[Politics] Do we need a General Strike?

[Fignon's Ponytail]

My wife has worked at RSCH for almost 30 years. Shes pretty much had enough now....last month being the nearest shes been to walking away as shes so fed up with it.
She has been working solidly for 16 years getting the new hospital project designed and approved (alongside her normal day to day role of providing all the hospitals in Sussex with the radiopharmacy kits for cancer scans etc) - and the last few weeks has been working 7 day / 80+hrs a week, starting at 4.30am (thanks to having barely enough staff these days) solely to try & get her dept open because of technical setbacks etc. delaying it all.
Her reward for all that was a week off with stress (shes been coming home in tears with everything thats going on), over £200 down on monthly pay as a result of whatever deal is in place, and being taxed over £2k last month alone (Im assuming because of the extra hours shes had to put in...just to try and provide a service for patients in the new hospital)

No wonder shes had enough of the NHS.

 

[Albion my Albion]

So how many Generals have gone on strike?

 

[Kuipers Supporters Club]

Pride train cancellation: Rail staff told not to wear branded shirts for safety

A rail company has warned its staff not to wear branded shirts for their own safety, as they cancel train services and pull out of the Pride parade

www.theargus.co.uk

A rail company has warned its staff not to wear branded shirts for their own safety as it cancels train services and pulls out of the Pride parade.

The trains in this country are a national disgrace. I have no sympathy with the unions who just want to stop people having a good time.

 

[jackalbion]

The trains in this country are a national disgrace. I have no sympathy with the unions who just want to stop people having a good time.

While I think it’s come to an impasse and with no resolution, the union isn’t actually on strike in this situation. Other operators (Southeastern) are running a full service, with the same industrial action.

 

[GOM]

My wife has worked at RSCH for almost 30 years. Shes pretty much had enough now....last month being the nearest shes been to walking away as shes so fed up with it.
She has been working solidly for 16 years getting the new hospital project designed and approved (alongside her normal day to day role of providing all the hospitals in Sussex with the radiopharmacy kits for cancer scans etc) - and the last few weeks has been working 7 day / 80+hrs a week, starting at 4.30am (thanks to having barely enough staff these days) solely to try & get her dept open because of technical setbacks etc. delaying it all.
Her reward for all that was a week off with stress (shes been coming home in tears with everything thats going on), over £200 down on monthly pay as a result of whatever deal is in place, and being taxed over £2k last month alone (Im assuming because of the extra hours shes had to put in...just to try and provide a service for patients in the new hospital)

No wonder shes had enough of the NHS.

I can't imagine how stressful that must be and she certainly deserves good pay, but I imagine many people would love to earn enough to have to pay £2000 in tax in a month.

 

[fly high]

I can't imagine how stressful that must be and she certainly deserves good pay, but I imagine many people would love to earn enough to have to pay £2000 in tax in a month.

I thought I was doing quite well when my take home pay after tax & NI reached £2000

 

[Fignon's Ponytail]

I can't imagine how stressful that must be and she certainly deserves good pay, but I imagine many people would love to earn enough to have to pay £2000 in tax in a month.

Shes normally nowhere near that amount of tax, so it came as a huge shock tbh.
I guess thats the penalty for just trying to do your job and sacrificing home life etc. to see that the patients interests are looked after.
Damned if you do, damned if you dont.

 

[drew]

Shes normally nowhere near that amount of tax, so it came as a huge shock tbh.
I guess thats the penalty for just trying to do your job and sacrificing home life etc. to see that the patients interests are looked after.
Damned if you do, damned if you dont.

Might be the one off payment the Gov made as part of the pay settlement. My wife in the same boat although not as many hours as yours.

 

[Goldstone Guy]

I can't imagine how stressful that must be and she certainly deserves good pay, but I imagine many people would love to earn enough to have to pay £2000 in tax in a month.

There are thousands of vacancies within the NHS. Nothing to stop anyone from doing the training and then working the job, if they think the job described (or any of the other vacant positions) is well paid and worth the stress. Get back to me and let me know how it goes.

