I find this so depressing: tacked onto "we didn't cause it, we shouldn't have to take a pay cut............
Look, lads, I didn't cause it either but my drop in income as a solicitor didn't stop when it hit the floor - nope, it just kept going down.
We cannot afford to run the country the way it has been run and continues to run. The pain will hit everyone - there cannot be exceptions for anyone who didn't cause the problem.
And the worst part is that I still don't believe the message has gotten home to way too many people.
This is quite patronising. Don't assume that because you are not hearing the answer you want, people 'dont get it'. Many of those people do 'get it' and have offered different answers and solutions.
I should say perhaps qualify earlier comments. I do not believe that - in an ideal world where all options can be explored - pay cuts are the only way to achieve the required reduction in the cost of the public sector wage bill.
Wholesale layoffs would work too.
There are LOTS of people in Planning Offices, Land Registry, Revenue, Health and Safety Authority etc. who are already faced with a hugely reduced workload.
There are LOTS of employees in other services where we may just have to decide we can no longer afford to enjoy public services at the levels we have previously enjoyed.
Don't the Land Registry have years of backlogs on hand to catch up on? I've no idea why you think the HSA have a reduced workload - their work was always on a sampling basis, so they never got to inspect every building site or every farm. Given the cutbacks that many public and private business are making in their own H&S staff, I'd have thought that the HSA will have more than enough productive work to keep them going. Every local authority planning office is currently rewriting their county development plan, which defines their planning policy for the next decade or so. These guys aren't sitting round scratching their asses.
I think those who propose cuts in public services have a duty to be reasonably specific about which services they propose to cut back.
Tax take is pretty much at rock bottom as it is. Retail is hit as hard as its ever going to be. People just aren't spending and to be honest, a few more people spending a bit less isn't going to make that big a difference, not in comparison to the savings made immediately off the wage bill.
Famous last words...
There are means to bridge this gap and not all relate to pay and job numbers. But what we agree on must be beneficial for the greater good, not personal self interest. If you're a public servant, the greater good is the public.
Indeed, the greater good is down to the public - who are (and the hint comes in the name) the users of public services. There are those who (very quietly) are quite happy to see public services being cut, because they will be jumping in at the chance to offer these services, at a price of course. This is the privatisation agenda, led by Mary Harney, and followed enthusiastically by many others.
To come back to the same tiring issue, about comparing private with public, in certain cases we can, in others we can't. But when people say the private sector by and large hasn't taken pay cuts may have missed the numbers on the live register. The CSO figures only include pay cuts for people in employment. Too many have seen 100% pay cut.
Indeed, many in the public sector have had their 100% pay cut - including just about all contract staff, many of whom were in essential roles.
But for those employers that haven't seen their basic rates cut have made other changes because they've had to, stuff that doesn't get recognised by the CSO. They've done everything they can to not cut pay and to try and keep people in employment. But there has been swift and quick reform.
The important thing is that in the vast majority of cases this has been with the support of employees. They may not have liked it, but ultimately they were able to see the greater good.
And indeed this kind of reorganisation has already been taking place right across the public sector - the private sector don't have a monopoly on quick & swift reform.
Why must cuts happen everywhere? If an employer is profitable, forcing a pay cut on the employees out of some warped notion that they must share some pain, that just makes the employer more profitable - doesn't do a whole lot for the economy other than a bit of extra corporation tax.
I don't think anyone has suggesting forcing job cuts on the private sector. However, there are real options out there to balance our budget by increasing income and other taxes. That's the beauty of income tax - those who earn will pay, those who are earning less, pay less.
No, neither of you answered the question I asked with a YES or NO.
You appeared to partially agree and Complainer did his usual.
Are you still not willing or able to answer?
Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Caveat - YES or NO?
As you've just realised, there are some questions that can't be answered with a YES or NO. I answered your question clearly.
Now where's the incorrigible Complainer?
Sorry for the delayed response. That pesky inconvenience of public service sometimes causes temporary interruptions in my AAMing (unlike many of those who claim to be overworked and overstressed in the private sector).