Politics

[Happy Face 29]

I wouldn't expect them to be held on a political parties website tbf. Blair wanted to move on from Kinnock/Smith and the tories want to move away from being homophobic racists.

 

Would have thought they would/should be available elsewhere though. Newspaper or University sites. Summat like that.

[Park Life 71]

Soon you will be scared to look.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

There was only a couple of times under Labour when growth was less than 2%.

 

 

Are you sure?

[ewerk 30611]

It was consistently above 2% pre-world financial crisis.

[Happy Face 29]

 

Are you sure?

Feel free to show me otherwise. But the question will still stand.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Feel free to show me otherwise. But the question will still stand.

[ewerk 30611]

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Fuck. What have I done

[ewerk 30611]

You've put up a graph showing quarter on quarter whereas the previously quoted predictions were for year on year.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Ah fair enough

 

Any how's

 

UK services growth at 16-year high!

 

 

Activity in the UK services sector last month increased at its fastest rate since May 1997, a closely watched survey suggests.

 

The Markit/CIPS PMI services index rose to 62.5 in October from 60.3 in September, beating forecasts of 59.8.

 

Readings higher than 50 indicate growth.

 

Markit said the services sector, which accounts for around three quarters of the economy, was the "major driving force" behind the UK's economic upturn.

 

Employers were hiring people at the fastest rate since 1997, the survey found.

 

 

 

So basically once again the Tories have sorted the economy out and got us back to a similar path to when Labour inherited the last Tory golden spell.

 

Basically Labour need to learn lessons and buy into a private sector lead economy rather than "buying votes" by using public money to buy public sector and benefit votes.

 

The Labour fanboys will never budge, but to see a government putting private sector first, whilst taking millions of poor out of paying tax, linking pensions to RPI, spending more on the NHS than Labour promised and legislating for gay marriage is a welcome sight.

 

5 more years.

[Kid Dynamite 7029]

They are only spending more on the NHS to set it up to turn private ffs. They are destroying it piece by piece

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3894]

Ah fair enough

 

Any how's

 

UK services growth at 16-year high!

 

 

Activity in the UK services sector last month increased at its fastest rate since May 1997, a closely watched survey suggests.

 

The Markit/CIPS PMI services index rose to 62.5 in October from 60.3 in September, beating forecasts of 59.8.

 

Readings higher than 50 indicate growth.

 

Markit said the services sector, which accounts for around three quarters of the economy, was the "major driving force" behind the UK's economic upturn.

 

Employers were hiring people at the fastest rate since 1997, the survey found.

 

 

 

So basically once again the Tories have sorted the economy out and got us back to a similar path to when Labour inherited the last Tory golden spell.

 

Basically Labour need to learn lessons and buy into a private sector lead economy rather than "buying votes" by using public money to buy public sector and benefit votes.

 

The Labour fanboys will never budge, but to see a government putting private sector first, whilst taking millions of poor out of paying tax, linking pensions to RPI, spending more on the NHS than Labour promised and legislating for gay marriage is a welcome sight.

 

5 more years.

What do you think of the increased use of foodbanks?

[Meenzer 15527]

The only reason more people are using food banks is because there are more food banks.

 

(I've genuinely heard that used as an argument as to why the food bank statistics are misleading.)

[Renton 21626]

Ah fair enough

 

Any how's

 

UK services growth at 16-year high!

 

 

Activity in the UK services sector last month increased at its fastest rate since May 1997, a closely watched survey suggests.

 

The Markit/CIPS PMI services index rose to 62.5 in October from 60.3 in September, beating forecasts of 59.8.

 

Readings higher than 50 indicate growth.

 

Markit said the services sector, which accounts for around three quarters of the economy, was the "major driving force" behind the UK's economic upturn.

 

Employers were hiring people at the fastest rate since 1997, the survey found.

 

 

 

So basically once again the Tories have sorted the economy out and got us back to a similar path to when Labour inherited the last Tory golden spell.

 

Basically Labour need to learn lessons and buy into a private sector lead economy rather than "buying votes" by using public money to buy public sector and benefit votes.

 

The Labour fanboys will never budge, but to see a government putting private sector first, whilst taking millions of poor out of paying tax, linking pensions to RPI, spending more on the NHS than Labour promised and legislating for gay marriage is a welcome sight.

 

5 more years.

