General Politics Thread

[strichener]

23 minutes ago, BawWatchin said:

Because they didn't have a workable system to replace it with. A new system needs to be tested before it can be properly implemented. Simply scrapping the council tax and replacing it with some untested system would have been deeply irresponsible. The promise was also made under the assumption that they would be running as a majority Government in parliament again, which obviously didn't happen.

That's an awful lot of history being re-written in one post.

[BawWatchin]

21 minutes ago, strichener said:

That's an awful lot of history being re-written in one post.

Care to explain that? Or are you just going to keep hammering the red arrows while posting comments that contain nothing?

[topcat(The most tip top)]

I thought I would bring a little bit of perspective to this debate.

The actual pay offer was not 9% but 3% from April 2018, 3% from August 2018 and 3% from April 2019 with another 3% from April 2020.

The previous pay rises were 1% from April 2017 and 1% from August 2018.

that’s 11.5% over 5 years equivalent to 2.2% annually

Ccredit to Mr Porteous who taught me maths in the ‘80s

[John Lambies Doos]

I'm a member of the SNP.

Inside job

[pandarilla]

But not a peep out of the teachers union  that over sees England and Wales.... their silence on the matter is deafening. Yet up here, we have a teachers union that isn't satisfied with the current arrangement that already see's them better off with a commitment to rises that the UK Government hasn't commited to for England and Wales. Yet they continue to place the burden on the Scottish Government who is supposed to have some sort of magic money tree of their own.

The Scottish government are responsible, through cosla, for teachers wages in Scotland.

I've no idea why the unions down south are not making as much noise as our unions - but I also don't particularly care.

I vote for the SNP (some of the time), but they're in the big boy chairs in Scotland. This is their problem, and to be fair to them, I think they're trying to reach an agreement. But the union is promoting its members interests, which is exactly how it should be.

[BawWatchin]

14 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

The Scottish government are responsible, through cosla, for teachers wages in Scotland.

I've no idea why the unions down south are not making as much noise as our unions - but I also don't particularly care.

I vote for the SNP (some of the time), but they're in the big boy chairs in Scotland. This is their problem, and to be fair to them, I think they're trying to reach an agreement. But the union is promoting its members interests, which is exactly how it should be.

 

Well in that case, the interest of it's members would be to get the highest possible wage they can, which would result in never ending strike action, as they'll forever push for more than what is offered.

[Arabdownunder]

3 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Been working late and I've been whooshed.

Half past four finish?

[Paco]

But not a peep out of the teachers union  that over sees England and Wales.... their silence on the matter is deafening. Yet up here, we have a teachers union that isn't satisfied with the current arrangement that already see's them better off with a commitment to rises that the UK Government hasn't commited to for England and Wales. Yet they continue to place the burden on the Scottish Government who is supposed to have some sort of magic money tree of their own.

 

Here’s the teaching Union in England and Wales proposing strike action over funding in November 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/21/teaching-union-leader-calls-members-vote-strike

 

Here’s the teaching Union in England and Wales proposing strike action over pay in March 2018 - no 5% rise in 2019 and they’re out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43604858

 

This is Rangers/Celtic levels of paranoia here.

[BawWatchin]

3 hours ago, Paco said:

 

Here’s the teaching Union in England and Wales proposing strike action over funding in November 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/21/teaching-union-leader-calls-members-vote-strike

 

Here’s the teaching Union in England and Wales proposing strike action over pay in March 2018 - no 5% rise in 2019 and they’re out. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43604858

 

This is Rangers/Celtic levels of paranoia here.

We will see.

[strichener]

12 hours ago, BawWatchin said:

Care to explain that? Or are you just going to keep hammering the red arrows while posting comments that contain nothing?

They did have a system to replace it with.  Well they did until 2009...

The SNP have continually kicked the can down the road on local government finance both in minority and majority governments.  Even the council tax freeze was originally a Tory policy adopted by the SNP once they realised that no matter how they worked the numbers on their LIT proposals, it would have created too many losers.

The last proposal to scrap council tax was raised by the greens and was defeated by the SNP and Tories voting against it.

[BawWatchin]

14 minutes ago, strichener said:

They did have a system to replace it with.  Well they did until 2009...

The SNP have continually kicked the can down the road on local government finance both in minority and majority governments.  Even the council tax freeze was originally a Tory policy adopted by the SNP once they realised that no matter how they worked the numbers on their LIT proposals, it would have created too many losers.

