199 replies to this topic

[Christian U]

You are clearly deluded, it is obviously Catholics who are heretics not Protestants.

Weeeeell, we'll see about that when you're burning in the fires of hell and I'm, uh, well, burning in the fires of Purgatory, I suppose.

[Mike]

The constant onslaught from this Government is wearing down my ability to get furious about their policies, which is maybe what they're banking on.

Osborne's latest wheeze, to cut public sector pay for those in poorer areas 'to match the local economy' is perverse logic at its worst. Deprived areas need to attract the brightest and the best of the public sector to give the people who benefit the most from every help that Government can bring to bear their best chance of making the most of themselves.

Cameron's coalition is systematically entrenching, at every level, a widening difference between the haves and the have-nots in British society. The changes they are making now will echo down for generations to come, and it will undoubtedly set the United Kingdom backwards in terms of social equality. I fervently hope that when Scotland's time to make a choice comes that we definitively react to Cameron's poisonous brand of politics and reject his repulsive view of a two-tier society, where those with money get the best that both the private and public sectors can offer, and those without get what's left over.

"The care of all those sacred rites [i.e. sacraments] has been given to the Church of Christ." (Father Billot, S.J.)

I couldn't tell you what is policy, because modern Catholic policy seems to be all over the place and I haven't kept up with it. I was raised Anglican, not Roman Catholic. But it is doctrine, which I would think should be more important. The Council of Trent defined Matrimony as a sacrament, and as such it given to us by God to allow us to better come to God -- which clearly we can only do if we are proper ("proper" meaning Catholic) Christians.

"Matrimony gives the graces necessary for those who are to rear children in the love and fear of God, members of the Church militant, future citizens of heaven." (St. Thomas.) (Incidentally this does not exclude same sex marriages, as it is for rearing children, not bearing children )


"In adults, for the valid reception of any sacrament ... it is necessary that they have the intention of receiving it. The sacraments impose obligations and confer grace." This quote (from the Catholic Encyclopedia) is basically saying that you must be willing to accept grace if you want to receive the sacrament, which fits doctrine because nobody believes that Christ forces himself on people -- they have to accept him willingly. Also: "it is a general law that application for the sacraments should be made to worthy and duly appointed ministers", only Catholics being worthy and duly appointed, of course.

I'm sure that if a Jew or a Muslim accepted Christ's grace and applied to an ordained Catholic minister then he could be married...

Oh well, if Catholics are going to not accept any marriage as marriage unless it's a Catholic one, then it makes a self-mockery of their opposition to equal marriage anyway. They're non-relevant to the debate if they already define marriage so strictly compared to the generally held prevailing social view of marriage.

[Mike]

The protest against the NHS Bill in Whitehall today was met with police armed with machine guns. The sense of proportion over honest disagreement with government policy has been dangerously lost.

And will the BBC report it? As much as the corrosive plans to undermine the NHS' founding principles and strip it of its core values anger me, what makes me just as furious is that the BBC is standing by and not reporting in a balanced manner over the proposed changes an the strength of opposition to it.

The Royal College of Physicans of London, one of the biggest medical colleges in the country, declared their opposition to the Bill at the end of last week. 70% of all hospital doctors working in the NHS think that the Bill is dangerous and will irrevocably harm the NHS. And yet that degree of opposition is not reflected in the coverage of the BBC.

Two great institutions, pillars of what it has meant to be British in the 20th Century, both at risk of falling and failing in the early days of the 21st.

Please don't stand aside and do nothing if you even vaguely care about these changes. Write to your MPs, lobby the Department of Health, bring pressure to bear in any and every way you can.

[David Meadows]

The constant onslaught from this Government is wearing down my ability to get furious about their policies, which is maybe what they're banking on.

Osborne's latest wheeze, to cut public sector pay for those in poorer areas 'to match the local economy' is perverse logic at its worst. Deprived areas need to attract the brightest and the best of the public sector to give the people who benefit the most from every help that Government can bring to bear their best chance of making the most of themselves.

This isn't new. They've been doing it for decades. From TES:

TEACHERS’ PAY FROM SEPTEMBER 2011

Scale point Annual salary England and Wales excluding London
(band D) Annual salary inner London area
(band A) Annual salary outer London area
(band B) Annual salary Fringe area
(band C) £ £ £ £ 1 21,588 27,000 25,117 22,626 2 23,295 28,408 26,674 24,331 3 25,168 29,889 28,325 26,203 4 27,104 31,446 30,080 28,146 5 29,240 33,865 32,630 30,278 6 31,552 36,387 35,116 32,588


London weighting also already affects police and some civil servants. I'm surprised it doesn't affect doctors, to be honest.

Anyway, this idea isn't new or radical by a long shot, and if it brings other public servants in line with teachers and the police, doesn't that make sense?



