Lloyd90

Average UK worker salary is currently estimated at £38,000. Take home pay each month - £2530.92. Without accounting for pension etc. Rachel Reeves salary of £86,000. With the MP pension contributions, take home pay - £4402.08. £1,871 ish a month more than the ‘average worker’. It’s plenty of money to live comfortably but if you’ve taken a mortgage out years ago, and your mortgage has gone up 4-5-% points, your utilities have gone from less than £100 a month to several hundred, your weekly shop has gone up multiple times over. She is in a similar position to lots of other people. I believe her comments were more around her ‘noticing the impact’ of the cost of living crisis, things costing a lot more and less left over every month. People (Reeves included it seems) made big life decisions on things like house costs/mortgage, whether to send their kids to private school, etc etc, based on what they could afford at the time. Artificially low interest rates have led to people stretching themselves and they are now heavily impacted that rates have gone back up. On Martin Lewis last week loads of people were demanding that “rates must go back down” and he quite rightly said publicly, rates have always been around what they are now and people have been very silly to think they’d stay that low forever. I don’t think Reeves noticing the impact of rises makes her out as something to go mad about. Simply making the comments was foolish though as the media are out to slate anyone they can for a quick headline and it’s played right into their hands. With her husbands massive wage and ability to claim expenses she is hugely insulated against issues the everyday public face, very foolish to think she’d been seen as “one us us” and get some support for those comments.

Fair criticism, I will try and look up what he said.

To be fair, they are a work force like any other, you can’t emotionally black mail them with “if you don’t come to work people will die”. Thats a real low way to negotiate with a workforce, emotional blackmail. Despite that it’s been done for years in the health and care sector, people told if they don’t accept poor deals it will harm patients and service users if they strike, that manipulation has been going on for years, and in the past staff have buckled to it. They’ve not pushed that line too far and staff clearly can’t take it anymore. Also to this, many on this very thread have said if they don’t like the terms and conditions of being Doctors, then they should leave and do something else. This person has made steps to do that, clearly working as a Doctor alone wasn’t cutting it, and they’re better off working part time and spending the rest of their time with this investment company. It seems they can’t win and will get slated no matter what.

🤣🤣🤣

1/2 choke with the 42g 4’s on a 12 bore sound alright? Thank you

This is good advice from Andy, First step is I would strongly consider, is your bitch a great example of the breed that warrants breeding? Or would you be better off avoiding all the risk/cost and bother and just buying yourself a pup similarly bred pup in? Does your bitch have any faults as outlined in the breed standard? Only them would I consider health testing as there’s no point spending money on health tests for a dog that holds a major fault (as it shouldn’t be bred!). Absolutely get the bitch health tested if all sound, it’s around £150 or less to do the DNA testing for the inherited conditions from pet genetics lab. You also then need to choose a stud dog that compliments your bitch, as Andy said COI, lines matching or out crossing etc, or are you simply just using your mates dog cos you know him and he’s nearby? Is his dog a worthy stud dog and proven without fault? Is the dog clean of any health issues? As Andy said consider if things go wrong, you could lose your bitch or incur major vet bills (The springer bitch that won the champs last year died whilst in pup so it’s not just myths, although unlikely to be fair). Add to that, if all goes well and you have the pups, that list of people who would love a pup will declare “ah what a shame, we’ve just booked a holiday” or “now isn’t the right time… maybe next year”. Add again to that that we are in a cost of living crisis, take a look on the various dog selling sites and see the high number of pups for sale, and note that many of them are well older than 8 weeks old when they should of been long gone. Not many people buying dogs / pets atm and record numbers are being given up each week to rescues due to the cost. Make sure you have a plan for them as you may have them for quite some time. Then you have the cost of docking (and currently it is a major pain for many people finding a vet that will even do it). It is critical that this is done in the first few days. Few claws, jabs, worming, etc. Then consider that cockers usually don’t have big litters, it’s a substantial cost and don’t expect to be making money out of it. Again, not trying to be doom and gloom, just make sure you go into it with your eyes open fully aware of the potential issues you could face. Best of luck if you go ahead, PM and I will send you the link for the health lab I used if you’d like to look it up 👍🏻

Still a fair chunk cheaper than the new Defender. Likely the same issues though, all these cars going over to electronics and systems that go wrong. They used to be so reliable cos they had minimal stuff that could go wrong in the first place.

All 6 of us, first time going up, we are realistic however that they’re wild birds and nothing is guaranteed!

Absolutely, and all the unpaid work running around scouting and prepping I imagine.

Have ordered 42g 4’s in Lyalvale Express. Arriving tomorrow. A bit last minute but one of the lads claimed he had loads and no one buy any, which turned out to be less than 100 carts 🤣

Thank you Yes I believe paying the guide 👍🏻

Off to Scotland next week for 3 days on the geese. 6 of us going. Guide has said minimum 42g 4’s for the geese (allowed to use lead). Have managed to secure 2 slabs of 42g 4’’s … same energy as steel 2’s I believe so hoping the 4’s will be ok? More pellets for potential head shots? Also, paying for 6 of us £100pp per flight on geese, and £80pp for 2 nights duck pond shooting… so looking at £460 per person for the 3 days. Would you also tip the goose guide at the end of the trip? What would be a fair amount?

