The difference in France is that they are only interested in "home" policy, even though they make big EU and NATO noises, the real truth is that they do what they think is best for France.
For a start, they are not spending billions on soldiers in phoney wars !
Isn't the attitude of be insular exactly what is being suggested by so many in this country right now ? Are the French and British people's and economies so different ? What is the retirement age in France, what is the average working week ? Both less than in the UK. I suspect it's just that the French are not as prepared to accept the nasty medicine that we are being asked to swallow when they can see injustice and hypocrisy at the very top. Politicians and Bankers feeding on the likes of hard working joe public.
Er, didnt I hear that the French are increasing retirement age to 67, from its current level of 65? I didnt think anyone in Europe had a lower retirement age than the UK. Even the septics are at 67.
Er, didnt I hear that the French are increasing retirement age to 67, from its current level of 65? I didnt thisk anyone in Europe had a lower retirement age than the UK. Even the septics are at 67.
I think that it's rising from 60 to 62 ! Could be wrong.
This isn't, and shouldn't be about public vs private sector workers. I appreciate that the stereotype of the former is of work shy scroungers doing the bare minimum, but we've seen over the last year or so what happens when vital services are cut (see also the recent thread on retained firefighters). We'll miss these services a lot more when they go, and those who want public spending brought under control are usually the first to moan when the library shuts for good, or their local school shed staff, or the rubbish doesn't get collected.
No one wants to go on strike, but there are limits on how you treat people. In the real world inflation is running (officially) at around 4-5% (and unofficially at a point or two higher) and if interest rates rise then a lot of public workers who are stuck with zero or below RPI wage increases and going to have few choices left open to them. One choice is suck it up, the other is to protest. In this country we have the right to strike and despite a generation of union bashing we have had less investment in industry and more manufacturing jobs disappear overseas than when we had stronger trade unions. Be careful what you wish for - if you reduce union rights further you merely make it easier to sack people without compensation. That should have been the lesson of the 1980s when high unemployment was last used to attack unionism.
I still say that French birds are unusually hairy.
I bet even that little midget fella Sarkozy's bit of stuff has got a classic 70's bush going on down below and has stuff growing out her chin that Grizzly Adams would be proud of.
just seen the shadow sec saying that the unions are falling into a condem trap and that they shouldnt, Where as i see it as a labour trap to force people to remember the first year of the condem coelition (spelling sorry) .
is it a double bluff who is right who is wrong.
but the hairy argument is the one that holds ground with me, sarkozy's missus is bang tidy but if shes got grizzly adams under both arms and down below, then striking is the only option open to the french
i'd love to see any super rich tax exiles banned from ever setting foot in this country. I know there are no easy answers or ways of doing it and i know all about the 'they''ll go elsewhere' stuff regarding the bankers but i'd be prepared to risk it - tell em to f off. We don't have the manufacturing industry we once had and maybe its just the stage of development country like ours is at but the fact that 90% of the wealth is with 5% of the population is the real problem - the premier league is minature version of the economy and i'd like to see the big 4 or 5 f offed off to a european league. If they want to make all the rules for themselves - fair enough but f off and don't come back. The establishment like it how it is, so it won't happen whilst we all blame each other and scroungers and immigrants. Its bullshit and the dimbos wmongst the working class who vote for the upper class like cameron and boris johnson are the biggest culprits because they think they are the protectors of little england but really they are the fodder who are being taken for a ride. Wake up and stop reading the establishment's newspapers you deluded fools
the biggest problem with the last sentance you right Ken, is there is no alternative to vote for, Labour are for the scroungers and immigrants,
we tried them and they screwed the country royally from what i can make out.
there is no solution there is no alternative.
i agree with the exile statement but scroungers and non contributing immigrants along with non necesary wars, wastage within local government and eurpean bail outs are still the biggest drain on our resources that i can see
The problem with your logic Dan is that if you force the top four (and it's probably more like six) to leave then Sky won't want to pay for the league any more and the remaining sixteen (or fourteen) will all lose most of their income streams. This would have a knock on effect in the lower divisions and the top teams know it, so they demand the lion's share of the income just for not leaving.
At present the Goverment are commited to the following additional changes:
Pension age for men and women will increase from 66 to 67 between April 2034 and April 2036Pension age for men and women will increase from 67 to 68 between April 2044 and April 2046Any advances please!.....
Pressumably based on the John Hutton report findings.
At least you have the best part of thirty years to sort out your pension arrangements, and as far as I know has virtually all party agreement.
