coprolite

Fairly sure plenty people have suggested increased taxes and been shouted down because the SG can only increase rates a bit. I myself pointed out that payrises can (not necessarily should) be partly funded by increased tax receipts and certainly wasn't "kicking and screaming" about the eventual NIC proposal, although the original regressive version was a pile of shit. Being angry about a specific proposed tax rise is not the same as not entertaining the concept of tax rises.

I do enjoy the "these people" strawman that you're developing. Anyone who disagrees with you on anything must disagree with you on everything, and always be wrong. I'd be surprised if many people disapproved of the NI rise once the threshold adjustment was built in. It became a progressive tax then, up to a point.

That Chinese lad that's always on about universities.

For many jobs, it's not a binary choice between pay rises and service provision. If below inflation pay rises increase leavers more than they increase joiners then staffing levels will fall. It doesn't matter how many machines the nhs can pay to maintain if there's no nurses to push the buttons. Any shortfall in employees will be made up through agencies which will cost a fortune. Paying a premium for employees can be efficient. I've used nurses as an example because i know they're having retention and recruitment difficulties. It's not necessarily the same across all professions, maybe there are some that are overpaid and could recruit easily but i'd prefer not to speculate which.

Farage was allowed to leave Embra alive, with all his appendages intact. I'd say that's pretty tolerant, considering.

I quite enjoyed that game tbh. Even though there wasn't much happening at the ends it was a decent quality scrap. McGrath and Levitt were good for Utd in attack but that defence looks fragile. Thought Scales and Stewart were our best players. Decision making about when to tippy tappy out of defence, play a long ball or to just twat it anywhere was much better than it's been. Thought Ramadani had a good game and Kennedy was a better option than Richardson at wing back (faint praise). Miovski's play in the lead up to the pen was brilliant to watch- perfect pass.

There was a young guy not far around the corner from us that got stabbed to death a few years ago due to mistaken identity. Some guy paid a couple of junkies to stab a business rival and they turned up at 17 xxxx place instead of 17 xxxx street and when the guy answered the door they clearly didn't twig that the 17 year old student wasn't the pot bellied balding 50 year old businessman they were after.

Are you suggesting this is because of teachers asking for pay rises?

I'm not going to go through all the appendices to check but there are a couple of relevant points that aren't related to the composition of the figure. That graph shows rates of change, not absolute levels. That graph could describe a situation (although not the case in real life) where public sector wages are higher but growing less. So you don't need the level of pension benefits but the change to them. Public sector pensions are getting worse (no new final salary schemes. Lower fractions per year). Private sector has improved (auto enrolment). Public sector pensions are undoubtedly at a better level, but the direction of change is the same.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/october2022#:~:text=Average regular pay growth was,outside of the pandemic period.

That's all assuming that the wages were in line with productivity before and have anything to do with productivity. Wages depend more on bargaining power than actual value and despite unions being more active in the public sector than in the private, the state is massive and has considerable bargaining power. The Unions haven't had the upper hand since the seventies. George Osborne was going to bring in market facing pay because of his perception that the public sector was overpaid. In the course of trying to work out how much they should cut by in each region, they found out that overall they'd have to pay the public sector more. And there have been pay freezes or below inflation rises since then. When i was in a civil service department, the return on investment that you had to generate to get a business plan approved was round about 60x. In the private sector it's more like 2x. Most problems in the public sector productivity aren't to do with the contribution of people but with the lack of capital investments. If you want to use the old productivity = wages fallacy, it needs to be the marginal productivity. How much people can do with what they've got.

Definition from a report: Anti-social behaviour in a non-housing related context is that the conduct concerned has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm, or distress to any person. This will apply, for example, where the anti-social behaviour has occurred in a public place, such as a town or city centre, shopping mall, or local park, and where the behaviour does not affect the housing management functions of a social landlord or people in their homes..... Legislation : 2Meaning of “anti-social behaviour” (1)In this Part “anti-social behaviour” means— (a)conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person, (b)conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to a person in relation to that person’s occupation of residential premises, or (c)conduct capable of causing housing-related nuisance or annoyance to any person. Some clarification : housing-related and non-housing related situations. This includes vandalism, public drunkenness, aggressive begging, irresponsible dog ownership, noisy or abusive behaviour towards neighbours, or bullying. Injunctions should not be used to stop reasonable, trivial or benign behaviour that has not caused, or is not likely to cause, anti-social behaviour to victims or communities, and potential applicants are encouraged to make reasonable and proportionate judgements about the appropriateness of the proposed response before making an application for an injunction. Reading between the lines it's a warning to the away fans about aggressive begging.

To summarise, people that don't have a grand spare every month must be spunking money and have no right to ask for fair pay for skilled work because they work in the public sector. I disagree.

It depends on what you do with your money. If you spend it all, as many people do, then you need your pay to keep pace with inflation, on average, to maintain your consumption. If you spend a lot servicing debt, the percentage inrease in that could well be above inflation because of the link between inflation and interest. An inflationary pay rise may be insufficient. If you save a lot you can probably save less and cope. Obviously there's a lot of variation and people's personal inflation rates will vary according to their basket of goods. People who don't use fuel or electricity or who don't eat any staple foods should be fine.

No she didn't. The problem with Truss's budget wasn't that it increased spending. In part ot was that it reduced tax and in part because it was arbitrary and unsupported. They were still looking at cutting spending (real terms) to fund reduced tax and did put cost cutting measures in place for some benefits. It would be perfectly possible to increase spending along with either a bigger increase in taxation or an actual budgeted plan for how any growth multiplier effects of a fiscal expansion would create enough future tax revenue to fund the borrowing required. Anyways, my comment was in response to "The UK govt at least have the possibility of borrowing to pay for services or salary rises" Obviously the effect that this has on Barnet doesn't give the national governments control over that decision.

My wife managed to keep hidden, until after birthing our eldest, that she's an absolute psycho. She now has grudges against all of my family, which are substantially imaginary or recalled with increasingly unhinged inaccuracy.

Foragers, always keep a pad of post its and a felt tip handy

Agree the governments (Uk and nations) are between a rock and a hard place, less so the UK government, but the narrative that they have no choice is false. (not saying you're pushing that narrative, but it's out there).

When i smoked i always stubbed it and took the butt to a bin (unless in a pub with ashtrays). Most of my fellow smokers did the same. I have however seen lots of wee shites throwing plastic bottles on the ground. And fizzy drinks kill kittens.

The "pot of cash" isn't exactly a fixed amount decided by external factors. It can be increased. The Scottish government can raise tax. If the UK government increases uk spending through borrowing then Barnet gives more money to Scotland. Consumer price Inflation will be increasing the tax take from VAT especially on fuel. Rising wages will be increasing income tax and NIC receipts. VAT is only a nominal rise but because of threshholds and allowances income tax and NICs will be a real terms rise. But then wage increases below inflation are only a nominal rise too. Obviously receipts from excise duties will be falling in real terms. I'm not suggesting that there's enough in current budgets to fully meet all pay demands but inflation and government choices both affect both sides of the tax and spend equation.

They're not going to concede the victimhood title easily. Rangers need to up their game, possibly with a statement.

I didn't know they still made ready brek

Is that Roberts boy not a winger too? Morris needs a loan.

So you’d like society to be structured according to a load of fairly arbitrary rules that were formalised in Victorian times and not evolve in an organic way according to what suits the population best? You are Jacob Rees Mogg and I claim my ten shillings.