Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[Bobby Hundreds]

It's not the point though is it. With so called austerity and cuts alongside discussion to cut even further services that are actually life changing to the majority to decide to increase funding in areas like grouse mooring seems obscene. The land is supposedly owned by private owners which is why they are getting subsidies and its not fully paid for by the state. If its privately owned by wealthy people they should not receive any, they definitely shouldn't get an increase at this current time. If the land is state owned and the grouse farmers, game keepers what have you are employed by the state then I've little issue with it if its us maintaining the land and providing the right resources and staff. The story reminds me of iain Duncan shit and his farming subsidies for land his wife owns that isn't even used as farm land he's claimed over a million quid. Mr something for nothing culture must end.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

 

Zero-hours contracts: 1.4m in the UK, ONS says

Office for National Statistics says the trend for hiring staff without guaranteeing a minimum number of hours is more prevalent than previously thought

The number of UK jobs offered on zero-hours contracts is 1.4m, according to the latest government figures, a far higher number than expected.

A snapshot survey of employers by the Office for National Statistics, taken from a two-week period between late January and early February, shows the trend for hiring staff without guaranteeing a minimum number of hours is more prevalent than initially thought.

Following an earlier survey of employees, the ONS had previously estimated that 583,000 people were employed on zero hours, suggesting that some people have more than one job on a zero-hours basis.

The TUC said the figures showed the UK jobs market was far more precarious than the government suggested, and urged ministers to crack down on the "abuse" of zero-hours contracts by employers.

"Insecure work with no guarantee of regular paid hours is no longer confined to the fringes of the jobs market," said Frances O'Grady, the TUC's general secretary.

"It is worrying that so many young people are trapped on zero-hours contracts, which can hold back their careers and make it harder to payoff debts like student loans. The fact that these contracts have become the norm in tourism, catering and food will be a major concern for the millions of people employed in these industries."

About 13% of employers reported some use of zero-hours contracts. In the tourism, catering and food sectors, the contracts were in use by almost half of all businesses. The contracts were more commonly used by large companies than small businesses.

Zero-hours contracts were found to be relatively rare among workers in the financial and professional services and the manufacturing, energy and agricultural sectors.

Chuka Umunna, Labour's shadow business secretary, described the figures as "shocking".

He said: "It is a staggerin​g illustration of the cost-of-living crisis under this Tory-led government and a reminder that David Cameron and George Osborne are failing to deliver a balanced recovery that works for all.

"Labour is clear that we will outlaw zero-hours contracts where they exploit people, ensuring that people at work are protected and get a fair deal. It's time the Tory-led government matched our plans."

Last week Ed Miliband said the contracts, which often tie a worker to a single firm but in return do not guarantee employment from week to week, had reached "epidemic" levels as employers sought to exploit laws allowing flexible working.

Labour's leader said workers with irregular shifts and pay should get a contract with fixed hours if they had worked regularly for the same employer for a year.

Responding to the latest figures from the ONS, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said zero-hours contracts were just one element of a national problem with in-work poverty.

Katie Schmuecker, policy and research manager at the foundation, said: "Zero-hours contracts are just one aspect of the UK's problem with in-work poverty. We have workers unable to get enough hours to lift themselves and their families out of poverty, and not being offered training and development by their employer, leaving them stuck in dead-end jobs.

"Tackling in-work poverty requires the nature of jobs at the bottom of the labour market to change, alongside reform to the welfare system."

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/30/zero-hours-contracts-uk-over-one-million-people

 

[Section_31]

I'm shocked and appalled by this. They can wheel out all the 'economy is getting better, crime is going down' spiel they want, we all know it's bollocks. It's like being in love, you just know it, balls to bones.

[Jairzinho]

Zero hour contracts offer flexibility to the employee.

[TheBitch]

97% of people on zero hour contracts love them.

[Strontium]

Labour's proposed zero hours reforms appear to be an anticipation of stuff the government is likely to bring in anyway. Are people going to be fooled? Probably.

[L19red]

I understand the sentiment Bobby but you have to have a bit of perspective. A 1,000 acre grouse moor will earn you £22,400 a year instead of £12,000. And I bet some of these are owned by institutions such as the National Trust.

good news for Paul Dacre

http://www.whfp.com/2014/01/24/anti-eu-editor-pockets-european-subsidies/

[Jairzinho]

Labour's proposed zero hours reforms appear to be an anticipation of stuff the government is likely to bring in anyway. Are people going to be fooled? Probably.

