Dont worry, there will be another show about people claiming a couple of grand in benefits soon to take people's mind of it.

I think there was one on Channel 5 at the same time, but when poverty porn has sunk as low as Channel 5 you know it's been done to death.

You can always tell the posters on here who get a little bit of a hard on when discussing cash.
Those who've got it.
Those who haven't, but would really love to have it.

It's mildly amusing.

At my wifes work people were discussing this program and try as she might she could not get them to see how the issues in the super-rich program were far bigger than a minority exploiting the benefits system.

The propaganda has worked.

It really pi55es me off. People get so worked up about the unemployed having loads of babies or claiming disability when that money is just small change in reality. These people don't realise that large companies avoiding taxes and banks needing to be bailed out is what's costing them the real money. Politicians are claiming benifits on anything they can get away with but I'll ignore that, some bint without a job has gone and got herself pregnant.

It's not people on benefits that cost money. What costs money is the ridiculous number of people employed in public sector office jobs who are unproductive, spend their time in meetings and get good pension provision. That and the number of ultra-high paid "executives" who have had their packages justified by comparison with the private sector when in fact they could never command such salaries in the private sector. All public sector staff earning more than, say, £35,000 should be dismissed and asked to reapply for their jobs with lower salaries on offer. Let's see what their "market rate" is then!

I know a human resources manager who works for a well known high street bank and she's on over 90k a year for basically attending meetings and making calls. Show me a 'real world' HR Manager who earns over 90k. She'd be lucky to get even half that.

You could say the same about the NHS pen-pushers that were shipped-orf by Hunt and his predecessor, all with good pay-outs.

Problem was, it didn't take them long before they realised they shouldn't really have these bods go and they were soon re-employed as independent contractors and ended up costing the NHS more. But hey, at least Camoron could point to the number of staff they'd shed.

We all know you have a particular beef about what you perceive to be non-productive public sector staff but as usual, "you know nothing Jon Snow"

I can't speak for the whole NHS but whilst I was at York Hospital it needed more not fewer admin staff, it would've saved them money.

The same went for doctors and nurses. It needed more not fewer, and so would save on locum staff.

Coming from a family with multiple NHS workers I can also vouch for this, based on 2nd hand info of course. The one complaint I hear about admin is the number of management types who do square root of feck all in the way of actual admin, that allows patients to get sorted faster etc, and just go to meetings about why they aren't getting through enough admin.

Yep. As a for instance, I worked primarily with the Health Records dept and the majority of records were placed with a private storage company but there was next to no storage available on-site at the hospital and that was now full. So we developed our own off-site storage centre. It was significantly cheaper than at the private storage company. But because the trust wasn't prepared to fund the establishment of a proper centre (one that could store all records, free up space at the hospital and be cheaper in the long run) those records remained with the private company and we just dealt with the overflow.
I've heard it's since been closed down due to it needing some more investment that they weren't prepared to pay.

So because they weren't prepared to pay the initial set-up costs (and no senior manager was prepared to take responsibility for the problem) they now have higher on-going costs.
I worked out at the time it would cost roughly 3p per item/record per year including setup costs. At the private company it costed (this was around 2007 if memory serves) 37p.

That may be true but that really isn't the way the debate is being framed is it? It is all about benefit cheats when we face losses in tax income exponentially greater than that.

You may have a point about over inflated salaries in the public sector but I'd suggest even that issue pales into insignificance compared to banking bailouts and tax avoidance.

It is just another distraction to get angry about that is overall, much less of a problem when you look at the actual amounts involved.

If it is not benefits cheats, it is public sector salaries. Both ought to be far down the pecking order of issues to address.

That is complete tosh, as you probably know, you just like to push the myth. If Universities can still be classed as public sector the vast majority of staff earning over £35k would earn more in the private sector.