Tory new plan for regional pay deals

[Muttley]

On the subject of paying civil servants less in the unfashionable hell holes of the north (etc.) I believe that there is still such a thing as "London Weighting" in Civil Service jobs (not to mention a tendency to upgrade certain positions in the SE) why not close all national civil service offices in London and move them all out to the provinces? No one gets a drop in salary but a huge wedge is saved in LW, a boost is delivered to those areas and I suspect that the people moved might just find their quality of life is improved (OK they might have to forego all those trips to the Opera). The Tories have already dipped their toes in this when they moved some Treasury jobs to Darlo (don't believe the hyperbole though it amounts to about 100 jobs) I'd like to see someone run some numbers up on this. I know the CS top brass will hate the idea but fkkem.

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

Fair enough.

Do Green have a fair chance of winning your seat? It's a fair intention, but I wouldn't do that in my seat, as it wouldn't do anything about putting a dent in the local Tory lead (which is probably quite close now).

Nope. I'm actually in a fairly important seat that labour could win from the Tories.

Let's try an analogy. A man has had his arm chopped off. Is there any point in putting a sticking plaster on the wound. Then ignoring any further treatment, because we've already fixed it.

Voting in such a moderate defanged labour would be completely pointless for someone in my situation. They will not fix the issues. And there will be no voice. No argument from the left. Because we've fixed it by putting a sticking plaster on it.

But like I said I will read the manifesto. My difficulty would be in trusting labour to stick to their manifesto. The attempts they made to get Corbyn out really opened my eyes to what a pack of vipers labour are.

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

On the subject of paying civil servants less in the unfashionable hell holes of the north (etc.) I believe that there is still such a thing as "London Weighting" in Civil Service jobs (not to mention a tendency to upgrade certain positions in the SE) why not close all national civil service offices in London and move them all out to the provinces? No one gets a drop in salary but a huge wedge is saved in LW, a boost is delivered to those areas and I suspect that the people moved might just find their quality of life is improved (OK they might have to forego all those trips to the Opera). The Tories have already dipped their toes in this when they moved some Treasury jobs to Darlo (don't believe the hyperbole though it amounts to about 100 jobs) I'd like to see someone run some numbers up on this. I know the CS top brass will hate the idea but fkkem.

Well yes this is what's going to happen. Particularly since people aren't working in offices.

Civil service has been moving out of London for years. Started under the Blair government. It's not a Tory/labour thing. There are lots of posts all around the country now, have a look on the jobs website.

And I like living in London. Can't afford to go to the opera as I rent. Personally I think they should try fixing the housing market.

 

[Redwurzel]

I saw a docunentary about the DWP and its HQ appeared to be in an expensive area of London, so much for saving money. Move the department to some where like Middlesbrough or Stoke and you would save tens of millions in rent alone. , plus all the London Weightings.

 

[MolteniArcore]

Nope. I'm actually in a fairly important seat that labour could win from the Tories.

Sounds like you are on the wind up!

Your arm is chopped off so instead of voting for the sticking plaster you vote for the party who will regrow your arm. Under the current system and the voting situation you'll end up with the party that chopped off your arm. They will probably chop off the other one.

You don't need to read a manifesto to realise that the last 12 years have destroyed the country.

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

I think that the idea that anyone who does not support the Tories should automatically be voting labour to be pretty patronising. Try to understand that people have different priorities from you in life, different issues. Whilst labour may offer solutions to you to many they do not.

Perhaps I should take a different approach. Do none of you care about the state the planet is in? Everyone voting for labour or the Tories is hammering another nail into the coffin of the planet. Do none of you care about the state the world will be in when you're kids grow up?

 

[Unravel_Morrison]

Nothing will happen in terms of any serious move out of London for civil servants.

As much as anything else, the government like to keep them on a short leash.

Restricting the pay of the plebs in the shires and pitlands is a lot more palatable.

 

[Redwurzel]

The number of central office type civil servants that needs to be in London is a couple of hundred in total (the very senior ones for each department) but there are tens of thousands within the M25 - I am sure over a billion could be saved, but those involved want to preserve the status quo and life style, that is theIr main concern and they have great influence, saving public money is probably well down the list of priorities. Its not just the public sector neither, how many charities have a Central London HQ or PLCs?

 

[SmallTown]

This argument always baffles me. It's a technicality. It doesn't change my point at all. There's always someone who sticks their hand up at the back. "Actually you're voting for your local MP."

Yes I know....we all know.

It's not "a technicality" it's fundamentally how our political system works. What always baffles me is we got do much Americans culture and politics in our news people actually make the mistake that we have the same system of electing a leader

 

[Andy_W]

Nope. I'm actually in a fairly important seat that labour could win from the Tories.

Let's try an analogy. A man has had his arm chopped off. Is there any point in putting a sticking plaster on the wound. Then ignoring any further treatment, because we've already fixed it.