So you youngters like my sons are going to be working till at least then!.....
That sobering thought aside...with pensions linked to inflation, the position now seems even more bleak!. especially as we have quite a low pension rate compared to many EEC countries!.
Re Frace:
France’s retirement age will be raised from 60 to 62 over the next eight years as part of sweeping pension reforms, there government has announced.As well as raising the retirement age to 62, the planned reforms will also require employees to work for a minimum of 41.5 years to qualify, and there will be higher taxes on the better paid.Those who began working before the age of 18 would continue to retire at 60, however, and those with particularly “arduous” jobs may also be able to retire earlier.*On a personnal note I had a 'particularly ardous job' ..... all that nude life class drawing at art college with those 'hairy' french models, was enough to diminish anyones 'lead' in there pencil.
What I don't get is why I keep hearing that people that are close to retirement are going to strugle to sort out their pension arrangements when they are, in effect, going to have longer to to so than if they retired sooner?
I don't think you can underestimate the power for the right wing popular press in this issue. The Condems have played an absolute blinder in shifting the blame for the financial mess we are in onto the alleged excesses of the public sector and away from the true reason, the unbridled greed and corporate stupidity of the banking system and certain individuals at those banks causing a worldwide financial crash.
Greece's economy isn't tanking because a left wing local authourity spent a few £1000 on some stupid scheme or other, it's because investment banks were making fortunes selling worthless packages of home loans to each other. In hindsight the whole house of cards was always going to collapse and the governments of the day involved should hang their head in collective shame that they never had the nuts to regulate them properly. But to do so would have left them open to criticism from the supporters of the free market, the right wing press and of course they also enjoyed the short term tax gains from these self same corporate boiler room scams!
Just a couple of quick points to finish with that no one seem to have mentioned - firstly that when Labour came to power we had just had a period of 18 years of Tory under investment in the public sector that needed redressing. Whether they got the balance wrong is another argument but there's no doubt that the services available from the public sector (mostly) improved greatly in line with the additional investment e.g. NHS waiting times, access to IT facilities (or even just books) in schools, etc.
Secondly, why are we so bothered about bankers leaving the country? So what? If some wide boy thinks he'll get a better deal elsewhere, let him take his services there. We will have very little difficulty replacing him or her given the renumeration packages available. What we will have trouble with is finding replacements for those highly trained, experienced public sector workers who decide that their skills are better rewarded and valued elsewhere. No one seems to have given any thought to the cost to our society of replacing large amounts of teachers, nurses, paramedics, police officers, planners, environmental health officers, radiographers, occupational therapists, mental health workers, etc, etc, etc. Believe me there are plenty of people in the public sector going through that thought process at the moment.
TBH I was dreading opening this thread but I have to say how pleasantly surprised I have been, both at the overall tone and the excellent way the arguments on both side of the fence have been put. I fear though that posters on CL are far more reasoned in their thinking and better at presenting a coherent, well contructed, point of view than the average member of the public and therefore there will be very little sympathy for any industrial action.
'I’m not going to try and argue that further public sector pension reform is unnecessary and wrong, but there is something plainly unsatisfactory about “race to the bottom” policy, or levelling public sector pensions down to the disgracefully low standards that rule in the private sector.'
Think that is what they call the Early Retirement age in France, in common with much of Europe. Standard retirement age with full pension is rising from current 65 to 67.
Exactly what I tried to say above when I said that the real fight is Political Classes v The People rather than Public Sector v Private Sector.
Hence why I also tried to suggest a more imaginative strategy than simply inconveniencing and alienating innocent members of the public.
The battle is with the political classes both elected inside Parliament and unelected in outside quangos etc. Therefore the Unions should use their industrial muscle to sabotage and stop those political systems working as an effective protest rather than protest by withdrawing frontline services from vulnerable, innocent people.
The problem with your logic Dan is that if you force the top four (and it's probably more like six) to leave then Sky won't want to pay for the league any more and the remaining sixteen (or fourteen) will all lose most of their income streams. This would have a knock on effect in the lower divisions and the top teams know it, so they demand the lion's share of the income just for not leaving.
the amount of money in the system will reduce - thats all - the clubs and players will still be there and once the unsustainable european breakaways realise their fans don't want to travel all over the place for every game against teams they have no history with, they will soon be begging to come back.
Bob Crow is a top bloke and a hero of mine. You wont be surprised to hear that i'm an Engineer on the railway and while i'm a member of RMT i know that those Tory tossers will never be able to take my pension away while lining their own pockets.
