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Not in the Union. Come the revolution Bob Crowe can go up against the wall too.

Flashman wrote:Not in the Union. Come the revolution Bob Crowe can go up against the wall too.

Now you're speaking my language!

That's brother Bob Crowe to you.

Also not in the union, by the way. I hate the union heads. Another way to manipulate people to get their damn money. Holding the education system at home back.

I actually feel sorry for Clegg, tbh. A good chunk of the hate that gets fired at him should be landing on the tories and labour, in my view. Though the lib dems are mostly crazy and stupid, too.

I was nonplussed about the strike in general, but I dislike the rhetoric spouted that suggests that all public sector workers are lazy and that they are not providing value for money.

(I am drunk and exhausted if this post makes no sense by the way)

The thing is, for many of us, the public sector isn't providing value for money.

Public sector is often badly managed. By the managers. That would be the echelons above the level that is busy losing its jobs en masse.


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Albatross wrote:

Flashman wrote:

Albatross wrote:

Flashman wrote:
Yes, love the way the second the Conservatives got in, the public sector was suddenly a bunch of leeches drinking our fill from the public purse. The vast majority of us aren't paid all that much. I'm a transport professional, yet earn under the average wage. The way the media portray it, we're sucking the country dry with our greed. The point is, nobody goes into the public sector for a decent wage. They go to make a difference and do a job they believe in.

Of course they do.

Well I do And I shall carry on until the UK transport system is working perfectly

Man, in that case, feth pensions! If you can pull that off they should give you a small Carribbean island!

Incidentally your union boss, Bob Crow, earns over £130k per year plus expenses totaling around £10k, which puts him on par with the Prime Minister.


I'm sure he just does it for the love, though.


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purplefood wrote:

Flashman wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:The revolution can't come soon enough.

When they line them up against the wall, Osborne is mine

Oh hang on, that could be construed as being offensive

I call dibs on killing Clegg...
It will be slow and oh so painful...

He'd probably kick your head in, mate. As would Cameron. They're both fairly big blokes who work out every day, and who no doubt know their way around a Rugby ball. You'd get minced.


No offence.

Seems a bit odd to assume that the people making the threats aren't equally or even more capable than Bobblehead Dave and his butt-puppet sidekick? I'm quite confident that a great many of the people who would love to physically inconvenience Cleggy are a sight more dangerous than a public school boy who might have played rugger twenty or thirty years ago. (There are a few steel workers I can think of who would happily bend him in half after that Forgemasters debacle.) . Bit of a daft diversion, all said.

Wait, the Top Gear guy? That guy is a friggin' riot! It seems like not even the British understand dry British humor anymore.

I don't give a gak about cars but I watch that show cuz those guys are brilliant.

Sure, that joke was a bit off-color, but they make off-color jokes all the time.

EDIT: And looking at the context in which it was made... well... come on, people.

Jeremy Clarkson wrote: Now airports, you know, people streaming through with no problems at all and it's also like being back in the 70s, it makes me feel at home somehow.

Like the 70's you say?
OFF WITH HIS HEAD! Clarkson must be sacked immediately! We can't have people thinking the strike is viewed as positive by a man who feels at home in the 70's. Have him shot!

Albatross wrote:The thing is, for many of us, the public sector isn't providing value for money.

It's difficult to argue against this, but this is largely because of bureaucracy and just because you involve the private sector, doesn't mean you remove that bureaucracy. If anything, you add more. About half Southampton City Council is now run by a private partner and often they refuse to do even the most simple task because it's "not in the contract". Outsourcing services just bogs a local authority down with legal wranglings as the private partner tries to say "we didn't agree to do that" at every given opportunity.

The best argument I can think of is the still incomplete Edinburgh tram. Now ok, all major infrastrucure projects are handled by the private sector these days and that's not going to change, but the fiasco in Scotland's capital is a prime example of the private sector making a hash of a project. The original cost estimates were about £500 million which for an 11km stretch of route is fairly steep to begin with. Yet as work commenced, the private company delivering the project discovered more and more issues with laying the track along Edinburgh's historic streets. For each and every one of these problems, they went back to the city authority and whinged "You never told us about this, we need more money." You may have seen coverage of the works snarled up in Princes Street as contract negotiations broke down time and time again.

