AA Roadwatch report major traffic jams in Newry as public sector workers go shopping.

[Clanrickard]

Stupendous contribution, your best yet I'd wager.


Tell me, has some one conducted a survey to see if all these people heading north are indeed PS workers?

Also, it is bloody laughable to try and claim that they are heading north because they are overpaid when we all know that people shop north to save money because we are savagely ripped off in the South.

Its this kind of disconnected logic that makes all these moronic attacks on the PS all the more laughable.

Keep it up

Massive tailbacks on the day of a strike and the two are unconnected? Really? While they are filling the Queen's coffers Lenny's have less to spend. It wouldn't occur to the bird brains that if they shopped here the government wouldn't have less money and would not want to cut their wages.

[Baron von Biffo]

Levels of need varies between the two. The public need the private much more than the private need public.

I was educated in public schools. I wouldn't be alive without the public hospital in Portlaoise. I'm no longer young and strong enough to view a world without police with enthusiasm. I couldn't carry water from a well and I'm glad the streets don't run with raw sewage.

There's interdependence Myk, we need each other.

[dipole]

Stupendous contribution, your best yet I'd wager.


Tell me, has some one conducted a survey to see if all these people heading north are indeed PS workers?

Also, it is bloody laughable to try and claim that they are heading north because they are overpaid when we all know that people shop north to save money because we are savagely ripped off in the South.

Its this kind of disconnected logic that makes all these moronic attacks on the PS all the more laughable.

Keep it up

Attack is the best form of defence?
On a day when the Public Sector showed contempt for the economy that pays their wages you attack other posters who are rightly incensed by their behaviour.
Comical Ali.

[pd_phoenix]

I was educated in public schools. I wouldn't be alive without the public hospital in Portlaoise. I'm no longer young and strong enough to view a world without police with enthusiasm. I couldn't carry water from a well and I'm glad the streets don't run with raw sewage.

There's interdependence Myk, we need each other.

so you're trying to say the private sector would be unable to supply all of the above... Because of never heard of PRIVATE schools and universities, or PRIVATE hospitals or indeed PRIVATE companies taking on contract work.

[myksav]

Not true. The PS educated you, it will look after you when/if you become ill and it enforces the law which to a large degree keeps you safe. There would be total anarchy without it resulting in the kill or be killed mayhem of the middle ages.

It is extraordinary that people have such a myopic view of the public sector considering the level of beneficial activity it engages in to the betterment of us all.

What would happen if every private sector worker emigrated tomorrow morning? Would the public sector survive?

Yes, the PS do education, medical and law enforcement. Which are only three areas of the PS.
Is the education system excellent? Doesn't seem so.
Medical treatment via Public? Not great, long waits still, etc.
Law enforcement? Quite spotty that. If you need the police, you can't find them.

A lot of what makes people 'angry' or disgusted with the public sector is the massive inefficiencies in it. It is wasting our money. With that waste, there's little sympathy for that group to be hanging onto higher wages.
The private sector generates money through production, the public sector, through taxes.

Sure, the public sector pays taxes but the basic wage comes from taxes to start with.
A bit like filling a bowl of stew from a pot, then "taxing" by returning some of the stew to the pot without putting anything into the pot at the start.

[Chrisco]

I was educated in public schools. I wouldn't be alive without the public hospital in Portlaoise. I'm no longer young and strong enough to view a world without police with enthusiasm. I couldn't carry water from a well and I'm glad the streets don't run with raw sewage.

There's interdependence Myk, we need each other.

All of the above could be carried out by private enterprise, as indeed most of them were before the last century.

[Baron von Biffo]

so you're trying to say the private sector would be unable to supply all of the above... Because of never heard of PRIVATE schools and universities, or PRIVATE hospitals or indeed PRIVATE companies taking on contract work.

How much do you think it would cost to buy every public service we currently enjoy from the private sector?

Do you think it would be a good idea to have our police and courts system driven by a profit motive or as a public service?

[Chrisco]

How much do you think it would cost to buy every public service we currently enjoy from the private sector?

Do you think it would be a good idea to have our police and courts system driven by a profit motive or as a public service?

You didn't ask whether it would be a great idea, merely how it would work.

[myksav]

I was educated in public schools. I wouldn't be alive without the public hospital in Portlaoise. I'm no longer young and strong enough to view a world without police with enthusiasm. I couldn't carry water from a well and I'm glad the streets don't run with raw sewage.

There's interdependence Myk, we need each other.

Interdependence requires balance. That balance isn't there now. There's too much waste linked with PS systems so the flow goes one way much ore than the other.

It's like the public sector is on a ratchet system and the private is a freewheel. It's that imbalance that is partially driving the disgust many feel toward the public sector. No real problems with the "frontline" PS, it the middle and upper sectors that cause gripe.

It is interesting how since the high tax days, the PS numbers increased along with the drop in tax rates. But there hasn't been the same degree of service recieved along with the increase in PS workers. Waste.

[Baron von Biffo]

You didn't ask whether it would be a great idea, merely how it would work.