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We know the solution to this

forced membership of pension schemes that cannot pay a return as the funds are invested in environmentally bankrupt companies,

Invest it all in 1% bonds at a time of 9% inflation instead of course.

32 thoughts on “We know the solution to this”

  1. Of course his economic expertise extends to the Labour Market

    Like the Bank of England, Johnson claims the UK has a ‘red hot’ labour market, with vacancies exceeding the number of people available to accept employment.

    My appraisal suggests this is untrue. The jobs available seem to have three characteristics. They are low paid. They are zero hours, or something akin to it. And many are with agencies, with the intention that the employer assume no obligation to the person they’d rather not call an employee beyond the end of any working day.

    I wonder how detailed his appraisal is. I went into LinkedIn and searched for Full Time jobs in Stevenage – over 20,000 within 25 miles. Thinking that he might be able to take me to task because of proximity to London – I ran the same search for Newcastle upon Tyne and Liverpool. Both over 10,000. Even Barrow- in Furness came up with more than 3,000 and that’s just from one site. Candidly he is talking utter rubbish.

    Strangely, like a caveman confronted by a laptop he stumbles into the debate recognising it is a complex picture, but that’s about all he can come up with. One thing I can say for certain is that if any of his policy prescriptions were acted on at all we’d soon now what true lack of opportunity was as no private firm would ever invest in the UK again.

  2. This made me chuckle, although ‘John Cavannah’doesn’t seem to be of North Korean or Soviet extraction….

    John Cavannah says:
    May 23 2022 at 9:15 am
    “Right now is the time when this year’s new teachers should be looking for their first jobs. But there are almost none available.”

    The TES currently has 9,042 jobs advertised. 7,539 are listed as permanent.

    Reply
    Richard Murphy says:
    May 23 2022 at 10:40 am
    How many for new teachers?

    And only one in three schools have a vacancy?

    Really?

  3. What utter bollocks from spud. Schools love NQTs because they’re a lot cheaper than more senior staff. They will always ditch a post threshold teacher who isn’t teaching Excellent every lesson in favour of an NQT.

  4. I used to work with somebody who was a supply teacher – she loved it because it paid more than being a permie. Where’s this “agency staff paid less than proper workers” assertion come from?

  5. @ V_P

    I can confirm that John Cavannah is a close friend of mine. It took all of two minutes research to unearth the info from the TES site, clearly two minutes more research than Spud undertook before making his claim that schools weren’t taking on permanent employees.

    As always though, arguing with Spud is like fighting with a blancmange and you know for certain that if you do come up with a conclusive rebuttal of his argument, he just won’t publish it.

  6. Andrew C

    I confess to not knowing the equivalent to the TES for the nursing profession – Nursing Times? I have a feeling rather like the old transport professionals publication you’d need to subscribe to get it but I do know locally based on anecdotal feedback the two hospitals in and around Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City have hundreds of vacancies (at least according to their local Trade Unions….)

    I must admit as I have said to Dennis I think we’re looking at the early signs of dementia – or at best a serious late mid life crisis. To suggest there’s ‘no decent jobs available’ is simply utter rubbish, and really shows how ignorant of reality he is…

  7. VP
    The Health Service Journal is the place to go for NHS jobs. Mostly “management”. Hundreds of vacancies for diversity and “commercial” hires. (You don’t need to subscribe to see the jobs.)
    An example: Commercial director, Yeovil. Salary one hundred grand. Since the nHS is not supposed to dirty its hands with grubby commerce, this is basically a job for a parking warden.

  8. Richie’s a sort of reverse toilet.

    You push the handle and instead of flushing away out it comes!

  9. Philip

    Thanks for that info – I’ll use it next time although I want to preserve my ‘acceptable’ TRUK login so might have to scour the web for another Senior North Korean to input… (could be time for Jang Song Thaek to return!) The bible for this kind of thing used to be the Guardian’s ‘Society section’ which had all the roles in the Non productive public sector (At its peak under Brown the supplement was bigger than the main paper!) but they seem to have moved ‘online’ now….

  10. environmentally bankrupt companies

    A.K.A. Perfectly viable companies which will only become technically bankrupt if he ever gets his bizarre way with accounting standards.

    Of have I misunderstood?

  11. John

    I tried to explain ‘Sustainable Cost Accounting’ principles (such as they are) to a retired Finance Director, only for him to literally choke on his drink.

    After he had recovered When I said that the originator of them was apparently a ‘qualified accountant’ – his response was: ‘Which branch of Woolworths did he purchase these credentials in?’ Fuelling my suspicion that there was some subterfuge involved in obtaining them…

  12. @BlokeInTejas

    “What does “environmentally bankrupt” mean?”

    ExpertInEverything Richard Murphy has suggested some audit standard which would require companies to work out the cost of eliminating all upstream and downstream CO2 emissions arising from their business (including the ones they have no control over) and putting this cost on their balance sheet. I would imagine this would make just about every single company insolvent and if they couldn’t come up with the money to offset this cost, they would be put into liquidation.

    We would go back to an economy we last saw in the 18th century.

    This is essential to save us from the Tories who are, according to Spud, a threat to human existence on the planet.

    He’ll probably do a Twitter poll, draw a Venn Diagram or write a poem to prove this.

  13. The TV News is currently reporting that ScotRail are cutting services ‘cos they can’t get the staff. They’re now talkinh about a shortage of NHS maternaty staff. In a break in my first day back at work, I’ve just popped out to buy some milk and have walked past ‘Staff Wanted’ signs in the local household goods shop, the local Greggs, the local pub, the local bakers’, the local frozen food shop, the next pub, the fish restaurant, the the chippie. I’ve been clearing out my email inbox of dozens of vacancies that have arrived since I popped out for a pint. Where’s this “no jobs”?