 

Labour's proposed reforms are a fucking embarrassment.

[Strontium]

Labour's proposed reforms are a fucking embarrassment.

 

In what way? What would you suggest?

[Jairzinho]

Banning them.

[Strontium]

All of them? Won't that pose a problem for the considerable number of people who quite like them?

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

I await the neg, but up to 20% of crime is, reportedly, going unrecorded, i.e. is being reported to the police, but is not being officially recorded as a crime.

 

We're not talking just trivial crimes either. The figure is said to include 14 rapes.

 

So, maybe it's nothing to do with society being more civilised and instead more a case of official figures being totally unreliable?

 

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27226110

[Jairzinho]

All of them? Won't that pose a problem for the considerable number of people who quite like them?

 

Yes, but fuck the employers.

[Section_31]

Report out saying the police don't record one in five crimes, unbelievable scenes!

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Been going on for s while, too.

[Chairman Meow]

They are juking the stats? Colour me surprised. 

[Section_31]

Everything's stats now. My mate's a teacher where his school has already decided to expel a badly behaved special needs kid but are waiting until he's done his SATs because he's predicted to get good grades that will bring the school's average up.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Let's call Help to Work what it really is: punishment of the undeserving poor

The government's scheme undermines the very idea of unemployment benefit and demonises the vulnerable people it should be assisting

 

Has Iain Duncan Smith ever met uber-troll Katie Hopkins? It's a serious worry, because they could meld. Her latest "idea" – "It's time we issued an unemployed person's uniform" – would doubtless appeal to him and George Osborne with their penchant for tramping on the faces of the poor.

 

Hopkins may or may not mean what she says; she is simply an entrepreneur whose commodity is venom that she markets as "telling it like it is" – an increasingly common tactic for the right. Suggesting this is a prelude to rounding people up and putting them in camps will not bother her.

 

Way more horrific is that a fundamentally cruel attitude to unemployed people is actually government policy. Worklessness no longer means not having a job; it means that you can be treated as if you were a prisoner. You can be made to work for no money or forced to "volunteer".

 

The rules now in place were announced last year by Osborne and are now fronted by Duncan Smith and Esther McVey. The harshest sanctions apply to the long-term unemployed (one in 30 claimants, who have been out of work for more than three years). These people – living the life of Riley, presumably – will now have to attend a jobcentre every day or commit to six months of voluntary work or a training scheme, or payments will be stopped.

This is called Help to Work. Doublespeak. For it doesn't help and it won't work. Jobcentres are not geared up to cope with such numbers, and many leading charities such as Oxfam are boycotting mandatory work placements because they think the key word in voluntary work is, er, voluntary. If it isn't, we are basically talking about community service, which you would get for being found guilty of an offence.

 

The government's own research indicates that unpaid work placements are not increasing the chances of claimants finding work. But, yet again, this policy is not about finance (it will actually cost money if travel fares to jobcentres are paid); it is an ideological assault that seeks to undermine the very idea of unemployment benefit.

As Cameron said on a visit to a jobcentre this week: "The day of giving people benefit cheques and not asking for anything in return – those days are gone." Forcing people to work for free will push people into "proper" work, he reckons. McVey suggests that forcing people to sign in at jobcentres every day will improve their lives. They make such statements with straight and shiny faces.

 

I know what they are, but what have we become? Has the "skivers" narrative taken such root that we now all accept that the unemployed are Untermenschen who personally steal from us via state benefits when there are perfectly good jobs they are refusing to do?

 

For a start, many people want a job where they live. Odd that, but they do. We still have high youth unemployment, which is devastating, and we may have to accept there will always be some people who cannot get jobs. Employers aren't fantastically keen on someone has not worked for a while.

 

Osborne's lonely fantasy of full employment is his little power trip, but what is underlying all this, and where Labour joins in, is the joyless repetition of the spurious notion that all work is life-enhancing. This may well be the experience of the middle-class technocrats who manage us, but they have clearly not done a load of crap jobs.

 

Much work is not in any way "fulfilling". Work is now being used as a moral as well as financial salve. I don't buy it.