 

[GOM]

There are thousands of vacancies within the NHS. Nothing to stop anyone from doing the training and then working the job, if they think the job described (or any of the other vacant positions) is well paid and worth the stress. Get back to me and let me know how it goes.

Please re-read my post, your reply is totally unrelated to anything I said.

 

[Goldstone Guy]

Please re-read my post, your reply is totally unrelated to anything I said.

Ok fair enough and apologies, I must have been particularly grumpy last night.

The issue is that the UK media are often reporting salaries for various professions, particularly with all the strikes over the past year or two. Train drivers, nurses, teachers, airport staff, doctors of various types, radiographers etc. Most or possibly all get their salaries reported, sometimes regularly in our media (often inaccurately or cherry picking stats to inflate the figures in my opinion). The clear message being "look at what these people earn, they should be grateful and count themselves lucky they're in such well paid, comfortable jobs". It's a tactic of the media, in cahoots with the government/ruling elite, to pit normal working people against one another and distract them from the mess this government have made. Fair enough, that's what they do and I wouldn't expect them to do anything different. My real frustration is with the idiots who read that crap and actually believe it.

So the "I wish I got paid that much, they don't know how lucky they are" types are fools as far as I'm concerned. If you think £60,000 or whatever is a lot for a train driver/tube driver etc you've got two options - either accept it and get on with your own life, or learn to be a tube driver and earn the salary yourself. If it's that great and well paid the job will have lots of applicants and qualified staff and salaries will come down. There are thousands of NHS vacancies for a reason and Fignon's Ponytail demonstrates why - not having a go at you and I can see you acknowledge his wife's job seems stressful.

 

[jessiejames]

All workers are under paid and everyones job is just as important as the next one. If you dint like the job or the pay, find another one.
Im lucky i work for an haulage umbrella company. Each depot deals with different things, 10 weeks a year normally last week in May to end of July i transfer over to do continental haulage driving part of the company. Because of that im on approx £48k a year, more than most in the NHS, the 12 regular drivers on that side earn £78k a year, only work on average 8 hours a day, sometimes like one driver a couple if weeks ago had 5 days downtime, it was cheaper for the company to book him all inclusive hotel in Greece for the 5 days still being paid for that, however they will only spend 6 weeks a year in this country not ideal if you have a family life hence the good pay. Should these drivers be on less money than someone saving lives yes but if the drivers went on strike how long before the shops are empty and no produce that is imported is available to buy.
You make your own choices in life be happy and proud of those choices u made, its only you that can change it.

 

[Albion my Albion]

Please re-read my post, your reply is totally unrelated to anything I said.

To me that is a large number of the non-football posts on NSC.

 

[Justice]

My wife has worked at RSCH for almost 30 years. Shes pretty much had enough now....last month being the nearest shes been to walking away as shes so fed up with it.
She has been working solidly for 16 years getting the new hospital project designed and approved (alongside her normal day to day role of providing all the hospitals in Sussex with the radiopharmacy kits for cancer scans etc) - and the last few weeks has been working 7 day / 80+hrs a week, starting at 4.30am (thanks to having barely enough staff these days) solely to try & get her dept open because of technical setbacks etc. delaying it all.
Her reward for all that was a week off with stress (shes been coming home in tears with everything thats going on), over £200 down on monthly pay as a result of whatever deal is in place, and being taxed over £2k last month alone (Im assuming because of the extra hours shes had to put in...just to try and provide a service for patients in the new hospital)

No wonder shes had enough of the NHS.

That’s normal hours for many self employed people many of which we don’t get paid for ie doing quotes, book keeping, advertising/promotional work.

