Thoughts on Morality

The NHS - a marvel of the modern world

2017-05-10T11:39:00.001+01:00

I had a frustrating NHS experience recently. I am moving and starting a new job at the end of May and don't hear very well in one ear, so around the middle of March I thought I'd ask about getting a hearing aid (I've previously been offered an operation to correct it but (a) it's just one ear, it doesn't make enough of a difference to warrant taking 6 weeks off work and (b) they've already done this particular op twice and it hasn't worked twice).

I got an appointment with my GP towards the end of March and he agreed to refer me to a consultant. I get a call from an NHS place to book a time to see the consultant. Great - it's a month away, but that's not so bad, I guess - I can justify taking a morning off work to deal with it.

Next week I get another call from the same place - can I book a hearing test? They can't do the same day I'm seeing the consultant, so I'm looking at two mornings off work now - great! Still, it's not so bad, and at least if that gets it done it'll be worth it.

I go in for the hearing test. Next week I go back for the consultant visit. "So, you're hear to get your ear cleaned then?"
"No - I want to get a hearing aid." I explain the situation.
"Oh, ok. We can probably do that - let me just get you booked in for a hearing test and we can see you again to talk about it."
"I've already had the hearing test - here. Last week."
He checks his notes. "Oh yes, so you have. Well I don't see any reason why you can't have a hearing aid - we'll give it a try and see if that helps."
"Great - where do I pick it up?"
"Oh no - I can't give you it here, you need to go to the hospital and talk to someone there. I'll refer you, you should hear from them in a few weeks."
"But I'm moving house and starting a new job in 3 weeks - can you refer me to a hospital near Leeds?"
"No, but if you want to speak to your GP there, they can get the ball rolling for you."
I've already been trying to get this down for a month and a half at this point - I can always come back for a hospital visit. "No, that's ok thanks. I'll proceed down here."
"Seeing as you're hear, I can give that ear a clean anyway."

So I'm now nearly two months from when I spoke to my GP and I've had a hearing test (which showed the same as the last one I had) and have had my ear vacuumed out (which made no difference to my hearing), at the cost of two mornings off work. I'm still waiting to hear from a hospital which won't be any where near where I live by then, and I'm starting to lose the will to live.

If you had to have anything urgent done, I hate to think about how it would be dealt with.

Don't get me wrong - when my mum had an aneurysm, the NHS were not bad. They did keep postponing the operation to fix things, and it was hard to get anyone to actually tell us what was happening, but they did it and kept her alive, so that's a great outcome. There's a lot that could be better though.

Taking kids out of school in term time

2017-04-06T10:51:00.000+01:00

Doesn't affect me, but I saw this

And when the case was heard at the Supreme Court earlier this year, the local authority argued that an unauthorised absence "for even a single day, or even half a day" could be unlawful.

Back when I was in school, there was a lot of truancy. If they've cracked down on this then fine, but if we have kids bunking off once a week and no prosecutions, and then we have kids with 90+% whose parents are prosecuted for a week out then we're doing it wrong.

Who pays?

2017-03-24T11:57:00.001+00:00

Saw this article about maternity pay on the BBC

Statutory maternity pay for UK mothers is among the worst in Europe, according to an analysis by the TUC.

Well the fact that the TUC is behind it is a bad sign to start with.

The trade union body says only Ireland and Slovakia have worse "decently paid" entitlements.
It defines decently paid as two-thirds of a woman's salary or more than £840 a month.

This is a little unclear - the £840 a month figure is apparently 2/3 of the UK average. They don't compare with absolutes anywhere in the source or the TUC's analysis so the mention is a little misleading - not least because no other country is being measured against £840 a month.

Croatia comes top, with six months

Would you rather have 6 months of 2/3 the average Croatian pay, or the current UK system?

Average pay in Croatia is around 750 euros per month, meaning 6 months at 2/3 would be around 3,000 Euros. In the UK you get 90% of your average pay for 6 weeks then around £140 per week for the next 33 weeks. So it would be approx (6 x 25000 / 52) + (33 x 140) = ~ £7,500

Although, the UK system pays out over 9 months - if we pro-rate we get 3,000 Euros vs £5,000 for 6 months. I know which I'd prefer.

