Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 8:19:48 GMT
I know exactly how to improve efficiency in the hospitality sector. Close 50% of all businesses. The remainder will have ample capacity to cater for all the current customers, will employ fewer staff overall and make much more (taxable) profit. They will be able to afford living wages for all their staff. The freed up staff can be used in other industries in place of immigrant labour. A win-win for the employees and the state. You do talk some rubbish don't you ! Were you referring to this? What the Uk needs to do is increase PRODUCTIVITY. That means the same level of output created with fewer resources. So what that means in the real world is closing half the half empty restaurants so there are enough customers to fill the remaining ones. Which then are profitable, can pay good wages and taxes from their profits. Plus it frees up the premises and surplus workers to do something more productive elsewhere. Growth needs to be about using workers more effectively. |
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Post by colin on Nov 11, 2024 8:21:44 GMT
Care Sector saying NIC increase will cost it £2.5 bn pa
LAs already pay 25% below sustainable cost for care service.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 8:31:22 GMT
The rest of your reply is just bizarre - hospitality, care, retail and logistics just "have to go"? How thereafter do we get our food, clothes and so on in your more theoretically efficient economy? Increasingly we get the 'and so on' online. Plus a growing proportion of the food.
If I go round the town here the biggest number of shops are charity shops (donated stock and no business rates) and cafes, restauarants etc so some sort of ready to eat food and drink. A number of small shops selling food including some of mini supermarket chain shops and independants. Sundry one-off shops a bit more specialist. Half a dozen survinging banks, building society, PO. A whole row of solicitors and associated estate agents. Maybe the restaurants have peak times after shopping hours when I am around, but they always look empty when I see them and there are empty premises too. Hospitality industry complaining business is bad is another way of saying there are too many outlets for the number of customers.
I did once count the charity shops and got past 20. Probably similar numbers of hospitality. I notice second hand furniture is getting significantly more expensive - which suggests a shortage of donations or more people buying second hand.
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Post by pete on Nov 11, 2024 8:34:14 GMT
pete No, not you. Getting frothed up too are you? Another true democrat I see. I think you're in the wrong site! You seem to dislike the democratic processes as much as steve and his holographic sidekick Lib Dems - forever tainted. No need for photo reminders this morning. Then I'm happy to apologise for calling you an idiot. As for democracy. The election may well have been democratic but what were hearing (before as well) since the result isn't anyway near democracy. And yes, Democratic states really should look at their future and their rights. In saying that I don't expect Democratic states to secede. (just my opinion they should certainly give it some thought). |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 8:36:04 GMT
When the hereditary peers bill was brought forward, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the paymaster general, said: “It is indefensible that, in the 21st century, there are seats in our legislature allocated by an accident of birth. This is a long-overdue reform and a progressive first step on the road of change. Bit dangerous arguing things are indefensible simply because they are undemocratic. Lots of examples of that in how we are governed. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 8:38:30 GMT
Care Sector saying NIC increase will cost it £2.5 bn pa LAs already pay 25% below sustainable cost for care service. Yes but most care is state funded, and the taxes go straight back to the state so there is no lack of money to make up the loss to care companies. |
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Post by moby on Nov 11, 2024 8:43:12 GMT
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 8:55:46 GMT
We have for years encouraged care providers to use cheap labour. The markup on services provided to councils is quite extraordinary, and people may recall led to craziness like councils allocating ten minutes of care. The reason why this has happened is of course because councils were ordered to get out of the businss of providing care themselves. |
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 11, 2024 9:45:36 GMT
 Meanwhile back to the present Michael Crick schools a bunch of no nothing brexitanians on GB News about the implications for Billy no mates U.K. of a trump regime. youtu.be/aLWfEs6LnoE?si=ztUfNI7DsytKL2F_ |
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 11, 2024 9:51:56 GMT
"Then I'm happy to apologise for calling you an idiot." There was no need to call him an idiot. He already knows.  |
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Post by jib on Nov 11, 2024 10:05:11 GMT