 

[amexer]

My wife has worked at RSCH for almost 30 years. Shes pretty much had enough now....last month being the nearest shes been to walking away as shes so fed up with it.
She has been working solidly for 16 years getting the new hospital project designed and approved (alongside her normal day to day role of providing all the hospitals in Sussex with the radiopharmacy kits for cancer scans etc) - and the last few weeks has been working 7 day / 80+hrs a week, starting at 4.30am (thanks to having barely enough staff these days) solely to try & get her dept open because of technical setbacks etc. delaying it all.
Her reward for all that was a week off with stress (shes been coming home in tears with everything thats going on), over £200 down on monthly pay as a result of whatever deal is in place, and being taxed over £2k last month alone (Im assuming because of the extra hours shes had to put in...just to try and provide a service for patients in the new hospital)

No wonder shes had enough of the NHS.

Appreciate like many many people your wife has a stressful job. Are you saying she should not pay tax on her overtime. Many people in private business are working lots of unpaid overtime to keep there job and business going. Things are mighty tough out there and outside of public services there are not many very secure jobs

 

[Fignon's Ponytail]

Are you saying she should not pay tax on her overtime.

Not at all - never said anything like that. Just the amount she was taxed was insane.

 

[GOM]

Ok fair enough and apologies, I must have been particularly grumpy last night.

The issue is that the UK media are often reporting salaries for various professions, particularly with all the strikes over the past year or two. Train drivers, nurses, teachers, airport staff, doctors of various types, radiographers etc. Most or possibly all get their salaries reported, sometimes regularly in our media (often inaccurately or cherry picking stats to inflate the figures in my opinion). The clear message being "look at what these people earn, they should be grateful and count themselves lucky they're in such well paid, comfortable jobs". It's a tactic of the media, in cahoots with the government/ruling elite, to pit normal working people against one another and distract them from the mess this government have made. Fair enough, that's what they do and I wouldn't expect them to do anything different. My real frustration is with the idiots who read that crap and actually believe it.

So the "I wish I got paid that much, they don't know how lucky they are" types are fools as far as I'm concerned. If you think £60,000 or whatever is a lot for a train driver/tube driver etc you've got two options - either accept it and get on with your own life, or learn to be a tube driver and earn the salary yourself. If it's that great and well paid the job will have lots of applicants and qualified staff and salaries will come down. There are thousands of NHS vacancies for a reason and Fignon's Ponytail demonstrates why - not having a go at you and I can see you acknowledge his wife's job seems stressful.

Too true, but it's not just a tactic of the media, the Unions use it too, does anyone actually believe that all Junior Dotors earn just £14 per hour....no of course not, but that's what's on the placards and touted about. In a way that does a disservice since nobody believes it. It may be the lowest starting salary but rises to c. £60,000.
Now I'm not saying that is excessive by any means, but you can't blame the media for saying how much they earn whilst at the same time using the other end of the stick.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Not at all - never said anything like that. Just the amount she was taxed was insane.

That's the way PAYE works. If you get £2K normal salary in April (Month 1) and a £10K annual bonus also in April then PAYE thinks you are earning £144,000 a year and so clobber you for 40% / 45% tax on two-thirds of it.

However, in Month 2 when your gross income returns to £2K then PAYE will adjust downwards and the tax over-deducted will start coming back to the employee via higher net pay. In my example, by Month 12 the employee will have earned £34K and ALL of punitive tax will have been repaid by the end of the tax year.

 

[Commander]

Not at all - never said anything like that. Just the amount she was taxed was insane.

Have you checked if it is correct? I sometimes get quarterly bonuses, and when I get one HMRC often assume that this is the amount I will now receive for every month for the rest of the year, and tax me as if it is. If you call HMRC they will sort it out, they're actually pretty helpful once you get through.

 

[deletebeepbeepbeep]

That's the way PAYE works. If you get £2K normal salary in April (Month 1) and a £10K annual bonus also in April then PAYE thinks you are earning £144,000 a year and so clobber you for 40% / 45% tax on two-thirds of it.

However, in Month 2 when your gross income returns to £2K then PAYE will adjust downwards and the tax over-deducted will start coming back to the employee via higher net pay. In my example, by Month 12 the employee will have earned £34K and ALL of punitive tax will have been repaid by the end of the tax year.

Yeah this is how it works for me with my occasional yearly bonus (although it tips me in to the upper bracket rather than top bracket!)