Don't get me wrong - I get that this is an issue, but we need to consider the costs of increasing maternity pay. Do we really need more kids being born? If so, encourage it. If not, don't. As far as I know, no-one has done any analysis of whether we want to increase or decrease the birth rate, and without that it's hard to know which way we should incentivise behaviour.

Trump's new healthcare bill

2017-03-24T10:05:00.000+00:00

I don't have much of an opinion on Trump either way - I figure we wait and see how he does, it's a bit early to judge so far. That said, I saw this story on the BBC and the graph at the bottom is very misleading:

The scale on the left jumps from 0 to 10 so a quick glance will appear as if the fall under the ACA was significantly greater than it was. Looking at the numbers, it seems to have fallen from a high of 18% to 10% (a drop of 44%) but looking at the positions on the graph it appears more like a drop of 80%.

The prediction under the new republican plan appears to be heading back to where it was before the ACA, but I do note the little uptick they've added at the end (suggesting it will be worse?).

Anyway, let's have a look at what they're doing (and I've cross checked with PolitiFact - no idea if they're any good, but they come across as relatively unbiased)

Key elements of the new bill:
Cuts the Medicaid programme for low earners

This is one of the key things in America, from what I can gather. The Democrats want more support for the poor and the Republicans want less (or at least don't want to have to pay for it). There are a couple of parts of the new act that this could refer to, but probably the biggest one is that the the rollback of the provision under ACA that allowed states to expand their Medicaid provision to those earning up to 138% of the official poverty level (with the federal government paying 90% of the cost), whereas previously it had been limited to 100%. This option has only been taken up by 31 states, so it seems like another one of those odd cases where you get different levels of federal support depending on which state you live in.

Provides tax credits to help people pay medical bills, but reduced compared to Obamacare

Still higher than before the ACA, from the sounds of it, but I can see why some people are unhappy about it being lower.

Ends penalties on those who do not buy health coverage

Definitely a good move - I'm against forcing anyone to buy anything - although there is a risk that young healthy people won't buy healthcare and that will mean the insurance companies can't afford to provide cover for the less healthy.

Allows insurers to raise premiums for older people

This looks fairly big. I do think it's misleading for the BBC not to mention that this is already the case under the ACA, but the limit is going from 3x to 5x the premiums expected from a younger person. In addition, the new act will reduce the subsidies available (for everyone, but this has a bigger impact on the older people).

Blocks federal payments to women's healthcare provider Planned Parenthood for a year

That's a policy thing. The Republicans don't agree with abortion, so they're banning payments to a group that carry them out.

Looks to me like people will still be better off than they were before the ACA. To be entirely honest, the healthcare system in America is a bit worrying - they should look to somewhere like Singapore for a good example of how it can be done.

Real Tax Rates 2017/18

2017-03-16T14:37:00.000+00:00

Six and a half years ago, I posted a summary of how much tax is actually paid at the various earnings levels. I thought it might be time to update it.

Summary:

Earnings	Marginal rate 2017/18	inc Employer's NI
up to £8,060	0%	0%
£8,061-£8,112	12.00%	12.00%
£8,113-£11,000	12.00%	22.67%
£11,001-£43,000	32.00%	40.25%
£43,001-£43,004	52.00%	57.82%
£43,005-£100,000	42.00%	49.03%
£100,001-£122,000	62.00%	66.61%
£122,001-£150,000	42.00%	49.03%
£150,001+	47%	53.43%

There's a big bump between £100k and £122k as the personal allowance is withdrawn, and the slightly different banding between NI and Income Tax makes for a few oddities. Overall the levels are higher than you might think.

Note: This was calculated using the weekly NI limits, and it is worth noting that if your income is not spread evenly over all of the weeks of the year, you may wind up paying additional NI. Also those with low incomes may face severe benefit withdrawal rates taking their effective tax rate up a lot higher than indicated here.

Quick thought

2016-09-06T15:59:00.001+01:00

Saw this on the BBC and had a thought.

The plans include a Child Poverty Bill, which Ms Sturgeon said was arguably the government's most important legislation.
The bill would establish Scotland as the only part of the UK with statutory income targets on child poverty, and see a "baby box" given to every newborn.