The outcome of this was an overall rise in the project costs which now stand at something like £700 million. It came to a head this summer when the current political administration wanted to scale down the project further (all planned future phases have alredy been cancelled) so that the tram line would only run from the airport to haymarket which is just outside of the city centre. Now to a transport planner, that's beyond hilarious. Not only would it not use the track laid in Princes Street (where a significant portion of the costs have been generated), but the number of trips generated would be slashed. Nobody would use a tram route that stops before it gets to the main destination. Fortunately this decision was overturned, but the result = more money needed. Edinburgh tax payers are boned.

I have an entire list of reasons why outsourcing to the private sector is irresponsible, but that is for another thread perhaps

RatBot wrote:Wait, the Top Gear guy? That guy is a friggin' riot! It seems like not even the British understand dry British humor anymore.

I don't give a gak about cars but I watch that show cuz those guys are brilliant.

Sure, that joke was a bit off-color, but they make off-color jokes all the time.

EDIT: And looking at the context in which it was made... well... come on, people.

Hasn't this thread taught you something?

Namely, the vast majority of us dont think the bloke did anything wrong!

What was the whole story with Clarkson and his ex-wife?

olympia wrote:What was the whole story with Clarkson and his ex-wife?

They briefly patched up their differences... in bed... after he had remarried

ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Seems a bit odd to assume that the people making the threats aren't equally or even more capable than Bobblehead Dave and his butt-puppet sidekick?

Wow. Really mature. Do you not feel just a little bit childish resorting to name-calling?

In response to your question, why would you assume that just because a person is posh they are not able to handle themselves in a fight? A lot of the people saying that they would love to beat the PM and Nick Clegg up are probably spotty basement-dwelling nerds indulging in power fantasies, and we're talking about two 6ft+ men who are in good nick, physically. That's all I'm saying.

Hey. If you're allowed to assume they're spotty, basement-dwelling nerds, it's fair for them to pretend to be ex-marine combat veterans build like brick privies. Fair's fair.

You have a reasonable point, though most times when someone says they'd like to hit a given public figure who offends them, that doesn't mean we consider it to be a sufficiently-likely eventuality that we start assessing their relative merits in combat.

I reckon Dave could knack Arbeit like..

The thing is, for many of us, the private sector isn't providing value for money.

Albatross wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Seems a bit odd to assume that the people making the threats aren't equally or even more capable than Bobblehead Dave and his butt-puppet sidekick?

Wow. Really mature. Do you not feel just a little bit childish resorting to name-calling?

In response to your question, why would you assume that just because a person is posh they are not able to handle themselves in a fight? A lot of the people saying that they would love to beat the PM and Nick Clegg up are probably spotty basement-dwelling nerds indulging in power fantasies, and we're talking about two 6ft+ men who are in good nick, physically. That's all I'm saying.

Not in the slightest. Its a fitting description. Bobblehead. Its about as mature as the "who would win in a real fight." argument. Forge-masters employees are just one group of people who intensely dislike our glorious leaders, who are more than physically capable of doing damage to an executive type who "works out" occasionally. I already pointed that out. Given that this forum is frequented by everyone from "spotty nerds" to full blown combat veterans, it merely seems foolish for you to assume that a poster is one thing or another.

And its usually accepted knowledge that "come the revolution" whatever "leader" is being overthrown could be built like the proverbial brick gak, and still come a cropper at the hands of the people. I believe this is the mood in which such comments have been made? We aren't talking about Queensbury Rules here. We're speaking of brickbats and the risen masses.

Besides, both Dave and Nick are starting to look a little tired these days.


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mattyrm wrote:I reckon Dave could knack Arbeit like..

Pfft. I've met bigger. Two years behind a bar without recourse to licensed door staff means you meet all sorts of giant knobheads who spend their days engaged in rather more energetic pastimes than "returning the nation to a Victorian standard of living" and "being a meatshield for the ones making the bad decisions."

But as I say, its rather silly to make assumptions about what people can or cannot do when one does not know them. We are all just words on a screen, and thus predominantly unknown quantities.

