Freelance Living Wage

[Maxim Ford]

Freye if you read the posts you will see that I have been talking about exactly that, The film union proposing plans for the Film Industry. This is open for all film makers to take part in.

 

The producers organisation PACK does not have a plan for the Film Industry.

 

On the industrial side it stands on the other side of the table in negotiations trying to keep wages DOWN.

 

The Market does not have intelligence, a morality, a plan, it is blind economics. They people who promote free market are the ones who benefit from it, or brain washed by the denial of any alternative.

[Freya Black]

Freye if you read the posts you will see that I have been talking about exactly that, The film union proposing plans for the Film Industry. This is open for all film makers to take part in.

 

The producers organisation PACK does not have a plan for the Film Industry.

 

On the industrial side it stands on the other side of the table in negotiations trying to keep wages DOWN.

 

The Market does not have intelligence, a morality, a plan, it is blind economics. They people who promote free market are the ones who benefit from it, or brain washed by the denial of any alternative.

 

I would point out that wages are a separate if somewhat related issue to budgets.

 

PACT may not have a plan for the movie industry as it is more about the relationship between broadcasters and independent producers. They certainly have plans in that context of course and will be fighting for larger budgets and not smaller ones.

 

The trouble in terms of the movie industry in the UK is we don't really have one. Movies are for the most part basically made for TV affairs with an element of government subsidy. It's great if BECTU have some kind of plan for taking things further than that but the basic problem there is you are kind of talking about starting from scratch really.

 

What little of a film industry we had went away long ago with polygram filmed entertainment.

 

That's a huge issue to address. I think there would need to be wide sweeping changes made but again, as I've been saying, I don't think any changes are going to really have much effect until we make serious attempts to address the core problems in the UK.

 

I didn't realise we were talking about movies specifically and the idea of some kind of UK movie industry.

In some ways producers become even more irrelevant in that context because there is so little left that could fall under that banner.

 

In that context budgets are entirely dictated by what is available under the govenment schemes and what is available from the broadcasters involved. Both parties will be pushing for lower budgets to try and stretch the meagre amounts further and that is understandable as there is an argument for trying to get more movies made in order to increase the chances of success.

 

Producers are definitely not going to be keen to have less money to make their movies but they will be forced to take what is on offer or go away.

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

 

The Market does not have intelligence, a morality, a plan, it is blind economics. They people who promote free market are the ones who benefit from it, or brain washed by the denial of any alternative.

 

A free market might be very cool. Would love to try that. I think it's unlikely in the short term but I guess you never know, this is a time of change.

 

Having said that I'm not sure why you are throwing that into the mix, as it seems somewhat irrelevant to the current discussion and doesn't seem to be something you are keen on yourself anyway!

 

I wouldn't go as far as to say the market has no plan, it obviously brings forces in a specific direction but obviously you are right about the lack of morality or intelligence.

 

Freya

[Stephen Williams]

[quote name="Maxim Ford" post="397478" timestamp="13837313

The rich should be given one days work down a coal mine, one day as a nurse, one as a teacher, one flipping burgers and then given the choice - they can keep their money but have to do one of those jobs. OR continue making films on a average wage.

 

Well in the UK the poor are not compelled to work, there are families where nobody has worked for 2 generations, soon to be 3 generations.

If the poor don't have to be given 1 days work in a coal mine why should the rich have to?

 

The great thing about a free market is than anybody can be a producer, which RB has shown, so where is the problem? It's just incompetent people complaining that someone less competent than themselves earned more money , it's not fair LOL.

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

anybody can be a producer

 

Even if that were true, it would still be a problem: we can't have everyone doing the same job just because someone's decided it should, for some reason, be the best paid.

 

But it's not true. Various people are psychologically and intellectually suited to various jobs; that's fine, that's normal. If you want to take that as a polite way of saying that not everyone is prepared to do, or frankly psychologically able to do, the things that are required to be a producer, fine. The same probably goes for lots of things.

 

The main problem with the all-too-common attitude that it's OK to be rich because anyone can be rich is that it is simply logically inconsistent. With the gap between rich and poor large and growing, it's obvious that we can't all be, and all live like, the billionaires who currently seem to run things. The resources to do it don't exist. If the rich-poor gap were narrower, there might be more room for ambition to improve everyone's lives, but at the moment the pay gap is so unimaginably vast, you might as well try to swim up the Niagara falls.