As we know, the concept of poverty in the UK in a historical fashion is basically meaningless. Even the poorest have food to eat and a roof over their heads, and I seem to recall reading that just being on the dole puts you in the top 2% globally as far as incomes go. Hence, no real poverty. What we do have is some level of inequality. Personally, I think this is less of an issue than poverty, but some seem to disagree.

So, if all of the recent talk of child poverty is actually measuring inequality then there's a good chance that Scotland becoming independent would at a stroke reduce child poverty more than any amount of government spending. We know that London is economically over indexed within the UK - everything costs more there and wages are higher to compensate. As a result, comparing two people (one in London, one not) with the same spending power after rent, bills, etc could still look as if their was a big discrepancy (as the Londoner will have higher salary, higher rent, higher bills). Thus there will always be a problem with relative poverty as long as we measure total income and not disposable income.

Hence, remove London from the equation and things look better for everyone. Removing the rest of the UK as well may be a slightly extreme way to do it, but I'm sure it would have a big impact on the child poverty measure being used, hence the child poverty bill could reasonably call for a new referendum.

Maybe we should have another referendum

2016-09-02T11:14:00.003+01:00

Saw this on the BBC

Nicola Sturgeon has launched a "new debate" on independence as she urged Scotland to "control its own destiny".

Because the rest of the UK is imposing all sorts of terrible burdens on them?

She said there was a "democratic deficit" at the heart of the Westminster system, and the fundamental question was whether Scotland should control its own destiny as a country, or "will we always be at the mercy of decisions taken elsewhere".

And yet, they wanted to remain part of the EU. So they still want to be at the mercy of decisions taken elsewhere, they just want it to be more remote.

I think that if a majority of the Scottish want to leave then we should of course let them. I'd be tempted to go a step further - if they keep going on about it, perhaps the rest of the UK can have a vote to see if we want to kick them out. They're running a deficit of £15bn or so now, aren't they? I'm sure we can find better things to do with that money.

Translation services available for a fee

2016-09-01T09:47:00.002+01:00

Saw this on the BBC website today.

The EU referendum campaign was dogged by "glaring democratic deficiencies" with voters turned off by big name politicians and negative campaigning, a report says.

The vote didn't go the way we wanted

The government's controversial mail-shot to every household in the UK had "little effect on people's levels of informedness", it said...

It was a waste of money

... towards the end of the campaign nearly half of voters thought politicians were "mostly telling lies".

They've cottoned on to us!

The society said the EU debate was in "stark contrast" to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, which it said had featured a "vibrant, well-informed, grassroots conversation that left a lasting legacy of on-going public participation in politics and public life".

People voted the way we wanted in the Scottish Referendum

Ms Ghose added: "Now that the dust is starting to settle after the EU referendum, we need a complete rethink about the role of referendums in the UK. They are becoming more common, but the piecemeal nature of the how, when and why they're done means we could simply end up jumping from referendum to referendum at the whim of politicians."

Letting the people have a say. Why would we want to do that?

Loss

2015-11-23T07:18:00.000+00:00

We had to have our 6 month old kitten - Odin - put down yesterday morning. We'd just started letting him go outside a few weeks ago and he loved it, he was so eager to get out - literally hanging off the window until we opened it. That morning was no exception.

We let him out at around 9am and I walked the dog about 10 minutes later. When I got back and was near the house, I could hear this loud meowing. I looked for the source and found him sprawled under a bush. He wasn't laying right - his back legs looked funny - so I called my wife right away. She came out and had a look and I took the dog in. We got into the car and took him straight to the vets where he had three X-rays, and they revealed that his spine had been crushed and his pelvis was broken. He was in a lot of pain, would never be able to walk again and wouldn't be able to have any quality of life. They recommended that he be put down.

He was such a lovely little kitten. He was already heavier than our other cat (who is 4 and a half years old) and always seemed so happy and energetic. My Dad called him a "smashing little fellow." He had a wonderful life, and I wish he hadn't had to go so soon, but I don't think there's anything we could have done to make him happier.

