AF62 wrote:But I meant 'faceless' as in being one of hundreds of 'drones' working for a large corporation where you could merge into the scenery if you wanted to
I thought that was for call centre workers (no offense if anyone is one)
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AF62 wrote:But I meant 'faceless' as in being one of hundreds of 'drones' working for a large corporation where you could merge into the scenery if you wanted to
AF62 wrote:I was stood outside a regional development office that had a signboard outside advertising local jobs, and every job whether it was a shop assistant, receptionist, bar staff, waiters, cleaners, and even more responsible and skilled jobs such as fast food chefs, was being advertised at the minimum wage or only a few pence over it. The only higher paid jobs were sales jobs with commission such as sales staff in kitchen showrooms.
BT63 wrote:Mostly garden and a few home items. The sort of things you might find in large garden centres ...
Earlier he gave a more exact figure and said the first half of April sales are down 67% compared to previous years.
AF62 wrote:Dod101 wrote:A lot of people seem to have no concern about the cost of living at the moment or it would seem the future.
Dod101 wrote:AF62 wrote:Dod101 wrote:A lot of people seem to have no concern about the cost of living at the moment or it would seem the future.
Why would the cost of living increases concern a lot of people?
Sure the rises in prices of food and energy will be terrifying to a sizeable group of people on very low incomes or relying on state benefits, and will be concerning to a larger group of people on low to middling incomes, but to a vast number of people those increases will be annoying rather than life changing.
That is about the most pompous lot of words that I have read for a long while. To 'a vast number of people, those increases will be annoying'?' They will probably not be life changing for me but they will, if they come to pass, be more than annoying. I can afford the extra costs, but I would much rather not bear them, instead of which, I may cut back on giving money to people who really need it.
Doid
scrumpyjack wrote:Well look on the bright side -it is devaluing our eye watering national debt quite rapidly and fiscal drag will greatly help tax revenues.
stevensfo wrote:scrumpyjack wrote:Well look on the bright side -it is devaluing our eye watering national debt quite rapidly and fiscal drag will greatly help tax revenues.
Please don't say 'our eye watering debt'. Nowt to do with me. It may be someone's eye watering debt, certainly not mine.
My mum's village has cut everything to the point where they won't even clean the drains to stop half the bloody roads flooding after a rainstorm and wheelie bins are only removed when more than two inhabitants have died from dysentery and the contents of the bins evolve into a new life form.
But the council taxes ARE eye watering!
Goodness knows what they're spending the money on!
Sure there's a Doctor Who episode in there somewhere.
Steve
stevensfo wrote:But the council taxes ARE eye watering!
Goodness knows what they're spending the money on!
Steve
Nimrod103 wrote:.....
However, a more interesting answer is that 57% of council tax (on average) gets swallowed up in social care...
Nimrod103 wrote:However, a more interesting answer is that 57% of council tax (on average) gets swallowed up in social care:
Social care would seem to be the elephant in the room, and I am sure the Govt would be very keen to recieve suggestions of how that figure might be cut.
RockRabbit wrote:Nimrod103 wrote:However, a more interesting answer is that 57% of council tax (on average) gets swallowed up in social care:
Social care would seem to be the elephant in the room, and I am sure the Govt would be very keen to recieve suggestions of how that figure might be cut.
Well, Boris claimed that his Health & Social Care levy would solve the funding for this. It won't, but Boris is allowed to lie cause he's Boris.
The reality is that a chronic shortage of staff, inflation, the rise in the minimum wage and an ageing population mean that expenditure on social care is likely to increase in real terms over the coming years (and probably 12% plus in nominal terms over 2022 due to high inflation etc).
Solutions? Reduce the client/staff ratio (ie reduce quality of care), reduce demand (let the elderly rot/die at home), increase labour supply (only possible through immigration which isn't attractive (or in many cases possible) due to visa and Brexit red tape/restrictions. All this has an additional knock-on effect on the NHS which can't free up beds due to there being no social care places for many elderly patients.
77ss wrote:Nimrod103 wrote:.....
However, a more interesting answer is that 57% of council tax (on average) gets swallowed up in social care...
A bit misleading that perhaps - the figure given in your link excludes spending on police and fire services - which certainly form part of my council tax bill.
Nimrod103 wrote:stevensfo wrote:But the council taxes ARE eye watering!
Goodness knows what they're spending the money on!
The simple answer is that most council tax gets spent on other people's salaries. of which the salaries of council employees and their pensions must figure large.
However, a more interesting answer is that 57% of council tax (on average) gets swallowed up in social care:
(https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... WEoYtowL4I)
Social care would seem to be the elephant in the room, and I am sure the Govt would be very keen to receive suggestions of how that figure might be cut.
Nimrod103 wrote:wages and pension contributions make up by far the largest component of council tax. So the only way of keeping council tax down is to restrain wages below the inflation rate, and/or reduce the head count and range of services councils currently provide.
My personal take on numbers of people employed by the state is that it is far too high, with the exception of the armed forces, police and border force. Government (local and national) should be cutting back on its non-useful activities, so that workers can be reallocated to something more productive. But one of the biggest issues is care (for the elderly poor and children, even though child mistreatment cases seem to be far too common).
Dod101 wrote:RockRabbit wrote:Nimrod103 wrote:However, a more interesting answer is that 57% of council tax (on average) gets swallowed up in social care:
Social care would seem to be the elephant in the room, and I am sure the Govt would be very keen to recieve suggestions of how that figure might be cut.
Well, Boris claimed that his Health & Social Care levy would solve the funding for this. It won't, but Boris is allowed to lie cause he's Boris.
The reality is that a chronic shortage of staff, inflation, the rise in the minimum wage and an ageing population mean that expenditure on social care is likely to increase in real terms over the coming years (and probably 12% plus in nominal terms over 2022 due to high inflation etc).
Solutions? Reduce the client/staff ratio (ie reduce quality of care), reduce demand (let the elderly rot/die at home), increase labour supply (only possible through immigration which isn't attractive (or in many cases possible) due to visa and Brexit red tape/restrictions. All this has an additional knock-on effect on the NHS which can't free up beds due to there being no social care places for many elderly patients.
Could also of course encourage more to plan ahead to cover at least some of the costs in looking after family members. Automatically looking to the State/Councils to do everything is simply nonsensical if we are not prepared to pay the taxes. I am sure that many could more efficiently provide the care themselves. Subcontracting to the Council the bits of life we don't like is unsustainable long term, as we are discovering.
Dod
tjh290633 wrote:Interesting to note that the Average Total Pay Index (K54U) has fallen by -1.77% between March and April, from 196.2 to 192.7. See earn01jun2022.xls, downloadable from the ONS web site at https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlab ... ingsearn01 - and note that there are some changes to earlier months if you look at previous versions.
April is, of course, the yardstick for the Triple Lock, and this reduced the annual increase from 8.32% in March to 5.54%. Is this a coincidence?
TJH
Dod101 wrote:The month for measuring the rise is actually September and the indexed part of the measure is the CPI for that month. September 2022 is likely to see a CPI of at least 10%, and thus it is likely that State Pensions will rise by at least this amount in April 2023.
Depends of course on what happens to wages in the meantime, but the assumption seems to be that the CPI will be the highest of the three measures used.
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