The last proposal to scrap council tax was raised by the greens and was defeated by the SNP and Tories voting against it.

No they didn't. They had an idea for a system to replace it with. But nothing that had been tried or tested for practicality. The greens wanted to scrap council tax and replace it with a system that hadn't been tested, so of course it was voted down. Labour very predictably abstained on the issue as they didn't want to be seen siding with the SNP or the Tories, even although they were in full agreement.

[BawWatchin]

7 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

Why haven't they tested one then?

Because they would need to get a vote through parliament just to test a new system. The greens won't back a system they don't consider radical enough, but the SNP aren't going to waste time and money testing out a system that is doomed to fail from the very beginning. So they need cross party support to test out a system that actually has a chance of working, but they can forget getting any cross party support from any of the other parties.

[pandarilla]

Well in that case, the interest of it's members would be to get the highest possible wage they can, which would result in never ending strike action, as they'll forever push for more than what is offered.

What? Unions are made up of members, not weird psychopaths hell-bent on strikes.

[renton]

8 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

Fair enough. Wonder why they never did it in the last parly.

partly because no one was really thinking seriously about it.

Partly it's a fairly wide precipice and a narrow rope walk to traverse politically. Any tweak to the system will create new winners and losers, any new system will amplify that effect. Bringing in any significantly new system, regardless of how it works also generates process stories about the almost inevitable snag work in execution.

Take the Land Value Tax system. On the face of it, progressive and potentially raises significant extra revenue, as well as acting as a behavioural nudge towards reducing wasteland. Big estates and very rich people won't like it, but no Scottish politician ever lost a vote attacking them. However, such a system inevitably creates issues with, for example, old people in older dwellings who've been there their whole lives. Forced to sell up the 'ol family home under the new system and you've got little old ladies on the front page, every day for months.

So even with a majority, you kind of have to spread the shit evenly amongst everyone so that subsequent blame does not attach entirely to you. From the opposition point of view there is nothing to be gained by helping you: They won't get credit if it works, and will happily watch you take the flak if it doesn't.

So, unless someone can find and manage a path that smooths out all transitions, reduces or eliminates the number of losers and does so in a way that doesn't create expensive bureaucracy, then it'll be tweaks to the system until the sun goes out. 

[NotThePars]

Baw Watchin thinks the teachers unions are led by Bolsheviks transplanted from Petrograd July 1917 and not mild mannered left liberals.

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

12 hours ago, BawWatchin said:

Well in that case, the interest of it's members would be to get the highest possible wage they can, which would result in never ending strike action, as they'll forever push for more than what is offered.

What? Unions are made up of members, not weird psychopaths hell-bent on strikes.

This seems to be lost on lots of people nowadays, some appear to think that it's Arthur Scargill type characters that are shouting the odds and dictating what the members must do as opposed to the members actually giving the hierarchy a mandate to carry out.

As a former Union official myself, I got sick and tired of explaining to certain people that "they" were in fact the Union and not me, as I didn't make the decisions, I only attempted to carry out the wishes of the majority of our membership.

[dirty dingus]

4 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Baw Watchin thinks the teachers unions are led by Bolsheviks transplanted from Petrograd July 1917 and not mild mannered left liberals.

The ones in my schools were either alcoholic psychopathic tweed wearing philanderers or sexually repressed god bothering wee wummin with a penchant for extreme violence.

[NotThePars]

The ones in my schools were either alcoholic psychopathic tweed wearing philanderers or sexually repressed god bothering wee wummin with a penchant for extreme violence.

The union rep in my high school shouted at me from his car calling me a Nazi the day after the 2010 GE because I said I voted Lib Dem. Went back in 2014 to volunteer and saw he had a stack of the Wee Blue Book and Yes badges all over his jacket despite the Fife wide ban on discussing the referendum in schools.

[Detournement]

10 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

 

The union rep in my high school shouted at me from his car calling me a Nazi the day after the 2010 GE because I said I voted Lib Dem. Went back in 2014 to volunteer and saw he had a stack of the Wee Blue Book and Yes badges all over his jacket despite the Fife wide ban on discussing the referendum in schools.

 

I hope you apologised to him.

Edited February 22, 2019 by Detournement

[NotThePars]

I hope you apologised to him.

Ofc I did. We bonded over all the No voters we’d jettisoned before the referendum vote.