On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:54:44 -0000, Sausage King
wrote:

In article ,
says...
However, tonight the Trevor McDonald programme on ITV had a piece
about the dreadful lack of midwives in the UK and the effect this is
having on births all over the country. Apparently we are 10,000 (ten
thousand!) midwives short. The midwives that there are are having to
work long hours to cope with the pressure.

For which they get more money than other people in similar professions.

Obviously not enough to entice more into the profession.

So, if anything, both Labour and the Tories should be ploughing in
*more* taxpayers' money into the NHS, not less.

Why not just introduce better tax breaks for people wishing to take
private medical care...?

Private medical care is a misnomer. The correct term is: Let us balls
up the simplest operation because we know the NHS will bail us out as
the hozzie of last resort.

Another item on the
news today was the industrial action by job centre staff and others in
that category. A public servant's starting salary mentioned earlier in
the day was just over £9,000, so it's no wonder they're out on strike.
How can the fourth richest country (so called) allow this to continue?

Life has winners and losers. Sounds terribly harsh but should they
strike simply because they are low paid?

Because that is what striking is all about - to improve one's lot when
all other negotiations have failed. Would you make strikes illegal?
Maggie Thatcher tried very hard to do so and look where it got her! If
you don't want to make strikes illegal, then logically you must
support striking workers.

Whilst I believe in freedom

Good. That includes the freedom NOT to work, yes?

I
also believe that those people went into those low paid jobs on low pay.

Well, stap me if I don't roll about laughing, but could that be
because they were not being offered high-paid jobs at higher pay?

If they had all gone in at £30k then had their money cut to £9k I could
understand.

Big of you!

And then wonder why we can't get the staff and increasingly have to
rely on people from countries far worse than ours but who are willing
to work for a pittance.

This has always been the way since slavery...

....ah, slavery! Let's shed a tear.

Adam Crozier, Royal Mail boss on the other hand gets a basic (basic!)
salary of half a million quid! The top people in many other industries
receive similar huge sums of dosh. I'd say, a couple of hundred grand
should be enough for anybody.

Why though?

Can you spell g-r-e-e-d? Can you understand f-a-i-r p-l-a-y? Just what
added value does one man bring to the business by earning fifty, yes
FIFTY times the rate of the low-paid worker? Doesn't that strike you
as a massive imbalance which is completely unfair and foments digust
and loathing in the workforce, which inevitably will eventually go out
on strike to get the fair play it deserves? And who picks up the tab
for the income support which helps low-paid families to get by when
they are faced with the excessive rises in stealth taxes? That's
right, the people earning just a bit more. Certainly not upper
management. Do you think that people like Crozier would leave the
country if they had to pay just a little bit more tax on their vast
earnings? Do you think if they did that Britain would have no other
fairer-minded managers willing to occupy key posts for less?

Typical left view (not that I am saying that that is wrong
in itself if you can back it up).

So if it's not wrong, why the pejorative "typical"? Sounds like you're
on the right, but I won't hold that against you.

Adam's salary should be set at a
level which he would earn in the next best employment (opportunity cost)
for this is the way of the free market.

It's not a free market! It is rigged in favour of the big
corporations. What is free about Tesco, ADSA, and Sainsbury's to
decimate the High Streets of Britain, force nearly all food shopping
to be undertaken by car, lobby for Sunday opening and ruin the one day
off a week, and turn Britain into a 24/7 consumer society? Anyone in
their right mind would see that British society has become more hectic
and less caring over the past ten years, and that is because we work
the longest hours in Europe often for a pittance. The corporations,
aided and abetted by their Government lackeys, are to blame for the
sorry state in which we live.

Are you the communist who would cap earnings at a couple of hundred
grand?

I'm not anything except an ordinary member of the public who likes
some things from Labour, others from the Tories, but will vote Liberal
Democrat. If you had a referendum tomorrow, what do you think the
proportion would be of those supporting a reduction in high earnings
to benefit low-paid workers or employ more midwives?

So while managers everywhere are getting paid what I believe to be
excessive remunerations, plus perks, share options, and golden
goodbyes, we do not have enough staff to run a vital part of the NHS!

A third of my family are employed by the NHS and I can only agree.
However, nothing will be done on the back of strikes.

How else will any advance be achieved? You must think that employers,
the Government, big corporations will suddenly be assailed by an
attack of guilt! How do you negotiate an advance from £9,000 to, say,
£12,000 (a minmally reasonable wage) if the employer simply tells you
to eff off? Employers are cheating the better paid by relying on their
tax take to pay for income support, whereas if the employers could
only, just possibly, stop feathering their own nests quite so
luxuriously, there'd be more to pay the low-paid workers and less
income support required. So it comes down to greed, pure and simple,
on the part of corporations, mainly the larger ones. Family businesses
are somewhat different because the boss knows the workers personally
and he, the boss, has a local reputation to maintain. But once
coporations get so large that the management starts occupying the
ivory towers, any connection to the actual workforce, without which
the whole business would be screwed, is lost.

Neither Gordon's nor Olive's sums add up at all.

But do people care?

Well, I do. I am 58 and I'm still waiting for Britain to become
anything like a decent country, having lived for many years abroad.

If that many people were bothered about our friend Brown he would be out
tomorrow.

Apathy. Wait until the vast mountains of personal debt, encouraged by
the big four banks, come crashing down and you will see the public in
revolt that will make the poll tax seem like a vicar's tea party.
Ordinary people don't seem to realise that they are going to LOSE
THEIR HOUSES! In their thousands. But that's okay if one's been
"earning" £500 grand and managed to save a few bob.

MM