Voting in such a moderate defanged labour would be completely pointless for someone in my situation. They will not fix the issues. And there will be no voice. No argument from the left. Because we've fixed it by putting a sticking plaster on it.

But like I said I will read the manifesto. My difficulty would be in trusting labour to stick to their manifesto. The attempts they made to get Corbyn out really opened my eyes to what a pack of vipers labour are.

Assuming this version of Labour is similar to the last version of Labour which won an election (and the only one which possibly could win an election), would you say the previous version of Labour were comparable to the Tories who have been in the last 12 years?

Lets clear this up though, the Tories have chopped your arm off (and done much worse to many others) and it ain't coming back under the Tories that's for sure, and like @MolteniArcore says, you're literally not voting against them doing it again.

How would you feel if the Tories won your seat by one vote, or even 1000 votes if some others like you did the same. Then repeat that all over the UK.

It just seems a waste of a vote, and you've clearly got an interest, as you're posting on this thread. At least the people who never vote, probably don't have a clue about what the hell is going on, or just don't care, so can't expect them to do anything either way.

I'd trust Labour to stick to their manifesto, providing nothing exceptional happened, but then even if those things did happen then they would largely stick to it then also, where possible.

When Labour have been in power previous, do you think they largely stuck to the manifesto or not?

I think the doubt you seem to have is they never stuck to the previous 2019 manifesto, but that manifesto lost by 365 seats to 202, and the world has been turned further upside down since. That manifesto, the Tories and brexit cost you your arm, I don't see the point in sitting on your remaining hand whilst the Tories polish their axe ready to take the other one.

In hindsight Corbyn probably shouldn't have been there in the first place, he and the Labour members etc should have realised the UK wasn't ready for what he was proposing or what the members wanted, he was leading them down the garden path to something which was unelectable. You can't appease the left too much to a point where it loses too much of the middle. I wonder if this also led to more of the centre and right panicking and voting to leave, or if Corbyn's Euroscepticism or luke warm support played a part in that.

Once the UK (England) voted out things were only going to get worse, the country clearly jumped further right, moving the balance even further from JC. 23/31 of the shadow cabinet left within two weeks of the leave vote, and then he lost a vote of no confidence by 172-40. He should have walked.

He had a second chance to walk after he got beat by May, who wasn't doing a great job, but there wasn't much point then, and I suppose him sticking around for the next loss gave us something to draw a line under, and at least the new guy doesn't get associated with two previous losses. I don't think the last loss would have been anywhere near as large mind, but we've made it back up just fine.

 

[MolteniArcore]

I think that the idea that anyone who does not support the Tories should automatically be voting labour to be pretty patronising. Try to understand that people have different priorities from you in life, different issues. Whilst labour may offer solutions to you to many they do not.

Perhaps I should take a different approach. Do none of you care about the state the planet is in? Everyone voting for labour or the Tories is hammering another nail into the coffin of the planet. Do none of you care about the state the world will be in when you're kids grow up?

How patronising is your response? "Do none of you care about the state the world will be in when you're kids grow up?"

You keep voting Green in a tight Tory seat where Labour have the chance to win and see how many policies are introduced to help the environment pet.

But vote with your conscience, vote Green. That's up to you and is your right. But you are not voting for the change that you think you are in first past the post. You are just voting for the status quo. At least you can walk with a clear conscience as food banks rise further, bills keep climbing, sleaze infects the system more, the rich get richer, the poor become poorer, net zero gets kicked down the road, debt increases, illegality in Government rises, NHS spending drops, life expectancy falls further. You can tell your children you did the right thing as they pay off decades of Conservative debt and underspending in public services

 

[Andy_W]

How patronising is your response? "Do none of you care about the state the world will be in when you're kids grow up?"

You keep voting Green in a tight Tory seat where Labour have the chance to win and see how many policies are introduced to help the environment pet.

But vote with your conscience, vote Green. That's up to you and is your right. But you are not voting for the change that you think you are in first past the post. You are just voting for the status quo. At least you can walk with a clear conscience as food banks rise further, bills keep climbing, sleaze infects the system more, the rich get richer, the poor become poorer, net zero gets kicked down the road, debt increases, illegality in Government rises, NHS spending drops, life expectancy falls further. You can tell your children you did the right thing as they pay off decades of Conservative debt and underspending in public services

People also have a lot of control over how green their lives are, by what they do in their day to day lives, it doesn't necessarily need to be one or the other.

There's little point blowing all your money on solar panels though, if you can't afford to feed your kids, or if you or family members have to wait 5 hours for an ambulance.

Loads of people can't even afford to have kids, with the way things are at the minute.

I suppose there's more chance of Labour siding with the greens or having closer policy than the Tories would, but all of them should be pushing for us to be largely self sufficient with regards to energy. The only way we can really do it is with green energy (backed up by nuclear) or coal and fracking, and there isn't much support for either of the latter.

