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UK Politics General Discussion

What will be the result of the UK’s General Election?

  • Conservative Majority

    Votes: 3 2.5%

  • Conversative Biggest Party in Hung Parliament

    Votes: 2 1.7%

  • Labour Majority

    Votes: 87 72.5%

  • Labour Biggest Party in Hung Parliament

    Votes: 28 23.3%

  • Other Result (Please specify in your post)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    120
  • Poll closed .
Worked 92 hours in 7 days on a previous job. The show keeps rolling.

Even in my present role, a request for 4 days would be denied due to needs of the business. You can't just demand you want a 4 day week and they have to accept it. That's not how it works.
 
The working time directive was an average over seventeen weeks, so your hours were perfectly acceptable mate.
Could have done anouther fifty hours and still been in the rules if you took it easy after for a couple of months.
I refused to sign my rights away back in the day, I was a part timer, still naffed the bosses off though!
 
You have got to be kidding, not a chance, 48 hours averaged over 17 weeks!
Overtime is voluntary, and in non safety critical jobs, hours can be open ended.
I used to work 25 hour shifts, with sleep hopefully through the night, but that was rare.
If my opposite number went sick, I was occasionally left with no option but to work a single 72 hour shift in a line, friday 2pm until monday 3pm.
The senior management would refuse to come in, no emergency supply staff, couple of good colleagues on holiday, and one person sick meant 73 hours in a line without a break.
The clients were always most supportive, and we would often spend every last penny in the petty cash on cinema, ice skating, bowling, rollercoasters and mcflurrys.
They would then throw absolute shit at management and social workers for staff abuse on monday morning.

23 hours overtime in a single weekend, and 48 regular hours, in the space of three days.
 
rob666 said:
The working time directive was an average over seventeen weeks, so your hours were perfectly acceptable mate.
Could have done anouther fifty hours and still been in the rules if you took it easy after for a couple of months.
I refused to sign my rights away back in the day, I was a part timer, still naffed the bosses off though!
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In media they can average over even longer I believe. the 92 hours was followed by another 25 I think over the 3 days after that 7.

Matt N said:
I thought the law was that you weren’t legally allowed to work more than 48 hours per week unless you had some sort of extenuating circumstance?
Click to expand...

I worked contis in another job on a 5-2-4-3 rotation. The 5 being 60 hours rota'd, not including overtime. It's all averages and even when not, its hard to refuse. It's not like in education where there is mandatory limits for students, you just deal with it as it lands in your lap. Rob having to do OT? No one else to cover. Event goes to Overtime/Extra Time? Diogo isn't going home. Breakdown in Scotland? I'm not rolling in until 02:30 and back to work for 10:30
 
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Those 72 hours would not be the end of the working week, I would then have had two days off, so back on thurs for another 25 hour shift.
Many other people still work similar hours, we used to cover 24 hours a day, non stop, year round, with five staff.
Someone goes sick, you have compulsory overtime, unless you want to leave your precious clients with complete strangers.
 
As has already been pointed out, these all sound lovely on paper, but the reality will be completely different.

Think about it, how many people actually work in the kinds of jobs that won't be exempt from most of these measures? 9-5 Mon-Fri office workers Gregg and Tracey from "the accounts department". Many (not all) are already more likely to enjoy a certain degree of flexible working, working from home, bank holidays off, uninterrupted breaks and days off, weekends off, Christmas off, sub-48 hour work weeks, and paid overtime for working extra hours.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fully supportive of every single measure being announced and I wish every worker had these rights. I wouldn't listen to the right wing naysayers either, as there's actually evidence to the contrary that rested employees, working flexibly for 4-days per week works and can actually make workers more productive when managed correctly in other countries.

But much of the jobs that make up our economy are not TV advert cliché 9-5 jobs (over 60% actually), and many are held by the lower paid. I'm around the half way point in my career, and I bet by the time I retire that I will still be salaried (no overtime), be working 5-days or more per week, harassed on my days off and holidays, working 16 hour days when someone selfishly throws a sickie, attending a place of work that isn't my home every day, and further benefits such as sick pay will continue to be eroded to pay for the day one rights of new employees. Some of these factors will be true for millions of other workers also.

There's tonnes of get out clauses for employers of existing laws as it is. I'd take it more seriously if the working times directive, 11 hour gap between shifts, and uninterrupted rest breaks were already a given. But the reality is, the nature of the way our economy operates, it's just not compatible. We're a service sector led economy, that's becoming increasingly 24 hour in nature, and technological design means that you can be reached from almost anywhere in the world.
 
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The non-contact thing is why work do not have access to my personal phone number or email to use. The only way I prevented contact was refused to use them, they could provide a phone or I'm not using one.
 
Now you see, that nice Mr Starmer is going to whip all the ticket touts, magic away secondary ticketing, and turn dynamic pricing into rainbows and unicorns instead.
A big government investigation into the matter, that'll stop it.
 
Just needs an overnight Brexit special Bill and Law passed in a couple of days. Make it illegal to sell concert tickets above face value and no dynamic pricing. Job done, sorted.
 
I'd argue that's not where most of the problems come in. I'd wager that the majority of tout tickets end up on resale ticket sites. Make it harder for people to do it and a lot would stop doing it. Bloke standing outside the arena on the off chance that he can sell already pricey tickets on one night only would not be a massive issue. People just buy up 100s/1000s now and leave them on official resale sites for months knowing that some mug will buy them at some point.
 
