I make you right about the divide and rule policy -- I think there's little doubt that this government is doing precisely that. While we, the people who live pay-day to pay-day, quibble with each other over who's got the sweetest crumb, their mates in the City have made off with the whole bloody cake, and we're not supposed to notice.
well said Dippenhall The public workers should remember that Blair and Brown plundered £20 Bn from private pension funds that affected their retirement
It might be more accurate to say that what Brown did as soon as he got in, being too dishonest to raise income tax, was to abolish ACT recoverable on dividends for pension funds, thus removing approximately £5bn per year from 1997 onwards from pension investments. This money, if not removed from pensions, would have compounded within the funds ever since, and together with the year on year lost contributions, would probably be worth something like £100bn now. Thanks Gordon. A liar, a cheat and a thief.
This was a major contribution to private sector pensions moving from surplus to deficit, and hence the closure of final salary schemes which had been constructed on different actuarial assumptions.
The problem with the public sector demands, although I have some sympathy, is that there is no pot of cash to pay them, but they will have to be met by the contributions of those without any pension provision of their own. I will be poor in my old age because, in part, I am funding your retirement. So the government didnt keep its promise? Neither have they made good the victims of Equitable Life whose pensions were supposed to have been monitored by a public sector department. Governments break promises - it's what they do.
And long before Brown did that, Major allowed employers to steal from your pension funds by taking long contribution holidays when the pots were in surplus, so that, when markets fell, there were suddenly (surprise, surprise) massive deficits.
bollox to you all striking 2morrow against it 110% if thats OK AFKA.
Of course it is. But then again you may not already be tied into a minimum 3 year pay freeze while all your bills have been going through the roof, or already had most of your benefits you signed up for taken away from you.
I'm grateful for having a job. But my employer gained my commitment by offering a decent pension to make up for the far weaker comparative pay. I'm sure there are many in the public sector who feel the same. By all means offer these different terms to those starting New roles and schemes from now, but honour existing contracts offered to some people who may have built their entire careers and lives around them.
This is a perfectly understandable comment but heres a few comparisons that I'd like to make
My wife works for the NHS, she gets a decent contributory pension. I work in the private sector, for me to get the kind of pension she gets would require me to make a contribution of more than 50% of my earnings.
The true value of Public Employees pensions is far greater than the unions will have you believe.
Of course on the one hand its all the wicked Tory led coalition and the bankers fault and on the other, its those in the Eurozone who can't sit the right way on a toilet seat.
Lets not forget however that the last government was happy to hose up the taxes paid by rich bankers and city slickers to bankroll structural spending that the country now can't afford. It is those massive tax receipts from the City and increased borrowing when times were good that paid for an increase in spending in the public sector on staffing costs and allowed the pensions on offer to be very advantageous.
The economy was allowed to get massively out of balance and now its very painful to put things right, especially during a sovereign debt crisis.
Labour, Tories fell over one another to toady to the city slickers who were their paymasters. Labour had a "light touch" regulatory framework only surpassed by the Tories who wanted a "no touch" framework.
It is very sad for those who's living standards are being damaged and whose pension rights are being reduced. Unfortunately thats what was always going to happen which ever Government was in power. The Governor of the B of E knew his and said as much prior to the General Election.
When I listen to the odious Mr Balls, one of the architects of the mess we are now in, spouting off about a fantasy five point plan to make it all better, it makes my blood boil.
Its the structural part of the deficit that needs to be dealt with. Current spending will rise during the economic cycle but as Balls former boss knew, (until he re-wrote the rules) that borrowing had to be balanced over the economic cycle - he and Balls didn't do that so the structural deficit become too high as a proportion of GDP. A cogent plan for reducing that has been the only way to keep the markets sweet. Losing that financial competency will spook the markets, increase interest rates, make a deep recession an absolute certainty and leave us closer to the brink along side Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.
Keynes talked about the paradox of thrift but the reality is those who cannot afford to keep borrowing have to pay down some debt, other players who are cash rich like China, Brazil and India need to stimulate their economies. That is really the only way out of this mess.