"Then I'm happy to apologise for calling you an idiot." There was no need to call him an idiot. He already knows. View AttachmentGiven your definition of idiot applies to anyone with an alternative view to your simple and naïve world outlook, I'll take that as a massive compliment. X |
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Post by jib on Nov 11, 2024 10:07:20 GMT
pete No, not you. Getting frothed up too are you? Another true democrat I see. I think you're in the wrong site! You seem to dislike the democratic processes as much as steve and his holographic sidekick Lib Dems - forever tainted. No need for photo reminders this morning. Then I'm happy to apologise for calling you an idiot. As for democracy. The election may well have been democratic but what were hearing (before as well) since the result isn't anyway near democracy. And yes, Democratic states really should look at their future and their rights. In saying that I don't expect Democratic states to secede. (just my opinion they should certainly give it some thought). Or just wait for the next electoral cycle? The US is a great functioning democracy, far, far superior to the archaic UK, or at least the Westminster variety. |
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Post by colin on Nov 11, 2024 10:34:11 GMT
I think you may be a bit off with "slightly".:- NIC increase in 2024 Budget as % last reported pre-tax profit :- JD Wetherspoon-325% Sainsbury-80% BT-41% M&S-36% Tesco-34% ( NIC increase calc by Morgan Stanley) UK Hospitality say its members will need to raise prices by 8% to compensate-or "reconsider investment and drastically cut jobs and reduce hours" But we knew all this-both OBR & BoE said the Budget will be inflationary. Something is seriously wrong with those numbers - Tesco make £2.5-3bn profit and have about 310k employees, there is no way this measure can cost them 34% of that, that'd be nearly a billion pounds, or over £3k per employee. www.tescoplc.com/preliminary-results-202324/Likewise Wetherspoons made about £70m profit last year with about 43k employees, so for the NI increase to cost them 325% of that would be about £5.5k per employee, which will be more than their entire Employer NI bill! www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/wetherspoons-reinstates-dividend-after-profit-30068168I appreciate there are many different definitions of "profit" but the numbers for those two at least are wrong by an order of magnitude. I rechecked the Times report and if others had reported the Morgan Stanley numbers. I discovered that the costs MS reported are for the whole Parliament-so I assume they should be divided by 4 for annual effect. When looking at cost per employee remember that if a company has a lot of part-time employees it gets hit harder. The threshold drops by £4000 -which at 15% NIC is £600 pa. Apologies for my error. I couldn't actually find the MS report to check the source. |
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Post by colin on Nov 11, 2024 10:36:33 GMT
Care Sector saying NIC increase will cost it £2.5 bn pa LAs already pay 25% below sustainable cost for care service. Yes but most care is state funded, and the taxes go straight back to the state so there is no lack of money to make up the loss to care companies. LAs will not be increasing their fees to compensate for the increased NIC paid by the provider. |
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Post by leftieliberal on Nov 11, 2024 10:57:44 GMT
A new blog post from Ben Ansell (and despite getting his prediction for the US Presidential election so wrong, he reckons that as he's apologised in a couple of other places he doesn't need to return to why he got it wrong in his blog). So this blog post is looking forward to what the Democrats can do in 2028. Actually, the post does make some good points like: A related insane fact about the Democratic Party is that Tim Walz was the first person on a Democratic Presidential ticket since JIMMY CARTER not to have attended law school - that’s Mondale, Ferraro, Dukakis, Bentsen, Clinton, Gore, Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, Obama, Biden, Clinton, Kaine, and Harris in a row. Now I know we all love lawyers but that feels a little too non-occupationally diverse to me. It is something that we notice here too with the number of lawyers in Parliament. There is also a link in the blog post to an article in Vox from 2020 (Vox in America is a left-of-centre online publisher, not to be confused with the right-wing political party of the same name in Spain). What is interesting is that it is about how a data analyst (David Shor) lost his job for the 'crime' of pointing out that violent protests were actually counterproductive even if the cause they were nominally in support of was just. This led me to think about organisations in this country like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil that cause criminal damage to get publicity for their cause. The principal consequence is that art galleries have now to employ more security staff and equipment to screen visitors, which makes the experience of going to an art gallery less enjoyable and also means that the galleries have less money to employ other staff like conservators. While the immediate effect of the stunt is obvious; what is not obvious is the long-term damage it causes to our society.