Yes long gone

Would take a look at the new Land Cruiser.

👍🏻👍🏻🤣🤣 I’d eat it!

My wife doesn’t work there she works in the private sector like I said. I work there because I can genuinely help people and get satisfaction but I am regularly asking myself if it’s worth it, as are friends of mine in the NHS, Police, Ambulance etc. Whilst there are some individuals that you appear to be friends with who are abusing the long term sick, I manage a team of 20+ and we don’t have anyone in our team abusing the sickness. Those agency jobs you speak of don’t come with the NHS pension or the sick pay so if people are quitting their current roles to go into agency posts for better money that just shows the brilliant pension ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. (Some) People would rather be better paid now. I imagine she’s already paid in for many years so doesn’t need to add much more. I know many people in private sector who retire from their main role and go back consulting or doing project work 2-3 days a week on good money, it’s no different. You can continue to state what you will but the staff are the biggest resource (and expense) of the NHS and public demand just continues to increase. You won’t get better services by putting in less staff with worse pay/conditions, that’s for certain.

If it’s as good as you say, why are there so many vacancies? Why are they leaving in droves? Why aren’t the public queueing up to leave their private sector jobs and take up the easy life in the public sector?

I don’t think paying the staff less will solve the problem. I think one way to address some of the many complex issues would be to do away with lots of things as we simply can’t afford to have the current level of service people want for the cost involved. Managing expectations. The expectation of public services from the public is significantly higher than what is being delivered a lot of the time and the vast vast majority of people who claim they’ve “paid my stamp all my life” haven’t paid in very much at all, and are a net drain on the system. The Police are having a big push in this regard, Right Person Right Care is being rolled out across the country, pulling people away from public demands on them and focusing on Police work. One example I had just the other day, a woman had phoned / text her dad but he hadn’t replied. Only a few hours had passed. She called us in the emergency social services team to ask if we could go check on him, just in case. She said she doesn’t live in the area. Expecting her to say she lived on the other side of the country I asked her where she was from, she lived in Bristol and her dad in Weston (roughly 30 minutes away). I decline and told her to do it herself. The police get hundreds of calls like this a day. As do the ambulance and NHS services.

Yes the payment to CEO’s and shareholders is from profits but it just shows the huge shift in priorities from employees, workers are told there’s no money for pay rises whilst those at the top are being paid significantly more. I understand more than most the risk and burden starting a company takes on but it’s gets to a point where it’s just perverse. Especially with public utilities like the water companies as an example. Paying massive bonuses and profits whilst doing an awful job. I understand that over the past year or two even the private sector pay rises have been low, but we’re looking at pay erosion over the past 20 years. There were many years my wife in the private sector was getting over inflation rises whilst in the public sector we were on a pay freeze or +1-2%. Some will (quite childishly) say, don’t work in the public sector then. I didn’t go into that work based off the financial reward, but I still hold the right to complain when the pay is eroded year after year. Similarly in other fields, and there are plenty who are saying “fair enough” to such childish comments and leaving in droves. There are staff leaving the Police, NHS and social services in droves. Add to the pay erosion that the tax thresholds have been frozen for years. The 40% threshold should be sitting at around 65-75k if it had kept pace with inflation, not sure what the 20% would start at but it has similarly been held back, hitting people hard in their pockets! Yes the Police aren’t allowed to strike, neither are prison officers I believe. The Police have an “independent” pay review body to counter this so it’s somewhat fair … I believe they recommended something like 7% pay rise last year for the Police… only to be ignored by the Government 🤣. Front line police are walking out all over the country. They are having to recruit and promote people who are not experienced or skilled enough due to shortages. Recent inspections of services shows them getting very poorly graded. There are (like the other services) many skilled and hard working offices out there but the workload is insane and unmanageable. The Police are having a massive shift in attitude and won’t be attending lots of calls in future.

I am very sorry to hear that 😞

Once again a sad attitude shown on here regarding the NHS and public sector workers, yet we see other threads complaining about how services are crumbling, not working and letting the country down. UK workers both public and private have seen significant wage stagnation for many years now. Look at similar wages abroad and the UK is well behind for lots of fields. Add in fairly high taxes, inflation, constantly rising house prices and cost of living. We don’t have enough Doctors, many doctors (as well as nurses and similar) are moving abroad for better pay and quality of life. The idea that those who choose to remain in the UK rather than jump ship should therefore have to shut up about the pay and conditions and be blasted for fighting for better pay and conditions is madness. Similarly in the private sector: We continue to hear “we can’t afford better pay”… CEO pay vs average worker pay in 1989 was 59:1… these days it’s almost 400:1. There seems to be plenty of profit for CEO’s, big bonuses and share holder bonus payouts.

Where can you view them?

Will you split? I just want the mod.

Over cooked the beef despite putting it in for less time than it said! Disappointed but still ok.

Looks a normal meal, most people in the UK need to lose a bit of weight (myself included!).