My living standards have dropped considerably over the last few years and as I said before, my pension is paltry compared to comparable pensions in the public sector. You can either whinge on about it, or you can try to find other sources of income/work that will supplement your shrinking income. That is what I decided to do.
I respect peoples right to strike - my grandfather took part in the General Strike and my family suffered real hardship as a result. i just wonder who is pulling the strings and will this strike achieve anything apart from allowing a pressure value to let off some steam?
Yes promises have been broken but if the money ain't there, it ain't there.
Don't listen to the false profits like Mr Balls who will kid you on that there is some magical panacea to make this economic nightmare go away. He was one of the principal participants in producing this terrible dream which has become a reality.
And long before Brown did that, Major allowed employers to steal from your pension funds by taking long contribution holidays when the pots were in surplus, so that, when markets fell, there were suddenly (surprise, surprise) massive deficits.
And now they want to use the argument that gold plated (I dont seem to be able to read anything in the media about public sector pensions without this!) public sector pensions are so much better than those in the private sector and they have every right to destroy them in the same way as they've allowed these to go. Brilliant!
as an employee of a private sector company.And one ,I should add ,that is also about to go out on strike soon,
that the great pension scam is not only effecting those in the public sector.
My view is that if you were offered a decent pension when you took employment, then you've every bloody right to do what you can to keep hold of it regardless of what sector you work in or how badly they've pissed that money up the wall.
I just dont understand why private sector workers are so opposed to the public sector receiving a reasonable pension. We all work for one aim only and that is to have a decent standard of living. All companies have some sort of perk...such as company cars, all expenses paid meals, invites to corporate doos (football, gigs etc), BUPA etc. Because this Government want to save some cash, the first port of call is to cull the Civil Servants and local government and then change at will their contracts as though these people have no rights to complain. Work is work whether its done by public or the private sector. If the public sector is pointless then why all the reaction to the strike...? We all have value. This government is acting as a dictatorship with patronising statements as in if you dont do what I want you to do we will take your toys away. Utter CUNTS!
The fact of the matter is that unfunded final salary pension schemes are just too expensive to run. END OF. A combination of people living too long, a dwindling workforce and low annuity rates means that The Treasury is having to set aside more & more money every year to pay for this priviledge and it has to stop.
I'm not sure how many of you undestand the workings of a public sector pension scheme (be it the NHS, civil service, Teachers, local government etc) but none of the money paid by employees or employers actually gets invested anywhere. You are not bulding up you own pension "pot" with your 6% or 8% or even 10% contributions - this money is simply going to the Government to pay people retiring NOW. None of this money is being invested and so unlike the millions of workers who are in "funded" pension schemes,public sector workers has not suffered the 20% or so loses that everyone else has suffered due to the Euro problems etc. There are hundreds of thousands of people retireing NOW who have seen their pension "pots" reduced by thousands of pounds and allied to the fact that annuity rates are at their lowest rate ever are now having to retire on a pension a lot less than they were expecting just a few years before.
still happy to strike ?????????
Th
You know what? I've had a really sh###y day doing my best under difficult circumstances to give the public the best level of service I can and promised myself that I would not get involved in the inevitable CL pensions thread as I knew it would be full of opinions that would wind me up and ignorance of the issues involved. Golfie, you are fully entitled to your opinion even though I disagree as you would expect but what shocks me given what you do is that you are unaware the local authority scheme is funded and in fact has been performing very well. It is far from unaffordable as it the NHS scheme for another example.
You have also lumped them all into together, which is precisely what the government wants the public to when in fact the LA scheme has already been significantly changed to the detriment to it's members. The govt agreed that but has now come back in for another chunk of the pie. How is that fair?
IMO this is not about the sustainability of the pension schemes, it's about running them down to the extent they can flog them off to the private sector with the consequential change in emphasis that will involve, towards making money and not serving the public.
The announcement re:the salary cap has topped my day as you might imagine so I think I might dip out of this one for tonight :-(
bollox to you all striking 2morrow against it 110% if thats OK AFKA.
Of course it is. But then again you may not already be tied into a minimum 3 year pay freeze while all your bills have been going through the roof, or already had most of your benefits you signed up for taken away from you.
