howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
5 January 2009
19:0112158barry
i am still trying to get my head around andrew marr being part of the "nulab project and peter mackay normally being restrained!!
Sid Pollitt
5 January 2009
19:0912160It might be an idea to have a note telling us which political commentators are members or former members of any party. That could make interesting reading especially as we get so-called independent talking heads on the tv making out they aint got an axe to grind. Wasn't the BBC's Nick Robinson a member of a party when he was at Uni?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
5 January 2009
19:4112161Yes Sid, there is some merit to what you say in that. Nick Robinson was a Young Tory but he seems to be trying hard to overcompensate from what I have seen.
Howard - Marr well known as a NuLab supporter (friend of Blair if memory serves me right) and his appointment was controvercial when it was made.
Mckay does not write a political column as such (most of him column today is nothing to do with politics) and, until recently, when he did venture into the political arena was quite anti-Tory.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
5 January 2009
19:4312163errr, Sid - are you trying to suggest that you are a floating voter? You cannot get away with that one, too many of us know your history. You are as much a floating voter as I am.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
5 January 2009
23:0012183barry
the point about peter mackay/mckay was about his nonsensical column, not his politics.
he just goes off at the deep end and has no restraint whatsoever.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
6 January 2009
08:4012203Thats not the Peter McKay that I read howard.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
12 January 2009
13:3212595Well the latest initiative on the job creation scheme was announced this morning at a Job Summit. Politicians from all sides are and were anxious to be seen hitting the ground running after a rather long three week break not afforded to the rest of us.
The Conservatives also called a press conference today launching a poster but the headlines were grabbed by the government with a new £500million package on job creation. The main eye catching headline being the payment of a golden £2,500 to any employer giving a job to someone who has been unemployed for more than six months.
This idea could be a real winner. Tories are grumbling that the idea was theirs to begin with, but whether this be true or not it seems a good idea to put into operation at this time of job losses( now standing at 1.86m) so that long term skills are not lost from the workforce.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
12 January 2009
13:5412596No bleating PaulB - it is a fact that this idea has been taken from the Conservatives hook line and sinker.
Tale a look at this blog to see what Guido is saying...
http://www.order-order.com/2009/01/mcnulty-slams-browns-desperate-golden.html
This very idea was attacked by Labour Minister McNulty when proposed by the Conservatives (as well as on this forum) and now, Labour are adopting it.
Pretty good for a Party labelled as 'do nothing' ehhh. What about the next Cameron idea to be taken on board, just how long will it be before this Government decides to heed Cameron's call for a loan guarantee scheme?
Sid Pollitt
12 January 2009
14:2212598I suppose it is quite pleasing if your ideas are adopted by a party that can do something rather than being in the wilderness.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
12 January 2009
15:1612603It just demonstrates who is now making the running with policy and ideas. There will still be plenty left to be enacted when this Government gets kicked out.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
12 January 2009
17:3212608what goverment barryw there was me thinking it was a dictatership.
Sid Pollitt
12 January 2009
18:5212613Maybe people will be thinking that there's no point in voting Tory because all their good policies get nicked and their bad policies should carry a health warning.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
12 January 2009
19:0412617We shall see Sid - just 18 months maximum to go.
Sid Pollitt
12 January 2009
19:0712618Not Feb 2009 then? I think many in the public sector will be glad that their not going to add to the jobless at the moment, the do-nothing stance will change if they get in to a do-nothing to help and do lots to make things worse no doubt.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
12 January 2009
19:1612621Well, Sid - better redundancies in the unproductive public sector among the 'Street Sport Co-ordinators' or the community empowerment network programme managers or then there is the mass of 'diversity' and 'equality' non-jobs. I would like to see every one of these politically correct inspired jobs to be completely done away with.
Far, far better than just one job being lost in the private sector all the wealth of this country is created.
Its time the public sector was expected to bear its share of the burden.