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 11, 2024 11:17:14 GMT
Both the world cup and Olympic games are due to be held in the U.S. while the fascist is president. Assuming dementia doesn't see him off first I wonder what joys await us at the opening ceremony.  |
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Post by colin on Nov 11, 2024 11:19:01 GMT
While the immediate effect of the stunt is obvious; what is not obvious is the long-term damage it causes to our society. From what i have read the damage to art works and disruption / cost imposed on art galleries is part of the purpose. To shake us all out of what they think of as the "Delusion of normality". A delusion which these cultural icons and places are keeping us trapped in. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 12:56:36 GMT
Yes but most care is state funded, and the taxes go straight back to the state so there is no lack of money to make up the loss to care companies. LAs will not be increasing their fees to compensate for the increased NIC paid by the provider. The market will find a new level. So charges will increase. The question is whether councils are compensated by extra money. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 13:05:48 GMT
Interesting item on the radio about driving tests. Apparently wait time is up to 5 months now, and rising. So a market has arisen in missed tests, to jump the quoeo. For around an extra £100 you can buy a test slot someone cannot use from one of a number of companies which have now made a business of re-selling the slots.
First off, there arent enough testers, which is down to the last government's cuts. Second...it seems this has led to demand for earlier slots than just waiting your turn, and so this business has arisen taking advantage of loopholes allowing different people to turn up for a test. Not sure thats actually bad, if without a market incentive some of these slots might just not have been used, but presumbly previously you would have gone to the government website and just changed your booking there, for free, and released it to be re-booked at no extra charge.
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 11, 2024 13:55:01 GMT
Interesting item on the radio about driving tests. Apparently wait time is up to 5 months now, and rising. So a market has arisen in missed tests, to jump the quoeo. For around an extra £100 you can buy a test slot someone cannot use from one of a number of companies which have now made a business of re-selling the slots. First off, there arent enough testers, which is down to the last government's cuts. Second...it seems this has led to demand for earlier slots than just waiting your turn, and so this business has arisen taking advantage of loopholes allowing different people to turn up for a test. Not sure thats actually bad, if without a market incentive some of these slots might just not have been used, but presumbly previously you would have gone to the government website and just changed your booking there, for free, and released it to be re-booked at no extra charge. On the plus side, if the doom sayers are right and the globalists have their way, then most cars will be self-driving and most folk will not be able to afford a car anyway. “You shall own nothing” etc. |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
Posts: 6,700
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Nov 11, 2024 13:56:58 GMT
While the immediate effect of the stunt is obvious; what is not obvious is the long-term damage it causes to our society. From what i have read the damage to art works and disruption / cost imposed on art galleries is part of the purpose. To shake us all out of what they think of as the "Delusion of normality". I find elections and their aftermath, quite often do that |
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 11, 2024 15:01:42 GMT
So fascist president elect trump has already failed in his first promise to end the Ukrainian war the day after the election
Last Thursday he reportedly called Putin telling him to de-escalate Moscow has denied that such a call took place.
Whatever the truth it's evident that the war if anything has intensified since trump's victory with more young men poured into the meat grinder.
Yesterday Ukraine reported Russian casualties in a single day at 1770 , the highest since the start of major conflict.
Russia has lost the most casualties in a single month this october, November is on track to exceed it with over 40,000 Russian and mercenaries killed or wounded and significant infrastructure destroyed in Russia and of course Ukrainian troops are still entrenched in the Kursk region of Russia.
Trumps hubris was always total cobblers , presumably it will just be another case of something he said being unsaid when total shite collides with reality!
