One third of people in employment in Newcastle are employed by the state..

[SixtyFootDoll]

How can we as a Country keep going if most of us are State employees?
Esp when the Councils start haveing to make cuts.

" But equally a lot of children have benefited dramatically from the money being spent..."

I don't see that, labour didn't exactly make child poverty go away did they? Whilst dragging the rest of the country into poverty to boot.

"it's now up to them to use the skills they've been taught..."

What about the skills they have not been taught? The three r's for a start, money management. How about money management the government hasn't exactly led by example.

"and be good workers and pay back what has been spent on them."

Socialism didn't work in Russia and it doesn't work in China, what makes you think it would work in the uk?

Add to that if you ask these kids in ten years time when they have families if they would have foregone the diet training for the extra money in their wage packets to feed their own kids I'm sure they would say yes.

"Socialism didn't work in Russia and it doesn't work in China, what makes you think it would work in the uk?"

Do we have socialism in the UK? How did I miss that?

"Do we have socialism in the UK?"

'we'll keep the red flag flying here'
Labour and their many colours of red.

But I was refering to the fact that MillyMollyMoo said " and be good workers and pay back what has been spent on them.", which is the same as wage labour if you take into account the fact that their 'contract' involves paying for all of the chancellors misdemeanours.

Child poverty is measured very differently these days, in comparison to the 80's where kids who's parents on benefits actually did starve, very few these days are in that position.
My children benefit from that hopefully by not being stabbed by starving children when they grow up, hopefully.

I cannot believe i am writing this btw as personally I believe every man for themselves but appreciate that isn't how the UK works.

" in comparison to the 80's where kids who's parents on benefits actually did starve"

Sorry? I was on benefits in the 80's and my kids didn't starve, nor did anyone else's kids that I know, are we talking about the uk here or are you thinking band aid?

Link to all those poor starved children of the 80's please.

I could show our family for example, we went without, breakfast if the milk man came on time, school dinner which was free and that was your lot.
The kids next door to us used to steal food from the milk mans float or the local corner shop.
There were 4 of them, no carpets in the house, 2 in a single bed top and tailing and dad had fecked off.
The two eldest were in prison last I heard.

"in comparison to the 80's where kids who's parents on benefits actually did starve"

I'll echo Atlantis, my parents suffered from the unemployment of the 80s and were on benefits for a very long time.

Fair enough the house was falling to bits, there was no wallpaper, no carpets and we never had any holidays anywhere but on the other hand we didn't starve.

And even with those things we were without I wouldn't call us "poor". We were warm (jumpers!), fed and had a garden to run around in.

I'm sure there were exceptions then as there are exceptions now but starvation certainly wasn't the norm.

They key word in your sentence there Badger was parents Plural.
Just because it wasn't the norm on your street doesn't mean it didn't happen.
We were saved if you like when our mum met our step dad and what a success story that was, not.

and i thought this thread would read

'one third of Newcastle people employed in unofficial car removals'

runs for cover

"Just because it wasn't the norm on your street doesn't mean it didn't happen."

I'm not saying that it didn't happen and I'm not saying that it doesn't happen now.

What I am saying is that it's not accurate to give the impression that starvation was any more common in the 80s than it is now.

In fact the Evening Sub-Standard are saying today that malnutrition is now worse amongst the children of the poor than it has been for years. Though I'm not sure that that that's true either.

Another non starving 80s benefits child here too.

Guess what, my mum - single parent of two - managed to get herself a degree and become a teacher, without a man on hand to bail her out! How about that eh?

God bless Maggie!

......

Naw, just joking. About the last bit I mean.

I was on another child living on benefits and there was no starvation. We were warm, fed and loved.

My dad eventually got job and my mum retrained as a Housing Officer.

I actually find it offensive when it was implied I had some kind of Dickensian childhood. OK my clothes looked shit but I had a good standard of living and personally didn't notice we were even poor.

Well that's great, I wouldn't delight in hearing stories of children suffering today or 30 years ago.
But having seen with my own eyes the difference tax credits and benefits have made to my niece and newphews life v's the experience we had in a single parent family, it's unrecognizable.