Sid Pollitt
12 January 2009
19:2412623Better redundancies? Did you see that article in the Guardian by Polly Toynbee regarding what you call non-jobs? Very good. I said before that I reckon that if the council tax was 'frozen' by the amount suggested by the nasty party here in Dover it would meant a cut of around 3 to 5 million pounds over two years. That is not sustainable without wholesale job losses [you call them better redundancies] and cuts to frontline services. That would be just here in our district just think what caould be saved/ butchered by the nasty lot if carried out nationwide.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
12 January 2009
21:1012646Polly Toybee? Daft as a brush that one! I read her scribbles frequently.
Yes, there are many idiotic jobs created just to fulfill Labour's pc objectives that do not contribute wealth creation or any useful public service like emptying the rubbish bins!
Sid Pollitt
12 January 2009
22:5812681Yes, Polly Toynbee. She was flavour of the month with the Tories for about six weeks when they went all IDS touchy feely. Anyway, she wrote the following:
The Society Guardian's ads for public and voluntary jobs are now the regular target of the right, a catch-all sneer that draws a guaranteed guffaw at any Tory meeting. The Tax Payers' Alliance has just produced its Annual Non-Job Report, adding up the ads in Society for one month. Naturally, the Tory press joins the attack with glee. The Mail: "The public-sector wage bill is being bloated by thousands of jobs with spurious descriptions and little apparent value." The Express: "Taxpayers are being forced to fund an army of public-sector officials with bizarre jobs." The Sun: "Bureau-prats!" Even the BBC's You and Yours took up this report, mocking the job titles and interviewing the Tax Payers' Alliance with no balancing comment, nor bothering to do the briefest research - pick up the phone - to ask what these jobs are.
All this goes to the heart of Tory policy, persuading the electorate that tax money is always wasted, public jobs are pointless and the state should shrink. That is why the shadow paymaster general, Mark Francois, eagerly endorsed this report: "Taxpayers are becoming increasingly frustrated at having to fund politically correct jobs while they themselves are struggling to make ends meet." Joining the attack, George Osborne has promised that a Conservative government would ban all newspaper advertising for public jobs, putting them all online instead. (The Daily Mail owns the company that runs the NHS online jobs site - but oddly, they don't mock any of the job titles there.)
Examine the Tax Payers' Alliance's final list of Top Ten Non-Jobs and it's true, some have terrible titles. Something happens to the English language when it falls into the hands of human resources. But it only takes a couple of minutes on the phone to find out what the jobs are in human, rather than in human resources, speak.
Here's its No 1 non-job: assistant director, wellbeing and community services. Hampshire county council, salary, up to £85,000. What's the job? Complete charge of a budget of £170m, delivering care services to 10,000 adults, the old, disabled and frail across all of Hampshire - which is, incidentally, Tory-controlled. They may think "wellbeing" sounds silly, but it is David Cameron's favourite word. Is £85,000 too much? I don't know in a world where Lord Browne has just left BP with £63m legally purloined from a public company holding all our pension funds.
No 2: programme manager for national Supporting People value improvement programme, Department of Communities and Local Government, salary £39,728-£53,144. This is an awful mouthful of a title, but what does it do? Supporting People is one the government's best programmes, doing what the Tories like - funding a host of charities, such as Homeless Link, that help 1.2 million people to live independently. They are old or mentally ill homeless people who risk falling back on to the streets. This job does what taxpayers ought to want - checks best value for money.
Job No 8 has a deliberately funny title: Cardboard Citizens managing director, £45,000. This Arts Council-funded charity for homeless people (living in cardboard) helps 2,000 people a year get back into normal life. It puts on plays with homeless actors (Michael Billington gave four stars to its Timon in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works festival at Stratford). It uses theatre to help people get jobs - 400 last year - with interview training and career guidance. It's brilliant - but is it essential? That depends if you want to strip public funding to nothing but the barest bones.
"Diversity" is the alliance's worst word. But even here, it gets it badly wrong. Non-job No 10 is diversity and inclusion manager, Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, salary £38,000. This job sees that disabled people can take public exams. Would the alliance not want deaf children to lip-read French oral and blind children not to take exams in Braille? Would it deny exams to children in hospital?
Here are the other six on the list. No 3 is group manager, assessment and care management, Scottish Borders council, up to £42,024 - self-explanatory manager of care services in this Tory council. What on earth is non-job about that?