I really miss him - the house seems quiet without him (even though Dusty and Thor are still here), and I miss his little purr and the way he'd stand up to get cuddles, and the way he would sit on my shoulders and purr. I hope we did the right thing for him - and we will never forget him.

Rest in peace, little one.

FPTP vs PR

2015-05-08T08:27:00.000+01:00

I'm sure I've gone into this before, so I won't belabor the point but this election is a great demonstration of the flaws with First Past the Post, when combined with single member constituencies.

~~The latest data I have shows 643 seats declared~~ Table updated to show final result ~~(and I'll try to update these numbers as more data comes in)~~. It shows that 30.7m votes have been cast, which would equate to 47,223 votes per seat in a perfect democracy.

Looking at any party that got at least 47,223 votes, we see:

Party	Seats	votes	votes per seat	seats under PR
Alliance Party	0	61,556	-	1
UKIP	1	3,881,129	3,881,129	83
Green Party	1	1,157,613	1,157,613	25
Liberal Democrat	8	2,415,888	301,986	52
Plaid Cymru	3	181,694	60,565	4
Ulster Unionist Party	2	114,935	57,468	2
Sinn Fein	4	176,232	44,058	4
Labour	232	9,344,328	40,277	199
Conservative	331	11,334,920	34,244	242
Social Democratic & Labour Party	3	99,809	33,270	2
Scottish National Party	56	1,454,436	25,972	31
Democratic Unionist Party	8	184,260	23,033	4

(updated to reflect final score - the single "other" seat is left off of this list)

Doesn't look so good for UKIP, at 3.8m+ votes per seat, does it. ~~That should come down a bit when Thanet South is declared~~. Greens are also in a bad place with over 1m votes per seat. Interesting to see the Lib Dem position - under PR they'd have got a lot more seats.

The system does seem to be set up to ensure that the bigger parties cannot be challenged.

For the record, the PR figures above assume that anyone getting less than enough votes for one seat would be ignored, and the seats split among the remaining parties according to vote share.

Interestingly, these PR figures would still leave Conservatives and UKIP 1 seat short of a majority if they worked together.

Someone at Tim's place mentioned that UKIP have more votes than Lib Dems and SNP put together - something to think about!

Numbers taken from the BBC page at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

Fear

2013-10-06T00:10:00.001+01:00

My cat was hit by a car last week. I was at work and my wife called me to let me know. It was one of the scariest calls I've ever taken.

I rushed out and met them at the vet's. Luckily it seems like he's not too badly hurt. His ear is a bit mangled and a couple of teeth chipped, but the rest of it will all heal.

Today we let him out for the first time since it happened. It's scary sometimes, having pets...

Health care

2013-10-04T22:32:00.001+01:00

I had an interesting discussion with my mum earlier today about the NHS.

For background, my mum had an aneurysm at Christmas and was admitted to hospital. She was stuck in there for a few weeks while they did scans and decided what to do, then once they'd decided on an operation there were more than a few delays but she eventually had her op and all went well.

We were discussing the changes coming up to the national lottery, and one of her reservations was around the "good causes" that lottery money is sent to. She suggested that it could instead be funnelled to the NHS. I had to disagree.

My mum was quite surprised to hear how much we all currently pay for the NHS (last time I did the maths it was around £2,000 per taxpayer per year - a little over £150 per month).

My problem with the NHS is not that it's not a good thing, but that it's not efficient and has no need to be. This is one reason I'm all for the idea of competition within the NHS. I'd rather go further though.

The best system I've heard of is the Singaporean one. Everyone pays their NI equivalent into a special account. If you need serious treatment (such as for cancer, etc) then the government pays, and most other medical costs are taken from your special account. If there's anything left in it when you reach retirement age, you can use the money to buy a pension. This way people who need something can get it, but it discourages frivolous uses of the health service (by making people aware of the cost) while driving efficiency (through competition - if a new clinic will charge less, people will use it).

Sleepy Sunday

2013-09-14T21:39:00.001+01:00

The dog, cat and I are having a snooze. The best way to spend a Sunday!

Doctor Who

2013-09-13T11:37:00.001+01:00

I just found this thread on RPG.Net a couple of days ago and have very much enjoyed reading it. It's great to see how people perceive Doctor Who, and reading about someone watching it for the first time reminds me of when I first watched it.

