At least you've looked at it - and of course you're perfectly entitled to refute it, as many people in the comments section do; the point of course, is that there is plenty of conflicting information out there and it's risky to rely only on what bounces back at you in your own echo chamber.



Sorry, but I have no idea what you mean, or what relevant it has?

If that is what the government can afford then yes it is - why should this be any different from a commercial enterprise which incidentally is actual funding the increase.

Is it OK to award pay increases if productivity drops - a simple yes or no to both questions will do nicely

It would appear Mrs May has learned nothing - why is she so afraid of engaging with other humans on a human level?

These are people who have lost everything including - in some cases - family members why is she so afraid of getting some well deserved flack!!

Time the Tories discarded this robot for someone who has empathy with and can engage with fellow humans

She's completely devoid of any social skills and looks thoroughly panicked when put in a position of having to engage with anyone other than pre-approved Tory stooges. Everything from her facial expressions to her body language is just plain awkward.

The best description I've seen of her so far is 'a baby giraffe who's been dressed at Oxfam'.

Doesn't empathy go against the whole Tory ideology?

Unless empathy and selfish are the same thing, it will be a long wait.
Mrs May has spouted hot air about fair society for months but, they are just empty words.
Nobody knows what she actually thinks because it seems to change with each day of the week but, she is lacking any attribute that you would want from a leader.
No conviction, no principles, no leadership and no bottle.

FWIW I dont think that Corbyn has got all of those attributes but, he does seem to have some principles (even if I dont agree with some of them).

Everyone knows that she has to go, it's just a matter of time and delaying getting rid isn't helping anyone.

There are MPs in both parties Brown hardly did himself any favours in 2010

Completely agree - she has to go and soon - no spine whatsoever

As my unlikely new hero MC Saskilla said during an interview with Victoria Derbyshire the other day: "Theresa May doesn’t care about the mandem, she don’t care about the gyaldem, she don’t care about the under privilege, she don’t even care about black people, she don’t care about nobody, let’s be real."

Although I'd amend it slightly - what she cares about is clinging on to power at, it appears, any cost - including the tentative peace in Northern Ireland. Her own MP's are now having to defend and justify her robotic incompetence - and they won't put up with that for long, as the Tories hate weakness; she'll be gone before conference.

On point 2, I agree.

On point 1, I dont know if you are being deliberately daft or, whether you understand how local government in funded ?
The only way for local government to increase it's income is from local council tax or government grants, they aren't selling chocolate bars that they can increase the price or, make the bar smaller or, put out a 3 for 2 offer.
Their revenue comes from me and you and if we dont adequately fund our local services and reward the staff properly, what will happen to those services ?
Yes they can alway manage costs a little better and maximise the efficiency of their various departments, just like any other business but, then what ?
We've had the brakes on for the last 7 years, how much longer do you want to reduce the living standards of those who work in these organisations or should they employ people who cant find work elsewhere and are just "happy" to have a job.

I think you don't understand productivity - productivity isn't an increase in revenue its a way of doing the same with less resource or doing more with the same resource. This country has one of the lowest productivity rates in the EU perhaps if we increased our productivity the brakes would be released - just a thought?

Agreed - she cannot last behaving the way she is.

So Jeremy Corbyn went to visit the people who live around Grenfell as did the Queen, but Theresa 'Robot' May wont. Is this really the kind of person who wants the best for our country?

And why is her hubby always hanging about like a bad smell? Is he just making sure wifey is acting in his, I mean the country's best interests?

I don't know why you're engaging with this facile, Trumpesque argument that a country can be run like a business - it patently can't, and to distill it down to such simplistic notions misses even the most obvious differences between the two.

Yes, I covered that one with "an increase in efficiency"

Even if the brakes were released AND there was an increase in efficiency, which going by numbers of patients treated in the NHS, does seem to have increased in some areas, Mrs May, STILL doesn't want to pay these people more than the 1% cap allows.

BTW, having been a company director for 25 years, I think I might know a little bit about productivity and cost management

No one is saying it should be run like a business - however the basic principles of operational and fiscal cost control and the drive to do things in a more efficient manner should still apply to the public sector?

1% efficiency saving in the NHS is worth £800m - that is my argument with Corbyn - who has suggested nothing about efficiency savings all he is saying is let's throw money at it primarily pay people more to do the same job.

If you have been a director as long as you say then you would understand that the finances are not a bottomless pit and difficult choices sometimes have to be made. It easy in Jeremy's world - just give everyone what they want but you like I know that simply isn't possible in the real world.

Corbyn is a Bruce Almighty!!