What I don't like is that there isn't an option to post tally comments in support of Clarkson on this issue.

I think we would get more than 21000 signitures.

While everyone except a union twit would likely understand that the comment is nort to be taken literally, the strike is not as popular as they are making out, and it is not justified. Civil Servants; its time you paid for your pensions like the rest of the tax paying populace.

It doesn't matter if the comment was not meant to be taken literally. It can still be offensive.

Polling of UK public opinion indicates that a significant percentage support the strike.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15910621

Survey Monkey offers a way to explore the issue further.

Part of the UK's problem is that many private sector workers aren't paying for pensions. The state pension is being slashed significantly -- mine is going down 74%. There are going to be a lot of people on very poor incomes in the future.

Medium of Death wrote:If this goes to the police it will be a fething joke.

Clarkson is known for this kind of humour, I think some people need to get a grip.

QFT

It really doesn't need to go any futher. "Sticks and stones..."

It should not go to the police.

His position with the BBC should be reevaluated and either docked pay/suspended without pay or fired. It was a witless and offensive thing to say.

As to the public sector, I've moved from the UK to the US, every bloody one of you back there in blighty should thank your lucky stars for the NHS and fight to preserve it with your last breath. I am now living in a land where I pay more tax than I ever did back in the UK and then I get to pay for insurance and then I still have to pay the fething copay on top of the insurance rates. People here are frightened by a state healthcare system because they've never had anything other than the insurance company's reassuring fists up their bottoms, they don't know just how screwed over they are being.

Oh and we recently lost a family member to cancer over here, the bungling and lack of information sharing between private health companies and insurance firms and hand wringing over pennies was disgusting.

I'm telling you, Brits, fight for your National Health Service, don't let them take it from you.

MeanGreenStompa wrote: I am now living in a land where I pay more tax than I ever did back in the UK

How is that possible?

I thought that in the USA both the corporate and personal mean income tax rates were significantly lower than in the UK?

I remember reading an article about it a few years back on the BBC website that said British citizens were pessimistic and complained about our high taxes, but our tax rates are not as high as most people seem to think, and whilst we pay far less than other big European nations such as France or Germany, we were definitely above the USA.

I'm paying around 30quid more in taxes per month than I did in Bristol and then the insurance rates on top of that and then the copay, should I actually visit the hospital, on top of that...

mattyrm wrote:

RatBot wrote:Wait, the Top Gear guy? That guy is a friggin' riot! It seems like not even the British understand dry British humor anymore.

I don't give a gak about cars but I watch that show cuz those guys are brilliant.

Sure, that joke was a bit off-color, but they make off-color jokes all the time.

EDIT: And looking at the context in which it was made... well... come on, people.

Hasn't this thread taught you something?

Namely, the vast majority of us dont think the bloke did anything wrong!

Yeah, I know. The "come on, people" was directed at no one in particular. A general "wtf?" sentiment. I'm just truly perplexed at the media and these unions.

Melissia wrote:Funny how people are jumping to defend him saying "that's just who he is". Well "just who he is" is a freaking unrepentant jackass, why shouldn't his employment come up for review? I'd probably have been fired for something like that in my previous jobs...

This sketch gives a good idea of "The Clarkson".

"We have to clip them twice a year otherwise their woolly hair gets clogged up with all the gak that comes out their mouths see?"

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
I'm telling you, Brits, fight for your National Health Service, don't let them take it from you.

'Them' being...?

Private concerns? The Conservative Party? (Might be a synonym.)

The conservatives wouldn't dare get rid of the NHS... Nor would any political party that has any chance of getting into power.

Might have missed your notice, but the Conservative party is busy parcelling off bits of the NHS to private concerns every day. The most recent suggestion was that private companies be allowed access to your medical records, which popped up this morning I believe.

They may not declare wholesale that the NHS is "privatised", but they have no qualms about a more stealthy editing.

The idea that the Tories would disband the NHS is a completely ludicrous idea bandied about by unreconstructed socialist dinosaurs who wish it was still the 80s so they could re-fight the battle against economic progress all over again.