My own take on it was that 9 was suffering some kind of PTSD - he could have done with another season or two to work through his issues, but I guess a regeneration works as well. 10 was ok - he was a little too human for me, and a bit too much of a hypocrite for me to get behind 100%.

All of my favourite episodes in the early seasons were Moffat ones. I've disliked just about all of the end-of-season finishes under RTD. Take season 1 for example - great setup, fantastic situation. Daleks poised to destroy mankind, and the only way the Doctor can stop it is by wiping out Earth. Great stuff! But then he doesn't go through with it, and instead Rose gets super-powers and saves the day. There's a line in there about how a time lord can't look into the heart of the Tardis as he'd get the powers of a god (kinda like Rose just did?). Then how the hell did they lose the time war?

When the Master stole the Tardis and left the Doctor and co marooned at the end of time, I thought it was so he could look into it's heart and become a God. But no, instead he wants to use it to build a really fragile Paradox Machine device, the breaking of which will undo all the stuff he's done. Great plan...

The other big thing that annoys me about RTDs endings is that there's no build up until the last minute. People have already talked about the Bad Wolf thing. It was meaningless - at best it gives a little cue that lets you place the episode within series 1 when re-watching. In Season 1, the first time we learn that the "Heart of the Tardis" is special is in Boom Town, the episode immediately before the season ending two-parter (and it solves all their problems by magic there as well).

This problem is endemic throughout the season-endings. The resolution is always something of a deus ex. Season 2, great situation with Daleks and Cybermen attacking. How do we solve it? Pull a lever... Season 3, a whole lot of people chanting your name give you magical powers? Really? And the whole fobwatch thing that indicates hidden time lords? Only introduced a couple of episodes before, and all because the Doctor didn't want to hurt the poor bad people, instead getting a bunch of innocents killed.

Season 4 gave us the Doctor-Donna fiasco. Never mind that dodging a regeneration shouldn't be as easy as having a spare body part around (and where are the limits? can I shunt regeneration energy into a finger? How about a toenail clipping?) The whole thing where Donna gets all the knowledge and power of the Doctor by touching this energy imbued hand is dodgy as anything (and not just that, but (a) she's apparently better than the Doctor at it and (b) she still only saves the day with essentially meaningless technobabble) but also creating a human clone of the Doctor? I never liked biology, but the repressed biologist inside me is crying out in agony. Still, anything for a happy ending, right? (A happy ending for Rose and the clone Doc, anyway. Kinda sucks for Donna).

I will confess I've not actually watched The End of Time - I fear my heart may give out given what I've heard.

Don't get me wrong - I love the situations and most of the season ending episodes, I've just always been disappointed by the resolution. New things are introduced (such as Heart of Tardis giving Godlike powers) which are then ignored forever-more.

I'd love to say that things got better under Moffat, and they kinda did. The first season under Moffat was genius, and I loved every minute. The next looked promising but then had a crappy ending - how exactly a wedding ceremony is meant to fix the universe I don't really know, and the resolution where River killed the robot seemed a little contrived - it would have been less of a stretch and a better nod to continuity within the series to have the 'Ganger Doc come back. The latest season hasn't really ended yet - but I'm not overly thrilled with the explanation for the Impossible Girl - seems a bit too similar to Rose getting God powers in the first RTD season and spreading messages through the time-stream. GI's motivation seemed a little OTT as well - screwing one person over at the cost of your life seems like too high a cost - better to send a minion to do it, surely?

Have to see what the 50th Anniversary special is like.

Journalists and numeracy

2013-08-12T13:36:00.003+01:00

Just spotted this - it's a fairly minor thing, but bugs me.

"...a maximum "lifetime allowance" applies to pensions, limiting the total size of a fund to £1,500m for this tax year (ending April 2014) and down further to £1.25m in the next (2014-2015). "

Seems like a hell of a cut, from £1.5bn to £1.25m...

