According to Hilton, the government needs to scrap maternity leave altogether to stimulate the economy. Really Steve, that’s your big idea? Force women to go back to work immediately after birth? Or is the plan for them to actually give birth at work? Surely that's against the law.
Apparently in this meeting Hilton actually asked why David Cameron has to obey the law. Downing Street’s permanent secretary Jeremy Heywood embarrassingly had to inform him that if he did he could end up going to prison. I don’t know what’s wasting money more: hiring Hilton to come up with these idiotic ideas or using Downing Street’s secretary to state the bleeding obvious to him.
Have you ever seen a bigger waste of government money than Steve Hilton? A man who’s past ideas include commercialisation of the public sector and of course who could forget the big society. Today’s revelations are a little worrying. Worrying because this is the best someone can come up with, and that they might actually implement them. All being well though they won’t be put into law anytime soon, Vince Cable practically laughed at the idea, and even Gideon Osborne is against it.
It does beg the question: why on earth are the government paying this man to come up with these ideas? It feels like he just puts a load of ridiculous ideas into a few boxes and randomly gets Noel Edmonds to open them up when the next cabinet meeting comes up. Honestly, Cameron could pay me just five English pounds and I’d do better than the ideas he comes up with! How about…let’s have our own countries’ train workers work on the new Thameslink line and not a German company. Keeping British people in work and off the dole. I think that's a fairly decent idea, but then again Derby is in the North, its community does depend on the train makers and Conservatives don’t have a good record for caring about communities.
Anyway back to reality; today the government revealed its plans for their pension reforms for public sector workers, further belittling the supposed negotiations between the themselves and the unions.
The government wants to cut £1.2 billion off its pension bill next year and the only way to plug the gap it seems is to get the public sector workers to dish out £1.1 billion in extra contributions from 2012.
The annoying thing about all this of course is that the government are supposed to be in negotiations with the unions, brokering a fairer deal for both parties. But as everyone knows these negotiations aren’t negotiations at all, they are talks: the unions talk; the government ignores. Seriously, taxpayers are paying Francis Maude to stick his fingers in his ears and shout loudly “NANANANANANA I CAN’T HEAR YOU NANANANANANANA!”
Well if you needed a clearer sign the government isn’t willing to listen to the unions, here it is. Mark Serwotka, whose union the PCS was out on strike last month, reiterated his former statements regarding the government‘s lack of negotiations by commenting:
“These highly detailed proposals show that the government has made its mind up and is not negotiating seriously”
Gideon retaliated with his usual response:
“They are a good deal for teachers, nurses and police officers, because they are going to get one of the best pensions you can get in our country, but it is also fair to taxpayers.”
There’s some more money we can save: sack Gideon and replace him with a tape recorder. All he’s ever done is say the same thing over and over again on this matter. He isn’t even listening to them now. All the statements have been about the lack of negotiation, yet Gideon just presses play on the tape recorder and tells everyone how fair the deal is when in reality it’s about as fair as Fox News.
I personally hate the way the government has been demonising the public sector over the past few months, the whole ‘taxpayers shouldn’t fund these greedy sods’ message is quite frankly starting to sink in.
It seems more and more people are starting to agree with Gideon and co - the public sector have it easy, sure some of them get up and go to work for near enough the same money their next door neighbour gets for lying in bed all day, but look at their amazing pensions! It’s about time they were punished some more for their idiotic work values!
The public sector deserve a good pension for the work they do. Obviously there should be some changes but I’m not sure if Gideon’s noticed that it’s the teachers, nurses, doctors, police officers, and other civil servants who kind of run this country. Without them we’d be pretty screwed as a nation. The problem is it won’t really matter to the high-earning public sector workers (like our mate Gideon) but for the ones at the lower end of the payroll it’s catastrophic. Maybe we should replace Gideon with a Speak and Spell that’ll save us plenty of money.
So is this a fair deal then? Well no, not really. The public sector are currently sat in the hot seat down in Bristol’s Deal or No Deal studio. Noel Edmonds is on the telephone to the banker while the audience looks on in interest. The board has five boxes left in play, £100; £750; £1,000; £5,000 and £100,000. “Hm, right okay,” says Noel as he scratches his beard thoughtfully while dribbling down his floral shirt. He looks at the contestant straight in the eyes, pauses for dramatic effect and delivers the rich banker’s message: “£900 - Deal or No Deal?”
The public sector has no choice but to fight on.
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