I'm all for a blanket ban on "dynamic" / "surge" pricing on everything. It's sheer greed.
.... And always makes me think of the supermarket scene in Threads just before the attack.
 
Oh, reducing the price isn't a problem.... Ah, wait, they'd just jack up the "regular" price then.
Ok, not a perfect solution. But I'm sure better paid people than me can work out the details.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Oh, reducing the price isn't a problem.... Ah, wait, they'd just jack up the "regular" price then.
Ok, not a perfect solution. But I'm sure better paid people than me can work out the details.
Click to expand...
Exactly my point. Or just invent discounts/vouchers which effectively do the inverse of what a surge price does but when it's quiet.
 
It would be interesting to find out what others opinions are on the current negativity and media pressure surrounding the new government. Whilst it's quite normal in this part of a parliament for a new government to see their honeymoon period ebb away very quickly, the government seem to actually be getting as many arrows flying in from the left as well as the right. Like I said, completely expected, but an interesting discussion point nonetheless because of where the attacks are coming from.

There's tonnes of controversy from both left and right around the winter fuel payments and the state of the NHS. The right attacks are also centred around small boats, suspected tax rises, closer relations with the EU, and prisons. The left wing attacks seem to be centred around the 2 child benefit cap remaining, austerity, relations with the EU not being close enough, and negative messaging from the Prime Minister and Chancellor. The ring wing attacks trying to blame the new incumbents for 14 years of failure dealt by the last government were always as inevitable as they are laughable, but there seems to be some pressure from the left flank (including from Labour MP's), that they're just not left wing enough.

Personally (other than the scandal with that dodgy landlord MP, and Starmers continued PR gaffs such as calling Sunak 'Prime Minister' twice now in the commons), I'm happy. I'm a centre left kind of guy anyway, and I'll admit that I did want a bit more of a Keynesian approach than we got. But as far as I can see, they're doing everything they said on the tin. As usual, there was loads of politician talk before the election, but Labour never promised New Jerusalem 2, with big cheques being written, a return to the customs union, and all round jam tomorrow. They said the country was a in a bad position, they said there was no money, they declared the NHS broken in week 1. They promised a centrist government of practicality, not a government of big spending with a magic wand, and that's what we've got so far as I can see. Did we not elect a government to make tough decisions to get us out of a hole?

The messaging could probably do with being toned down a little, but I feel there's still a lot of delusion out there. The country is not in a good place, and I think it's right that our national government should be honest with us. I get that people have been stung with all the lies about "going bust like Greece" peddled by the last government after the 2010 election to excuse savage cuts to expenditure for ideological reasons. But what kind of la la land are people living in now? If languishing on a 2 year NHS waiting list whilst your neighbours have their house repossessed isn't evidence enough, economists and, even our own institutions, have been telling us how bad everything is for years now.

I also don't think the public mood matches that as portrayed by the media. Watch the news or click on a Telegraph or Guardian article on your phone, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the current government is as unpopular as the last one. But most people I've spoken to don't seem that stupid. Media reporting seems to be trying to brew a storm in a teacup for views and clicks (shock horror, perish the thought), and I'd be lying if I said they didn't do this during the election campaign with the overblown reaction to Sunak getting rained on. I'm finding that most people didn't really want this government, but saw no choice, and certainly didn't want any of the rediclous alternatives! There wasn't really a golden honeymoon period as portrayed by the media, similarly to how I don't think there's some car crash slump in public opinion now. It seems like an indifferent government that's not particularly liked, but after the last few years isn't really hated either, and people just want things to get better, regardless of party allegiances. Perhaps a sigh of relief even if nothing else. A very cautious willingness to give them a chance.

I've been waiting for a government to tell it how it is. I think means testing Blair and Browns winter fuel bribe is an excellent idea and long overdue! There is no money to spend on public services, the economy has mostly stagnated for 14 years, productivity is in the toilet, the national debt as a % of GDP is nearing 100%, prisons are full, the NHS is not fit for purpose in its current state, and shop looting has become normalised. A pay deal had to be struck with Junior Doctors to ease health service paralysis, we've lost control of our national borders, NIMBY's are preventing us building the homes we so desperately need, rejoining the EU at this moment in time is an impractical as pretending we can carry on as we are, the outgoing government commited to wild spending plans that couldn't be afforded, taxes need to rise, and Father Christmas isn't real. So why should the government not be honest about all this?

Bring on the misery budget I say. It's tine for a wake up call
 
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I don't particularly mind them means testing the winter fuel payments. They were introduced at a time when the country was doing relatively well and the working person on the street was quite well off but pensioners were not doing so well. Now, the tables have turned and the economy is s***e for the working person but pensioners have never had it better. There's no reason that they can't share a bit of the pain (if 'most' of them can afford it). I mean, the younger generation coming through now generally have nothing BUT pain with regards to their life chances in comparison to boomers etc, but they're just expected to take it all on the chin.

It would make the pill a whole lot easier to swallow for people, I think, if the government was to announce that they would share a bit of the pain too by giving up some of their subsidised stuff like meals and fuel payments or whatever on their second homes etc. I know it would be a drop in the ocean in money terms, but it's the principle and showing people that 'we're all in it together'. There's no reason why they can't do that, as being MP's they CAN afford it, just like the majority of pensioners. Why won't they do that?
 
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