You've just proven in your last post, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you're an idiot.

 

People are generally worse off than ever with no end of declining living standards in sight. This is what matters. In any case, economic 'recovery' at some stage was inevitable considering the low base were coming from after the worst recession in living memory. Again, I think you're the only one who doesn't get this (managed decline etc).

 

As for fan boys, there's only one on this board re: politics (and football). I'm under no illusions that the present Labour party are out of touch, career politicians with nothing new to add or differentiate themselves from the appalling shit houses currently in power. Miliband is virtually unelectable. Yet I still expect a hung parliament at least, which says a lot about Cameron.

[Gemmill 44881]

CT man you are such a thick prick. And never mind the attempted "look over here!" misdirection. What a stupid, stupid human.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

What do you think of the increased use of foodbanks?

Great. The Tories decided to advertise them through job centres. Labour refused to do this because of the bad PR a rise in use would bring.

 

Hypocrites.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

CT man you are such a thick prick. And never mind the attempted "look over here!" misdirection. What a stupid, stupid human.

Yet you never offer any coherent argument?

 

Stick to robots.

[Gemmill 44881]

Is that what you think you've done?

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Is that what you think you've done?

Offer one up.

[Gemmill 44881]

I'll take that as a no. It's not my job to offer up arguments on demand, and despite what you might think, you're not proving any points by demanding one.

[desmondTUTU 0]

Super Tory boy in the house

[Tooj 17]

Wasn't sure where best to put this so I thought that it might engage some discussion in here.

 

Well worth a read:

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/our-work-culture-is-killing-us

 

Once upon a time, work was something you did in order to fund the rest of your life. It was the pain in the arse that you had to endure for eight hours a day, five days a week and all but two weeks a year in order to pay for your drinks, your drugs, your dad's Christmas present, your dinner and your dignified funeral service. Work was work, leisure was leisure, life was life. From what I can remember from a few episodes of Cold Feet, we were all moderately satisfied with this arrangement.

However, nowadays the lines seem to be blurring. The recession has stolen our contractual hour-long lunch breaks, Facebook photos and drunk tweets have exposed our "emergency dentist's visits" as the hangovers they really are and smartphones have turned every holiday into a working one. Work is staging a coup of our private lives.

You’ve only got to look through any national newspaper’s “work” section to find a slew of horror-stats that’ll send you to the Goa trail before you even get an interview. Five million people are being paid less than the living wage, workplace depression is on the rise, and the man partly responsible for abetting the culture that led to the financial collapse – Sir Hector Sants – has had to quit his job for reasons pertaining to stress. Which is surely proof that not even the bastards have it easy any more.

For me, though, the most telling stat emerged a few months back, when a survey suggested that 72 percent of British workers clock up ten extra, unpaid hours of labour every week. Did I believe the results of this study? No, it was carried out by Travelodge. But then I saw another study, one conducted by the slightly more reputable Trades Union Congress, which suggests that the average British worker – bear that in mind when you read this, the average British worker – does seven hours and 18 minutes of extra, unpaid work every week. It’s a terrifying statistic, one that suggests we've all come to accept a secret code of conduct dictating the way we must work today: for longer than we're meant to, for less pay, with fewer perks and a partisan regard for the company mantra.

Those seven hours and 18 minutes are one thing if you’re an entrepreneur, a human rights lawyer, or a freelance street style photographer. You sign up for one of those gigs, you know you're not going to be striding off home or to the pub at 5.01PM every day. But seeing as most people in post-Thatcher Britain work in the service industry or office admin jobs, what the fuck are they all doing? Shelf-stacking in their own kitchens? Hot-desking the pub? Invoicing their children for services rendered?

Something’s not right here. All around me I see people turning into knot-shouldered flesh cases, their bursting veins wired with so much caffeine that every social interaction is like trying to converse with a PTSD sufferer at a firework display. You'd think that booze might be able to offer some kind of a release, but now even that age-old escape route from the slog could be under threat from a workplace alcohol-testing scheme. The targets of this don't seem merely to be the daytime drunks – who, let's face it, are easy enough to spot – but also the people who dared to have a few drinks the night before. The proposed initiative – which has come from the States – is at least a social equaliser in that it's bound to strike fear into the overstretched hearts of every type of British worker, from your humble parole scheme scaffolder, to your media solutions manager, to the Head of Inequality at JP Morgan.