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10233522/Todays-children-will-need-2.4m-pension-pot.html

The whole article is a bit crap to be honest - £2.4m would buy you around (very approximate) £120k of pension, which seems like a hell of a lot more than most people live on while working, let alone in retirement. I suspect they're taking inflation into account, at which point they may be trying to draw attention to the fact that the allowance is decreasing rather than increasing, but they really need to say what assumptions they are making and what that means in today's money. It's just scaremongering

Update

2012-08-29T09:50:00.000+01:00

So, my last post was February, and now it's August more than a year later. I guess it might be time for an update...

In some ways a lot has changed and in some ways it's the same.

The biggest change is that I have a new job. I started in March last year, and am now part of the dreaded public sector. The job is very different from my last role, and so far I am loving it. It's a great challenge, but has commensurate renumeration.

I'm still happily married and have a beautiful wife who works in retail. She has recently started a new job, and the pay is slightly worse but the hours and travel are much better. I also have a lovely dog and cat at home.

I'm registered self employed but the income hasn't been more than a few hundred pounds a year so far. With the new job, I just don't have a lot of time or energy for building apps or the like.

I have basically stopped role playing (by which I mean games like dungeons and dragons, and not anything kinky) and as a consequence haven't seen most of my friends in a while. This was more due to a growing discontent with the gaming that we were doing than a falling out with them, and truth to tell I do miss the gaming and the social aspect.

I have been following a few projects and recently received the pdf of Torchbearer by the Burning Wheel crew. It looks great! I've also backed exalted 3e and will have to get my wife to play when I get the pdf of that.

My wife got me a kindle so I have been devouring books on the way to and from work - if anyone can recommend some good fantasy or SF let me know.

I'll try to be somewhat active on here going forward...

Cutting the Pension Annual Allowance

2012-02-16T11:41:00.000+00:00

As some of you may be aware, I work in pensions so I tend to keep half an eye out for pension-related news. I saw this article earlier today.

It seems to be the usual scare tactics to sell newspapers. Apparently the government is thinking of cutting the annual allowance. No quotes from anyone in government of course, and nothing concrete, just a lot of speculation.

There are two good reasons why I don't think that this will happen:

They only just cut the allowance from £225,000 to £50,000
The people most affected would be higher rate taxpayers, and most of them usually vote conservative. Hitting them in the pocket would be a great way to lose votes.

This sort of story just puts people off pensions for no good reason

Dropbox

2012-02-15T13:03:00.000+00:00

Not sure if anyone even reads this, but if you do and you use Dropbox, I've put together a short guide on how to get over 8GB of free space at http://zelazny.co.uk/android/?p=78

If you don't use Dropbox, but have more than one computer, you really should check it out - it's very cool and easy to use :-)

Shock TUC report says Unions should get taxpayers money!

2012-01-25T11:10:00.000+00:00

I saw that there's been a report from the TUC that says that Union Reps being paid by the employer is a good thing. Shocking position for a report from the TUC to take, right?

(Report: http://www.tuc.org.uk/tucfiles/206/FacilityTimeSeparatingFactfromFiction.pdf)

It seems that part of their argument is based on survey data, and the rest is questionable:

They rely on data from a previous report that cited savings as follows:

i)Dismissal rates were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps – this resulted in savings related to recruitment costs of £107m-£213m pa

Surely this is because the Unions make it hard to fire people. So if someone is crap at their job, you can't replace them with someone good at the job. Without looking at the relative productivity rates of unionised vs non-unionised workplaces this is meaningless, but I reckon that preventing you from firing people who are crap would lower productivity and thus constitute a cost, rather than a benefit - and the magnitude of that cost will be significantly greater than the benefit, as you'd not want to sack someone unless you could get a better person in and make more money after costs were taken into consideration, so the costs must be smaller than the benefit.

ii) Voluntary exit rates were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps, which again resulted in savings related to recruitment costs of £72m-143m pa

People stayed longer (albeit because the benefits/pay were likely better) - this could be a valid benefit.

iii) Employment tribunal cases are lower in unionised workplaces with union reps resulting in savings to government of £22m-43m pa

See (i) - this is likely because tribunals were threatened in any number of cases, and the employer forced to back down. If you sack less people, less people will complain. I'd count this as a part of the cost of replacing crap people with good people, and would expect the benefit thus to far outweigh this cost.

iv) Workplace-related injuries were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps so resulting in savings to employers of £126m-371m pa

Really? What were the additional costs of complying with increased health and safety requirements placed there by the Union rep?

v) Workplace-related illnesses were lower in unionised workplaces with union reps so resulting in savings to employers of £45m-207m pa

What about non-workplace related illnesses? Is this just a case of the union rep saying "don't put it down as workplace related, or you could get in trouble"?