Sorry, should have realised I couldn't paste in a table. Should have looked like this:

Edited by David Meadows, 19 March 2012 - 09:46 PM.

[Christian U]

This isn't new. They've been doing it for decades. From TES:

TEACHERS’ PAY FROM SEPTEMBER 2011

Scale point Annual salary England and Wales excluding London
(band D) Annual salary inner London area
(band A) Annual salary outer London area
(band B) Annual salary Fringe area
(band C) £ £ £ £ 1 21,588 27,000 25,117 22,626 2 23,295 28,408 26,674 24,331 3 25,168 29,889 28,325 26,203 4 27,104 31,446 30,080 28,146 5 29,240 33,865 32,630 30,278 6 31,552 36,387 35,116 32,588


London weighting also already affects police and some civil servants. I'm surprised it doesn't affect doctors, to be honest.

Anyway, this idea isn't new or radical by a long shot, and if it brings other public servants in line with teachers and the police, doesn't that make sense?



Sorry, should have realised I couldn't paste in a table. Should have looked like this:

Do I understand this correctly in that currently, the point is that you're getting paid more if you're working in London? Or is this already more general localised pay that goes for other areas of the country, as well?

[David Meadows]

Teachers get paid more if they are working in London. This has been the practice since the 1920s. There is a reason for it: it costs more to live in London than it does in (for example) Newcastle, so you need to earn more to have the same standard of living as other members of your profession elsewhere in the country.

As far as I know, it's only London that gets this treatment. It would probably make sense to extend it to other expensive cities, though I can imagine the admin and the calculations for that would be a nightmare.

But what George Osbourne wants to do is extend the principle to other public servants. I can't see why anybody is objecting to this, unless they also think London teachers should be paid less -- and the teachers went on strike last time somebody messed with their London allowance (2002 I think) so that's a non-starter.

Of course, the best solution would be to make it cost the same to live in London as it does in Newcastle, but I can't see any way that's going to happen.

[Christian U]

Teachers get paid more if they are working in London. This has been the practice since the 1920s. There is a reason for it: it costs more to live in London than it does in (for example) Newcastle, so you need to earn more to have the same standard of living as other members of your profession elsewhere in the country.

Yeah, okay, that's what I would have thought and it does make sense to me, simply because cost of living in London is so much higher.

From the article, though, it seems like Osborne wants to take things a huge step further:

The department is not trying to introduce just regional pay, but local or zonal pay that might take account of, for instance, living costs in suburban Manchester as opposed to inner-city Manchester.
The Treasury regards the change as one of the most important measures it can introduce to rebalance the economy. Osborne claims the move would provide a boost to the private sector in the north and south-west, arguing that employers in these areas cannot afford to recruit staff owing to the relatively high public sector wages in cheaper areas of the country.

Paying people in London more is one thing; paying them less than is the case right now if they live in areas with cheaper living conditions is another one entirely. For one thing, it takes money away from poor economies. For another, it takes away one of the few reasons you might have to work in a relatively desolate area - because you can afford a whole different standard of living. I think Mike is quite right about policies like this entrenching a widening gap in society.

Edited by Christian U, 20 March 2012 - 04:30 PM.

[David Meadows]

The problem is, if you think Osbourne's idea is bad, you have to agree to take away the current London weighting for teachers, as that's already doing the thing you are saying is bad.

[Christian U]

Taking money out of the public sector as opposed to putting money in? No, I do not think that is the same at all.


If you took London levels away, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference, mind you. People would still want to live in London. I live in a city with very high costs of living, and I don't make more money than my colleagues in the countryside, and I still don't want to leave.

Edited by Christian U, 20 March 2012 - 04:41 PM.

[David Meadows]

Any cut in the money going to the public sector is wrong, there's no argument there, and the government shouldn't be doing it.

But, starting from the principle that the governent is cutting the public sector, and there's nothing going to stop them doing that, what's the fairest way to implement the cuts? Do you:

a) Cut £1000 from everybody

b) Leave the pay of the Londoner with a £300000 mortgage untouched and cut £2000 off the pay of the northerner with a £100000 mortgage (and a nicer house for his money)?

Again, the inequality is already there for teachers. Why not equalise the inequality?

[Christian U]

Well, speaking for myself, I don't own a house because I couldn't afford one here in the city. The choice not to move to the countryside and buy or build a house and to keep living in a rented flat (that costs me double of what a way bigger place in a smaller town would) in the city was mine, nobody else's. I could move out of the city and thus have more money available anytime. What I get in compensation is everything a city offers, the cultural life that I love and just the liveliness of it all. What do small, poor towns have to offer to make you stay there if not low costs of living? How many people who have a choice will stay there if they're making less money than they do in more attractive areas?

