NCFC and the living wage

[the jarrold]

Just read that only Chelsea, Hearts, Luton and Norwich in the entire UK pay employees the Living Wage. I'd have thought with all the money they get, Premier League clubs could afford to pay a cleaner or bar person £9.15 an hour. 

 

[eatonparkboy]

Footballers can have an agent and their own union but should the staff get organised and decide to join Unite no doubt there would be hell to pay.

 

[Personal Trainer]

Yeah, the Clubs would outsource every non-football post, NCFC rare in employing it's own stewards.

 

[Canaryboy]

Just read that only Chelsea, Hearts, Luton and Norwich in the entire UK pay employees the Living Wage. I'd have thought with all the money they get, Premier League clubs could afford to pay a cleaner or bar person £9.15 an hour. 

And £9.15 is actually the London living wage, the living wage outside of the London area is just £7.85. 

Celtic fans had a bit of a tiff with their club about their refusal to pay the living wage. Its a shame that in an area with a lot of deprivation (Glasgow) you can't even earn the living wage when working for the countries biggest football club.

Raith Rovers, Liverpool and Everton also pay the living wage though.

 

[Dubai Mark]

I can fully understand some busineses not paying the living wage and paying a wage they can afford and the employee is happy to accept,  BUT there is no excuse for the overwhelming amount of professional clubs not to pay it, andd they should be ashamed of themselves for not doing so.

 

[eatonparkboy]

And of course if Jeremy Corbyn ever becomes PM then many of the Premier League club's owners will have to go and live, er, well, abroad??

 

[Dubai Mark]

OT,but I cant see Corbyn being leader of the Labour party by the next election to even be considered for PM, the world has gone mad!

 

[Canaryboy]

I doubt Jeremy Corbyn will be leader for the 2020 election, but I'm enjoying seeing him ruffle a few feathers. 

 

[eatonparkboy]

OT,but I cant see Corbyn being leader of the Labour party by the next election to even be considered for PM, the world has gone mad!

I was being TIC. I was just imaging the excuses why clubs won't be paying it until they have to pay it.

And like Canaryboy, I doubt Corbyn will get elected at the next election but at least we have a definitive choice now instead of the previous public schoolboy Labour leaders.

But I don't want to politicise this too much. It is a football site.

 

[Canaryboy]

And like Canaryboy, I doubt Corbyn will get elected at the next election but at least we have a definitive choice now instead of the previous public schoolboy Labour leaders.

I find it refreshing that people (Labour party members) have voted with their heart instead of their head for once, just think they've made themselves completely unelectable in the process. Andy Burnham would have been the smart choice I think, if they'd gone with their heads. 

I actually agree with a lot of Corbyn stands for, I'm a republican too (the UK sort, not the American sort), and I despise the House of Lords where people tend to inherit their title by accident birth or simply buy it, and I worry about the current situation with the property market which caters for foreign investment to make a few rich instead of to meet the housing needs of the general population (particularly in London), especially where local authorities are complicit in this by selling publicly owned land to property developers who are building luxury housing instead of semi-affordable housing, which is happening a lot. 

I just couldn't bring myself to vote for somebody quite as socialist as him, not because I don't like the sound of socialism in principle, but because the history books show that it has always ended in disaster in this country. People point at Scandinavia as an example of socialism working, but we simply aren't blessed with the natural resources that they have, and they have also invested decades of oil revenues into a massive trust fund which helps them pay for it (Norway have at least, not sure about the others). We didn't have the foresight to do the same when we had thriving oil and coal industries, perhaps if we did our finances would be in a much better state. 

 

[Gaffer]

Having Corbyn in charge of Britain would be like having an anti-McDonalds campaigner as the CEO of McDonalds. Fortunately, the turkeys are not going to vote for Christmas.

 

[eatonparkboy]

I find it refreshing that people (Labour party members) have voted with their heart instead of their head for once, just think they've made themselves completely unelectable in the process. Andy Burnham would have been the smart choice I think, if they'd gone with their heads. 