Indeed, phrases such as "hardworking families" make me gag. The work ethic, the faith before which we are to prostrate ourselves, has a context. That context is that we are all supposed to compete not just with each other but with huge, unregulated global workforces such as China's. The work ethic becomes part of a race to the bottom of wage slavery.

 

The ethics of work, however, should be around its redistribution. We have youth unemployment, but are raising the retirement age and working long hours. In a world of part-time work and zero-hours contracts, workers' rights are virtually nonexistent. Yet this is what those at the very bottom of the pile must aspire to, as they sit preparing CVs for nonexistent jobs to send to companies that are suspicious of people who have been forced to do menial tasks.

 

Even if you believe that the idle rich should indeed legislate on the lives of the undeserving poor, what, pray, will happen when jobseeker's allowance is docked because someone falls foul of the rules? If you stop their £72 a week, what then? Do they not eat? Does some other agency step in? How much will that cost? Do we have no politicians who will denounce this wickedness?

 

It would be simpler not to say it is about "help" and call it what it is. Punishment. This government is deliberately creating an atmosphere in which it is no longer immoral to treat subsets of people – in this case, the long-term unemployed – as criminals. Who don't deserve a living. Let alone a life.

 

Katie Hopkins, a professional spewer of bile, does not pretend to care. She is self-employed at Hate Not Hope. These Tories are worse. They pretend they do. They are utterly shameless.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/help-to-work-is-really-punishment-unemployed-people

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Lazard advised on Royal Mail shares then profited by £8m in flotation

Investment bank 'made huge buck at expense of ordinary taxpayers' says public accounts committee's Margaret Hodge.

 

The government paid Lazard £1.5m for Royal Mail flotation advice. The bank bought the shares at 330p then quickly sold them at 470p.

 

The investment bank that advised the government not to increase the price of Royal Mail shares, despite widespread fears they were hugely undervalued, made a profit of more than £8m by immediately selling the company's stock in the wake of its controversial privatisation, a parliamentary commitee was told.

 

Lazard, which was paid £1.5m by the government for flotation advice, followed its own recommendation and bought 6m shares at 330p each on the day of the float but sold them within 48 hours at 470p to reap a profit of £8.4m.

 

Margaret Hodge, chair of the parliamentary public accounts committee (PAC), said Lazard "made a killing at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer that lost £750m on day one" of Royal Mail's London Stock Exchange debut.

 

An official report by the National Audit Office last month found that the government decided against increasing the flotation price of Royal Mail beyond 330p-a-share because of warnings from Lazard's corporate advisory arm, Lazard & Co, that City funds would be put off.

On the day of the flotation, on 11 October, the shares rocketed 38% due to phenomenal demand from the City and public. They gained £750m in value in the biggest one-day rise in a privatisation since British Airways in 1987. The shares, which continued to rise to a peak of 615p, are now trading at 530p.

 

During the sale Lazard & Co advised the government to sell the shares as cheaply as 212p. Other banks valued the shares as high as 510p, with none reckoning they were worth less than 300p.

 

Hodge, who questioned Lazard and the government's other advisers on Wednesday, said: "How did you get it so wrong that it cost the taxpayer £750m on day one?"

 

Lazard's investment division, Lazard Asset Management, cashed in despite the advice from the business secretary, Vince Cable, that the postal service should "start its new life with a core of high-quality investors who would be there in good times and bad".

 

William Rucker, chief executive of Lazard & Co, admitted at the PAC hearing on Wednesday that his part of the company knew that Lazard Asset Management was given "golden ticket" priority investor status, allowing its investment arm preferential access to the shares.

Hodge said she was astounded that Rucker knew that Lazard Asset Managment was on the list. He denied that there was anything improper in Lazard acting as adviser and investor. He said there were Chinese walls preventing one half of the business from knowing what the other half was doing.

 

Denying any wrongdoing, Rucker pointed out that the £8.4m profit was made on behalf of clients rather than for Lazard Asset Management itself.

 

Lazard Asset Management was one of 16 investors given "priority investor" status that allowed them to buy bigger chunks of Royal Mail in the hope that they would stay with the company through thick and thin.

 

However, six of the investors sold all of their shares almost immediately and a further six had sold most of their stake within weeks.

