Do you want to discuss boring politics? (19 Viewers)

[Grendel]

I don't support the current administration either but they weren't in charge for a decade and a half. Is the previous lot's time in office not relevant?

If we are talking care provision most of the move from councils to private occurred under Blair

 

---

[rob9872]

I get the logic - I think the issue is profiteering. There’s a reason quite a lot of private equity has gone into car home provision over the last 5+ years. I mean, what other choices do people have at the end of the day? Let your elderly relatives remain at home sitting in their own piss until they inevitably injure themselves or blow the house up because they forgot they left the hob on?

I agree, which is why it's a circular argument and back to my original point a page ago, where I said it should have happened a generation ago, but it didn't and that it's now too late to put the genie back in the bottle. It's partly because of low wages and lack of staff, that those profiteering are able to exploit the care home system. If the profit gaps were less originally they might have looked somewhere else. Now we have poorly trained people over worked and giving poor service in homes that are charging a small fortune. It's all wrong, but some think there is a magic wand and a money pit.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

As I keep saying, yes they made mistakes, but the reason they are out is lack of trust and being charlatans, not to do with managing the economy. For fear of sounding like a broken record, austerity was necessary at the start of the term with the coalition following the worldwide recession (which you accept was finished by 2010 just a few posts up). The second term covered Brexit and then we had the pandemic with much of the country furloughed and no industry. What would you have suggested during that time? Keep raising wages? To what end? I genuinely don't see how the economy could have been managed much better, it certainly wasn't a time for investing.

Whose idea was it to hold a Brexit referendum? Has the Liz Truss economic experiment also escaped your memory? You can't point to anything they did wrong over their long time in office on here without being accused of political bias. What do you want people to say instead; they were in charge, they did a crap job and oversaw a worsening of the country's problems. You can tell from what I've written about the current government despite it apparently being my 'side' I wouldn't vote for them either and didn't actually vote for them at the last election.

Johnson himself was probably the worst man to have at the helm during a global pandemic. Ironically Maggie Thatcher would probably have excelled at it.

 

[rob9872]

Ah yes those 6 weeks of Liz Truss that ruined the economy forever irreversible.

Ys I can point to many things they did wrong, but do you honestly think if we'd kept on spending throughout those times (which is the alternative course of action) that things would now be better?

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Ah yes those 6 weeks of Liz Truss that ruined the economy forever irreversible.

Ys I can point to many things they did wrong, but do you honestly think if we'd kept on spending throughout those times (which is the alternative course of action) that things would now be better?

I'm not saying that the answer to everything is more money. The furlough scheme was an economic and medical necessity, no argument there.

But as we have transitioned to a more privatised set up for care homes, schools and so on, the money has been more concentrated in the hands of executives and other staff who don't contribute to the service. The result of that is the profiteering that we see which in turn worsens the quality of the service. Social care is not something that needs or should have a profit incentive, likewise with healthcare and education.

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. From what you're saying that's what we should now be accepting for many jobs going forward.

 

[rob9872]

I'm not saying that the answer to everything is more money. The furlough scheme was an economic and medical necessity, no argument there.

But as we have transitioned to a more privatised set up for care homes, schools and so on, the money has been more concentrated in the hands of executives and other staff who don't contribute to the service. The result of that is the profiteering that we see which in turn worsens the quality of the service. Social care is not something that needs or should have a profit incentive, likewise with healthcare and education.

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. From what you're saying that's what we should now be accepting for many jobs going forward.

Not at all, my original post again said there is no ideal solution. Part of the problem is people see themselves above it. I know if I ask my daughter to clean up her own mess let alone someone else's that it's a battle. Nobody wants to do that kind of work, so we bring people in who are glad to take the job because it's better than what they have. We have a whole generation and probably the last one too who have too much and are generally too entitled. You'd have to make it one of the best paid jobs going to encourage them to do it, because too much is obtained with less effort. That won't and can't happen so there is no solution. We also have an ageing population, but then all the people coming into the country will also live longer and we'll keep needing more and more people coming in to the industry and therefore the country, to support it.

As callous and outrageous as it was (and I accept that I unfairly speak as someone who wasn't affected personally by people in care homes at the time of the pandemic), but the 'let the bodies pile high' was probably the best opportunity to make that change, it's unsustainable.

