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The bare faced cheek of it

‘Tater:

Just as their senior colleagues were burdened with excess tax charges on their pensions,

This from the man who wants to stop anyone gaining tax relief on their pensions Unless, of course, the cash is wasted on the ‘Tater Master Plan.

Oh, and this?

The real decline in pay exceeds 25 per cent.

Lying toads:

The association’s annual representative meeting 2022 in Brighton this week passed a motion pointing out that doctors’ pay has fallen against RPI (retail price index) by up to 30% since 2008

RPI tends to run hotter than CPI. By, umm, up to 1, maybe 1,5% actually. Meaning that some goodly chunk to all of this fall in “real” wages is because the doctors are trying to use an inflation measure that no one else does any more.

But of course an accountant and political economist would never mention that if the story was to propagandistic benefit now, would he?

18 thoughts on “The bare faced cheek of it”

  1. I am keen to see Our NHS doctors receive what they deserve.

    Anybody know how I can capture and transport the evaporate of my micturation?

  2. What happened in 2004, I hear you cry? Well, Andy Burnham negotiated a new GP contract and got taken to the cleaners by the BMA, mainly. A GP’s average pay went from £80k to £150k in three years and ever since the NHS has been trying to rein things back

  3. Also, I have just noticed that Murphy’s blog has 2,258 pages of his blatherings. At say eight blog posts per page since January 2005 that is an average of about three brainfart blog posts a day, every day, including weekends, high days and holidays.

  4. “Meaning that some goodly chunk to all of this fall in “real” wages is because the doctors are trying to use an inflation measure that no one else does any more”

    Please check which measure of inflation is used to calculate the interest on student loans.

  5. Isn’t he married to a retired doctor, who is presumably in receipt of a final salary pension? I bet her pension is not invested in 1% bonds.

  6. Ha Ha – Gerry can’t be serious and must be taking the P out of the Potato surely? A high point in Murphy’s “best efforts” includes calling all Tories fascists.

    GerryC says:
    April 7 2023 at 10:11 am

    The level of political discourse is at an all time low, despite your best efforts, Richard.

  7. Steve… Dunno what you’re planning with water vapour, but the Interesting Stuff is, hypothetically speaking, alledgedly in the residue.. 0:)

  8. Maybe we should adopt the American use “compensation” to add together wages, pension subsidy, and any other perks the mass-murdering bastards get.

  9. ” Well, Andy Burnham negotiated a new GP contract and got taken to the cleaners by the BMA, mainly.”

    It wasn’t Andy Burnham, it was Alan Milburn. And he didn’t get taken to the cleaners, he delivered himself to the cleaners on his own time and expense.

    The guy who was the GP negotiator couldn’t believe what the DoH were offering. They had never thought they would get the DoH to allow them to give up evening and weekend cover, and even if they did the penalty demanded in terms of lost income would be large. Whereas the DoH came straight out with an offer of overall higher pay, and only a £6k pay reduction for dropping evenings and weekend cover. So they got a massive pay rise AND a huge reduction in responsibility. It has to go down as one of the most destructive bits of government administration of the NHS there has ever been. A large proportion of the current ills stem from the destruction of the GP service that has resulted from that decision.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/gloating-gps-delighted-with-lucrative-pay-deal-7248878.html

  10. Jim, I was at school (& am still in touch) with the GP who negotiated with Milburn – he still chuckles about how AM just accepted the initial, outrageous demands!

  11. Wasn’t it Gordon Brown who introduced CPI? If so, it was surely done for a reason other than that it would be an improvement on RPI. Probably for the political betterment of his mates. You cannot trust that malignant, unscrupulous toad. I have to say that RPI tends to track my experience much more closely than CPI

  12. @ Diogenes
    CPI doesn’t include housing costs for owner-occupiers; house prices more than doubled in ten years under Blair/Brown: CPI was introduced to hide the impact of that on the cost of living.

  13. Indeed John77. I remember much comment about that at the time and also that CPIH is almost never referred to

  14. Another piece of inflation data. I previously reported how my Warburton’s loaf had gone up from 145p to 175p, so I had switched to Co-op at 125p. Well, Warburtons are now 210p, and the Co-op loaf is now 105p. So is that a 45% increase or a 28% decrease? Or even, for Guardian journalists, a 200% increase!

  15. Over the weekend I discovered that there is a series of childrens’ books about ‘Supertato’. Worth following up? They are on Amazon.

  16. Why should only government-sector workers get the benefit of no pension maximum?

    Ingrateful fuckers wanting us (well not me, since I’m in the US, but we’ve got the same ingrateful bastards here) to subsidize their goodies.

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