Of course choices have to be made BUT, it's fundamentally wrong to effectively force a wage freeze (a reduction in real terms) on people that carry out services on our behalf, which is what all public servants do, whether they are teachers, nurses, care staff, road sweepers etc, etc.

The point is, and I do know that there isnt a bottomless pit that, you cannot suppress the wages of these people indefinitely, it's not right.
It's akin to your boss or, you, if you are the Chief Exec where you work, pumping up his salary year on year and giving his workers the same.
Whatever happened to the "we're in this together, when the austerity measures were first announced.
I'm not advocating double figure percentage increases but, IF we want decent public services, we cant keep squeezing them indefinitely.

Why is productivity so low? The main reason is due to excessive debt and BoE/government desperation to keep interest rates low. This keeps zombie companies alive which tie up resources that in theory could be more efficiently used if they went bust and new ones took their place. I think I read recently that there are something like 96,000 companies which could not cope with even a 0.25 per cent in interest rates on their loans.

Then there are the capitalists beloved zero hours contracts and part time working. Lots of employment in terms of jobs but no real efficiency.

Other factors include the fact that to do the simplest of tasks that 10 years ago would take say one minute (e.g. Speaking to a company / HMRC / etc to resolve a simple matter) will now take hours, days or weeks due to email, lack of customer care (but moronic 'customer services'), lack of common sense and inability to do anything / be allowed to do anything other than read from a script, automated telephone systems with wasteful recorded messages, etc. In short US business school crap. It may work in McDonalds but it doesn't work in lots of fields.

Times are about too change though in my view. The UK economy looks set for a huge shock. The building industry has slowed (traditionally the sign of a recession coming), the dominant services sector is slowing, inflation exceeds wages growth, we have the 4th highest level of household debt in the world, the property market is slowing, the retail sector is slowing and showing the potential for major collapses, US interest rates are going up and expected to be up to 3 per cent within a year which means the pound continues to fall against the dollar and will create further inflation, Brexit will put pressure on further, BoE will soon need to raise rates to stop the pound falling but that will put thousands of zombie businesses under with huge job losses, households will struggle to pay their huge debts and the ramifications of that are clear. I predict that this next year or at a push 18 months we'll think that we never had it do good as during the 7 years of austerity.

When all those poor people lose their jobs productivity will inevitably rise but will it really help people?

People talk of Corbyn's magic money tree but we currently live in a bizarre world where taxpayers money is used to subsidise individual and large companies. A magic money tree for the few, not the many. A sort of reverse Robin Hood. In essence the economics of the mad house. E.g. utilities, railways etc - subsidise profits and bills of foreigners. Getting rid of counciil houses - instead of the public getting money back via rents we have a huge bill in housing benefit not a penny of which goes to the people who need it but ends up in the pockets of private landlords (a number of major ones being Tory MPs and party donors). Then there is the NHS and care. One small care provider I know of put £3M into a tax avoidance scheme for the directors one year - not bad on a turnover of just £12m. A charity / public sector provider would work on a no profit basis. So is the private provider more efficient? Of course not. It is just not providing care - when the principal cost of care is wages and they throughout all providers are at or near the NMW then the only way that 25 per cent net (not gross) profit can be made is by providing less than 75 per cent of the minimum care needed.

This state of affairs is truly shocking and is unsustainable. People need to stand up and be counted to challenge it.

The analysis above is spot on. I've always thought 'Atlas shrugged' was Dally's bible


I'd also add that 2008 was a great opportunity to let the banks fail and completely reform the banking system and re-balance the economy. I would've gone as far as to distribute the money used to bail out the banks to every household in the UK on the condition that they use it to pay their debts. If they have no debt then they're free to spend that money in the economy. We're past the point of no return though, and we're teetering on the edge of a cliff, and we've done nothing to try and rectify this, in fact, we've taken steps to make the problems worse.

If you had let the banks fail how would you supported those businesses that either had large deposits or needed the overdraft/loan to function if you had given all the money to the non business customers?

IMO productivity is low for three reasons: General resistance to change, zero Kaizen culture and a lack of capital investment.

We see where all the above are embraced we can deliver world class performance e.g. car production where our factories are on a par or better than the best in the world.

On the housing it begs the question what did the councils do with all the money they received from the houses they sold and what had they been doing with all the millions they must have been making from owning all those houses they rented out.

The housing market would be much stronger if the ability to borrow especially for younger people was achievable asking a young couple to put up £15k as a deposit is asking too much. Builders aren't building because the demand isn't there - why is that because the bottom rung of the ladder isn't getting replenished with new buyers.