General Chat

Since the General Election:-

The Department for International Development, which dishes out overseas aid, has employed in excess of 150 extra members of staff at a cost of more than £10 million a year :-|

The Department for Energy and Climate Change has taken on an extra 264 staff at a cost of more than £15 million a year :-|

The Treasury has increased the number of civil servants earning £100,000 or more from 20 in 2009-10 to 39 in 2011-2012 :-|

The Department for Communities and Local Government spent £4.3 million on agency staff in 2012, up from £2.6 million the year before :-|

And then there are the Banks

Royal Bank of Scotland to pay £600m in bonuses despite posting a £5.2 billion loss and the Prime Minister says they are showing "restraint and responsibility" :-|

Lloyds Bank boss to receive a £1.5m bonus despite £570 million loss :-|

Very depressing reading, OFG. But let's put a positive spin on it.

How do you get an application form? I would like to be a Bank Chief Executive till retirement as it will pay more than my current £15k pa. :-D

Put it another way - the Government has created an extra 400 jobs, and kept the Agency staff in employment. ;-)

'Pareto Principle'

The 80/20 Rule

Enough said :-|

If our Government is so clever, why am I not rich too?

We are rich, Dermot, because we see the sun, we smell the flowers and we breathe the lovely fresh air. And we have a clean conscience.

Those jobsworths spend all their time in unhealthy offices stressed up to the eyeballs, and their leisure time in unhealthy shopping malls spending surplus cash, driving their Mercs up over-crowded motorways, worrying about security of second and third homes and squashed in their seats watching Chelsea and Arsenal every weekend.

Who's the winner? :-D :-D :-D

Central and local Government employee numbers ballooned by around 800,000 over the last 15 years, largely from "mission creep" whereby new and unwanted functions were taken on by taxpayer-funded employees, such as "Five a Day Advisors" and "Diversity Fascilitators", the cost of whose inflation-proofed final salary pensions will be with us for decades even IF (big IF intentional) their jobs were to disappear.
Most of those are still in post either directly or through privatisation of the services.
Government expenditure (central and local) now absorbs nealy half of what the economy produces (known as Gross Domestic Product or GDP).
Therefore there is nothing left for investment so the economy can grow.
Unless and until that proportion is reduced from nearly half to below forty percent growth just will not happen.
Low taxes generate growth, high taxes stifle it unless a Country has vast mineral or other resources which can be exploited e.g. Australia digging up iron and exporting it to China..

Well, quite simply put............if you make cuts, the people within that, also cut their spending

If 'people' cut spending, we are in a recession

My own 'simple' belief is; Governments create a recession

For what reason?

Anyone with any intelligence should know......I posted earlier!

Brian. That creep has seemd to have occurred all my working life.

I used to love going through the expensive jobs in the Telegraph in 1970's and try and work out what on earth the job was all about.

Our dads were miners, factory workers, bank clerks, soldiers. Now jobs advertised were Human Resource Maximisation Assistant, Ashanti Facilitator for City of Durham etc.

Glad to see there is still a growth sector in the economy. :-D