The UK Politics & Brexit Thread

[Bobby Dazzler]

completely unnecessary prostate interventions

I’ve no idea what that might be but it doesn’t sound like a procedure entered into lightly.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

From the Daily Mail:

"Critics have dismissed claims from ministers that ordinary 'working people' will not see the impact in payslips, because most of the pain will be initially targeted at businesses"
So Labour ministers claim that businesses will see an increase in tax burden... but this won't affect their employees. How does this work, then?

Straightforward. See Brown’s plundering of the British pension system a quarter of a century ago.

The woman in the street doesn’t understand how the money’s been taken.

Increased Employers National Insurance doesn’t affect your payslip. But it dramatically increases the cost of employing people, so employers have to fire people,offshore jobs, and pass employed jobs (with benefits) out to the “precariat.”

 

[markjay]

Straightforward. See Brown’s plundering of the British pension system a quarter of a century ago.

The woman in the street doesn’t understand how the money’s been taken.

Increased Employers National Insurance doesn’t affect your payslip. But it dramatically increases the cost of employing people, so employers have to fire people,offshore jobs, and pass employed jobs out to the “precariat.”

Raising Corporation Tax won't cut it, because it is only paid by profitable companies, and given where the economy is going, there will be less of those around. So you can increase the tax rate, but you'll still collect less overall.

Raising Employer's National Insurance Contributions, on the other hand, is a better proposition for the government, because every business that employs people has to pay it, even if they turn a loss.

However, the obvious risk is that losing businesses will let employees go. So, combine the increase in Employer's NIC with new employment laws that make it nigh-on impossible to fire anyone, and you're on to a winner (until businesses start collapsing, obviously, at which point you blame the Tories).

Well played, Labour.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

However, the obvious risk is that losing businesses will let employees go. So, combine the increase in Employer's NIC with new employment laws that make it nigh-on impossible to fire anyone

It's already too difficult to fire people. Not as difficult as France or Germany, but big corporates are full of people who are useless but not worth firing.

The real impact is that you just don't replace people who move for other reasons, and new work gets transferred out to suppliers, contractors and offshore suppliers.

We've been this way before.... The outsourced HR department, the contract IT staff, the IT consultancy, the offshored Accounting and Ops team

Where are the taxes on consumption? Where are the taxes on the genuinely rich, rather than on people who are daft enough to work long hours?

 

[markjay]

.....Where are the taxes on the genuinely rich, rather than on people who are daft enough to work long hours?

The genuinely rich are already being taxed..... 30% of the government's income from taxes comes from just 1% of taxpayers.

 

[markjay]

How many of those who will fall into the system as outlined because of self inflicted poor health and will cost the NHS considerable sums for a considerable period are the ones lambasting those who didn't quite save enough for retirement but are healthy and will overall be a much lower financial burden to the state then the unhealthy 'savers'?

True. The feckless who drink like a sponge, smoke like a chimney, and eat fried food like its going out of fashion, will cost the NHS more in the shorter term, but will be saving the NHS money in the longer term due to their much shorter life span. Still, the moral dilemma is there: if you had one donor who just passed away, who should get his/her liver: someone with Hepatitis C from a contaminated blood transfusion, or George Best for a second go?

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

The genuinely rich are already being taxed..... 30% of the government's income from taxes comes from just 1% of taxpayers.

You're misquoting. The top one per cent of earners pay 30 per cent of all income tax revenues. (a higher share than at any time in past twenty years.)

Luxury goods boomed under New Labour and the Tories. £20k Rolexes, £200k Porsches, £20 million houses. In the main bought by people who do not have large UK incomes, they have wealth or income earned overseas. (Or by the organisations which employ them)

And where are the taxes on luxury consumption by companies and corporates? Both British and non-British?

 

[st13phil]

It's already too difficult to fire people.

My view is that reasonable employment protections benefit everybody, but that they can be too easily abused by rogue employees. My experience is that those who are the poorest contributors to the work of the company tend to be the best versed in the “protections” afforded them by employment law, and are the most motivated to milk the situation for all they can get.

The sheer effort required to get rid of such a poor performing employee, together with the time it takes, can be extremely costly. The irony is that their co-workers generally want rid of them too, but can't understand why you haven't done so already.