Of course they're selling it as an attempt to look after their employees. But after driving them to seven hours and 18 minutes of extra, unpaid work each week, does that seem a likely motive? No, clearly it's because hungover people are crapper at their jobs than Mormons. But who cares? Maybe if you’re a crane operator or an easyJet Redeye pilot it's fair enough, but if you can’t have a drink at the end of the day to null the pain of your office job, then what else is there? It’s convenient puritanism for maximising profit.

I'm aware that's not exactly a Marxist reading of the situation, and there are optimists out there who'll say you shouldn't need to drink yourself into oblivion every night to forget about the painful drudgery of your daily existence. But I'm trying to be a realist here, and this is solid proof that employers are looking for dominion over your personal life as well as your professional one.

For me, the primary problem presented by all this seems to be the creeping corporate intrusion into our private lives and the lack of respect they show for them. I’ve heard all sorts of personal anecdotes about call centres timing your piss breaks and people’s wages being frozen when they’ve been seriously ill that reveal a shocking inhumanity at the heart of this culture.

The reasons for this humanitarian decline in the British workplace aren't entirely clear. But for my money, it's probably something to do with the moment that computers became cheaper than humans, and thus employers stopped treating their staff as IRL people and more like oxygen-run gadgets built to advance their own megalomaniac tendencies. It was always like this in the media, where jobs were scarce and workers were willing to push themselves to the limit so they could attain some kind of eventual glamour – a pay-off for the erosion of their real lives. But now that people are being forced to dance to "Get Lucky" for a job at Curry’s, and 4,000 people will queue outside a new shopping centre in Hampshire in the hope of landing a job there, suddenly it's OK to treat everyone like shit, because hey, if you don’t want to do it then somebody else will for a much lower wage.

Perhaps this is Thatcher's most dreadful legacy; the way that workers as well as workplaces have been forced into competition. While the bosses might still talk about "teamwork" at office paintballing weekenders, many people are basically encouraged to shaft each other at every available opportunity. The modern British workplace is The Office reimagined by Niccolo Machiavelli.

Not that we seem particularly willing to engage in that kind of knife-fight. It's clear that my generation is hurtling towards a mass burnout – a generational star death, if you will. Once upon a time it was thought that only the most stressed, the least mentally durable, the most booze and drug prone were the people who quit their jobs to manage organic goose farms in rural Sussex. Now that seems to be the dream for almost everybody I know. Maybe my friends are too caught up with ego and hedonism to really commit to such a dream, but I think that a massive proportion of young workers are so disillusioned either by their prospects or the working environment that nobody even wants to be the boss any more. “Let’s just get paid for a bit, and then play it by ear” seems to be everyone’s motto these days. Ironically, in such a fiercely capitalist society, ambition seems in massive decline.

Not only does this make us profoundly unhappy, stressed people, it also sends us slightly insane. We spend our weekends fighting each other in pubs in shopping precincts, fuelled on bad, cheap drugs and lagers that have more chemicals in them than the Pacific. Take a look at most British workers' extra-curricular activities, and you get the sense that people aren't just trying to relax at the end of a week, they're trying to release. We used to take the piss out of the office guy going nuts in a bar in his sweat-drenched suit because he'd worked three times as many hours as he'd slept that week. Now, come Friday, we're all that guy, intent on recreating Falling Down with Smirnoff Ices instead of Uzis.

People need to reclaim their real lives and remind their employers that they're only paid for the hours they do. They need to let them know that, as keen as a newer employee might be, they won't be as good as someone who already knows the ropes. You don't have to ask for the world, just for some basic decency to be applied to your mid-term contract assessment.

More than anything, we need to stop defining ourselves through our work. Your friends and family aren’t going to be talking about that great presentation you pulled out of the bag when you’re wired up to a ventilator at St Thomas’s. Because there are no LinkedIn connections in the afterlife. I’m not saying you have to storm your Managing Director’s office and send him to a Siberian work camp, but just remember that work is work, and life is life. And if they fire you, just sue them into the ground for unfair dismissal.

[BigWalrus 0]

Interesting, although I would seriously question the figures from the TUC. No chance at all that they would overstate that one, is there?...

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3894]

I like how CT actually thinks he is winning the argument. I can imagine him all smug and cheerful in the taxi rank praying for a girl who has no cash and wants to pay for her lift in kind.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Classy