Pilgrims - Action at last

More than two years into a so called austerity programme, the Conservative-led coalition is finally getting around to looking at the scandal of 'pilgrims'.

These are union officials, almost always full-time, employed within and paid by the public sector.  However, they work full-time on union activities.  So the already over-burdened tax-payer has to then fund an additional worker to cover for the work that isn't being done by the 'pilgrim' and for which the 'pilgrim' is also being paid by the tax-payer.

Think about this for a moment.

These union leaders pay lip service to probity and the need for transparency and berate the business world for a perceived 'too-cosy relationship with the government' and 'having their hand in the public purse'.  All the while, they are having their officials paid for, not by their members but by the general taxpayer.

Consider this further, we, taxpayers are paying people to sit in offices that we provide so that they can scheme and plot ways to disrupt the services that we pay them, and their colleagues, to provide.

Read that again and see if there is any kind of rational sense in that.

So - the 'action'?

Francis Maude has launched a 'consultation exercise' to address the estimated £36 million cost of this.

Other estimates, by the Sunday Telegraph, put the amount in excess of £100 million when all forms of such 'pilgrims' activity were considered - that is, in all forms of the public sector, NHS, Education, local government, etc.

Frankly, what is to consult about.  If any consultation was needed it should be with the taxpayer.  Something along the lines of, should we continue to close libraries and hospitals and lay-off front-line public servants or should we take the money from that which we waste on 'pilgrims' and use it to pay for those services or (very radical) should we use this to start to reduce the burden of taxation on you the taxpayer!

I know what I want!

Mr Maude - don't consult, LEAD, less jaw-jaw and more action today.  Do you really think that the likes of the Marxist  Mark Serwotka, from the Civili Servants union is EVER going to be persuaded?  Do you?  Take the Nike approach - Just Do It!

Cash handout or more QE

Just recently, the Bank of England issued a further £50 billion of money in what is known as Quantitative Easing.  As far as I can ascertain this is the BofE simply printing money.  The BofE then used this money to buy debt issued by the Government.

As a means of stimulating the economy, I don't see it.  Much of the money that the government raises, in this way, then gets spent on the inefficient Public Sector part of the economy.

As an alternative, would it not be better if every taxpayer received a one-off payment of £1,500 to £2,000 through their pay packet?

I am sure that were such a step taken, then some would be used to pay down personal debt and some would be saved but I am confident that a sizable portion of any such payment would get into circulation in the general economy - in other words, people will spend it.

What do you think?

 

Private sector pay

We are just entering the period when financial institutions declare their 2011 corporate earnings and in many cases the 'bonus pool' that will be shared among their employees.

Following the bail-out of RBS, Lloyds and HBOS, the retail and investment banks now fall into two camps.  Part state-owned (see earlier) and those others institutions such as HSBC, Barclays JP Morgan, CitiCorp and Goldman Sachs, which received zero bail-out funding from the UK government  - we will call these latter type - private institutions.

We can expect lots of the usual froth from commentators about 'excessive' bank bonuses and how the 'government ought to do something about it'.

So what can the government do?

Well in the case of the part state-owned RBS, Lloyds and HBOS, they can use the shareholdings, that they hold on behalf of the UK people, to limit the amounts of payouts.  These could be limited to those that are required to meet contractual obligations - some people have bonuses built into their contracts of employment and if they meet certain targets, then legally, these must be paid - and they can then limit other payouts to zero or to certain pay grades etc., however, they and the other shareholders see fit.

In the case of the private institutions, it is really none of the business of government to interfere in how the shareholders (otherwise known as owners) spend the income of their company.

If the government wants to affect such private sector bonus payouts, it could do so through the tax system (as I have proposed, on an earlier blog) but it cannot and should not dictate to private companies on the remuneration that they give to any of their workers.

If the government wants to set the tone around pay restraint, then maybe they should concentrate on the areas which are within its span of control................

So, set a cap on the pay of anyone employed by a public organisation.  So local authority executives, civil servants, military chiefs, ministers, BBC executives, etc.  My suggestion would be around  £100,000 per year.  Many private sector companies have re-organisations and require personnel to re-apply for their role, so do the same with all of the above - get them to re-apply for their job but at a reduced rate of maximum £100,000.  Oh, and let's make the maximum include taxpayer contributions to pension funds.

That might start to sound a little more like 'we are all in this together' in action!

Ed Balls, Labour and the S word

Sorry really does seem to be the hardest word for Labour!

Ed Balls is now saying that Labour supports a pay freeze for Public Sector workers and won't seek to reverse expenditure cuts.

On Public Sector pay he said:

It is now inevitable that public sector pay restraint will have to continue through this parliament. Labour cannot duck that reality and won't. There is no way we should be arguing for higher pay when the choice is between higher pay and bringing unemployment down.
I know there will be some people in the trade union movement and the Labour party who will think of course Labour has got to oppose that pay restraint in 2014 and 2015. That is something we cannot do, should not do and will not do.

And on the expenditures cuts he said:

My starting point is, I am afraid, we are going to have keep all these cuts. There is a big squeeze happening on budgets across the piece. The squeeze on defence spending, for instance, is £15bn by 2015. We are going to have to start from that being the baseline. At this stage, we can make no commitments to reverse any of that, on spending or on tax. So I am being absolutely clear about that.

There was some additional waffle and some luke-warm support for the other Ed but nowhere does he say Labour was again wrong on the economic issues - nowhere.  I have scoured the leftist blogs (its okay I was wearing disposable gloves so I don't think anything rubbed-off) - but nowhere do I see the S word.

As I said earlier, Labour can apologise for the 1848 Irish potato famine, they can apologise for the UK's role in the slave trade but economic failure, failure to adequately regulate the banking sector  - nothing to say sorry for, according to their leftist vision. 

Ed Balls was at the very heart of the incompetency that was Labour's economic 'policy'.  Not on the periphery, he was an economics advisor to Gordon Brown (sorry for using such bad language) and  then he became a government minster, all the while, being one of Gordon's inner cabal. 

Labour supporters must be in a whirl - how can the cuts be wrong one minute (per the 2 Eds) and suddenly ok the next.  Same for the pay freeze.  Flip-Flopping in Westminster used to be confined to MPs and their second homes but now Ed Balls has brought this into a core area of Labour policy.

Can I expect them to support my campaign to get Grantham to properly recognize Margaret Thatcher?