In terms of the economy, public sector money (when handled with competence) regulates things. If the state takes a healthy tax cut and spends it wisely economies overheat less, recessions are less severe, and all the while it provides essential services that businesses need (educated employees and customers, rule of law, security of person and property).

The benefits that direct govt spending bring to a region are often less clear. Postwar industrial policy being the obvious example. People complain that Thatcher closed down a lot of industry, but the real error lay with her predecessors, who allowed sclerotic industries to become dependent on unsustainable handouts. If they had invested in capital equipment, product development and so on British Leyland and British Steel would have been successful, but loss-making plants in marginal constituencies would have been closed, so too many MPs couldn't take the risk.

I'm not sure that objective of all this is harmed if local chip shops and car dealerships lose out a little on account of suppressed demand due to reduced wages among government employees. The objective as I understand it is for talented people to find government desk jobs less enticing, and for them to find a more adventurous niche in local firms that add value, so retailers are not a sensible priority. Business and Professional Services would be a far more valuable objective. Part of the problem in these regions as far as I understand it though is that all the bright kids tend to leave school with the intention of getting a government job, and tend not to be too fussy about which one. This is different from kids who decide in advance to be teachers or social workers, which I hope we can all agree is laudable. I don't think it's quite so awesome when a bright 15 year old has an ambition to occupy a desk at the ministry of Ag Fish and Food, or the DVLA.

I am not clear how they plan to help provide financing for dynamic small companies to expand and take on new staff, nor how they propose to inject new funds into training services for them - I am not after all Tory so I don't get let in on all their plans. I would like to point out that I am not their spokesman, nor their apologist in chief. I simply didn't agree with somebody's knee-jerk hysterical assertion that this proposal is the product of mental disease or unalloyed evil.

NewsFlash: Public Servants in expensive areas no longer condemned to lower standard of living.

Hang on, isn't there already a form of pay imbalance? You get London Weighting depending on how close you are to the capital. In essence - more money for living near/close/in London.

+1. You do get London weighting for living in the capital.

Which is why I think it's all a scam and they're essentially bringing in a pay freeze.

That's right.

Because London's the only expensive place in the country.

They'd look sweet trying to introduce it here considering the civil service is the backbone of this little rock, and the fact that we pay more for everything from food to car insurance...

I dont get a london weighting - the problem is that often peole think that the public sector has 1 standard pay scale - it dosent - almost every dept has a totally seperate set of pay scales and in many depts they have multipul pay scales

Where I work there are at least 4 (and probably more) different grade / pay structures with different benifits, pay, pensions etc and thats just one area within a large dept

It depends. I moved from Munich to Bramsche - the most expensive city in Germany to one of the cheaper in the West half. I took a paycut of around 60%, but my standard of living increased - i.e. I had more money "in the hand" every month

The flat was bigger and cost less than a third of what I had paid outside of Munich. Food, especially eating out, was markedly cheaper.

So, looking at 16K or 19K, you'd have to look at the other factors. When accomodation is 50% cheaper in the north, then a 16% pay "decrease" would mean a much better standard of living. Final salary doesn't mean much, you need the full equation to see whether you are worse off or not.

If you offer 19K in both places, it is a no-brainer, you can live like a king in a poorer place and like a pauper in a major town down south.

But the Govt wants us to live like paupers irrespective of the area!

I work in an area where the majority of properties are in the £1m bracket. I doubt i'd get a pay rise to match!

Would you care to name a country where system like this actually works (successfully)?

I could ask you if you can name a country where the opposite of my suggestion successfully works. I bet you'll have problems naming one.

At the moment, no. But because I can not does not mean that it is an ideal to which we should be striving, and indeed was the aim and goals when the welfare state was set up.

I am firmly of the belief that anything with strategic importance should be nationalised, not owned by private business. You only have to look at the railways to see the kind of mess that happens when a number of competing private industries are given the remit to run a public service. It's chaos - complex ticketing structures, poorly maintained rolling stock, routes she franchises a effectively having to be nationalised because no one wants to run them, or is incapable of doing so. All this because getting passengers from point A to point B along a line of track is a bit of a obstacle to running the business. You may ask how you can get something so simple so wrong, yet it appears that it happens on a day to day basis, and prices to travel are increasing beyond inflation on some routes. Bonuses are paid which should be invest in the network.

Translate that level of commercial incompetence to vital services, and you must surely see a problem. We are getting NHS services being put out to tender already, and the two leading private bidders have NO experience in the field of child medicine.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/ ... NTCMP=SRCH

Tell me that is right and proper. Tell me that you would be happy being treated in a health centre where the company running the place has no experience in that area. I know I would not. Maybe you can put my mind at rest in this instance.

You see, in this instance I see two companies with no experience making a pig's ear of it.

The problem I have with this, and I am sorry that you can not see why I am concerned or able to explain why it's going to be good, fair and equitable for all, is that there are places in society where we should not be looking to run like a business. A lot of these are in the "social areas" - health, crime prevention, education, defence etc.. I include in this grouping mass transport, utilities because I feel that they are of such national importance that they really should not be in private hands. We need a healthy population, the ability to protect, feed and power the nation and the means to move people and goes around to ensure a society with a high morale and to keep the economy moving.

Well it's been attempted many times and people are still trying but it has failed everywhere which is a good indication that this is not the way to go...

Out of interest, are they talking of a pay cut for poorer areas, or pay rise for richer ones? (one makes perfect sense, the other, not so much.)

Pay cut. Why would they ever agree to a pay rise? This is the Govt!

Also, will the MPs representing the poorer areas also be taking a cut?