Soo.. what proportion of Boots retail staff claim benefits and use the NHS?

[vinegarandbrownpaper]

Sick of 'business leaders' with businesses propped up by tax breaks, working tax credits and people propping up contracts with benefits when there is no work.. making sure those workers can still come back despite zero hours. Pay your staff properly before you complain about a supportive society you dolt.

"any fool of a government can spend money we have not got playing 'Barry BIG Bollocks'" yeah ... obviously the Tories then. And, as the figures show, they did this for 18 out of 19 years.

AllThePretty Seahorses .... Please explain WHAT the 1997 "Tory mess" was in detail; a UK economy (with Europe and America) that had a recession in the early 1990's, that had 20 odd consecutive quarters of mild economic growth up unto 1997, and budgeted to balance the UK books by eliminating the budget deficit early in the 2000's??????

If you compare that 1997 financially prudent, with a balanced state vs private sector economy - with the 2010 economic, financial, immigration, housing, education, £38 bil overspent defense, unemployment, pensions etc shit storm that Labour passed to the Conservative largest party - you are not playing with a full deck.

If it wasn't for the Lib Dems putting country before party, NOTHING could have been done via parliament to CORRECT that proud (but incompetent) Labour record Brown was sooo convinced was "the end of boom and bust".

Next the 'upturn' you refer to re our last posts on the other page was the REDUCTION under the Conservatives of our budget deficit from Osborne's first emergency budget, not the economy/growth which is different, and needs different levers.

But please explain in detail what the pre 2010 Labour reforms were to turn their own mess around by getting businesses to invest/employ, to reduce the size of the 13-year engorged State, to produce new detail departmental budgets to reduce the deficit they said they'd reduce by a half and the tax rises they said pre election would mean less spending cuts???

Clue; all I saw from a clueless Labour was give punters £2,000 to trade in an old car for a new one, raise the Fuel Duty, lower VAT for a year or so, but put up National Insurance (Darling admitted had a nasty side affect) to pay for it?

“Labour's planned National Insurance increase will cost jobs, Alistair Darling admits”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

“In his evidence, Mr Darling defended his plans to increase national insurance, saying it was necessary to raise extra money to reduce Government borrowing, which will be £167 billion this year.”

How hypocritical has Miliband been by blaming the Coalition for the loss of 'real' earnings that began in 2008 and got worse from 2009 to 2011, when Labour policy was to LOSE jobs, put a TAX on jobs, and OTHER taxes that was to be announced AFTER the 2010 General Election, as Balls wants to announce his MAIN tax rises (needed once the ideological rises are in place that bring in diddly squat), after this years General Election?

Iggly …. Re your ”Prove that the private sector is more efficient please give me the evidence”

”And why are quangos inherently bad? Not answered.”

Why is a 13-year Labour Party that spent hundreds of £££billions on a bloated State we didn’t need pre election 1997 with well over1 million new employees, that made over 4,200 new laws, restricted economic growth with regulation and red tape to give bureaucrats something to do and make the government look ‘busy’, wasting time trying to micro manage our lives e.g. Trolly’s UK Tax Guide DOUBLED to 16,220 pages?

Why?

Why can I not justify that expenditure?

Hmmmmm.

Or more like, how can the Labour apologists who hide their party’s incompetence behind life time trumps everything ideological mantras, that ‘only the Labour Party (not toffs) STAND UP for the poor, the under privileged, equality, social justice yada yada yada – *JUSTIFY SPENDING THOSE HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS, ‘FIDDLING’, ‘MULTICULTUIRING’, AND SUBBING OUT JOBS, WHILE THE POOR WERE HELD BACK, offered a ‘rounded’ mediocre education, offered a benefit Britain culture to keep them where Labour wanted them, with a housing crisis CAUSED by Labours other policies ensuring an unstable platform to help themselves?

Shelter (2009); The housing crisis in numbers – and the need for spare bedrooms, never mind homes.
england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/the_housing_crisis/what_is_the_housing_crisis.