I think you'll find that car theft is rather more likely in Manchester or even Romford Eggy. Newcastle also has rather less of a smack problem than other less deprived areas. Diven get at wu Geordies pet! As for the percentage employed by the public sector, I'm willing to bet that there are more civil servants, in terms of absolute numbers, in the south-east. Not to mention more BBC employees funded by licence payers throughout the country but unwilling to give up their west-London lifestyles, more Quango heads and more Arts Council bods. Moving all or at least a substantial proportion of these folk out of an already overcrowded region would enable us all to pay a lower level of salary more suited to housing and other costs in the rest of the country.

Yeah, get 'em out, I say. Living outside North London would do them good.

Didn't they try that with relocating to Manchester, all that happened was they recreated London in Manchester and ruined that, school fees trebled in 2 years in some places, the cast of Coronation Street were livid.

I have such a lovely image of Tristans taking over local pubs and making them serve sushi.

Jesus, a few offensive posts in this thread. Top political debating, atlantis, to quote your sister's boss's entirely stupid utterance that public sector jobs move up north bcs people there are 'thicker' and will vote labour.

Thicker like this perhaps?

North East has good schools, an educated workforce, a lower population density and consequently lower costs all round for employers. Newcastle area has a very high quality-of-life score compared with many parts of the UK and good investment in sustainable, green workplaces.

Since it is a Labour area anyway, not a huge amount of effective votes to be gained by keeping a highish level of public employment there, but a good strategy for keeping costs low and making good use of a pool of employable people.

And it is very heartbreaking up here in the north east to look for jobs in many many categories and repeatedly see the result that there are 100 in London and 1 in North East. Entirely sensible to correct that with a public-sector bias of vital jobs that can be done here more cheaply and just as well.

ok, to answer seriously, the anomaly of the north-east is exactly that - but the public sector is huge everywhere...

there is an element of self-feeding too - he government spends money, it actually gets back a reasonable amount of what it spends in ery short order (think about it - if the government spends £1000 on goods/services - how much is paid back in VAT, income tax, other varieties of tax...)

on top of those directly employed by the state there are whole private sector businesses that depend 100% on the state for custom eg. suppliers of temp soial workers/teachers/doctors/binmen....

so, yes it is vulnerable to spending cuts, but...spending cuts tend to be a consequence of a down-turn where the private sector is taking a much worse hammering -

in the current situation, jobs in the public sector, or with public-sector suppliers are greatly more secure.

whether or not the tax payer is getting value for money from all those people and expenditure is a very different question...

Or IT and other consultants who derive much of their income from govt bodies, health services and schools. Or pharmacists who get a substantial proportion of their income from filling NHS scrips. Or 'independent production companies' who have one major client (the BBC) and in fact whose employees would in former times have worked for that client at a fraction of the revenue they are now raking in from licence payers. Or GPs who are 'self-employed' and yet get a public sector pension...

The list is endless, and goes far beyond the National Insurance folk at Longbenton and the child benefit people in Washington. And when Geordies do find that there are 100 jobs in London for every one in Tyneside they discover that they can't possibly move there because of the costs of private sector housing and the impossibility of getting social housing. Another reason to ship some more public sector folk out if their services are not vital to the area.

fluffles rather than my PCT pay 15k for the 5 a day rep I would like more than 1 medic in the out of hours unit and more than one consultant on emergency standby to make life/death decisions at my localhospital at the weekend. These posts are wasteful and are non starters. Example, I coach fitness classes to Nursery schools Iam CRB checked insured andyears of experience behind me and we believe are educating young kids into the joys of exercising, and healthy eating. Classes are v cheap 2.50 per toddler however do the State run Nurseries want to know? Nah not on your nelly they haven't the funding. I know I provide better value formoney than a 5 a Day Coordinator so PUHlease.And 20k for a walk to school rep, who thinks up this stuff? There is real pain in the private sector and we dont want to punish you lot in the PS but we sure as hell want you to share some of this pain coz it bloody hurts you know!

my and dh combined salary 21k and that is before Darling gets his filthy hands on it. I just read about someone on another post retiring at 52 me and dh will be toilinguntil 75 at this rate.