Dan, the European travel doesn't seem to reduce attendances in the Champions League too much. Why would the clubs care how many travelling fans there are when they have so much TV money. Irrespective, if Sky took their millions elsewhere half of the Premier League teams left would be unable to pay the players wages and they would drop like flies.
Glad to hear it beds you and your pal bob crow carry on holding Joe blogs to ransom and ensure that those with other responsibilities at home increase their already dwindling disposable, I.e additional costs on childcare to cover the extra hours on our journey in and out of town.
But hey we all need heros glad you chose such a good one
"All that is happening at the mo. is that the govt is doing its utmost to provoke the public sector into strike action. It wants to pitch public sector workers against those in the private sector and thus create a ready scapegoat to blame when the economy doesn't pick up as predicted. Too many of us have seen it all before and it is with weary resignation that I sense a replay of history. "
It's funny how people have different perspectives - I see this the other way around - I see the unions who of course not only fund but also vote for the Labour party leadership, just trying to score political points against the government using their members as tools.
Bournemouth mentions the 'right wing press' being a big influence. Well I was under the impression that newspaper readership was at an all-time low these days due to the internet. If the 'right wing press' are playing such a major part, perhaps this is needed to balance out the shameful anti-government TV coverage that we see from the public sector funded BBC!
Someone else said that they'd be happy to see the odd banker leave and would take the risk. My understanding is that it's not individuals that we should be worried about - but entire organisations! I was speaking to a corporate lawyer the other day and he said that he has encountered numerous companies who would have considered locating to London but were put off by the high taxes. I asked him to estimate how much revenue that the country might have earned in taxes if JUST the companies that he was aware of had indeed located here. His guess was around £100 million.
Glad to hear it beds you and your pal bob crow carry on holding Joe blogs to ransom and ensure that those with other responsibilities at home increase their already dwindling disposable, I.e additional costs on childcare to cover the extra hours on our journey in and out of town.
But hey we all need heros glad you chose such a good one
Sorry mate but i need to look after the future of myself , my wife and my two young children and that pension i have been paying a lot of money into for years and if that means you think your being held to ransom then that's a price millions who pay into the union are willing to pay. Thatcher shafted the working man 25 years ago while her city friend's prospered . It WONT happen again. I only wish everyone was a member of a union as good as the RMT because if they were Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg wouldnt even attempt to shaft the nurses and teachers etc.....
Do you know what. Sometimes it just comes down to good old morality. Nothing will convince me that a huge responsibility for our current world predicament fall fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the greed fuelled opportunistic scheming bankers. The spineless self serving politicians sit snugly in the banking corporations of the worlds warm pockets feeding off the scraps and acting as consultants to these modern day barons. There is no will to reform the system that is unjust and immoral because too many of the lawmakers are doing very nicely thank you. Huge bonuses and politicians pensions not affected by the new austerity measures. Makes me sick.
Do you know what. Sometimes it just comes down to good old morality. Nothing will convince me that a huge responsibility for our current world predicament fall fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the greed fuelled opportunistic scheming bankers. The spineless self serving politicians sit snugly in the banking corporations of the worlds warm pockets feeding off the scraps and acting as consultants to these modern day barons. There is no will to reform the system that is unjust and immoral because too many of the lawmakers are doing very nicely thank you. Huge bonuses and politicians pensions not affected by the new austerity measures. Makes me sick.
Amen to that. Couldnt agree more. It's all about morality.
I pay my union dues every month, bob crow has dione nothing to grow the reputation of unions in this country, he is proberly done more harm than good, the man is typical millwall
If he stopped for one minute to consider the impact of his actions on millions of other union members that don't work within your area sympathy for causes like the one that this topic is about might gain more public support
Striking should be last resort, and probably the Bob Crowe's of this world however convinced of there right to strike probably set the labour cause back, more than most over striking at a drop of a hat!.......ken from BexleyI pay my union dues every month, bob crow has dione nothing to grow the reputation of unions in this country, he is proberly done......nth London addick Blimey North we agreed on something..........see you on the picket line one day!
The manor of the man his principles his unscrupulous behavior, the man's a mug a no mark fool, he doesn't just safe guard pensions he causes chaos at the drop of a hat the bloke that's typical of his behaviour and remarkably like a typical millwalk mug
Thatcher shafted the working man 25 years ago while her city friend's prospered . It WONT happen again.
The thing is, Beds, that is exactly what will happen if you strike and lose the support of the public like the Miners did.