• Over 1.7 million households (around 5 million individuals) are currently waiting for social housing
• 7.4 million homes in England fail to meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard
• 1.4 million children in England live in bad housing. [3]
• In 2008/09, 654,000 households in England were overcrowded. [4]

”The number of new households is increasing faster than the number of house builds,”

So Iggly, YOU TELL ME that fat, quango, non job Labour government £££billions could NOT have spent money better on homes, lower taxes for the working poor, the several £10 billion a time nuclear reactors urgently needed from 2004 never built, better rail & roads networks, an airport, ALL TO PRODUCE FUTURE ECONOMIC GROWTH – and even a honking £100 billion Trident nuclear deterrent paid for in cash as Russia’s Putin gets feisty?

You havent said what quangos have to do with that spending. They may have spent more, quango or not - which is my basic point. You scream about quangos but make no sense - what is inherently wrong with a quango vs another government body?

Nor have you proven that the private sector is more efficient. Because there's none to be found.

Nope, your answer still doesn't make sense. Labour balanced the books and then some within a couple of years of getting into power yet you credit the Tories with this growth: the deficit reduction was at a sharp tangent in early 2010 under Labour and continued until the effects of the Coalition's first budget slowed it down, yet you somehow credit the Coalition for a recovery that began before they weren't quite elected. You castigate Labour for its later budget deficit years despite 4 years of high surplus yet applaud the previous Tory government for running a deficit throughout its entire 3 terms, except for a small surplus in one year. You can't have it both ways.

Actually, I'll ask a question. Given the Tories' obvious record of working in a deficit which, lets be honest, would have projected 2 or 3 times the Labour deficit in 2008 as well as the historic Tory tradition of mass unemployment etc, exactly how bad a mess would the economy have in come 2010?

AllThePrettySeahorses ....please read your first two lines back, I REPEAT you are still confusing 'balancing the UK's books' and economic 'growth', whether that growth was sustainable paid for by the proceeds of a financial bubble/increasing national debt, or not.

Labour had the worst of both, unbalancing economic growth and running a budget deficit doing it.

The Budget Deficit was INCREASING annually under Labour by 2010, look at your own graph, look at the UK Treasure bar chart I've given you, look at Darling's statement on National Insurance, as he was preparing for a £167 bil annual budget deficit in 2010/11 but it was just over £150 billion under the coalition, even after Osborne REVERSING the Darling National Insurance and Fuel Duty hikes of their last budget.

Why, very simple, because Labour had made no plans/budgets to reduce it before the 2010 General Election, saying 'they can't be asked to account for every penny' - when the Conservatives coming into the 1997 General Election HAD made plans.

You have yet to explain/qualify your own points:WHY in your view was the 1997 Conservative economy a mess, and what were Labour pre 2010 reforms to get the economy back on track???

Iggly ..... are you saying that numerous new quangos were not formed from 1997, or their budgets increased - even though the facts show otherwise???

Are you saying that money COULD NOT have been better socially spent?

How can I compare the growth of usually expensive, wasteful, quangos with the private sector, as in 1997 before Labour took over, MOST OF THESE JOBS DID NOT EXIST, the Labour halfwits CREATED them - hence NONE can be found.

Prove it. Prove those jobs weren't needed. All of them. Some of them perhaps, but all of them?

Also, as I said way up thread - a quango is just one mechanism for government to exercise policy. It could have spent the same money, created all the extra jobs even without using quangos. So quangos aren't the issue. A red herring.

Still waiting for proof about the super efficient private sector.

Well the Conservative plans to stop the deficit weren't working, were they? As much as you desperately try to speculate that the Tories would eventually build a surplus, it is far more logical to infer, from previous performance, that this would not happen. I would ask what on earth Labour could do to balance the books in your eyes, when they patently did, (hint, all the targets you have previously mentioned such as economic growth, budget surplus etc etc) when in your view, the Tories, with their incompetence, uncontrollable deficit and lack of growth were successful but, frankly, I couldn't care less. The figures do prove that Labour was infinitely more successful that the useless Tories at "balancing the books" - even you, with your tortuous attempts at defending Tory policy have been unable to deny that. And yes, there was a mess in 1997. And yes, it would have been a damn sight worse if the Tories were in government in 2008. After all, there would not have been growth like there was under Labour, there would have been much higher unemployment before the recession hit and there would have been a bigger deficit beforehand. And yes, the deficit reduction in 2010/2011 was clearly based on Labour policies because a) it was happening before the Coalition took over and b) it only started to slow down when these policies were overriden by the coalition.

