The Celtic pussycat
Rowwrrrr!!
Begorrah! It seems that the Irish public sector has made an enormous leap that our bloated, thuggish “civil” “service” seems to be reluctant to:
Good morning. Here is the news. Because of the budget deficit, shrinking economy and untenable level of national debt, all public service salaries will be cut by an average of 13.5 per cent, with immediate effect. The charges will appear on your payslip as “government levy”, and will apply to frontline public workers in health, education, transport and local services and also to MPs, Ministers of State and the Attorney-General.
Judges will be, for the moment, exempt, but a mechanism is in place for voluntary payment of this levy. So far 72 judges have paid up. No undertaking can be given about when, or if, take-home pay will return to former levels. The severity of this measure reflects the good levels of public pay, security and pension rights compared with the private sector. Government regrets the pain this will cause, but regards it as essential. Thank you.
And it certainly seems to be hurting the lifestyles of the Irish public servants in question, yet they’re bearing it with good grace, even though their union leaders are moaning like stuck pigs:
Ireland has not ground to an indignant halt. Union leaders have fulminated, odd work-to-rule sessions have sprung up, some phones have taken longer to answer, and there was a demonstration last year of fully half the size promised by union leaders (whose pay is linked to that of senior public officials).
How strange. These people have all taken a massive cut to their lifestyles and are just getting on with it. Can you imagine the self-righteous outrage, strikes, uncollected rubbish and dead bodies in the streets if they tried this in the UK?
The article lists many possible reasons why this is happening: the Irish are nicer people, they’re more pragmatic, they’re aware that job security is a blessing to be treasured and respected, the pay cut was so shocking that it cut through people’s fantasies and brought them back to earth, or that they have a stronger sense of community.
All of these things may be true, although I fear that the one thing that truly differentiates the Irish from us is this: their government had the guts to try this on. No political party in the UK has the guts to do what really needs to be done.
PS: A small bonus:
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1
March 22, 2010 at 18:29 -
Bathe her and bring her to me
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2
March 22, 2010 at 18:48 -
3
March 22, 2010 at 19:03 -
I was going to vote for you OH but now I’m not sure that you need the vote of a fat-middled, thick-ankled, pendulous-breasted, varicose-veined, ‘gat-tothed’ old bag. You wouldn’t thank me for it, certainly not if you caught sight of me at the polling booth. I’m not your type, I fear. Actually, I fear I’m not anyone’s type now….
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4
March 22, 2010 at 19:05 -
5
March 22, 2010 at 19:06 -
6
March 22, 2010 at 19:11 -
It’s Mr Smudd I feel sorry for, Mr Thaddeus, it’s Poor Smuddy wot needs yer sympaffy.
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7
March 22, 2010 at 19:43 -
British civil servants might behave as patriotically as their Irish counterparts if British MPs took their snouts and trotters out of the trough and swallowed the same medicine. But there is no leadership from those greedy swine who have taken a 2.5% payrise and have watered down the judgements of the allowances and expenses reports. The most annoying thing is how the used tissues in the goverment bleat they couldn’t cut bankers’ bonus and redundancy pay “because it’s contractual” but unilaterally cut the contractual terms for civil service compulsory redundancy.
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8
March 22, 2010 at 20:16 -
No doubt the pigs at Westminster are feeling very smug and superior to the piigs of Europe. What the Irish are doing is a lesson that needs to be learned and learned quickly. Their economy is smaller so the effects of the recession happened faster. What happened to them will happen to the larger economies especially the UK just a bit slower and the measures to correct the problem the larger economies will have to take will in turn have to be larger. An angry populace are going to turn the pigs into bacon.
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9
March 22, 2010 at 21:58 -
The article lists many possible reasons why this is happening: the Irish are nicer people, they’re more pragmatic, they’re aware that job security is a blessing to be treasured and respected, the pay cut was so shocking that it cut through people’s fantasies and brought them back to earth, or that they have a stronger sense of community.
I think that one is most likely. For years in the UK the Government and unions have crowed about pay no matching the private sector but as their wages have increased the pensions and job security has not decreased to likewise match the private sector. The public sector was a mass of ‘laying hens’ before the explosion in public sector pay and will remain so when things have returned to a more acceptable state of affairs. What bugs me the most is that the more senior staff have raked in large increases in pay and decreases in responsibility, and there are more and more of these pointless people being paid for by the taxpayer. We are getting less and less in return for more and more money. That’s not a good deal.
You could quite easily dodge the ire of front line public sector staff too. The higher up the pay scales you go the larger the benefit they have had from our spendthrift Government. They talk equality so let’s see it in action – slash the pay of the more senior staff and don’t touch the pay of those at the bottom.
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10
March 22, 2010 at 22:17 -
start listin your own austerity plans……………..here…………no really here………………thats right here…………
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11
March 23, 2010 at 00:32 -
I’ve been on JSA for the last year and wearing the same pair of second hand shoes every day for the last two years, nuffink left to cut back on. A bacon sandwich would be nice.
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