Taking points (i) and (iii) as negative (i.e. assuming that the productivity increase from replacing bad staff would be at least enough to cover the costs of replacing bad staff twice) and disregarding point (iv) as we have no idea of the actual costs involved in reaching this point gives a total saving from having union reps on the order of £40m (using average figures).

By the methodology in the report, 60% of this is public sector, so £24m. Uprating to now gives £28.7m - call it £30m if you like. So we get a benefit of £30m for an expenditure of £113m. Sounds like a good deal to me...

They question the £113m figure, suggesting that £80m is more reasonable - so we're getting back a massive 38% of what we spend. That's the kind of deal our government should be fully in support of!

Is this right?

2011-12-08T10:46:00.000+00:00

I regularly read JuliaM's blog at http://thylacosmilus.blogspot.com/ so I wasn't shocked to see the case in the paper today where 4 girls racially abused and beat up another girl, yet didn't get sent to jail, receiving only a suspended sentence

Then today I was reading the news sent round at work, and I saw that the first conviction had been made under the bribery act. This chap took £500 to refrain from entering the details of a traffic summons in a court database. He was sentenced to 6 years in jail (3 for the bribery and 6 for misconduct in public office, to run concurrently).

Now don't get me wrong - what he did was very wrong, but 6 years in jail? That seems a little over the top. Sacking him and giving a very honest reference would pretty much destroy his career prospects, and seems like it would nearly be punishment enough on it's own. Throw in a big hefty fine and I'd say you're good.

The first case I mentioned? Jail seems to be the least we could be expected to do...

How did we get so turned around?

One to watch

2011-12-06T08:32:00.000+00:00

As if evidence were needed that our current benefit system is not fit for purpose: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3655837

Basically, there's a chap who earns £65k and faces losing his child benefit. He asks if it's possible to use salary sacrifice to commit enough of his salary to pension so that he won't lose the benefits, and wonders what happens if he goes further.

Based on the responses and what I know of the matter, if he were to put £50k a year into his pension (plus another ~£2k into childcare vouchers) he'd be assessed for benefits as if his income were just over £12k - meaning he'd get all sorts of benefits. He reckons he'd go from an income of £3300 per month (after paying for childcare vouchers and nearly £4k a year into his pension) to about £3100 per month thanks to all the benefits he could claim. He'd lose £200 per month, but would have an extra £46k in his pension pot per year (nearly £4k per month).

Sounds like a good deal? So the benefit state is really good for people with incomes of £65k or so...

The new 50% tax rate: a sure winner!

2011-11-24T10:10:00.000+00:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8911390/50p-tax-band-will-cost-Britain-1bn-a-year.html

So now someone's come out and said what a lot of us have been saying all along. The 50% rate will not make any money, and may in fact cost the government £1bn in tax revenues.

That's not all though, because that £1bn in revenue is lost because wealthy individuals seek to avoid the tax, in part by moving their operations offshore. This can cause the loss of jobs in the UK, and will have a knock on effect.

I find the details interesting as it shows the true pettiness of the left:

Mr Osborne and David Cameron are in favour of abolishing the top rate but are under intense pressure from the Liberal Democrats not to cut taxes on the wealthy.

Even though cutting taxes on the wealthy will mean more money in the kitty, so less that the poor have to pay? Who cares, right? We're not trying to make the lives of the poor better, but the lives of the rich worse.

This is not the answer

2011-11-11T11:17:00.000+00:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/8882173/Let-pensions-fund-homes-for-first-time-buyers-says-CBI.html

We keep being told that more and more people are suffering in retirement as they don't have enough pensions, so the article linked above came as a bit of a shock.

Potential first-time buyers should be allowed to use their pension savings to buy homes, according to a new report on how the boost the housing market.