 

[Earlsdon_Skyblue1]

I'm not saying that the answer to everything is more money. The furlough scheme was an economic and medical necessity, no argument there.

But as we have transitioned to a more privatised set up for care homes, schools and so on, the money has been more concentrated in the hands of executives and other staff who don't contribute to the service. The result of that is the profiteering that we see which in turn worsens the quality of the service. Social care is not something that needs or should have a profit incentive, likewise with healthcare and education.

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. From what you're saying that's what we should now be accepting for many jobs going forward.

I have said this many times on this thread, but the wages in the UK are absolutely shite. All across the spectrum.

 

[chiefdave]

Wages gap. If you increase those, every other sector will want their share of the pie and there isnt enough to go round without a magic money tree, not to mention the levels of inflation that would cause. Immigration is of course a factor on that too, but that's the history, its about what we do now and I dont have the answers, but throwing money at it now is pointless.

Not sure this is true. We don't necessarily need more money, we need the distribution of what we have changed. The last 15 years have seen money flow to the top at an unprecedented rate. Not sure you need to do much more than reverse that.

Try and move back towards hard work being rewarded rather than hard work meaning you're struggling to survive. For the younger generation its horrifically bad. Mates daughter has a full time job and two part time jobs and still has nowhere near the level of income you'd need to move out and have even the most basic standard of living.

 

[chiefdave]

I get the logic - I think the issue is profiteering. There’s a reason quite a lot of private equity has gone into car home provision over the last 5+ years. I mean, what other choices do people have at the end of the day? Let your elderly relatives remain at home sitting in their own piss until they inevitably injure themselves or blow the house up because they forgot they left the hob on?

Bingo. Saw someone post on twitter the other day something along the lines of why are care home fees so high but the workers pay so shit, then listed off loads of other examples of the same situation. Its not that the money isn't there, its where the money is ending up.

Another example, we hear a lot about food inflation, here's a quote about Tesco "The UK's biggest supermarket chain said pre-tax profits hit £2.3bn, up from £882m". So what is driving that food inflation?

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Not at all, my original post again said there is no ideal solution. Part of the problem is people see themselves above it. I know if I ask my daughter to clean up her own mess let alone someone else's that it's a battle. Nobody wants to do that kind of work, so we bring people in who are glad to take the job because it's better than what they have. We have a whole generation and probably the last one too who have too much and are generally too entitled. You'd have to make it one of the best paid jobs going to encourage them to do it, because too much is obtained with less effort. That won't and can't happen so there is no solution. We also have an ageing population, but then all the people coming into the country will also live longer and we'll keep needing more and more people coming in to the industry and therefore the country, to support it.

As callous and outrageous as it was (and I accept that I unfairly speak as someone who wasn't affected personally by people in care homes at the time of the pandemic), but the 'let the bodies pile high' was probably the best opportunity to make that change, it's unsustainable.

And yet then we have complaints from you and others that immigration is out of control, yet we won't put in the hard yards to wean ourselves off of people prepared to come and do unforgiving work for crap pay. So what do you want?

 

[Grendel]

And yet then we have complaints from you and others that immigration is out of control, yet we won't put in the hard yards to wean ourselves off of people prepared to come and do unforgiving work for crap pay. So what do you want?

You are I assume defining “crap pay” as the minimum wage?

 

[Grendel]

It’s odd when you look at average salaries as we are pretty competitive compared to Europe

Average salaries across Europe: Which countries have the highest pay?

Euronews takes a closer look at how average full-time adjusted salaries vary across Europe, both in nominal terms and in purchasing power standards.

www.euronews.com

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

You are I assume defining “crap pay” as the minimum wage?

Not necessarily, crap pay for the type of work that it is.

 

[rob9872]

And yet then we have complaints from you and others that immigration is out of control, yet we won't put in the hard yards to wean ourselves off of people prepared to come and do unforgiving work for crap pay. So what do you want?

It is out of control and again why I said it should have happened before but is now too late. I don't have a solution, but keep bringing in more people and propping it up definitely isnt one of them. It's unsustainable. I asked for solutions, it seems all we have is pay more money or keep bringing people in. Neither of those can we afford to do, so we need to be a bit more imaginative.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

It is out of control and again why I said it should have happened before but is now too late. I don't have a solution, but keep bringing in more people and propping it up definitely isnt one of them. It's unsustainable. I asked for solutions, it seems all we have is pay more money or keep bringing people in. Neither of those can we afford to do, so we need to be a bit more imaginative.