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Post by pete on Nov 11, 2024 16:00:32 GMT
Then I'm happy to apologise for calling you an idiot. As for democracy. The election may well have been democratic but what were hearing (before as well) since the result isn't anyway near democracy. And yes, Democratic states really should look at their future and their rights. In saying that I don't expect Democratic states to secede. (just my opinion they should certainly give it some thought). Or just wait for the next electoral cycle? The US is a great functioning democracy, far, far superior to the archaic UK, or at least the Westminster variety. Do you think? I reckon Trump is going to push those checks and balances as much as he can. I hope you're right but we already know how easy it is for voting to be gerrymandered. |
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Post by jimjam on Nov 11, 2024 16:59:16 GMT
LL, Ben Ansell might lurk here as I posted the below a week or so after Waltz chosen, Smiley thing
"Tim Walz was the first person on a Democratic Presidential ticket since JIMMY CARTER not to have attended law school"
I think it is indicative of choosing candidates who through training can be careful with words (Ming Vase on sterioids) and typically more erudite than the average.
If Trump shows us anything it is the enough voters will overlook candidates being inarticulate if the core message is appealing.
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Post by colin on Nov 11, 2024 17:01:58 GMT
Here we go again :-
"In a letter to the chancellor, 110 chief executives of homelessness organisations warned that the hike posed a “very real threat” and will have an “immediate detrimental impact on the lives of the thousands of people who are supported and accommodated on a daily basis helping them move on from the worst forms of homelessness and rebuild their lives”.
In a letter to the chancellor, 110 chief executives of homelessness organisations warned that the hike posed a “very real threat” and will have an “immediate detrimental impact on the lives of the thousands of people who are supported and accommodated on a daily basis helping them move on from the worst forms of homelessness and rebuild their lives”.
“We ask that you provide a similar rebate or relief to the homelessness sector – who provide vital services for the public sector– and require [the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)] and local authorities to cover the increased costs by increasing the value of grants and contracts for 2025-26 onwards.”"
Inside Housing .co.uk
I would love to know if the Treasury identified outcomes like this and ignored them-or failed to understand the effects of Reeves' NIC increase.
Beginning to feel like the latter.
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steve
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Post by steve on Nov 11, 2024 17:08:15 GMT
With Christmas just around the corner this is the must have gift for anyone over 60.  |
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Post by colin on Nov 11, 2024 17:12:36 GMT
" Kate Nicholls chief executive of UK Hospitality,describes the increase in costs as “eye-watering” and warns that it disproportionately hits companies in her sector, given many employ part-time staff in roles such as waiting and bartending.
She adds: “This is just not sustainable and will ultimately do real harm to our ability to support employment. The lowering of the NIC threshold increases those employment costs by as much as 75pc for those on part-time contracts. These are often people who need flexible hours, like carers and working mums and dads.”
Neil Carberry, the chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, warns that reducing the NICs threshold will make solving Britain’s worklessness crisis harder.
“The threshold change is especially challenging as it raises NI on the wages of lower salaried workers much more – not just lower paid workers but also many part-time workers who will become far more expensive to engage,” he says.Carberry adds that one of his members who employs hospitality workers has 31 of their own staff but also payrolls all their temps. “Their NI bill goes from £375k per annum to £657k, wiping out their profit. These kinds of rises make creating entry-level roles less attractive and that will damage the fight against economic inactivity.”
By by part -time work ?