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

How patronising is your response? "Do none of you care about the state the world will be in when you're kids grow up?"

You keep voting Green in a tight Tory seat where Labour have the chance to win and see how many policies are introduced to help the environment pet.

But vote with your conscience, vote Green. That's up to you and is your right. But you are not voting for the change that you think you are in first past the post. You are just voting for the status quo. At least you can walk with a clear conscience as food banks rise further, bills keep climbing, sleaze infects the system more, the rich get richer, the poor become poorer, net zero gets kicked down the road, debt increases, illegality in Government rises, NHS spending drops, life expectancy falls further. You can tell your children you did the right thing as they pay off decades of Conservative debt and underspending in public services

The whole point of my post was to be patronising.

I was trying to illustrate my point by taking your approach. To take issues that are important to me and accuse you of selfishness for not sharing the Belief those same issues are important.

I do not feel that labour will fix any of the things in your list.

 

[MolteniArcore]

The whole point of my post was to be patronising.

I was trying to illustrate my point by taking your approach. To take issues that are important to me and accuse you of selfishness for not sharing the Belief those same issues are important.

I do not feel that labour will fix any of the things in your list.

Of course you were pet.

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

I'm sorry I've really really wound you up haven't I.

 

[ThePrisoner]

People also have a lot of control over how green their lives are, by what they do in their day to day lives

No they don't. Marginal at best. Only systemic change can have a significant impact.

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

Assuming this version of Labour is similar to the last version of Labour which won an election (and the only one which possibly could win an election), would you say the previous version of Labour were comparable to the Tories who have been in the last 12 years?

Lets clear this up though, the Tories have chopped your arm off (and done much worse to many others) and it ain't coming back under the Tories that's for sure, and like @MolteniArcore says, you're literally not voting against them doing it again.

How would you feel if the Tories won your seat by one vote, or even 1000 votes if some others like you did the same. Then repeat that all over the UK.

It just seems a waste of a vote, and you've clearly got an interest, as you're posting on this thread. At least the people who never vote, probably don't have a clue about what the hell is going on, or just don't care, so can't expect them to do anything either way.

I'd trust Labour to stick to their manifesto, providing nothing exceptional happened, but then even if those things did happen then they would largely stick to it then also, where possible.

When Labour have been in power previous, do you think they largely stuck to the manifesto or not?

I think the doubt you seem to have is they never stuck to the previous 2019 manifesto, but that manifesto lost by 365 seats to 202, and the world has been turned further upside down since. That manifesto, the Tories and brexit cost you your arm, I don't see the point in sitting on your remaining hand whilst the Tories polish their axe ready to take the other one.

In hindsight Corbyn probably shouldn't have been there in the first place, he and the Labour members etc should have realised the UK wasn't ready for what he was proposing or what the members wanted, he was leading them down the garden path to something which was unelectable. You can't appease the left too much to a point where it loses too much of the middle. I wonder if this also led to more of the centre and right panicking and voting to leave, or if Corbyn's Euroscepticism or luke warm support played a part in that.

Once the UK (England) voted out things were only going to get worse, the country clearly jumped further right, moving the balance even further from JC. 23/31 of the shadow cabinet left within two weeks of the leave vote, and then he lost a vote of no confidence by 172-40. He should have walked.

He had a second chance to walk after he got beat by May, who wasn't doing a great job, but there wasn't much point then, and I suppose him sticking around for the next loss gave us something to draw a line under, and at least the new guy doesn't get associated with two previous losses. I don't think the last loss would have been anywhere near as large mind, but we've made it back up just fine.

The doubt comes from how the Labour party reacted when Corbyn won power. From the moment he was leader until the moment he was out they proved themselves to be a pack of snakes. I do not trust them as people or as politicians. I see them as being prepared to compromise every principle they have to get in power and stay there. I would find it very hard to vote for them.

 

[NYboro]

The doubt comes from how the Labour party reacted when Corbyn won power. From the moment he was leader until the moment he was out they proved themselves to be a pack of snakes. I do not trust them as people or as politicians. I see them as being prepared to compromise every principle they have to get in power and stay there. I would find it very hard to vote for them.

How would you describe the Tories?

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

How would you describe the Tories?

The same. Not voting for either of them I should imagine.

 

[Andy_W]

No they don't. Marginal at best. Only systemic change can have a significant impact.

You can choose how much you fly, what sector you work in, what type of car you drive, whether you have green energy at home, how efficient you make your home, how big your home is etc. A lot of that comes down to earnings also of course. A lot of that will have little impact from whoever is in government.

Governments can control what fuels the grid (any estimate I've done only a third of my footprint is from this/ home energy)

None of us have any control over how the products we buy from outside the UK are made, albeit we can chose what to buy and what not to buy, but who we elect makes no difference to that (unless they banned imports).

The reality is we need to do both of course, but electing the greens and not doing what you can at home would have a worse impact than doing what you can and voting for the next best party.