Frankly you have summed up what the public think in your post. You don't care what the public think, you want the Tax Payer to fund your Pension and you are willing to 'punish' and 'bully' them until they agree to do so.
You might find that the public Tax Payer have a little more back bone for the fight, following the cut backs that we have had to make, if you expect to hold us to ransom.
That is my view and I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I haven't read much support for the strike, either here or elsewhere, from anyone that is not, and has not been, employed in the public sector. That must tell you something about the level of public support you will receive when the services that we pay our taxes for are taken away until we agree to pay more for them.
I am all up for direct action in the right instance, and I agree whole heartedly in looking after those in need ken believe me,just in this case I believe the unions should be trying to influence changing policies on our public spending towards the waste on spongers poorly made decisions on war and stopping those that bring nothing to our country coming in and just taking, I believe if all unions worked together on these issues we may just save enough money to stop the cuts and increases in to how long people have to work
Comments
Isn't the attitude of be insular exactly what is being suggested by so many in this country right now ? Are the French and British people's and economies so different ? What is the retirement age in France, what is the average working week ? Both less than in the UK. I suspect it's just that the French are not as prepared to accept the nasty medicine that we are being asked to swallow when they can see injustice and hypocrisy at the very top. Politicians and Bankers feeding on the likes of hard working joe public.
I didnt think anyone in Europe had a lower retirement age than the UK. Even the septics are at 67.
I think that it's rising from 60 to 62 ! Could be wrong.
This isn't, and shouldn't be about public vs private sector workers. I appreciate that the stereotype of the former is of work shy scroungers doing the bare minimum, but we've seen over the last year or so what happens when vital services are cut (see also the recent thread on retained firefighters). We'll miss these services a lot more when they go, and those who want public spending brought under control are usually the first to moan when the library shuts for good, or their local school shed staff, or the rubbish doesn't get collected.
No one wants to go on strike, but there are limits on how you treat people. In the real world inflation is running (officially) at around 4-5% (and unofficially at a point or two higher) and if interest rates rise then a lot of public workers who are stuck with zero or below RPI wage increases and going to have few choices left open to them. One choice is suck it up, the other is to protest. In this country we have the right to strike and despite a generation of union bashing we have had less investment in industry and more manufacturing jobs disappear overseas than when we had stronger trade unions. Be careful what you wish for - if you reduce union rights further you merely make it easier to sack people without compensation. That should have been the lesson of the 1980s when high unemployment was last used to attack unionism.
I bet even that little midget fella Sarkozy's bit of stuff has got a classic 70's bush going on down below and has stuff growing out her chin that Grizzly Adams would be proud of.
just seen the shadow sec saying that the unions are falling into a condem trap and that they shouldnt, Where as i see it as a labour trap to force people to remember the first year of the condem coelition (spelling sorry) .
is it a double bluff who is right who is wrong.
but the hairy argument is the one that holds ground with me, sarkozy's missus is bang tidy but if shes got grizzly adams under both arms and down below, then striking is the only option open to the french
the biggest problem with the last sentance you right Ken, is there is no alternative to vote for, Labour are for the scroungers and immigrants,
we tried them and they screwed the country royally from what i can make out.
there is no solution there is no alternative.
i agree with the exile statement but scroungers and non contributing immigrants along with non necesary wars, wastage within local government and eurpean bail outs are still the biggest drain on our resources that i can see
The problem with your logic Dan is that if you force the top four (and it's probably more like six) to leave then Sky won't want to pay for the league any more and the remaining sixteen (or fourteen) will all lose most of their income streams. This would have a knock on effect in the lower divisions and the top teams know it, so they demand the lion's share of the income just for not leaving.
I don't think you can underestimate the power for the right wing popular press in this issue. The Condems have played an absolute blinder in shifting the blame for the financial mess we are in onto the alleged excesses of the public sector and away from the true reason, the unbridled greed and corporate stupidity of the banking system and certain individuals at those banks causing a worldwide financial crash.
Greece's economy isn't tanking because a left wing local authourity spent a few £1000 on some stupid scheme or other, it's because investment banks were making fortunes selling worthless packages of home loans to each other. In hindsight the whole house of cards was always going to collapse and the governments of the day involved should hang their head in collective shame that they never had the nuts to regulate them properly. But to do so would have left them open to criticism from the supporters of the free market, the right wing press and of course they also enjoyed the short term tax gains from these self same corporate boiler room scams!
