Back from de Jungle

Having got out of the UK the night before the strikes, I'm delighted to read that it seems to have been largely a damp squib.  I pinch much of this from the excellent Not a Sheep blog, usually an anti-BBC rant but also a fine source of right-wing non-racist opinion. (http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/)

"It's not fair" the public sector workers proclaim. Well, they are right:

'It’s not fair that a private sector worker on an average income would have to pay 37 percent of their take home pay into a pension pot to receive the same pension as a teacher who pays just 6.4 percent.

It’s not fair that low paid private sector workers with no pensions pay the generous pension pots of public sector workers, despite having the same pressures on their incomes as everyone else.

It’s not fair that public sector pensions should be ring-fenced whilst private sector employees, who are actually paying down our deficit, have seen theirs disappear over the years.'

"But we didn't cause the finacial crisis, why should we be penalised?" Is another complaint:

'Nurses, teachers and civil servants may not have caused the financial crisis – but neither did hairdressers, butchers or secretaries. So why should one group take a financial hit and not the other? Far from the government creating a divide between the public and private sectors, the unions are responsible for that divide by insisting that their members deserve special consideration.'

Donna rachel Edmunds at the Commentator has more examples and some solutions, here's an extract:

'perhaps it’s time that the private sector illustrates that, without the wealth creating sector of the economy, the country would quickly grind to a halt.

Close all the supermarkets, turn off all the utilities and stop all the petrol pumps. Builders: stop building those starter homes that so many younger people wish to buy. Bankers: don’t fill the cash machines this morning. Bakers: why bake bread for a nation that demands you do so to pay the salaries that buy it?

Most importantly: pay no taxes. Too often over the last few years we have heard ever more shrill demands that the government pick up the bill for all sorts of preferential treatment for the public sector, with apparently no realisation that it is not the government footing the bill, but ordinary people on average wages. A tax strike by the private sector would soon illustrate how dependant the government is on the private sector.'

Actually, I did stop paying my taxes.  Like many thousands of 'cash-cows' I just fucked off somewhere else.  The argument that public sector workers pay taxes as well is, if you have the mental capability to think, utter bollocks.  As all they receive comes from the public purse ie taxes, then it follows what they pay back is only a proportion of what they take and contributes nothing to the greater good.

The truth is that public sector workers now earn, on average, 7.5% more than their equivalents in the private sector (ONS).

Here's a random thought.  If we adjusted the pay of public sector workers so that they received their (reduced) salary gross but were not liable for tax and NI, how many tax inspectors, HR professionals and wage clerks could we get rid of from the state payroll?