I actually agree with a lot of Corbyn stands for, I'm a republican too (the UK sort, not the American sort), and I despise the House of Lords where people tend to inherit their title by accident birth or simply buy it, and I worry about the current situation with the property market which caters for foreign investment to make a few rich instead of to meet the housing needs of the general population (particularly in London), especially where local authorities are complicit in this by selling publicly owned land to property developers who are building luxury housing instead of semi-affordable housing, which is happening a lot. 

I just couldn't bring myself to vote for somebody quite as socialist as him, not because I don't like the sound of socialism in principle, but because the history books show that it has always ended in disaster in this country. People point at Scandinavia as an example of socialism working, but we simply aren't blessed with the natural resources that they have, and they have also invested decades of oil revenues into a massive trust fund which helps them pay for it (Norway have at least, not sure about the others). We didn't have the foresight to do the same when we had thriving oil and coal industries, perhaps if we did our finances would be in a much better state. 

The reason socialism won't work, and I debated this point with Tony Benn once (sorry to name drop), is that any socialist state would be an oasis in a sea of capitalism. Red isolated in blue. Unfortunately, life means there has to be as much grey as anything else.

But as you say, a republic is the best available alternative.

 

[Canaryboy]

And we simply cannot afford to do it, socialism would require renationalism of entire industries. I personally like the idea of monopolies being state run, such as the water companies and national rail, its a bit perverse that private companies can operate without any competition. Nothing 'free market' about that, but the public knows that in order to bring them back into state ownership you'd need to borrow huge amounts of money, and then what? Its run as profit neutral or the unions ensure that there is no budget surplus by striking for pay rises, so the debt is paid back through taxation?

But it isn't just wealthy individuals who own those companies now, it is also your pension fund, and your insurance company, and your savings bank. The only ethical way to renationalise something is for the state to purchase it outright from the shareholders using taxpayers money. It would require a huge amount of borrowing. The public would pretty much have to choose between borrowing a huge amount of money against future tax receipts and leaving the burden of the debt on future generations, or the state simply stealing it from your private pension fund. 

How many years would it take until renationalism became of net benefit to the population? We borrow to nationalise, we spend decades paying back what we've borrowed, so we'd pretty much be doing it for the benefit of people who are born after we've died? Only for the reincarnation of Thatcher to come along and do the exact same thing, back to square one? 

The damage has already been done, most of the privatisation is simply irreversible, it has happened now and the battle was lost in the 80's. People like Corbyn are largely irrelevant now, it is too late, they lost the war, Thatcher won. 

At a push he could sell the public the idea of borrowing to start a huge social housing program, especially if he could show that it would largely be paid for by the subsequent reduction in the housing benefit bill. But he needs to quickly show the public that he isn't just an idealistic fantasist who is firmly stuck in the past, driven only by having a chip on his shoulder about the 80's. 

Everything has a cost, and the same people pay for it either way. 

 

[eatonparkboy]

To be fair, Corbyn has not said he will bring back Clause 4 to the party's constitution or nationalise industries per se. He has said that, and his example was Rail, in consultation with the majority of the public it might be possible to restore public ownership. In other words, should the public think, that an industry that is still heavily subsidised by the state and might be equally profitable and more efficient under state ownership, the long term benefit is equitable, then it could be considered. We should not shy away from considering such matters.

In other words, the electorate would be consulted far more than it is now. Which is a form of socialism that is far more acceptable than the conservative and totalitarian socialist failures of the past in other countries. And whereby, the current policies such as privatising the NHS by stealth can be reversed before, as you rightly say,the war is lost.

 

[Lavanche]

As a finnis citizen I can tell that we Sweden, Denmark and Iceland have no more natural resources than anyone else. Norway is only oil rich country around here thought Denmark might become one if they start drilling at Greenlands waters. 

And by the way there is quite big leap from our politic scene to socialism or even bigger to communism.

Our socialdemocratic values work quite well because they were based on the common sense of being small country and as Finland is only country under political pressure of aggressive neighbour and none other really have claims on old colonies or reason to mess with world politics we have had good time to concentrate to our own people instead of our economical agenda all around the world.

Thought after globalisation and few bad choises in immigration and voting parties that put first economical growth of our multinational companies before anything else we have had few steps back.