You're further draining both money and human resources from those areas who are already poorest and need them most bitterly; this isn't just a matter of individual fairness, but of infrastructural development: in areas with high unemployment and generally low income, you're reinforcing the situation with this kind of policy instead of looking for ways to develop those areas more positively.

Edited by Christian U, 20 March 2012 - 05:54 PM.

[Mike]

I agree with Christian; London weighting isn't the same issue, and is effectively the opposite of what Osbourne is proposing. At the moment there are national tariffs for pay and in London an additional amount is paid to reflect the fact that the cost of living is significantly different - but the core valuation of what the job is worth is the same. Osborne is proposing to remove that standardisation, to say that a nurse working in the North of England deserves to be paid less for their core duties than one in the south-east of England. It will encourage the best and the brightest to move away from the areas of greater need, and that will lead to increasing - and increasingly entrenched - social inequality, a hallmark of Tory thinking.

I do get London weighting by the way David.

Conservative and Lib Dem ministers have "banged" the table at a cabinet meeting to mark the impending passing of the NHS reforms into law, No 10 has said.
The Health and Social Care Bill, for England, has had a difficult passage through Parliament but was finally passed by the House of Lords on Monday.
The government hopes it will now get Royal Assent and become law by Easter.
Meanwhile, Labour have failed by 82 votes in a final bid to delay the bill's progress.
The party called a Commons emergency debate on the issue, but in the subsequent vote was defeated by 328 to 246.
The motion said MPs should not consider planned NHS changes for a final time before an assessment of the potential risks to the health service is published.

Things will take time to change but this will be the point, I think, where we will look back in ten years time and say that the concept of the NHS, the founding principles that Bevan laid down, were fundamentally undermined in England.

There's potentially more than that even being undermined; when a Minister of the Crown stands and says with a straight face that he can ignore the rule of law because he 'has good reason' over his failure to publish the risk register, there is a worrying precedent being set. We are not at war. There is nothing in the Risk Register that affects national security. Lansley - and his Government's - arrogance in asserting that the register is 'too complicated' for medical staff to understand is breathtaking.

The NHS needs change; it has been constantly interrogating and revising itself ever since it was created, responding to the vastly different social and scientific circumstances of the 21st Century compared to the mid-20th. What it does not need is this reform, which will lead to fragmentation of services and the development of two-tier delivery of care, to the detriment - again - of the weak and the old, the young and the vulnerable; the poor, not the rich.

70% of hospital doctors oppose the Bill. The Royal College of GPs - the very people charged with implementing the major changes inherent in the Bill - said it was the wrong move. The BMA, virtually every Royal College of every medical specialty, the Royal College of Nursing - all have stood in opposition to this. It is the wrong response to a problem that has been described in false terms designed to support ideological change.

Mark that image well, of Tories and their LibDem lapdogs banging the table in glee at the passing of this bill. It will come back to haunt them at the next election, when doctors and nurses stand as prospective MPs against LibDems and make the NHS the issue they go to the electorate over; it will come back to haunt them when Scotland faces the question of whether we wish to definitively separate ourselves from the corrosive social policies which drip from this Coalition Government.

I have been an NHS doctor for 12 years, and I have never been anything but fiercely proud of that. I hope 10 years from now I can still say the same, but I fear by then we will have seen a balkanisation of healthcare delivery in England, and the NHS will be there in name but not in substance. The clear water opening up between the NHS in Scotland and Wales and that in England will only serve to highlight the differences in social policy in the devolved nations.

[Ben the Obiwomble]

A big problem is the simplicity of the presentations: Doctors? Oh, of course they're anti-change! They only look out for themselves!

Yet, you only have to read some of the comments made by these so-called selfish individuals to know that's crap, change is fine - just not this change.

What I'm hoping is the NHS Bill becomes this generation's Poll Tax, that went through despite massive opposition and in response it sparked what was, effectively, a popular uprising of such venom the Tories sacrificed Thatcher to appease it. It sounds horrendous to say it, but maybe the only way to really kill these poisonous ideas is to let them flower into full toxic bloom and then watch as the population takes a flamethrower to them.

That may be wishful thinking on my part though....

[steveuk]

The Poll Tax hit people hard, simultaneously, in large numbers and fast.

This will be gradual.

There wont be riots.

[Ben the Obiwomble]

At the pace they're going, I'm sure it'll be many things, but gradual? I'm sceptical.

[Mike]

On the eve of the 1983 election a young member of the Labour shadow cabinet delivered what was to be one of his most compelling speeches. Neil Kinnock knew a landslide defeat was imminent so, speaking in Bridgend, he sketched the world to come:

"I warn you," he began, addressing a nation about to descend into the bitterest stretch of the Thatcher era.