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Nov 11, 2024 17:55:55 GMT
" Kate Nicholls chief executive of UK Hospitality,describes the increase in costs as “eye-watering” and warns that it disproportionately hits companies in her sector, given many employ part-time staff in roles such as waiting and bartending. She adds: “This is just not sustainable and will ultimately do real harm to our ability to support employment. The lowering of the NIC threshold increases those employment costs by as much as 75pc for those on part-time contracts. These are often people who need flexible hours, like carers and working mums and dads.” She is basically saying hers is an industry wholly reliant on cheap labour, which barely makes a profit. Back in the day, Thatcher declared we no longer give state subsidies to loss making companies. Now, back then when there were too many small companies in the motor industry, what we did was try to amlgamate them and create economies of scale. While i wouldnt want to do that to all the hospitality industry, its very obvious there are far too many outlets for the size of the market. Home care is an industry where you need manual labour, and people have to be visited in their homes all over the place. But that really doesnt apply to the hospitality industry. Its an industry which got used to a growing economy, and now has to cut its cloth for half its customers growing poorer. I should add, the logic of brexit and reducing free movement of labour was specifically to end cheap labour, and therefore end industries reliant upon it. |
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Post by eor on Nov 12, 2024 2:07:10 GMT
Something is seriously wrong with those numbers - Tesco make £2.5-3bn profit and have about 310k employees, there is no way this measure can cost them 34% of that, that'd be nearly a billion pounds, or over £3k per employee. www.tescoplc.com/preliminary-results-202324/Likewise Wetherspoons made about £70m profit last year with about 43k employees, so for the NI increase to cost them 325% of that would be about £5.5k per employee, which will be more than their entire Employer NI bill! www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/wetherspoons-reinstates-dividend-after-profit-30068168I appreciate there are many different definitions of "profit" but the numbers for those two at least are wrong by an order of magnitude. I rechecked the Times report and if others had reported the Morgan Stanley numbers. I discovered that the costs MS reported are for the whole Parliament-so I assume they should be divided by 4 for annual effect. When looking at cost per employee remember that if a company has a lot of part-time employees it gets hit harder. The threshold drops by £4000 -which at 15% NIC is £600 pa. Apologies for my error. I couldn't actually find the MS report to check the source. Thanks for digging into that colin - why either MS or the Times are comparing a whole-parliament cost to one year's profit escapes me but that explains the Tesco discrepancy. The numbers for Wetherspoons still seem too high - divide it by 4 or even 5 and you're still looking at over a grand each per employee - their average employee would have to be on about £43k for that to be accurate, which seems way too high. Maybe the profit figures bounce around and they happened to use a quite low one from a different report. Either way, my overall point was that the effects will be problematic not just in levying some companies money they can't afford, but also in skewing sector markets. If Wetherspoons can afford to absorb the NI increase and still offer a decent annual pay review next year, and some other pub chains can't, that will be another ratchet to enhance their dominance in the market. Ditto Tesco, Next and so on - as well as disproportionately affecting low-paid and part-time workers, my concern is it's going to help the biggest and most profitable companies within the sectors further consolidate their market share by hamstringing their competition, and that's not usually a good thing for anyone. Hence why I think some people saying "there are big companies in these sectors who can obviously afford to pay more" is missing the point of why it's a problem. |
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Post by colin on Nov 12, 2024 8:29:28 GMT
"Ministers have pledged that parents of children under the age of five will be able to claim 30 hours of free childcare a week from next year as part of the biggest ever expansion of the sector."
"Nurseries have already paused capital expansion plans; others have imposed a recruitment freeze despite official estimates that 35,000 new nursery workers will need to be recruited to meet the demand for universal childcare when it is fully rolled out in September.One senior figure in the sector said that the whole scheme was now in “jeopardy” as a result of an “unintended budget consequence that no-one appeared to have thought about”.
"“I think this blindsided the Department for Education as much as it blindsided us,” they said. “Unless something is done then the whole scheme is in jeopardy and there simply won’t be the places on offer to parents.”"
"A survey of more than 1,000 nurseries carried out by Early Years Alliance found that 25 per cent were very likely to reduce the number of free childcare places they offer while 19 per cent were considering pulling out of the scheme.Eighty per cent said they would increase fees for hours outside the scheme, which many parents rely upon to work. More than one in ten said that some of their nurseries would simply be uneconomical to run and would have to close."
"Sarah Ronan, director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, said providers were already reversing or pausing plans to hire the extra staff needed to meet the additional demand while capital projects had also been put on hold.
“Bridget Phillipson [the education secretary] said early years education was her ‘number one priority’ but this runs completely counter to this pledge,” Ronan said.“It doesn’t support growth, does nothing to tackle child poverty and ultimately it will be disadvantaged children who will pay the price because these free hours simply won’t be available.”"
Times
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