Quote Originally Posted by Trickytreesreds View Post
They have been challenged sith to show this black hole. They refuse to do so.
I take that as a lie then and the black hole we now have, is after all the pay rises/ the white elephant GB energy/ foreign aid/ foreign climate aid/ asylum fiasco/ all the little ones added together like donations to African spice girls band, or dance troops.
Pay rises. I don't think anybody could, successfully, argue that doctors and nurses didn't deserve a hefty rise. Well deserved IMO. Add to that the fact that, due to the low wage and high hours, doctors and nurses were leaving at a great rate to get jobs either in the private sector or abroad then the rises were totally necessary to keep the NHS alive. Hopefully, this rise will stem the flow and encourage more to join the NHS. I also think their next rise will also be higher than inflation.

The train drivers? Don't they work for privately owned rail companies. How would their pay rise affect government coffers? As I've said before, the Blue Tory HMG getting involved and putting the mockers on any real wage negotiations was strange as, in reality, it's not their job to negotiate wage rates and/or T&C's in the private sphere. It was a purely political move on their part and should not, IMO, have happened. What will happen down the line ( ) will be interesting to follow. What I don't ever see being agreed to is railway employees agreeing to more weekend working tied to a decrease in weekend working premiums, ditto night shifts and they also won't agree to things they deem to lessen passenger safety. Personally, I can't say I disagree with them. The cure? When franchises expire, don't extend them. Let a national enterprise take over and run them for the good of passengers. Most are foreign owned. At least one is Dutch owned and the dividend they get helps keep our train service running somewhat better than the UK trains.