CatInASuit
Are you really suggesting that 1 in 4 workers in the UK economy are employed directly by the state ? and even more specifically, by the Civil Service?
I hope not, because it isn’t true.
My information is that its rather less than 1 in 5, and at least 30% of those are part timers. They are more likely to be women - not surprising given the part time aspect, or long serving full timers - ie people whose age means they cannot readily move employment due to our youth obsessed employment market.
As a total of the population they represent between 8% to 13% depending upon the area - with the South East unsurprisingly being the highest - these are not particularly high numbers of the overall population, those numbers have risen between 1998 to 2005 but are now either static or falling.
These are totals for all public workers, from hospitals, through to council workers, education at all levels to city councils, police, fire and prisons, Civil Servants form a very small part of all that.
The current situation, and this is before the credit crunch (and may even be a direct cause) is that public sector workers have been priced out of the housing market in 7 out of 10 UK cities, and yet until recently houses were still selling - to the private sector, so cry me a river over tax,- because somebody can afford to pay that tax and yet buy a house, and its not public service workers - which just leaves everyone else then.
(the definition of unaffordable housing is taken as being 4.75 times annual earnings by the building society association)
I got my other figures from the National Office of Statistics, you will find certain publications that do not deny these figures, but they will greatly exaggerate salaries by adding in overtime or by sheer invention, or completely neglect to mention the part time aspect, or the fact that the average public sector pension is less than £5k per year - hardly gold plated eh?
This is part of the problem, political attacks on public servants are good in the media, yet apart from boardroom excesses, no other groups of workers are attacked in this way, no other director of a private company would denigrate their employees in this manner, and yet government officials make political capitol out of running down their own staff - so if they are not particularly cheerful to you, then maybe you can reflect on their morale and what has led to it.
There are a lot of myths about public sector workers that are reinforced as fact by one source whose figures are then widely requoted, things such as more holidays - not true, more time on the sick - not true, that they get free pensions - not true, they are very expensive pensions and the workers themselves are paying for them, they retire at 60, not true, the majority still have to work till 65, but would you expect fire fighters, police, prisons staff and other emergency service people that have to deal hand to hand with members of the public - would you expect them to be working to 65?
How do you think a 64 year old copper would do in a foot race with a 20 year old scally?
How do you think a 62 year old prison officer would fare in a prison riot having to restrain violent prisoners ?
There is such a lot of crap mentioned about public workers, who have to deal with absolutely the very worst aspects of our society, day in day out.
Unless of course you want to volunteer to run the local old folks home, or perhaps you feel you’d be more than happy to control ASBO bred children in a secure unit.
I do notice that we have the money to support Northern Rock, a private business concern, with public money, yet somehow we cannot find the cash to run our prisons or our schools and hospitals - services that you may well prefer to be well funded.
I also notice that we somehow find the money to fight wars in two distant nations, one of which was based on a threat that was simply an invention - I wonder how much of your taxes those have soaked up, by my reckoning - and others current figures suggest £30 a second for the war and up to 2006 that was £4.5 billions - so you need to add in another 2 years worth, add in that £50 billion bail out to Northern Rock, and then the refund of at least £1 billion to the lowest paid workers because of the tax hike, then tell me why we are short of money.
It’s always been fashionable to attack public service workers, when I first applied for my post there were 20 applicants interviewed for every post, and that was after sifting the application forms, now we have posts that have lain vacant for over a year, and my job is to try train prisoners skills so that they can get out of the offending loop - or perhaps you think this is not worth paying for.
, because I’m interested in one more thing, which is if there’s any habit when it comes to PM changes in between General Elections. Is it actually usual for such PMs to seek a mandate either within their party or from the electorate as a whole?