No 4: strategic director, children and young people, Halton council, £100,000. This job runs all schools, social services and health for children. ("Strategic" signifies that it has cut the number of council directors from six to four.)
No 5: civil resilience manager, Stockport council, £39,132. Every council by law has to have someone in charge of emergency planning.
No 6: diversity programme manager, Redbridge council (Tory-controlled), £39,126. This job eases the way for the area's 48% ethnic minorities and 17 languages, while making buildings and events usable by the disabled.
No 7: strategic leader, partnerships and participation, Leeds city council, £60,000. This coordinates the work of doctors, schools and social workers, to stop more Climbie calamities.
No 9: mobile youth provision and rapid response manager, Islington council, £35,592-£40,578. This post heads a team of youth workers to go where gangs of kids hang about, offering better activities, saving police time, avoiding asbos, responding to what neighbourhoods say they need most. Good idea.
Are any of these non-jobs, then? That depends on your priorities and what services you think the state should provide. But most of them are so utterly essential that it is breathtaking to think Tory spokesmen, or even the Tory press, can imagine there should be no directors of children's services and no managers to run social services for old people.
But if tax cuts are a priority, it's necessary to rubbish the entire public sector as politically correct jobsworths. Call every manager a bureaucrat. Never spell out what the services do, simply mock their titles. The Tories claim they can cut waste and pen-pushers, and no doubt everywhere there is always some waste (though no such scrutiny falls on bad management in the private sector to make fair comparisons).
The danger is that Labour has failed to create warmth and appreciation for its many excellent programmes: they are easy to cut when few know anything about them. Blairite rhetoric on reform only encourages voters to believe mendacious propaganda against everything public, easing the way for voters to opt for Tory tax cuts because "nothing works".
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
13 January 2009
09:1512692Over the last 11 year public expenditure has been totally unrestrained. Given them the money and the public sector can always find something to do with it, more empires for the managers to build.
I do not doubt that there are worthy and useful aspects to all these jobs. But - are we really getting enough bang for our bucks, that is what is important here.
I remember (as will Paul Watkins) back in the early-mid 80's when at DDC we got rid of all Assistant Directors of departments and reduced the number of departments. Labour councillors opposed that then and warned of dire consequences. No, it worked and a lot of ratepays cash was saved.
The public sector has become bloated and inefficient and needs some serious trimming.
We are in recession, probably the worse for 80 years or more. The whole burden is falling on the wealth creating sector of the economy, the private sector, with the public sector getting off scot free. Can you not see how that can only prolong and deepen the recession. It is common sense, the more you burden those upon whom you depend to get us out of this mess, the more difficult it gets.
The private sector carries the costs of this bloated public payroll and their featherbedded pensions. These are only paid for, ultimately, out of the wealth created by businesses.
The Mobile Youth Provision and Rapid Response Manager at Islington Council, earning up to £40,000 a year, does not create a penny in wealth, he only consumes the wealth created by others. Of course it does not stop there. On top of his salary there is his pension (most of which is not paid by him), there is his offfice, secretarial and other support, his 'team', expenses, all to be paid for. That job at £40k is probably costs Islington ratepayers the best part of £100k plus any costs associated to his 'team'.
You can argue that he does something useful among the young. But is it really necessary? What happened before? Perhaps the young would have had to look after and be responsible for themselves. You can argue that they would turn to anti-social behaviour, but my generation rarely did and we did not have anything like what is available now, even without this 'team'. Indeed a lot of areas dont have such a team without the public feeling at all deprived.
You can always formulate an argument for the spending of endless amounts of public money but is that really a responsible and sensible thing to do? No.
It is time to speed the end of the recession by cutting and controlling public spending and to once again encourage the wealth creators. Cuts their taxes, cut the red-tape under which they struggle. Get the economy moving again and we will all benefit, including the youths helped by the Islington team, jobs will be created for them by succesfull and competitive businesses.
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
13 January 2009
13:4512708So to boil that argument down to its basics BarryW, no job should exist unless it makes a profit. There goes the fire service, police, lifeboats, all care services and I would add health services but we have already seen the moves to make them 'profitable'. What a bleak outlook that would present.
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour