(not satire – it’s the UK today!)
The government has just announced an average increase of 0%-1% in pay for doctors, nurses and other public sector workers:
Pay decisions announced for NHS staff and other public sector workers
This comes after bankers got an average of 35% (not even including their bonuses) and MPs gave themselves an 11% pay rise:
Interestingly, the police got nothing at all.
Punishment for plebgate perhaps?
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Please feel free to comment.
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Pride's Purge 
Reblogged this on My Blog.
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The rich continue to get rich and the poor – poorer.
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No wonder so many people despise politicians,they certainly look after themselves, & whoever needs nurses or fire & rescue assistance anyway,appalling self centredness from our MPs!
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The people in charge of making these decisions make the decisions in favour of themselves and of their paymasters.
Interesting when you compare the increase in pay + bonuses for banks whose performance is disastrously bad and likely to result in another financial crash with that given to people in the NHS, who are facing increasing demand, enforced higher productivity, and ever worsening conditions.
It all depends on who you’re working for, doesn’t it?
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Reblogged this on Political Pip Spit or Swallow its up to You.
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Reblogged this on Vox Political and commented:
Is any comment necessary?
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Tom Pride pay rise 100.00% or perhaps the decimal point should be before the 1. However, its certainly true that the already highly paid are getting larger rises than people with average or below average salaries. In a globalized economy it seem difficult to control top salaries but something does need to be done.
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Reblogged this on redcarrol.
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Reblogged this on glynismillward189.
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I work in the public sector and have done for nearly 30 years. I will get an extra (wait for it….drum roll please) an extra £2.39 a week (after tax and NI) I’ll try not to let it change my life and will console myself with the fact that my below inflation pay rise of 1% is funding the MP’s 11% pay rise, despite the fact that they too are public sector workers!
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Reblogged this on Gangstalked and slandered.
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Shared on this page too 🙂
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Reblogged this on UNEMPLOYED IN TYNE & WEAR.
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Hi, a friend of mine linked to this blog on facebook; I feel I should point out that the comparison isn’t like-for-like – the 35% increase for bankers is the increase in 2012 of average remuneration for bankers earning more than 1m euro – 2,712 people out of 2,000,000 or so. It also includes things like commissions on sales etc, not just salary. Just saying “bankers” feeds into the myth that bank employees generally get these kind of pay increases. If you looked at the annual pay increase of all bank employees in the UK as a whole, I think it’d be much more like the average for the private sector.
I see the larger point you’re trying to make, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and I agree that that is both happening and unjust. But better to make your point with accurate stats that don’t mislead people.
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog.
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I read that in real terms the average NHS worker has had a pay-cut of 10% since 2010. This can’t go on for much longer.
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Yes, I’d heard that too. It’s funny how food, gas, electricity, council tax and transport costs don’t just increase by 1% isn’t it
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Reblogged this on Jay's Journal.
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SetentaeBolg – “It also includes things like commissions on sales etc, not just salary.”
Poor wee bankers. Shall we have a whip round?
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And a footballer getting over a million a month……
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Reblogged this on Ned Hamson Second Line View of the News.
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One would imagine that with inflation the way it has been, there is one KEY stat missed off the bottom of this list: the self employed. Increasing rates is often seen by clients as, erm, increasing rates. Not balancing out the cost of living. Ergo, inflation often relates to a pay cut to many self employed folk. Oh that and a lack of pensions, sick pay, maternity leave… but you don’t often hear self employed folk moaning. Just getting on with the business of business.
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Oh, and paid for holiday too. What I wouldn’t give to sit on a beach somewhere AND get paid for it. Bliss.
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For me, this clearly comes back to the question of income inequality, which is in my mind (and factually) one of the greatest drivers of societal wellbeing. The facts are in on this one.
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The only time we will be offered income equality is when robots are running both the economy and industry.
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I totally agree that the Police etc not getting anything is disgusting, however unfortunately not uncommon in the current economic climate, but I would be very interested to see where you got the figures for Bankers as I believe that this is very much a case of Banker Bashing again! i work with a lot of bankers and they certainly are not getting a 35% pay increase!!
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I think most people are well aware that the average person working in a bank behind the counter or in a call centre or a back-office is not getting these increases – we know that they are treated like cattle, just like the serfs in every business, and have very little say or influence in any decisions the banks make. We understand that “bankers” refers to the people who are already obscenely overpaid and whose unabashed greed has brought the western world to its knees, and that these are the self-same people who are among the few whose wealth is increasing in real-terms and are right at the top of the list.
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When you say “bankers” in the table above, you’re talking about the best 0.1% paid bankers in the country. It’s like taking the FTSE 100 Directors and then saying that they’re representative of the private sector as a whole – terribly inaccurate and misleading. I agree that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and that this is unfair. But that point doesn’t need to be made with misleading statistics.
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Tom, I’m afraid your snarky reply seems to have missed the point I was making. No, we shouldn’t have a whip round for the top 0.1% paid bankers in the country. Yes, they are both paid too much and have had too much of an increase in remuneration. Neither of those two things that we both agree on counter the fact that I disagree with you using stats that aren’t comparing like-for-like to make a point that can be very reasonably and persuasively made with actually accurate numbers.
The problem with using dodgy numbers because they happen to be convenient to your argument is that they undermine your argument and make it easily dismissed by those who you might otherwise reach.
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Tom, intresting reading,
are your statistics this year or over a longer period, a source would be great.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24983178
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-25287108
http://news.sky.com/story/1175417/bankers-pay-top-earners-net-35-percent-rise
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-26556047
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0% is for policexand crime commissioners and not the proper police.
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Good point well made!
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Where did you get that nurses are getting one percent? I am a nurse and I am getting zero percent like most other nurses.
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As a banker, or more accurately a person who happens to work in a bank it is disappointing to see the same unqualified drivel from commentators who just look to sensationalise the pay story without either the intelligence, integrity, or intention to represent the 99% of workers who don’t drive Ferrari’s, earn average UK salaries, and have been on pay freezes since 2008.
A whip round Tom…..best get someone round to help you with the counting!
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Where did you get these figures from? Not my experience of the banking sector – maybe the top guys, and the fund managers, but not the front line staff who are on as little as £14k per year, with little if no bonuses, and make up the majority of the workforce. Why don’t you bring attention to the GP’s who are getting paid fortunes (granted by the Labour government btw) and who deliver less and less of a service? Three weeks to get an appointment because you tell them it isn’t an emergency. Not good enough NHS – deliver the service and the pay will follow.
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It’s a complex issue. Simply making pay rises more even will not help anyone in the long run. The real issue is our dependence on money to make life work. It might seem the simple solution is to ‘tax the rich’, but the money they have isn’t real anyway: it depends on them controlling resources like housing and food to force people into productivity, into using up more of the earth’s diminishing resources and converting them into currency. The world runs on a massive IOU, which is now impossible to ever pay back, but costs us our ecology and our spiritual wellbeing.
I would hope there are many public sector workers who actually love their job. There are nurses who gain a lot from taking care of people, but facing constant financial pressure and worries both diminishes and interferes with their ability to do their job as they know best and so caring, just like all other important professions that make our world function, become costly and inefficient, putting more pressure on our planet.
Imagine if shelter and food and fuel were a given and people did not feel they were forced into doing things they don’t want to (and therefore do not give their all) in order just to stay alive? Think of the quality of care that would be given by a nurse who could do the job they loved and did not have to worry about some pretty basic human needs. Maybe some people wouldn’t work in such jobs if they didn’t feel they had to, but this would ultimately be a good thing, because the quality of energy, their levels of resentment and unhappiness actually holds progress back and make life more expensive.
Our economy is based on consumption, so it actually depends on making people unhappy so that they will consume rubbish they don’t need to try and make themselves feel better about their lack of autonomy and feelings of insignificance. Happy people would consume less and that would ruin capitalism.
Although valid, these statistics a propaganda for unhappiness and therefore actually help keep capitalism in place. If we can put more attention into making ourselves and those we care about happy (in spite of our worries and our anger about the unfairness of capitalism) we would go a long way withdrawing support for the system that creates the unfairness and keeps it in place.
The most effective form of happiness is choosing not to be angry when tempted. I don’t mean fake it when you don’t genuinely feel it, but try to remember how happiness joins us together, whereas anger separates us. Once you start to see how happiness empowers you, why wouldn’t you choose something that makes you stronger and benevolent instead of giving into the temptation to be weak but righteous?
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Police officers pay rises are completed seperately to the other public sector workers, as are the MPs, who farmed theirs out to an ‘Independent body’. Why don’t they give the same ‘Independent body’ the decision on everyone else. I’m sure they wouldn’t let them give the nurses, police, teachers etc 11%.- funny that.
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Well, the bankers and directors are private companies, so I guess they can do what the want, and MPs didn’t give themselves a pay rise, they have no powers to do that. It was the parliamentary watchdog, IPSA, that recommended that. The MPs themselves roundly condemned it as wholly inappropriate and a disgrace, but again they have to accept IPSAs findings.
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You missed off the cuts to those dependant on welfare.
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I’m curious where hospital managers (Chief Executives etc) would come in the list, if they were included ? I’m sure it would be up there near the top of the list. No wonder there’s nothing left to pay the nurses. Meanwhile many hospitals suffer under bad management, who then accept a payoff and move the new pastures.
As for the ‘plebgate’ remark, I’m intrigued by all the publicity this one word has generated. Apparently the ‘honourable gentleman’ has admitted swearing at & insulting the officers. But so much attention has been focussed on this, that now we learn he didn’t use the ‘p’ word that apparently means he’s perfectly innocent.
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you are obviously just a bitter person who uses inaccurate information for the purpose of spreading your own agenda. what are you advocating? mp’s pay award was set by an indepndent body. it’s certainly not the case that all “bankers” receive that level of pay increase. and putting public sector workers pay up would increase taxes for everyone. that might be a valid option which plenty of people would support, but the inaccurate and rabble rousing method of communication you choose doesn’t help the level of debate.
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how exactly would you fund an 11% pay increase for public sector workers? please explain. i’m sure everyone would support higher salaries for nurses, for example, but they have to be funded somehow.
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Well said Martin. Who cares if he called the officers ‘plebs’ or not? That’s not a criminal offence – just rude. He admits to ‘f’ing and blinding, which is a criminal offence in a public place, but apparently that’s okay. Just another excuse to attack our police without whom, whether you like it or not, our society would rapidly fall apart (even more than it already is).
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This is such an interesting response. I have been aware for quite a long time of the positive affirmation movement which is mushrooming in America. I have been hugely helped by this but I think in the end even if you are happy, concentrate on making those around you happy that there comes a point when you need to be paying attention to what happens in the world and that you then need to make a difference. You are right to say that the anger divides us so maybe the answer is to make the change from the place of love and not anger, violence and the normal protests.
A good place to start is at David Icke’s Headlines. You won’t think you are on the same planet. But keep up the Oneness, the love and compassion.
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I have been a nurse for 35 years and we have always been at the bottom of the pile when it comes to pay. Is it any wonder the NHS is nose diving into oblivion with not enough nurses joining the service and those who do quickly leaving to work elsewhere! It is and always has been a disgrace.
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MPs didn’t get to vote on pay rises and they are only proposals at the moment. they won’t come in until 2015 anyway. It annoys me that they get paid a lot but it’s not something they get to decide anymore!
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I’m confused, http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/mps-pay-and-expenses, MP’s pay 2010 65,738. http://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/pay-mps/ 2014 67,060, that’s a 2% increase, where does your 11%come from?
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The 11% pay increase for MPs is set to come in in 2015:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-25287108
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