"I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old."

[steveuk]

At the pace they're going, I'm sure it'll be many things, but gradual? I'm sceptical.

The poll tax was a bill, demanding payment, that arrived in everyone's house on roughly the same day.

This bill however will take a few years, and if you're lucky enough not to need a doctor for a while you probably wont experience its effects first hand for even longer.

There will be protests over this or that but there wont be a mass protest, one that is spread over the whole UK and goes on and on and on.

Not unless someone with a ton of charisma steps forwards and leads it. Is there anyone out there who can be a Lawrence of Arabia for the NHS?

[David Meadows]

Well, speaking for myself, I don't own a house because I couldn't afford one here in the city. The choice not to move to the countryside and buy or build a house and to keep living in a rented flat (that costs me double of what a way bigger place in a smaller town would) in the city was mine, nobody else's. I could move out of the city and thus have more money available anytime. What I get in compensation is everything a city offers, the cultural life that I love and just the liveliness of it all. What do small, poor towns have to offer to make you stay there if not low costs of living? How many people who have a choice will stay there if they're making less money than they do in more attractive areas?

I'm making considerably less money than I could in London, and I stay where I am. Almost everybody working in the private sector in North East England is making less money than they could in London, and amazingly we're not all flocking down there to get more money. Some things are more important.

But that's not really relevant to the discussion. The relevant fact is this:

It costs more money to live in London than in most other places in the UK.

This is an indisputable fact. The private sector realises this, and realise they have to pay a lot more to attract people like me to jobs based in London, because why would I give up my nice lifestyle here in the provinces to live in London where I couldn't afford a pint of beer on the money I make now?

Teachers also realised this, way back in 1920, and the government started offering them more money to work in London, so if they worked there they could still afford a pint of beer (they probably need a lot of beer ).

And yet if you're a... for example... (God, I'm stuck for examples, every kind of low-paid council job I can think of is out-sourced to private companies!)... ok, let's say a road sweeper. A road sweeper in Newcastle is paid exactly the same as he would be to do the same job in London. Result: road sweepers in London can't afford a pint of beer (though they probably need it less than teachers ).

I do get London weighting by the way David.

That's interesting to know. I know about the weighting for teachers (both my sisters are teachers, though not in London) but I couldn't find anything to suggest Doctors got it too. Aagin, it makes a lot of sense, for the simple fact that it's going to cost you more to have the same lifestyle you would enjoy elsewhere in the country.

Personally I think anyone who choses to live in London must be slightly insane, no amount of money would make me do it, but that's a whole different topic

Mark that image well, of Tories and their LibDem lapdogs banging the table in glee at the passing of this bill. It will come back to haunt them at the next election, when doctors and nurses stand as prospective MPs against LibDems and make the NHS the issue they go to the electorate over;

Is that likely to happen? I would love to see it. I think anybody who did that would get my vote regardless of what party they actually belonged to.

Edited by David Meadows, 21 March 2012 - 09:55 AM.

[Martin Smith]

So, the budget. That was... tedious. Considering Osborne said it was a budget for working families, it was mostly about business tax.

His reasons for reducing the 50p tax rate to the 45p rate were predictably awful. 'People keep evading it and shunted lots of their earnings in the first year of it to the previous financial year.' Well, yeah, but they can't do that after the first year and you just said you're cracking down on tax evasion in general.

Only caught a snatch of Ed Miliband's response, but I liked him asking which of the coalition front bench would benefit from the tax cut.

[Christian U]

I'm making considerably less money than I could in London, and I stay where I am. Almost everybody working in the private sector in North East England is making less money than they could in London, and amazingly we're not all flocking down there to get more money. Some things are more important.

And yet...

Between 2001 and 2009 London’s population grew by over 430 thousand, more than any other region, accounting for over 16 per cent of the UK increase.

Doesn't seem like it is all that hard to attract people to London.

It costs more money to live in London than in most other places in the UK.

This is an indisputable fact.

Which is why nobody has disputed it.

Teachers also realised this, way back in 1920, and the government started offering them more money to work in London, so if they worked there they could still afford a pint of beer (they probably need a lot of beer ).

God knows, we do!

And yet if you're a... for example... (God, I'm stuck for examples, every kind of low-paid council job I can think of is out-sourced to private companies!)... ok, let's say a road sweeper. A road sweeper in Newcastle is paid exactly the same as he would be to do the same job in London. Result: road sweepers in London can't afford a pint of beer (though they probably need it less than teachers ).

Which doesn't address the problem of pulling money and personal resources out of the poorest areas at all. I think we're discussing two different things here, David. Why is this an either/or situation suddenly? You could also just lower salaries across the board, or better yet, not do that.

Edited by Christian U, 21 March 2012 - 04:19 PM.