The list, which was published by Cable on Wednesday following a long campaign by politicians and the media, revealed that three aggressive hedge funds were given the "golden ticket" status despite the business secretary's pledge that Royal Mail would not fall into the hands of "spivs and speculators".

 

The hedge funds – Third Point, Och Ziff and George Soros' family fund – were allowed to buy millions of shares while hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were limited to just £749 worth.

 

Hodge said the public offer was massively oversubscribed and the public generally "could have bought the lot". She said the funds made a killing at the expense of ordinary taxpayers, who lost £750m on day one. "That is just really, really uncomfortable – that is just wrong."

Hodge said it felt grossly wrong that a few in the City "made a huge buck" while the ordinary taxpayer lost out.

 

Ed Miliband accused the prime minister of ripping off taxpayers by grossly undervaluing the postal service. David Cameron insisted the sale was a "success for our country".

 

http://www.liverpoolway.co.uk/index.php?/topic/82870-cameron-cuts-will-change-our-way-of-life/page-469

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Report out saying the police don't record one in five crimes, unbelievable scenes!

 

 

“Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels. I’ve been here before.”

[Scooby Dudek]

 

The investment bank that advised the government not to increase the price of Royal Mail shares, despite widespread fears they were hugely undervalued, made a profit of more than £8m by immediately selling the company's stock in the wake of its controversial privatisation, a parliamentary commitee was told.

 

Lazard, which was paid £1.5m by the government for flotation advice, followed its own recommendation and bought 6m shares at 330p each on the day of the float but sold them within 48 hours at 470p to reap a profit of £8.4m.

 

During the sale Lazard & Co advised the government to sell the shares as cheaply as 212p. Other banks valued the shares as high as 510p, with none reckoning they were worth less than 300p.

 

Hodge, who questioned Lazard and the government's other advisers on Wednesday, said: "How did you get it so wrong that it cost the taxpayer £750m on day one?"

 

Lazard's investment division, Lazard Asset Management, cashed in despite the advice from the business secretary, Vince Cable, that the postal service should "start its new life with a core of high-quality investors who would be there in good times and bad".

 

William Rucker, chief executive of Lazard & Co, admitted at the PAC hearing on Wednesday that his part of the company knew that Lazard Asset Management was given "golden ticket" priority investor status, allowing its investment arm preferential access to the shares.

Hodge said she was astounded that Rucker knew that Lazard Asset Managment was on the list. He denied that there was anything improper in Lazard acting as adviser and investor. He said there were Chinese walls preventing one half of the business from knowing what the other half was doing.

 

Lazard Asset Management was one of 16 investors given "priority investor" status that allowed them to buy bigger chunks of Royal Mail in the hope that they would stay with the company through thick and thin.

 

However, six of the investors sold all of their shares almost immediately and a further six had sold most of their stake within weeks.

The list, which was published by Cable on Wednesday following a long campaign by politicians and the media, revealed that three aggressive hedge funds were given the "golden ticket" status despite the business secretary's pledge that Royal Mail would not fall into the hands of "spivs and speculators

 

http://www.liverpoolway.co.uk/index.php?/topic/82870-cameron-cuts-will-change-our-way-of-life/page-469

 

Luckily I was sitting down whilst reading this.

 

No conflict of interest. Obviously with the history of investment banks and hedge funds there was no need to put regulations in place and just take them at their word that they would not sell for a quick profit.

No one involved from the government can be blamed, they trusted the most honourable people in our society.

[stringvest]

Everything's stats now. My mate's a teacher where his school has already decided to expel a badly behaved special needs kid but are waiting until he's done his SATs because he's predicted to get good grades that will bring the school's average up.

 

that happens everywhere mate.  Even in Eton.

[Jairzinho]

Reading an article in the i that reckons nearly a million crimes unrecorded. Incredible scenes. Its almost as if what people are seeing with their eyes, rather than the horseshit spouted by the govt, is true.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

And Stronts has the cheek to call us all conspiracy theorists.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Luckily I was sitting down whilst reading this.

 

No conflict of interest. Obviously with the history of investment banks and hedge funds there was no need to put regulations in place and just take them at their word that they would not sell for a quick profit.

No one involved from the government can be blamed, they trusted the most honourable people in our society.

I am more disgusted by Help To Work.