 

So please, let's not be suckered into excusing the excesses of our ruling financial elite by claiming anyone can get there. We can't.

 

P

[Keith Walters]

- Rich as creosote

 

Creosote?

 

Hmm. Either Mr Rhodes has been careless with his use of a spell checker, or he has made one too many posts*

 

Or he may have actually meant: "Rich as Croesus"

 

Which raises an interesting point; no matter how rich Croesus might have been, it did not give him access to a car, penicillin, anaesthetic and antiseptic surgery, an iPhone, or even year-round reliable access to nutritious and wholesome foodstuffs, all of which are available to even the perennially impecunious likes of Mr Rhodes.

 

*Creosote you see, is what one applies to posts to stop rot setting in. The procedure appears to have been less than efficacious, at least with this particular thread….

[Guest]

Don't worry I'm still here, I just moved my base to LA for the week.

 

R,

[Maxim Ford]

Well in the UK the poor are not compelled to work, there are families where nobody has worked for 2 generations, soon to be 3 generations.

If the poor don't have to be given 1 days work in a coal mine why should the rich have to?

 

The great thing about a free market is than anybody can be a producer, which RB has shown, so where is the problem? It's just incompetent people complaining that someone less competent than themselves earned more money , it's not fair LOL.

Not true, the case in the news where a young graduate was forced to work in a pound shop or lose her dole.

 

Disinformation by the popular press perpetuates the myth of the lazy working class.

 

The terrible thing about the free market is that it gives the illusion that anybody can succeed but in reality denying it to 99% of the population.

 

 

The sad thing is that producer rather than join in a campaign for bigger budgets bemoan the threat to cheap wages.

 

After all the French system is still capitalism just not a red in tooth and claw. They give the workers meal breaks and decent wages....

[Keith Walters]

Not true, the case in the news where a young graduate was forced to work in a pound shop or lose her dole.

 

Why does being "a graduate" entitle one to a job of one's choice? Just because you've chosen to burn up a few years of your life, and a large wad of (most likely other people's) money, studying a field of your own choosing, doesn't mean that government or industry is obliged to find a position for you at a salary you deem appropriate.

 

This is actually one of the most pernicious issues with contemporary Western Societies.

Decades ago, faced with rising employment competition from newly industrializing Asian economies, the various governments of the day decreed that "we" desperately needed "more graduates". But the educational authorities' response was not to invest more in more educational facilities, but to simply drastically lower the bar for graduating

.

Hence most Western economies are currently being logjammed with clueless "graduates" who mostly wouldn't know their arses from a budget deficit.

I know, I have to work with them (and suffer the consequences...)

The staggering number of Billionaires who never went to college or even finished High School, suggests there may be a slight flaw in this thinking

.

But as they say, "To the man who invented the hammer, everything looks like a nail..."

Or was it the nail clipper...?

[Brian Drysdale]

I believe the graduate in that case had found unpaid work in the area of her expertise and was getting experience there. While the job finders had found her work experience in a shop, my understanding is that she was still getting paid by the state for this work. In this case it seems she'd done a better job of getting the work experience placement than the offical organisation that supposed to be doing it.

[Maxim Ford]

The point was that people are not just allowed to sit on the dole.

 

Whether she was a graduate or not is not the point.

 

Maybe you should raise those issues in another thread such as " more right wing nonsense"

Edited November 7, 2013 by Maxim Ford

[Mark Dunn]

The point was that people are not just allowed to sit on the dole.

 

Whether she was a graduate or not is not the point.

 

Maybe you should raise those issues in another thread such as " more right wing nonsense"

Do keep up. The court said that the requirement 'was not close to forced labour'.

There's quite enough "left-wing nonsense" here without spreading it about.

[Stephen Williams]

Not true, the case in the news where a young graduate was forced to work in a pound shop or lose her dole.

 

I don't have a problem with that, you said a producer should have to work in a coal mine, now it's a pound shop :D

[Stephen Williams]

The point was that people are not just allowed to sit on the dole.

"

Which is great news, I am very happy to hear it, needs to be applied to those on social security benefits as well.

[Phil Rhodes]

The pound shop thing was pretty awful - it basically comes down to a big company (the shop) getting someone to work for them at the government's expense, for less than minimum wage. I'm not sure anyone's learning anything from that, beyond the idea that crap retail jobs can pay so poorly they're barely worth doing.

 

Creosote is a Terry Pratchett character, perhaps a bit of an obscure reference.