Well - that would go some way towards boosting the housing market, but is it really the best answer? More money available to buy homes will mean house prices rise, so the problem gets even worse. Surely it'd be better to find some way to bring house prices down, like relaxing planning permissions?

The number of property sales in the UK has crashed since the recession despite 5m people "languishing on waiting lists", the CBI claims today in its Unfreezing the Housing Market study.

I assume that they mean social housing waiting lists, rather than waiting lists to buy a house. As far as I know (and my brother is in the process of doing it right now) all you have to do is find a house for sale, plonk down the cash and it's yours. Sure - there are contracts to exchange and the like, but no waiting lists. So realistically speaking, how many people waiting for a council house are going to be able to buy a house, even if they could access their pension funds?

The CBI said housebuilding, which is at the lowest peacetime level for 90 years, also needed to be increased. It called on the Government to address "structural housing market failures" and allow offices to be turned into homes without planning permission.

That at least sounds sensible...

Think it through

2011-11-04T16:43:00.000+00:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8865772/Temps-get-out-clause-could-be-tested-in-court.html

“We live in perpetual hope that maybe, down the line, we might get a small pay increase,” says Mark, an agency driver currently working for Tesco. “We’re not necessarily looking for pay parity, we’re just looking for the crumbs from the table.”

Fair enough, I suppose. Everyone wants a pay increase, but the terms and conditions were laid out when you joined - they're not cutting your pay, they're just not paying you as much as you might get if you worked in another role for Tesco.

Mark is one of thousands of agency workers up and down the country who has recently been asked to sign away his rights to the same pay as permanent staff at the supermarket – overriding new equal pay rules which came into effect last month. He stands to lose about £150 extra a week.

No he doesn't. He had a choice - sign away the "rights" or lose his job. The £150 a week was never on the table - he never had it, so how can he lose it? If he was happy to work for his current salary when he got the job, why should he suddenly get a big pay rise now?

On average, temps currently get paid about a third less than permanent staff doing the same job, according to the TUC.

That's usually for a number of reasons. For example, they've often not been with the company long and are not expected to stay all that long, so they don't get the same level of training as permanent staff, so they don't produce the same quality of work as permanent staff. Also, they can usually leave with a minimum of notice (1 day is not unheard of) and thus the company can't rely on them to the same extent as they do their own staff. Also it's often a lot easier to get a temp job (my company has a battery of tests and assessments that you need to pass to get a job, to ensure that they get people who can cope with the role. For temps who are mostly filing or putting letters in envelopes it's not necessary for them to have the same level of ability, so they don't get the same pay and don't have to do the tests).

I'm sure there are some workers out there who do complicated, detailed work and are employed as temps. All I can say to them is that if you don't like it, get another job. If you're vital where you are, threaten to leave.

Fundamentally, I just don't see why companies should be forced to treat temps and permanent staff the same given that there are significant differences between them.

(I also don't think government should be involved at all in what people do in their private interactions and should just stop trying to tell us all how to live, but that's never going to happen)

Civil servants should never be allowed to make agreements

2011-11-04T12:55:00.000+00:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8867315/Police-force-to-pay-out-for-overtime-officers-never-worked.html

Under the generous arrangement officers working in the Operations and Communications Branch (OCB) are paid for a minimum of six hours overtime when called in on their day off - even if they work fewer hours.

The local branch of the Police Federation, however, noticed that staff were only being paid for the hours in which they worked and took the force to court.

Oh no - they were only being paid for the hours that they worked! But wait a minute - police officers are on a starting wage of around £30k for 37 hours a week, so that's roughly £17.50 per hour (accounting for holiday), so that's £105 for 6 hours work. Not bad if you're only called in for 1 hour. Sounds like a stupid policy. Sure, allow a little extra for travel if need be, but to have a minimum of 6 hours? That's definitely stupid.

Never mind the rights and wrongs of it - if the agreement was that they get paid 6 hours for coming in, then fair enough, although you'd hope that the authority wouldn't have to be forced into keeping it's agreements. Still: a very generous and stupid policy.

This is why civil servants should never be allowed to make agreements (or decisions. Or anything, really...)