Just a couple of quick points to finish with that no one seem to have mentioned - firstly that when Labour came to power we had just had a period of 18 years of Tory under investment in the public sector that needed redressing. Whether they got the balance wrong is another argument but there's no doubt that the services available from the public sector (mostly) improved greatly in line with the additional investment e.g. NHS waiting times, access to IT facilities (or even just books) in schools, etc.
Secondly, why are we so bothered about bankers leaving the country? So what? If some wide boy thinks he'll get a better deal elsewhere, let him take his services there. We will have very little difficulty replacing him or her given the renumeration packages available. What we will have trouble with is finding replacements for those highly trained, experienced public sector workers who decide that their skills are better rewarded and valued elsewhere. No one seems to have given any thought to the cost to our society of replacing large amounts of teachers, nurses, paramedics, police officers, planners, environmental health officers, radiographers, occupational therapists, mental health workers, etc, etc, etc. Believe me there are plenty of people in the public sector going through that thought process at the moment.
TBH I was dreading opening this thread but I have to say how pleasantly surprised I have been, both at the overall tone and the excellent way the arguments on both side of the fence have been put. I fear though that posters on CL are far more reasoned in their thinking and better at presenting a coherent, well contructed, point of view than the average member of the public and therefore there will be very little sympathy for any industrial action.
Standard retirement age with full pension is rising from current 65 to 67.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/17/francis-maude-rhodium-plated-pensions
So much for "we're all in this together", eh?
Exactly what I tried to say above when I said that the real fight is Political Classes v The People rather than Public Sector v Private Sector.
Hence why I also tried to suggest a more imaginative strategy than simply inconveniencing and alienating innocent members of the public.
The battle is with the political classes both elected inside Parliament and unelected in outside quangos etc. Therefore the Unions should use their industrial muscle to sabotage and stop those political systems working as an effective protest rather than protest by withdrawing frontline services from vulnerable, innocent people.
In my opinion.
But hey we all need heros glad you chose such a good one
"All that is happening at the mo. is that the govt is doing its utmost to provoke the public sector into strike action. It wants to pitch public sector workers against those in the private sector and thus create a ready scapegoat to blame when the economy doesn't pick up as predicted. Too many of us have seen it all before and it is with weary resignation that I sense a replay of history. "
It's funny how people have different perspectives - I see this the other way around - I see the unions who of course not only fund but also vote for the Labour party leadership, just trying to score political points against the government using their members as tools.
Bournemouth mentions the 'right wing press' being a big influence. Well I was under the impression that newspaper readership was at an all-time low these days due to the internet. If the 'right wing press' are playing such a major part, perhaps this is needed to balance out the shameful anti-government TV coverage that we see from the public sector funded BBC!
Someone else said that they'd be happy to see the odd banker leave and would take the risk. My understanding is that it's not individuals that we should be worried about - but entire organisations! I was speaking to a corporate lawyer the other day and he said that he has encountered numerous companies who would have considered locating to London but were put off by the high taxes. I asked him to estimate how much revenue that the country might have earned in taxes if JUST the companies that he was aware of had indeed located here. His guess was around £100 million.
Sorry mate but i need to look after the future of myself , my wife and my two young children and that pension i have been paying a lot of money into for years and if that means you think your being held to ransom then that's a price millions who pay into the union are willing to pay. Thatcher shafted the working man 25 years ago while her city friend's prospered . It WONT happen again. I only wish everyone was a member of a union as good as the RMT because if they were Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg wouldnt even attempt to shaft the nurses and teachers etc.....
Amen to that. Couldnt agree more. It's all about morality.
If he stopped for one minute to consider the impact of his actions on millions of other union members that don't work within your area sympathy for causes like the one that this topic is about might gain more public support
What does supporting Millwall have to do with safeguarding jobs and pensions? Read what ShootersHillGuru wrote above. He has it spot on.
Blimey North we agreed on something..........see you on the picket line one day!
The thing is, Beds, that is exactly what will happen if you strike and lose the support of the public like the Miners did.
Frankly you have summed up what the public think in your post. You don't care what the public think, you want the Tax Payer to fund your Pension and you are willing to 'punish' and 'bully' them until they agree to do so.
You might find that the public Tax Payer have a little more back bone for the fight, following the cut backs that we have had to make, if you expect to hold us to ransom.
That is my view and I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I haven't read much support for the strike, either here or elsewhere, from anyone that is not, and has not been, employed in the public sector. That must tell you something about the level of public support you will receive when the services that we pay our taxes for are taken away until we agree to pay more for them.