Brendan Barber really is a bit of a twat:
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber argued: "Our economic difficulties are caused by reckless lending by bankers and current inflation comes from higher oil, food and commodity prices. "Asking low-paid and average earners in public or private sector jobs to make sacrifices when those who caused the difficulties continue to draw record bonuses breaches any test of fairness."
1. You can make up your own minds who's to blame for oil and food price rises, nobody's really sure. But, assuming that these rises result from global demand, we collectively have to accept that our standard of living will fall; the value of our labour, expressed in barrels of oil or bushels of wheat, has fallen and that is the end of that. Which is not to say that people aren't perfectly entitled to haggle up their own wages, but it is ultimately a zero sum game.
2. Now, I agree that "reckless lending" has contributed to our "economic difficulties", but not on the topic of "record bonuses"; if UK Bank plc has made £1m profit and keeps it as retained earnings, £300,000 corporation tax is due. If the bank pays it out as a bonus, then £476,950 income tax and NI is due, so in terms of filling the public coffers, these City chaps taking outrageous bonuses is A Good Thing, surely? Even better, those tax liabilities are being paid out of thin air - if UK Bank plc had done their accounts properly for the past couple of years, they would have noticed that there were no profits to pay out as bonuses!
3. An increase in public sector wages is paid via the taxes of private sector workers, so although he gives a nod to "average earners in private sector jobs", the majority of your pay rises will be borne by them.
4. And if he really felt for "average earners in private sector jobs", why are the unions threatening that "Everything from local government will stop - we are talking about bins, schools, council offices, environmental health inspectors - all those important services that local communities rely on". Isn't that demanding a disproportionate sacrifice from aforementioned "average earners in private sector jobs"?
- Posh people have big front gardens so they can live without weekly collections for a while, certainly a lot longer than people in flats.
- Posh people send their kids to private school anyway.
- Who gives a shit if council offices are closed? A bit of a bummer for yer welfare claimants, maybe?
- Threatening that "environmental health inspectors" will stop - oooh! I'm really scared now!
Twat.
A grim document
16 hours ago
12 comments:
Hang on a minute.Paying public sector workers a wage that takes inflation into account is not going to reinforce inflation because they do not produce goods and provide services that are paid for on the open market. If the extra comes out of taxation, disposable income goes down which is what you need for inflation.
DCB, nice try, but all they can achieve is that public sector workers have more take-home, and private sector workers have less. As I mentioned in the post, it's a zero sum game. And oil* and food prices will push on regardless. Did I say anywhere that generous public sector pay rises would be be inflationary?
* I am absolutely convinced it's a short term spike, like all the other oil crises, but I'm no expert.
The credit crunch and evil bankers is starting to become the perfect cover for an upsurge in strike activity. Trade unions don't look quite so nasty any more.
Alice
Yes but Brendan Barber did (mention inflation since the Guv is calling for public sector pay restraint) and the argument starts from that point.In the 70's in a comparable situation where the Guv had flooded the system with cheap money (and guess what happened: house prices went up 70% in two years; banks went bust etc),Enoch Powell said the unions were as "innocent as lambs, pure white as the driven snow"i.e. were only reacting in a to-be-expected way.
I think you might be confusing proper inflation (where gummint turns on printing presses) and oil/food price rises.
I also said that people were perfectly entitled to haggle their own wages up.
The Badger knows if he gives generous public sector increases then taxes are going to have to go up to pay them and private sector workers are going to suffer twice over. Or he can turn on the printing presses....
None of this changes the fact that the value of our labour (in terms of barrels of oil or bushels of wheat) has gone down.
Alice Cook: "Trade unions don't look quite so nasty any more."
Trade Unions always have and always will look nasty. It is simply a case of the biggest mob gets the biggest glob of cash, dressed up as fraternal concern.
Bollocks!
The trade unions are shamelessly riding legitimate public anger and disorientation to push an anti-poor platform (in the private sector). To do this they are pulling out all the usual easy targets of the "rich", the "speculators", the "fat cats", the "bankers".
Sickening. Same old story of rob Peter to pay Paul, safe in the knowledge that there's more Pauls so more votes.
Nick
Oil and food rises are not inflationary: they are,if anything, deflationary since they reduce the amount of money available for the full range of goods (petrol goes up so people stop buying papers etc).You are a hair's breadth away from subscribing to the Big Myth that public sector unions (and OPEC) put up prices and somehow caused inflation in the 70's.Enoch Powell made his speech exonerating unions on 20th November 1970. If he had n't made the so-called Rivers of Blood speech at much the same time, he could have ended up with union support which given his fanatical anti-Americanism would probably have pleased him very much.
DBC; You are a hair's breadth away from subscribing to the Big Myth that public sector unions (and OPEC) put up prices and somehow caused inflation in the 70's.
Nope.
1. 1970s inflation was caused by printing money (which gummint had to do to mask house price crash, as we well know).
2. And OPEC did put up prices IIRC (I was seven years old at the time, so don't quote me on that).
3.And private sector unions were still quite strong back then, so even if I did blame trade unions (which I don't) it would be 'trade unions' generally, not just 'public sector unions'.
Look up something like The oil shocks of the 70's on the Net.This gives the respectable ,monetarist line: that OPEC reacted to Nixon's "closing of the Gold window" and raised oil prices to compensate for being paid in a depreciating currency.
Enoch Powell played a straight monetarist bat with the unions: they don't control the money supply; they cannot be to blame.
Ah, the good old public sector* unions! Pushing for extra money and better conditions for their members. Fair enough I suppose, but, and this is a big but, to be paid for by us mugs working in the private sector. They seem to expect public sympathy for their 'plight' but don't look at me for sympathy! Oh to be a local authority worker with my Monday to Friday job, 35 hour week, retirement at 60 with inflation proof pensions paid for by the council tax payer. When is the last time you saw a council worker actually grafting? All council tasks should be contracted out to the private sector, (within reason). They need a severe reality check. An article in my local paper sums up the attitude.
Council headquarters are located next to a big shopping centre, with the usual car park attached. The owners of the car park have told the council workers that they will need to pay for parking, but at a reduced rate of £5 per week, the same as the shop employees have done for years. Obviously the council workers and the union are up in arms and it makes the front page of the local paper! The union are pressing the council to pay for the parking for all their employees! Get a grip and welcome to the real world.
Oh, and when I say public sector, I don't mean the emergency services.
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