Bob doing a talk on long haul flights - not sure when

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

Bob doing a talk on long haul flights - not sure when

rekamarkovics · House on Fire

He paid for your tickets to Milan?

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

Yes, he did. The least said about it the better I think

I know that he'd have paid your travel had you have been able to go. I seem to remember it being suggested that you buy the train tickets and it would be refunded.

I think we'd better put all this behind us now and you'll get to see him next time.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

Jules wrote:

This article is really about Tony Blair. What does Bob think I wonder - considering he needs to fly frequently. And when he paid for our flights to Milan he used Ryan Air. We are encouraged not to use cheap airlines and fly less frequently??? Interesting!! Maybe he agrees with Blair?

Geldof, like Blair, probably thinks the rest of should do what he says and not what he does. Green Britain

One week, they are increasing taxes for environmental reasons (Wednesday, 06 Dec 2006) Airline Tax

and the next, they are expanding airports (Thursday, 14 December 2006) Airport Expansion

Essentially they are all bull sh!tters, they are just in it for the money.

Michael O'Leary has it right. Look forward to Brown Britain where he'll tax the air you breathe.

-- Edited by ArrGee at 13:49, 2007-01-10

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

Oh but it is probably so very important for them to travel because of the nature of their business and to get them there quickly. That is different for the rest of the world, of course isn't it? It was probably acceptable for me to travel by Ryan Air because I was going to see Bob in concert, that must be considered vital travel (yes it was for me

).

Green when it suits.

Brown will simply follow on from New Labour's continuance of the Tories tax everything policy. They just changed the system from direct taxing at source to hidden indirect taxes and in doing so increased what all individuals were paying. Let's go back to the old Labour way. Tax at source, what you can afford and use it to provide decent public services for those which are vital to all.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

Jules wrote:

Brown will simply follow on from New Labour's continuance of the Tories tax everything policy. They just changed the system from direct taxing at source to hidden indirect taxes and in doing so increased what all individuals were paying. Let's go back to the old Labour way. Tax at source, what you can afford and use it to provide decent public services for those which are vital to all.

That's not true. The Tories could be accused of taxing everyone with the poll tax rather than everything.

Labour tax everything. Who brought in tuition fees? Who taxed insurance premiums? Who taxed pension contributions? The congestion charge?

Most tax is spent on the welfare state, and civil servants in non-jobs (and their gold-plated retirement schemes), not on so-called services. Even the money poured into services just go to massive conglomerates like Serco or management consultants like Accenture. More managers, but precious few extra nurses, doctors or teachers. Have class sizes reduced? Have hospital waiting lists shrunk?

North of Birmingham, over 50% of the population rely on the government for their income one way or another. In Glasgow, 90%.

Less taxation not more. That's the way the rest of the Europe is going.

Jules · The biggest Geldof fan in the world, bar none!

If the Tories didn't instigate the insurance taxes, they certainly intended to. The New Labour Party just went ahead and did it. The New Tories (oh I mean Labour) simply continued the work of the tories by implementing whatever the Tories hadn't. And it may well be set to get worse.

Ultimately, what does it matter having less taxes, we have to pay for it anyway. Although, somehow we now seem to be paying more tax overall than ever before.

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

Jules wrote:

Ultimately, what does it matter having less taxes, we have to pay for it anyway.

No, less taxes, less companies ripping UK plc off. Some of the best provision of services is done with relatively small amounts of expenditure with projects under local authority control.

Serco have become one of the biggest companies in the UK thanks to the contracts they have won from the government, yet they have no footprint in the private sector. As part of my job, I have to fly to Glasgow on an ad-hoc basis (with RyanAir, my company wants us to save every penny). The planes often have group of Serco employees (they presumably can't travel alone) bragging about the contracts they have won (hell when you get stuck next to a pair of them). Despite being one of the worst companies around they continue to win lucrative contracts. That's where the tax goes.

http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B2960.pdf

SERCO

Official data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that Kernow Urgent Care Services, Cornwall’s out-of-hours GP service, is missing almost all of its targets. The Serco-owned company has only met the required standard five times out of 49 in the last seven months. Although the rate of answering emergency calls is up from 50% to 70% it is still short of the 100% target. It has never met the target to attend urgent cases within two hours and regularly failed to hit the 100% target for non-urgent cases.

Employees of Breckland Council are being balloted for strike action in protest at the alleged ‘victimisation’ of a union official. Serco, under contract for the refuse collection service, levied "severe and unfair" penalty on a street cleaner who is also a shop steward. Serco alleges he had left his vehicle's engine running while collecting rubbish from the pavement. The man’s union argues that if he had shut it off the warning beacons would not have operated in contravention of the law and that the situation is Serco’s fault for sending a refuse collection vehicle out with only a driver.

A Serco-led consortium has won a contract from the DfES to support the development of children's centres by local authorities. The Together for Children consortium is made up of CareandHealth, ContinYou, 4Children and Bargaining Support Group e-mail: bsg@unison.co.uk 7 PA Consulting. The government aims to create 3500 children's centres in 150 local authorities by 2010.

Serco, Bechtel and BWXT have formed a consortium to bid for the five-yearcontract to clean up the Sellafield nuclear reactor site in Cumbria. The contract will be worth at least £5bn.

Education Bradford, a company run by Serco QAA, has been ordered to pay compensation to a project manager for the financial losses, injury to his feelings and psychiatric injury he suffered while he was suspended from his job. An employment tribunal ruled that Education Bradford racially discriminated against Mr Quarshie by cutting his pay while he was suspended from work, by leaving him suspended too long, for failing to allow him to appeal and for the length of time it took for his complaint to be dealt with. The ruling found five senior managers had racially discriminated against Mr Quarshie. Serco appealed against the decision but all of the tribunal’s findings were upheld.

Serco has been mentioned as a possible bidder for the new single Business Link franchise for Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. The South West Regional Development Agency has had to tender the agency to the private sector after the two agencies currently running the service failed to agree a merger. The business advice service contract could be worth £7m.

-- Edited by ArrGee at 21:09, 2007-01-11