So I'll withdraw from this thread because there are some things (beginning with S) you just can't argue with.

Iggly btw I agree with you that quangos are necessary bodies for the efficient running of government policy. They certainly didn't seem to adversely affect the economic growth either, did they?

Yes quangos can be quite efficient - they're small and it is easier to control costs vs departments which tend to be large and unwieldy.

AllThePrettySeahorses ..... I think it best you do withdraw as you don't seem to know your basic economic descriptions from you elbow, you seem unable to qualify your own statements, and are telling outright lies regarding the facts.

The Conservative tight budgets prior to the 1997 General Election was with the view of paying down the budget deficit from the 1990/1 recession in the early 2000's AS IT WAS, and Blair was elected in 1997 as he said Labour would do thinks 'different' to a tight spending economy living within our means - how did that work out?

Labour took that 2001/2 balanced budget ("in my eyes" and everyone elses) and went on a spending spree, as YOUR graph and my bar chart on the previous page shows, yet you are in denial, how very Labour.

In 1979, the Conservatives would have inherited an economy from Labour that 3-years earlier Labour had called out the IMF to bail out the UK economy financially, so unlikely the UK finances were not a train crash in 1979, what with all the strikes in Labour's last year below.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

GDP growth 1997-2013 under Labour was on the proceeds of a financial and huge government spending, huge government increases in employment, all components with Consumption of GDP - an economy built on sand, which is WHY we had the largest budget deficit in Europe.

Labour in 2010 had no plans to address their own problems, thinking as you clearly do ANY government spending/debt, is good public spending debt.

The Coalition did, they lowered taxes and stimulated the private sector which now has 2.7 million jobs since 2010, pared back the public sector, had the best performing GDP/employment major economy in the world in 2014 - while Europe, many following Labour's 2010 fat government, higher taxes non-plan, are still stuffed, with the Eurozone unemployment rate nearly double ours over 11%.

Those are the facts, and all your waffle can't change 'em, Labour screwed up and will do again as have not learned their own lessons.

Iggly ... so in 1997, the UK was waiting, nay gagging, to issue 4,300 new laws, needed a mass of State administrators, quangos and non jobs, often issuing more nanny regulation and red tape - and all this was more important than a non building housing housing crisis, got it.

As you have all the answers justifying fat government, how many old quangos had increased budgets, how many new quangos were there, and at what cost to the taxpayer, how many hundreds of £££ billions are you justifying?

As for the super efficient private sector, you still haven't got it, the taxpayer don't pay their salaries, and if they weren't so efficient in costs, Labour and their trade unions wouldn't shite themselves when 'competition' is mentioned - as if the State can't compete with well run private sector companies making a PROFIT as well, it means all is not well with the State.

Not that government quangos that are created out of thin air compete with anyone.

You're spectacularly missing my point deliberately

And you still haven't proven that the private sector is more efficient
If it was, why doesn't the public sector just do what they do? Why, because there isn't a magic golden answer.

Take off your Tory blinkers and open your mind a bit.

Iggly ..... what I have PROVEN is that during a fantastic opportunity for a 13-years Labour government flushed with huge financial bubble tax receipts, instead of that money being spent on the poor and disadvantaged they accuse the Conservatives of neglecting - the SIZE of the State and its employment of quangocrats/administrators grew enormously, 'creating' government jobs that did not exist prior to 1997. TRUE or FALSE?

As for State run industries over the past say 50-years, how many do you show still running, that are not know in private hands or disappeared altogether?

Are you a bit confused about the MAIN difference between the Public Sector and the Private Sector;

Where a private company is in GLOBAL competition, it has to remain lean otherwise it negatively affects the PRICE of its goods and services, making it less competitive, it losses market share, its stock price plummets, then the company can go tits up and EVERYONE losses their jobs.