There is the option of bringing sectors like that out of private hands and eliminating the profit making element from social care. At the same time you eliminate these high paying roles that take funds away from the front line service and don't make it better.

 

[rob9872]

There is the option of bringing sectors like that out of private hands and eliminating the profit making element from social care. At the same time you eliminate these high paying roles that take funds away from the front line service and don't make it better.

Perfect! Yep, 100% would support that and I think most people would. I'm not sure how we achieve that, but it's the kind of thinking we need to apply if we're going to make genuine change and not keep doing the same thing and pleasing nobody.

 

[Grendel]

There is the option of bringing sectors like that out of private hands and eliminating the profit making element from social care. At the same time you eliminate these high paying roles that take funds away from the front line service and don't make it better.

How would you take it out of private hands?

 

[chiefdave]

Not at all, my original post again said there is no ideal solution. Part of the problem is people see themselves above it. I know if I ask my daughter to clean up her own mess let alone someone else's that it's a battle. Nobody wants to do that kind of work, so we bring people in who are glad to take the job because it's better than what they have. We have a whole generation and probably the last one too who have too much and are generally too entitled.

I think this is a little one sided. At my last job one of our clients was a chain of luxury hotels. The rates per night started in the mid hundreds and went up rapidly from there.

The hotels were often out in the country with no public transport. Staff were expected to live on site, in frankly appalling conditions, for which a deduction was made from their minimum wage salaries. There were only the most basic cooking facilities but meals were provided, another deduction from your salary. In reality this meant you got whatever was left over and if nothing was left over tough luck. They were basically expected to be available 24/7 so they could work, for example, a couple of hours for breakfast, then not be paid until they were needed for a couple of hours at lunch etc.

All the minimum wage staff were immigrants, mostly Eastern European at the time as it was pre-Brexit.

I would say that if anyone on here had packed the car up to take their kid to start their new job they'd take one look at the conditions and turn straight back round. Think its a bit of a cop out to just say Brit workers are too lazy to do the jobs.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Perfect! Yep, 100% would support that and I think most people would. I'm not sure how we achieve that, but it's the kind of thinking we need to apply if we're going to make genuine change and not keep doing the same thing and pleasing nobody.

As it applies to schools, you would need to reverse academisation and put the schools back under local authority control. Doing that alone would put big amounts of money back into the public service without costing any extra; you could divert it into recruiting more classroom support, facility refurbishments and so on.

It looks like a similar story for care homes but I don't know that sector particularly well.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

How would you take it out of private hands?

I've outlined above what you'd need to do for education. MATs work as publicly funded but privately run collections of schools. I'm saying they should revert to being publicly funded and publicly run.

 

[rob9872]

I think this is a little one sided. At my last job one of our clients was a chain of luxury hotels. The rates per night started in the mid hundreds and went up rapidly from there.

The hotels were often out in the country with no public transport. Staff were expected to live on site, in frankly appalling conditions, for which a deduction was made from their minimum wage salaries. There were only the most basic cooking facilities but meals were provided, another deduction from your salary. In reality this meant you got whatever was left over and if nothing was left over tough luck. They were basically expected to be available 24/7 so they could work, for example, a couple of hours for breakfast, then not be paid until they were needed for a couple of hours at lunch etc.

All the minimum wage staff were immigrants, mostly Eastern European at the time as it was pre-Brexit.

I would say that if anyone on here had packed the car up to take their kid to start their new job they'd take one look at the conditions and turn straight back round. Think its a bit of a cop out to just say Brit workers are too lazy to do the jobs.

But that's more to do with unscrupulous owners taking advantage and they will always exist whoever is employed and if your business had them as a client, then they were in part enabling it. Not calling them out morally because if you didn't someone else would, but you clearly knew what was going on and I assume your bosses did too, but didn't act. If we all bury our heads nothing will change.

 

[Grendel]

I've outlined above what you'd need to do for education. MATs work as publicly funded but privately run collections of schools. I'm saying they should revert to being publicly funded and publicly run.

I fail to understand how this would benefit LA at all as they would then have to surely allocate funds to the schools - how?

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

But that's more to do with unscrupulous owners taking advantage and they will always exist whoever is employed and if your business had them as a client, then they were in part enabling it. Not calling them out morally because if you didn't someone else would, but you clearly knew what was going on and I assume your bosses did too, but didn't act. If we all bury our heads nothing will change.