  14. I definitely think Spud should stick to poetry, AC. Though I suspect comparison with his work would make William McGonagall sound like Ezra Pound.

  15. Jgh

    What’s worth pointing out is that while this observation is odd, it’s very far from being his most bizarre claim

    – Apparently some people ‘don’t care’ and anyone who voted for the Conservatives and/ or Brexit is an ‘oppressor’, misogynist, racist or homophobe.
    – Banks don’t need deposits to run

    The list goes on and on. But I completely agree, I could walk down Stevenage high street or into town and if you walked into a cafe or retail outlet they’d most likely have one or several vacancies. That’s before looking at agencies (which he disapproves of – maybe he wants state run Labour exchanges?) and the fact most jobs are online.

  16. BlokeinTejas

    This is a helpful guide to SCA – despite being touted back in 2019 as an idea which had ‘a lot of potential interest’ it has been discarded rather like one of my son’s older toys – http://taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/SCAGuide.pdf (apologies for posting the direct link Tim but it is to directly expose his stupidity)

  17. O O.o O O O
    O. O. O. O
    O. O. O. O.
    O. Reality. O. O. Richard. O
    O. O. O. Murphy. O
    O. O. O. O
    Oo. Oo. Oo. Oo
    O o O. O O O

    Venn diagrams for our time
    Do I win a fiver or something ?

  18. VP: If state-run labour exchanges are anything like the existing state-run job centres, they’d be utterly crap at actually *getting* you employment, their task is to chuck you out of the door as fast as possible.

    And what’s wrong with utilising a service that has a capability that you don’t have? I am crap at *getting* jobs, my skill is in *doing* the job. Mainly because the doing is what I have obtained skill from 99% of my life, the getting I only do sporadically 1% of my life. Just as I don’t do my own dentistry, what’s wrong with me contracting to somebody else to do my job searching? Does Lord Spudcup also hate people outsourcing their accounting as well? People Must Do Their Own Accounts!

  19. As long as my pension fund buys the bonds in the secondary market then I’m okay with it… 10Y maturity bonds should be coming in at about £48 for £100 face value.

  20. @jgh

    ‘Where’s this “no jobs”?’

    I have a suspicion you might find it in Richard Murphy’s email inbox. Personally I wouldn’t employ him to stack the shelves in Poundland, but I imagine he has been firing out boatloads of CVs and not-very-cunningly-disguised begging letters proposing himself as the beneficiary of £150k pa ‘social justice’ ‘research’ sinecures to every .gov and fake charity email address he can find – but finding no takers.

    @Grist

    ‘Richie’s a sort of reverse toilet. You push the handle and instead of flushing away out it comes!’

    I hereby rename him Dicky Teliot.

  21. Shit, that didn’t work very well. Was supposed to be 2 circles

    It still made more sense than anything the Professor of Accounting at Sheffield University Management School has ever come up with.

  22. “with the intention that the employer assume no obligation to the person they’d rather not call an employee beyond the end of any working day.”

    I do not understand this. What obligation does he think an employer has to you once you are off the clock?

    Or when people talk about the ‘protections’ being an employee brings – there are none at the lower levels and at higher levels those protections don’t come from law but from employers doing things necessary to hire and retain that talent.

  23. “jgh
    May 23, 2022 at 11:56 am
    I used to work with somebody who was a supply teacher – she loved it because it paid more than being a permie. Where’s this “agency staff paid less than proper workers” assertion come from?”

    My niece is transitioning into agency work as a nurse – her own company is hiring temps at 2-3 time what they’re paying staff nurses in order to fill out shifts.

    And they’re telling the temps to not talk to staff about their pay to hide it.

  24. Worzel

    Some work to do there to perfect the Venn Diagram, before you can attempt a “Mind Map”. When these are mastered, you’ll be equipped to move on to invent spurious pseudo-social-science grifting mechanisms, like the Fair Tax Mark and Sustainable Cost Accounting, mainly targeted at the gullible third sector.

  25. “And they’re telling the temps to not talk to staff about their pay to hide it.”

    Basic pay, maybe. You can add 40-50% for the defined benefit pension scheme to start with.

  26. Same situation locally with lots of staff wanted signs, but one oddity is healthcare.
    There are only 5 ICU nursing jobs posted/advertised in a city of 5 million people, yet according to the union and anecdotally staff working there are significantly more I filled posts. Similarly an initiative to pay $20k bonus to work in rural areas if you stayed 2 years saw only 10 jobs posted despite talk of hundreds of vacancies.
    Despite a scheme to fund bringing in foreign nurses most of the jobs posted for nurses locally are part-time or temporary which isn’t going viable for work permits.
    The ineptitude of healthcare management seems to be the main issue, maybe they think as there’s a shortage of nurses there’s no point advertising positions.

  27. Blokes who answered my question:

    Thanks, blokes!
    So in essence it’s a meaning free term invented by the Potato to support his continual grifting efforts.

  28. @BlokeinTejas, Sustainable Cost Accounting was Murphy’s pitch to get back in with Labour after the fallout with Corbyn/McDonnell. It’s basically a way of saying to the left that they can nationalise and control anything they want to because ‘climate change’. Thankfully Labour are still ignoring him but he has picked up a couple of grants on the back of it.

  29. Sam Jones

    Yes indeed; I just hadn’t connected “environmentally bankrupt” to that particular piece of uninspired lunacy.

    My new plan for the Fall of the Greens is to convince them that every time they open their refrigerators, the loss of heat from the cold air falling to the ground kills another part of Gaia, so they must never open their refrigerators….

  30. “My new plan for the Fall of the Greens ”

    Does it involve rope and lampposts?
    No? Go plug your plan to the Greens then…

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