Terms & Conditions

[Mike Hughes]

So you drive wages down; create a gig economy founded on lack of job security; zero hours contracts and PT work. You drive this cultural shift across the civil service and organisations like DWP thus losing years of experience and expertise and ally that to years of year on year pay cuts to those same sectors thus driving people out of many professions whilst driving costs up, for example, with the need for local authorities to use agency staff who can effectively name their price whether admin. or solicitor.

Then you moan when people leave professions completely or work part-time; characterise them as letting the side down and the real reason the economy is struggling.

Very out of character for government to blame our ills on us!

Have to say that, far from not being available to many, the figures speak for themselves. Clearly these options are not only available but they make absolute sense and are have taken on a life of their own and a momentum which is near irreversible.

I work with colleagues who have recently demoted themselves because it means less stress and the financial impact is manageable with the extra time it gives them. I have 2 friends who effectively retired in their 40s and who work if they get bored and feel like it. My cousin awaits the next building boom with interest but has quit permanent work; works on an agency basis and can generally ask for £2,000 more pcm by doing so. My wife was the highest paid locum I’d heard of until I spoke to friends in the NHS who can pull in up to £3,000 a shift without anyone batting an eyelid. The list goes on. A friend who quit as a deputy head and became a bin man. Less paperwork; stress and hours and child care costs. Same net income.

These economic circumstances are of governments own making and a marketing campaign to bring the retired back into the workforce or the part-time back to full time will no more work until it actually pays to do so than the attempts to drive people off UC into work.

We live in a place where in work poverty has long since exceeded out of work poverty. Marketing and bullying simply cannot change that.