These pesky things called trade unions would normally put an immediate stop to stuff like that or at least kick up a storm to change it.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

I fail to understand how this would benefit LA at all as they would then have to surely allocate funds to the schools - how?

How do you think MATs get their funds? Central government allocates the money to the people running them to spend how they see fit. The problem in the dying days of LEAs was that the government refused to increase the spending pot so started robbing Peter to pay Paul.

 

[Grendel]

But that's more to do with unscrupulous owners taking advantage and they will always exist whoever is employed and if your business had them as a client, then they were in part enabling it. Not calling them out morally because if you didn't someone else would, but you clearly knew what was going on and I assume your bosses did too, but didn't act. If we all bury our heads nothing will change.

I do find it vaguely amusing that - as I always said - one of the key reasons the Freedom of Movement rules in the EU were established was so that the bigger countries could exploit the poorer ones by extracting their workers and exploiting their willingness to work for lower wages and poorer conditions

 

[Grendel]

These pesky things called trade unions would normally put an immediate stop to stuff like that or at least kick up a storm to change it.

Trade Unions are "British jobs for British workers" - so in that example they would not give a fuck.

 

[rob9872]

These pesky things called trade unions would normally put an immediate stop to stuff like that or at least kick up a storm to change it.

You think the sort of employer who behaves like this and uses cheap foreign labour would encourage their staff to be union members? It only puts constraints on those who are prepared to conform, those who dodge will continue to dodge and it serves no benefit.

 

[Grendel]

How do you think MATs get their funds? Central government allocates the money to the people running them to spend how they see fit. The problem in the dying days of LEAs was that the government refused to increase the spending pot so started robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Yes I am aware of that but transferring it back to LA's achieves what exactly?

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Yes I am aware of that but transferring it back to LA's achieves what exactly?

Greater redistribution of the existing funds towards delivering the frontline service.

 

[Grendel]

Greater redistribution of the existing funds towards delivering the frontline service.

Sorry - I still do not get it. The Councils would not have to have more administration costs at all?

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

You think the sort of employer who behaves like this and uses cheap foreign labour would encourage their staff to be union members? It only puts constraints on those who are prepared to conform, those who dodge will continue to dodge and it serves no benefit.

I don’t, but it doesn’t require the employer’s permission to start one. See the Coventry Amazon workers for one example.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Sorry - I still do not get it. The Councils would not have to have more administration costs at all?

Considerably smaller costs than are incurred by MAT executives and the incentive to profiteer from public funds is also removed.

 

[rob9872]

I don’t, but it doesn’t require the employer’s permission to start one. See the Coventry Amazon workers for one example.

Amazon are a multinational, the hotel owner who uses foreign labour, what do you think they'll do at the whiff of someone who doesn't even have English as a first language starting a union movement? They'd be sacked on the spot and someone else take their place. I know it's not ideal, but you have to be realistic and they wouldn't rock the boat. The example Dave sued is pretty much modern slavery.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Amazon are a multinational, the hotel owner who uses foreign labour, what do you think they'll do at the whiff of someone who doesn't even have English as a first language starting a union movement? They'd be sacked on the spot and someone else take their place. I know it's not ideal, but you have to be realistic and they wouldn't rock the boat. The example Dave sued is pretty much modern slavery.

It isn’t just not ideal, it’s illegal to fire people for unionising, even with our anti union laws as they are. But people new to the country and desperate for any income I agree will be too scared to try even if they knew their rights.

 

[fernandopartridge]

It’s odd when you look at average salaries as we are pretty competitive compared to Europe

Average salaries across Europe: Which countries have the highest pay?

Euronews takes a closer look at how average full-time adjusted salaries vary across Europe, both in nominal terms and in purchasing power standards.

www.euronews.com

That data is not accurate, it would have the average UK salary at £44k when the ONS says it is more like £37k

Employee earnings in the UK - Office for National Statistics

Measures of employee earnings, using data from the Annual Survey for Hours and Earnings (ASHE).

www.ons.gov.uk

However, even with that, average pay is not consistent across the UK so in many regions the average salary is likely to be lower still than £37k.

If you convert that UK salary into Euros you see that average wages in the UK are lower than all of the developed northern European countries, the monthly average would be €3545.