[Guest]

I would seriously like yo know what kind of "dirty" jobs the morally superior comrade Maxim has done in his working life? The first person we should send into a coal mine is comrade Maxim because I can 100% guarantee he's never even seen one, let alone been in one. I'm pretty sure like most leftist types comrade Maxim has lead a pretty comfortable life. Send the CEOs into coal mines, you're so full of it Maxim. But we already knew that from 11 pages of full on BS spewed on this thread.

 

I would like to challenge anyone on here who thinks they have done worse dirty jobs in their lifetime than me. First off I come from a poor single parent family. I used to work on a rabbit farm, home to 5000 rabbits. On Saturday my friend and I would remove several tons of rabbit manure from the rabbit barn. Now you haven't seen or experienced a disgusting job until you've seen this one!! Maxim would of passed out in the first 10 seconds after entering the barn from the smell alone.

 

So I don't feel I need any lectures from Phil or Maxim about being some sort of greedy capitalist, especially since indie film producers barely scratch out a living in 90% of cases anyway.

 

R,

[Maxim Ford]

The point is to try and tackle the ideas raised, not reveal your fantasies about the people posting here.

 

You believe that some people deserve to earn 10 times, a 100 times, a 1000 times more than others.

 

You think there should be film technictions on stand by waiting to work on crap wages so that you can make a fortune on a Zombie movie.

 

You have contempt for people who flip burgers.

[Keith Walters]

Creosote is a Terry Pratchett character, perhaps a bit of an obscure reference.

I think so.

 

Actually I thought it might have been some sort of obscure reference to "Mr Creosote" the exploding fat man in Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life".

However the "Rot in the Posts" angle was too tempting to pass by....

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

I should be paid more than everyone else!

 

Why?

 

 

 

I used to work on a rabbit farm!

 

Bit of a stretch there, ol' RB. Everyone has a reason they're special.

[Guest]

Yeah but Phil they called me, Ricky The Rabbit Tamer, at school.

 

R,

[Guest]

You believe that some people deserve to earn 10 times, a 100 times, a 1000 times more than others.

 

So does 99.99% of Western society. You keep spewing this stuff, all the while forgetting that you demand to be paid big bucks for your stock footage. I don't know why you are not sharing your revenue with me, greedy capitalist.

 

R,

[Maxim Ford]

From ABC News ( Communist front no doubt)

 

Six in 10 Americans say the federal government should pursue policies to reduce the gap between the wealthy and less-well-off Americans, although fewer express support for the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s been protesting U.S. income inequality.

Sixty-one percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll think the wealth gap is larger than it’s been historically. And despite longstanding public concerns about activist government, six in 10 also say the federal government should seek to reduce that differential.

[Mark Dunn]

From ABC News ( Communist front no doubt)

 

Six in 10 Americans say the federal government should pursue policies to reduce the gap between the wealthy and less-well-off Americans, although fewer express support for the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s been protesting U.S. income inequality.

Sixty-one percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll think the wealth gap is larger than it’s been historically. And despite longstanding public concerns about activist government, six in 10 also say the federal government should seek to reduce that differential.

Oh for crying out loud, how many times? Richard is Canadian. CANADA IS NOT THE USA.

[Maxim Ford]

Speaking in a calm and reasonable voice....That's is not the point, if someone claims that 99% of the people support income inequality and I post a report that 60% are against it in the land of free markets. It disproves his point.

 

Unless you think Canadians are even more right wing? Some have been smoking crack.

[Guest]

My point Maxim is that 99.99% of people in Western society do not believe that a doctor should earn the same as a burger flipper. Or that a burger flipper who works 10 hours per week, should earn the same as a burger flipper who works 40 hours per week.

 

Anyway the discussion is now moot, you have convinced me that capitalism is wrong and socialism is the way to go. So with that in mind, I want 25% of your stock footage revenue, since you are now the evil capitalist and I am the bleeding heart socialist lay about.

 

Come on Maxim cough up the dough!! You are the 1% you rich greedy stock footage business owner. I want a significant share of your revenue. You are just like George Lucas, you said he received way more than he should have for creating Star Wars, and now I agree with you! You created that stock footage library and you are receiving way more than you should from it, it's not fair.

 

Now I'll send you my Pay Pal info and you can start making monthly payments to me.

 

Long live socialism, I should of listened to you earlier Maxim, this is great!!

 

R,