Leftist politics would work same way in any other country, but it is very hard to implent at the stage where people get this much information as modern people from all kind of medias.  And by leftist politics I mean supporting poor, having very open government and make profits and shareholds of companies open to public and have progressive tacation.  

Anyway sorry for offtopic.

 

[Canaryboy]

As a finnis citizen I can tell that we Sweden, Denmark and Iceland have no more natural resources than anyone else. Norway is only oil rich country around here thought Denmark might become one if they start drilling at Greenlands waters. 

Thriving Timber / Forestry industries too though in Scandinavia though, right? I know that Norway and Sweden both have multi-billion Euro forestry industries, exporting to Europe, that's also a natural resource which the rest of Europe increasingly doesn't have much of. Norway also has a huge exclusive fishing zone.

We do have a lot of coal beneath our feet if it ever becomes politically correct to start burning it again. 

 

[eatonparkboy]

Thriving Timber / Forestry industries too though in Scandinavia though, right? I know that Norway and Sweden both have multi-billion Euro forestry industries, exporting to Europe, that's also a natural resource which the rest of Europe increasingly doesn't have much of. Norway also has a huge exclusive fishing zone.

We do have a lot of coal beneath our feet if it ever becomes politically correct to start burning it again. 

We stopped digging coal out of the ground because it was expedient to sacrifice an industry, especially one mainly geographically in Labour constituencies, to obliterate the trade union movement. 

Up to then, the General Secretary of the TUC was as well known as any other political figure. Now how many know of Frances O'Grady?

Now we have four Tory like parties and the Greens.

 

[Canaryboy]

The main issue with Thatcher closing the coal mines is that even if they had become "economically unviable" and had become a drain on public financies, she allowed them to flood rather than spend a small amount of money 'mothballing' them by just running the water pumps. It would border on impossible to empty the deep pit coal mines of water now and restart production, so when she took that decision she didn't give a fig about future generations and the potential for coal to become viable again. Look at what has happened to energy prices since.

We still import a ridiculous amount of coal from overseas, particularly South Africa. I'm sure that is still cheaper than UK coal would have been, but the agenda has switched from 'coal is unviable', to 'coal is not environmentally friendly', but it isn't environmentally friendly to haul coal from the other side of the world either, surely?  

The Tory government look to be doing the same now with the big steel plant in Teeside, which is closing due to low steel prices. They are promising to invest millions in retraining, but have not committed to mothballing the site for a period of time to see if steel prices rise again. It would be relatively inexpensive to keep on a few engineers and a team of security guards for a period to ensure that the site doesn't fall into a state of disrepair, they could bring the plant into public ownership and commit to mothballing for 10 years and if steel prices haven't increased sufficiently by the end of that period then it has gone for good. If they do, they can sell the plant to the highest bidder. They will do it for a bank, but won't do it for a steel plant. 

 

[eatonparkboy]

And don't forget Thatcher enrolled the occupants of 1.5 million council houses into the Tory party with the Right to Buy Act. Tony BelAir just tinkered with it and called it the Right to Acquire Act.

No wonder most people I have spoken to have not dismissed Corbyn out of hand like the Tory press. They are actually waiting for him to put a manifesto together first.

 

[Canaryboy]

And don't forget Thatcher enrolled the occupants of 1.5 million council houses into the Tory party with the Right to Buy Act.

And again, the real problem with the right to buy act was that Thatcher didn't allow Local Authorities to spend any of the proceeds on replacing the stock by building more social housing, it was written in legislation that it had to be used to pay off Local Authority debts (and almost every local authority was heavily in debt to central government at that time) so the scheme was purposely designed to deplete the housing stock, rather than designed to simply give people a 'leg up' or empower people. 

If the opposite had been true, that all proceeds of the right to buy act had to be used only in building more social housing then perhaps our housing crisis wouldn't be as bad right now. My grandparents bought their house under the right to buy as it happens and I don't think they ever voted Tory, my granddad used to tell people he voted Tory and loved Thatcher, but I think he was just playing Devil's Advocate to wind my nan up.