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Cont: General UK politics [2]

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Truss wants to "shake up" Civil Service and public sector pay.

She wants an end to national pay deals.
Pay should be linked to living standards where you work, so jobs could have different salaries depending on location saving up to £8.8bn a year.

Also introducing regional pay would stop the public sector crowding out the private sector in places where private businesses can't compete with public sector pay.

So much for leveling up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62390009

Because of course, the best way to reduce equality gaps across the spectrum is to make sure that people living in areas of deprivation don't have any resources to to assist them. It's just obvious.
 
Because of course, the best way to reduce equality gaps across the spectrum is to make sure that people living in areas of deprivation don't have any resources to to assist them. It's just obvious.

And apart from cost of housing there is no longer that much variation in cost of living across the country. I can't drive up to Wigan to buy my new car £5,000 cheaper than I can in Reading. Electric, gas and water all cost the same, food varies by about 5%. London as ever does distort the picture, costs for goods and services are usually in the range of 5-7% higher. But that has always been covered by most companies and public services as an additional amount - "London Weighting" - not by reducing everyone else's wages.
 
Truss wants to "shake up" Civil Service and public sector pay.

She wants an end to national pay deals.
Pay should be linked to living standards where you work, so jobs could have different salaries depending on location saving up to £8.8bn a year.

Also introducing regional pay would stop the public sector crowding out the private sector in places where private businesses can't compete with public sector pay.

So much for leveling up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62390009

Civil Servants already get paid less outside of London - those in London get 'London weighting'. NB it probably needs increasing to be fair as it's very difficult to recruit at lower grades in London....that said, remote working was making that easier...and starting to make a nonsense of the weighting anyway...until Rees-Mogg started his non-sensical 'Get back into the office' schtick that went against years of Govt policy to get people working remotely so that buildings could be sold off.

Even now, I have former colleagues who have picked up roles in departments across the country from them so do they get paid by where the department is or where their home is? Regardless of Rees-Moggs attempts remote working is here to stay and all he's done is slow it slightly and it makes a nonsense of 'regional pay'.
 
Truss says of Sturgeon
"I think the best thing to do with Nicola Sturgeon is ignore her."
"She's an attention seeker, that's what she is."

So much for devolved power.

Huh, I must have missed when Sturgeon was riding around in a tank in Thatcher cosplay for the cameras. Projection's reached a whole new level with these clowns.
 
Because of course, the best way to reduce equality gaps across the spectrum is to make sure that people living in areas of deprivation don't have any resources to to assist them. It's just obvious.

Can't blame the Tories, I mean they have been quite clear and told the poor that they need to be rich, hardly the Tories fault if the poor keep insisting on being poor..
 
Maybe pensioners should get a lower pension if they live in a low cost area. :rolleyes:

Maybe a Tory MP should get less if they represent a "Red Wall" constituency :rolleyes:
 
Having the National Insurance guys up in Newcastle, National Savings in Glasgow and DVLA in Swansea has helped bring jobs to those regions, so the idea does have some merit. The Civil Service is top heavy with managers (the ubiquitous class system again, with everybody ever conscious of their grade). Moving more departments away from London is not a bad idea IMV.

Throwing out EU-based laws is really stupid IMV as the laws were perfectly sound and voted through democratically by, er....the government.
 
I accept that our next PM will be a Tory, just like when it has happened in the past. However why the hell are they talking about changes to policies - they were elected on a manifesto, that hasn't changed because they've changed leaders.
 
^They are also policies which they both supported in Cabinet, especially Truss who has spent more time in Cabinet than anyone else since 2010.

And look at all those bad things the gubbmint did, which she didn't know about...

Dim or liar? Or dim liar?
 
^They are also policies which they both supported in Cabinet, especially Truss who has spent more time in Cabinet than anyone else since 2010.

And look at all those bad things the gubbmint did, which she didn't know about...

Dim or liar? Or dim liar?

Well, there is always the alternative of Rish! Sunak as shiny and slithery as an oil slick. At Leeds he tried to ingratiate himself with a joke about having a sun tan and then in Exeter about how he was child-sized. Nobody laughed but that didn't stop his cheery chappy ambience. When he heard the words 'Corporation Tax' right at the end, trying to wring out a few minutes longer than the Truss Bot, he was bouncing with unsuppressed joy. 'Thank you for asking me that question! I am so glad you asked me about Corporation Tax...!'

Followed long scripted spiel, completely ignoring that the guy asking the question had gone into along bitter rant about CT ruining his business and was not being matey.

Exit Sunak trying to shake hands with a member of the audience taken by surprise by this.


Sunak or Truss? Hobson's Choice.
 
And she's done a U-turn on that regional pay thing...
..
Who could have predicted that a policy to reduce the wages of people who live

a) in rural as opposed to urban areas and
b) in 'red wall' areas where traditional industries collapsed leaving massive unemployment addressed by governments at the time with relocated civil service jobs

Would be opposed by

a) Tory MPs who traditionally serve rural constituencies and
b) First time Tory MPs who were elected in 'red wall' constituencies.
 
Yep, Truss walking back the regional pay thing, claiming she's been 'misrepresented', when all people are doing is quoting her own press release.

Yesterday: "By introducing regional boards, civil servant pay can be adjusted in line with the actual areas where civil servants work, saving billions"

Today: "Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely be maintained. Anything to suggest otherwise is simply wrong."

Whiplash levels of U-turn there.
 
The retired NHS payroll officer across the room from me took one look at the proposal Truss now tells us she didn't actually make (except she did) about regional pay in the public sector and began muttering darkly about has she costed it, does she know how many IT systems will need to be altered, does she not know how much simpler, and so cheaper, it is when more people are on the same T&Cs and pay scales, has she any ******* clue about how public sector admin actually works, how do ******** like that get to be in charge of anything when they know nothing and on and on...Not to mention which payroll officers she thinks will work on this after their own pay has been cut?

I couldn't make all of it out, but I was left with a distinct impression of Carrot Flower Queen, whose department payed NHS trusts all over the country, not just our local ones, was distinctly unimpressed with Truss' lack of thinking...
 
It's part of a peculiarity of Tory "thinking" like they'll talk about getting the welfare bill down, whilst forgetting state pensioners are welfare recipients. This was the same type of thinking those terrible Yes Minister types, forgetting that public workers include, the police, the army, nurses and so on.
 
Problem for them is what I commented on a decade ago, there isn't any fat to get rid of, we've been cutting out muscles to make "efficency " savings for the last 12 years , indeed I've said before we've been cutting bones out.
 
Problem for them is what I commented on a decade ago, there isn't any fat to get rid of, we've been cutting out muscles to make "efficency " savings for the last 12 years , indeed I've said before we've been cutting bones out.

It's longer than that: NHS trusts have been making "efficiency" savings and returns on capital since trusts were imposed by Thatcher.

I never worked in a service from 1984 to when I retired in 2013 which had the full complement of staff as defined by national and local standards (those standards were never good enough anyway, but that is another story). The NHS has never in my experience had an adequate, let alone a decent, number of clinical staff.

 
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