The net result is that it’s often less costly to reach a compromise agreement than it is to dismiss, leading to a justified feeling amongst the remaining employees that poor performance and/or poor behaviour has been rewarded.

 

[st13phil]

Motivational thought for the day:

“A chancellor who has never run a business and reports to a prime minister who has never run a business and is advised by civil servants who have never run a business - is about to advise business owners how to run a business.”​

 

[ToeKnee]

I’ve no idea what that might be but it doesn’t sound like a procedure entered into lightly.

If it ever happens to me, I hope to God I'm entered into lightly!

 

[DSM10000]

5

If it ever happens to me, I hope to God I'm entered into lightly!

Would Greece help?

 

[Dippo]

completely unnecessary prostate interventions etc etc

I sincerely hope the six and a half weeks of radio therapy I had a year ago was necessary.

 

[SpikyMikey]

If it ever happens to me, I hope to God I'm entered into lightly!

 

[fourwheels]

I’ve no idea what that might be but it doesn’t sound like a procedure entered into lightly.

MikeInWimbledon said:
completely unnecessary prostate interventions

I can guess what he refers to (ask me how I know) but silly comments like that are usually made by people who have no need of necessity.

 

[190]

I think there is a danger in this when the evaluation (or calculation) of 'productivity' may be suspect.

While I'm sure productivity of the public sector could be improved, it's not all about lazy staff. I have a similar concern about how it's measured and I wonder if scope creep is as much to blame as anything else.

Let me give you an example. I worked in a secondary school for 18 years in IT. In year 1 there was 1.5 employees running the School IT network for 1200 pupils. By year 18 there were 5 because the sophistication and scale had changed out of all proportion. We had gone from 50 computers to over 500 and 2 servers to 8 not to mention smartboards and projectors in every class room. Did all this tech improve education for the same number of pupils- well that's debateable. It certainly didn't in proportion to the increased expenditure.

School admin was similar with the staff numbers increasing 5 fold although for a different reason - bureaucracy. They were doing all sorts of administrative tasks that simply didn't exist in year 1. The only numbers that didn't change and in fact went into reverse was teachers. The failure of management clearly lies with not focusing on a schools primary purpose which is to educate kids. To be fair the vast majority of added complexity in running a school was imposed externally by government and the local authority but it's still crazy.

Now imagine a similar expansion of wokery in the public sector as a whole and it's no surprise to me that productivity has flat lined because they are focusing on everything but the task by which we attempt to measure them.

 

[GrahamT]

I can’t see the correlation. Do explain.

I described over-medicalisation. The people jumping into the NHS for depression, food intolerance, completely unnecessary prostate interventions etc etc

Are hardworking people who haven’t saved enough for retirement all chiselled whippets from a lifetime of hard work and modest appetites? Seems unlikely.

The essence of the NHS is that its free stuff for those who rock up. Double the budget and medics will find a way to spend it.

If you ever find yourself in need of the services of the NHS perhaps you will remember those words.....

 

[GrahamT]

 

[st13phil]

it's no surprise to me that productivity has flat lined because they are focusing on everything but the task by which we attempt to measure them.

The old adage that what gets measured gets managed tends to apply.

It appears that much of the public sector is burdened to report on matters unrelated to the delivery of their primary function, and is measured / rewarded according to how they score against those measures. Little wonder that performance against their primary function(s) diminishes when the measurement / reward focus is elsewhere.

 

[GrahamT]

The old adage that what gets measured gets managed tends to apply.

It appears that much of the public sector is burdened to report on matters unrelated to the delivery of their primary function, and is measured / rewarded according to how they score against those measures. Little wonder that performance against their primary function(s) diminishes when the measurement / reward focus is elsewhere.

My experience 20 years ago says that this was the reality in private industry at the time ! Was it the case in the public sector too ? It appeared not to be so much in health care .

 

[TC350]

The old adage that what gets measured gets managed tends to apply.

It appears that much of the public sector is burdened to report on matters unrelated to the delivery of their primary function, and is measured / rewarded according to how they score against those measures. Little wonder that performance against their primary function(s) diminishes when the measurement / reward focus is elsewhere.

This aligns perfectly with what @190 wrote about his many years working in schools. OFSTED inspections and subsequent reports are used as the go to measure of school performance by parents. Yet they have very little to do with educational achievement.