But where a public sector where NONE of the above matters to them, they get their budgets no matter what as a government can borrow if costs overshoot for as long as it likes, the vast majority of their jobs and final salary pensions are safe in perpetuity.

Labour (and you) have proven that it has no clue of the pressures businesses are under every day, in their 13-years in power, and now Miliband's constant 'attack and tax' mantras on various sectors of businesses now, seen by EVERY UK business looking to budget/hire for the next few years ahead.

All Labour hears are trade union demands for more money/better terms from those sponsoring MPs and their office costs, and that is why they find it alien for ALL MP's that might have a business clue, should get to UNDERSTAND those small, medium, large business fears via Directorships - the majority of which, being Conservative, hence the current SUSTAINABLE economic growth path we on, until Labour gets back in after 2015 and causes businesses to CONTRACT investment and lay off staff.

You haven't proven that the private sector is more efficient. It might do thimgs ore cheaply but, as anyone with a brain knows, cheap does not equal efficient.

As for this: as for State run industries over the past say 50-years, how many do you show still running, that are not know in private hands or disappeared altogether

Again, how does that prove the private sector is better? It only proves that successive governments like to privatise.

And where governments have done so, take a look at the layers of regulation they've had to put in because the privatisation approach doesn't work or provide lower prices for consumers. So, rail, energy, water, mobile phones etc etc.

If the private sector was so wonderful, then why do we need state regulation?

As for job creation - look at what the Tories are doing now to public sector professions like teaching and nursing. People are leaving in their droves. We need this people. It isn't about efficiency. They'll need to be recruited again!

Iggly …. What is clear and proven, especially under the last 13-years of Labour was that money was thrown at government departments with little attention to accountability, productivity etc etc etc that you CANNOT have in the private sector for long, for reasons I explain further above as the viability of a private company existing is at stake, not so in the public sector.

You mentioned teaching, out of the whole profession in England following similar syllabuses, over the past 20-years, do you know how many teachers have been fired for not being able to teach to an acceptable standard, 5, 10, maybe 20, do you have any facts????

So are we as parents and taxpayers expected to believe that unlike the ‘hire and fire’ private sector, every teacher is standardised like a clone and delivering excellent results?

Labour’s Shadow Education bod Tristram Hunt (in an earlier link) apologised for Labour lowering the education bar, and that can be seen in the results, the end product, the whole point of receiving an education to make your way in the world.

“England’s young adults trail the world in literacy and maths”.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24433320

”Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.”

Labour even hired a few hundred thousand teaching assistants, which on balanced was a policy that has not only FAILED to improve the standards of the children, IT SET THEM BACK.

“TA’s;Teaching Assistants impair pupil performance.”
www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6022071

“Pupils who receive intensive help from teaching assistants make less progress than their classmates, damning research into a key Labour education policy has concluded.”

“The more attention students receive from support staff, the worse their attainment in the core subjects of English, maths and science, a government-funded five-year study has found.”

In summary, the whole education model promoting ‘soft’ subjects, falling down on key subjects was a 13-year government failure, but no doubt content they still rolled out numerous ‘well rounded’ children, not stressed too much, so ready to join the JSA line.

In a Private Company; a Chairman/Board with a 5 -year plan going in the wrong direction would have seen their share price diving, as their cost base of hire hundreds of thousands of assistants and god knows how many ‘soft’ subject professionals with the wrong skill sets MASIVELY increased their FIXED cost base, as the results/bottom line plummeted below expectations.

The private company Chairman/Board would have been replaced; there would have been a huge cull and replacement of staff as many current employees have been too used to the ‘old’ system, either cannot or don’t want to adapt to the new professional rigour of the new Boards targets. Meanwhile it is a race against time, as under such a massive reorganisation to rescue the company the very survival of the company and every persons job is at stake.

Do you see the difference NOW between the public and private sector, especially when those public sector ‘senior managers’, make that teaching establishment, that saw such mediocrity under their watch actually kicked back and said ‘we don’t want to change’, intimating that those results may or may not have been acceptable to them but we don’t want to change – whereas in a private sector, based on results, there isn’t even the security of a job never mind telling the new ‘board’ to park ideas where the sun don’t shine?

As for regulation the most economically effective and practical regulation is LESS and CONCISE, as that way its easier to follow, easier to prosecute, keeps the cost of government/taxes down and frees up government time to BUILD a more prosperous, sustainable, economy - rather than create a small army of MP’s and their quancocrats ‘fiddling’ trying to justify their existence.

Regulations aimed at price monopolies etc are clearly needed, but that was clearly not what Labour's fat government were doing, they were relaxing City regulations and do NOT get me started on all their 'elf & safety legislation/regulation.

LOL.

You can't prove it. Sorry. But you can't.

The public sector is much more accountable. The private sector only has to worry about its owners. That's why we know more about the public sector than we could about the private sector.

Look at the scandals with private sector bank CEOs still getting their huge bonuses when banks have failed.... How does that work then?

Show me research that demonstrates that the private sector is more efficient. Go on. Find it and show me.

I know the private sector is different - of course it is. It has different motives. I don't think one is better than the other, they do different jobs. Serve different needs.

Iggly ....

How many teachers have been toasted over the past 20-years for not being able to teach, which statistically in a private sector job where results are key would be quite high?

How can the Public Sector cease to exist over its incompetence, ever?

Rotherham is the 'efficient' public sector EVEN after being told to change, tube drivers striking as its apparently OK to drive a tube train pissed, is the private sector.

Bank CEO's, how many from the crash time are still in the same job, or are you pathetically saying that every employee of a bank caught up in the crash has to suffer financial in perpetuity? Guffaw.

By definition the Private Sector like-for-like is more efficient as they can pay more to get better people/results, right to the other end of the spectrum, they cease to exist.

I just have to show how WASTEFUL governments and the public sector can be, some more than others, when 'creating' jobs/projects.

”New Labour ‘blew £230bn on errors, fraud and inefficiency’
www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4368120.ece

”The hundreds of billions of pounds of public money wasted through errors, inefficiency and fraud under Tony Blair’s New Labour government have been revealed in a book.”

”A retired businessman who spent three years examining where taxpayers’ money had gone found that by 2005 the government had wasted more than £230 billion, much of which was lavished on projects started under New Labour.”

Prove this: By definition the Private Sector like-for-like is more efficient as they can pay more to get better people/results, right to the other end of the spectrum, they cease to exist

You can easily dig out stories of failures in the public sector. The clue is in the name "public".

There are not the same number of stories on the private sector because they private sector is not more accountable. It doesn't make it better.

That is my point. One is not better than the other. There are inefficiencies on both sides. Look at things like food waste by supermarkets who over order food stock which needs throwing away, for example. Banks and retail chains have had IT failures. How many times have you been frustrated by phoning up a call centre, only to be routed around to various people but never the one you want or need?

I don't believe the public sector is better. But, and here's the bit which will blow your tiny mind, neither do I think the private sector is better.

So copy and paste all you like, you cannot prove your assertions.

Iggly ... earlier in this thread I have shown under Labour the number of government quangos multiplied and local authorities created a small army of non jobs and even more examples above of bad policy hiring e.g. teacher assistants.

The private sector IS accountable, every year to their shareholders, while politicians are clearly not judged by their screws ups after 5-years, as Labour is likely to win the next General Election - so not only will we never get that money back, we will pay interest of the national debt consequencies for decades to come and in May, off they go again to 'finish' the UK.

The point you are missing is I don't give a flying fuck if Tesco over orders and throws food away....but every penny an incompetent Labour administrations WASTES it is paid for by the TAXPAYER, usually under Labour HIGHER taxes, a double-whammy.

Nope you haven't proven that the private sector is more efficient.

And public sector bodies are subject to annual audits and vfm studies and various politicians sticking their noses in things. check your facts

"And public sector bodies are subject to annual audits and vfm studies and various politicians sticking their noses in things"

WHO checks;

The Labour Party from 1997 with the Campbell & Mandelson and Brown believing a neutral civil service shouldn’t be, practising an ideological ‘my way or the highway’ and then surrounded themselves by YES people? How many experienced Treasury people were still there when the financial crisis hit?

The Labour Party with an ex shipworker/trade union official Commons Speaker Mich Martins (cited by prosecuted Labour MP’s of encouraging it) overseeing the dropping of parliamentary expenses standards on their watch, admittedly taken advantage of by Conservative MP’s – who was eventually asked to leave as Speaker and got some title or other for his ‘services’?

The Labour Party investigated by the police for Cash for Lordships and how many of those donors received lucrative Labour Contracts e.g wasn’t the NHS IT computer system failure company one?

The Labour Party without a democratic mandate that decided on a Westminster sofa in 2000 the UK needed to be more ‘multicultural’ so 2/3rd s of the 4 million migrants coming here were NON EU citizens; who had the balls or intellect to remind them we are opening our doors to the EU in 2004 and building sod all new homes for them all?

The Labour Party that thought lighter bank regulation was the way forward and lecturing EU leaders on the need to do the same, whilst accepting party donations from a Co-op bank staffed by a board of card carrying incompetents?

The Labour Party of fat government that in 1997 virtually killed Private Sector Final Salary pension schemes while hiring hundreds of thousands of government administrators over 13-years ON Final Salary pension schemes to be funded by taxpayers - and even NOW after 2015, want to pay for naïve vote winning tuition fees cuts, by attacking private sector pensions again, that will not affect Public Sector Final Salary pensions - thus not upsetting the public sector trade unions paying for their general election campaign?

Etc etc etc.

Labour over 13-years had a 66 to a 166 parliamentary seat majority and did EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED TO DO as they thought they were policy untouchable, as long as they kept the Conservatives out they knew their voters would vote for them even if they took every families first born child – so WHO was annually checking for the effects of all the above?

Who is going to provide the ‘checks and balances’ in parliament from 2015, the Scottish National Party who take away dumping our Trident nuclear deterrent, could be a policy mirror image of Old Labour?

LOL. Still cant prove it though can you?

Why don't the private sector allow unions so fight for private sector pensions. Which were cut by private sector bosses, for everyone except those at the top....

You can't prove it. You can rant. But you cannot prove it.

Iggly … I can prove that governments (especially a Labour one) can be totally incompetent at managing finances versus the private sector as seen over the last few pages on this thread, I can’t help it if you’ve had a Labour brain screw, seeing everything through red rose tinted specs. Lol.

I have qualified (further above) how after Labour/Brown raided UK private pensions in 1997, those without gold plated public sector pensions LOST their final salary pensions the New Labour new army of above average salary quangocrats enjoy.

And as for trade unions, they ‘negotiated’ most of our UK factories closed in the 1970’s, so while they are in their element in the business of government, you STILL DON’T GET IT, businesses can go bankrupt if not efficient etc, governments generally don’t, so THE TAXPAYER is always on the hook for the pensions of non front line employees, especially armies of administrators.

The UK Nation Debt is currently around £1,500,000,000,000 (£1.5 trillion) and ON TOP OF THAT we have the UK’s pension liabilities, which unlike the private sector pension plans, are mostly UNFUNDED, having to come out of annual budgets in the future as fall due.

”ONS reveals full UK pension liabilities”
www.if.org.uk/archives/2031/ons-reveals-full-uk-pension-liabilities
More important are the total government liabilities of £5 trillion. These break down as follows:
• Government employee pensions: £1.2 trillion (unfunded: £0.9 trillion; funded: £0.3 trillion)
• State pensions: £3.8 trillion (all unfunded)

How many private sector companies could run a business WITHOUT putting money aside for pensions, like the government does – as for many private companies under the weight of Labour’s taxes, that is the difference between staying open for business???

Nearly £1 trillion of public sector pensions unfunded, just think if Labour had a more regard for 'front line' worker salaries and pensions over new bureaucrats, that figure would be both lower and going to the right people.

So forget the small army of £50k plus salaries Labour created that was coming out of budgets like housing of TODAY, the future pension liabilities of 13-years of Labour quangocrats you and Labour still luv, will be paid for by our grandchildren and beyond.

Still haven't proven that the private sector is more efficient.....