I'm grateful for having a job. But my employer gained my commitment by offering a decent pension to make up for the far weaker comparative pay. I'm sure there are many in the public sector who feel the same. By all means offer these different terms to those starting New roles and schemes from now, but honour existing contracts offered to some people who may have built their entire careers and lives around them.
Agree with this. These politicians are a joke, all sign up for there big pay increases, then sell all the worker ants down the river. Public sector workers deal with a lot of crap so these little things matter a great deal. Tube unions do it so its about time public sector workers did!
I'm not sure how many of you undestand the workings of a public sector pension scheme (be it the NHS, civil service, Teachers, local government etc) but none of the money paid by employees or employers actually gets invested anywhere. You are not bulding up you own pension "pot" with your 6% or 8% or even 10% contributions - this money is simply going to the Government to pay people retiring NOW.
That's not entirely true Golfie. Local Government has a pension fund, and so do the universities. I dunno about the universities, but the Local Government pension fund had a surplus when the stock market was booming, so the employers took pension holidays for several years in a row. Now, like many funds it has a bit of a projected deficit at the moment I think, but the scheme was reformed in the last 5 or 6 years to make it more robust. There's no need for further reforms to make it affordable, particularly in the long term (once the baby boomers have popped their cloggs in 20 years time). The NHS pension scheme is unfunded, it's true, but it's running at a healthy surplus so the Govt are already making a profit out of it.
As for private sector pensions, yes the Brown reforms didn't help, but nor did the pension holidays in the boom years, and nor do the ridiculous levels of fees and charges levied by our much vaunted financial services sector now. Your taxes may pay public sector wages and pensions, but their taxes also help pay tax credits and pension credits for private sector workers whose employers don't pay them a living wage or who didn't save for a pension of their own. Guys, if you want to organise a national demonstration about the poor state of private sector pensions, and lobby for a national scheme with reasonable overheads, I'd be with you all the way. But we can't strike over it, as that'd be secondary action, and we're not allowed to do that since Thatcher outlawed it in the 80s. :-)
And the statistics about average pay and pensions in the two sectors often neglect to mention * pensions are accrued over a 40 year working life, and just because average public sector pay may be better right now while we're in a recession, historically it hasn't been * while pay may be better on average, that's because most of the low pay jobs have been outsourced to private companies. Like for like - teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, accountants - private sector jobs pay better. * public sector workers are more likely to pay into a pension scheme and (excluding the army) generally pay a higher proprtion of their salary in contributions than the private sector workers do
I'm not striking tomorrow because I booked leave before the ballot results were announced, but I fully support the strike. I also find it quite funny, the difference in attitude here to striking where employees are protesting about employers trying to force through change terms and conditions, depending on whether the employees are electricians or public sector workers.
When I was 18, I started paying NI contributions that were to go to my pnesion when I retired at 65.
Today I've been told, I will not get my state pension until I'm 67.
So that's two more years of contributions and two less years of pay out - I reckon about £15k of my money has been 'stolen' from me by successive Governments and who's to say it won't change again in the next ten years?
This Government's divide and rule tactics are getting tedious.
Everyone knows that there has to be change - that there isn't enough money to go around. The nature of that change and who pays the most for it is what's at question.
When public sector workers withdraw their labour, the Government says they are holding the country to ransom and must be confronted.
When banks say they will move abroad if they are regulated and taxed, the Government says we have to listen to them and comply with their wishes.
Teachers and nurses (and road sweepers come to that) are as essential to my well being as bankers and the rest of the super-rich.
The Government talks about making difficult decisions. What's difficult is to identify and enact the sort of long-term structural changes the global economy requires. Not picking on the easy targets that this Government delights in turning us all against.
I suspect things will only get worse because the growth model is unbalanced and perhaps just doesn't work anymore. The value of labour gets cheaper and cheaper and money from economic growth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. To be honest I don't know who has an answer to that - socialism didn't work and our Government is even more wedded to the free market paradigm than New Labour was.
Democracy is dying and 'the markets' rule. The world needs a saviour.
when i joined the fire service 22 years ago i signed an agreement with the government to join the national pension scheme, now they want to change the contract if i was to leave the scheme i would not be entitled to my pension until i reached 65, i pay 11% into the scheme . With the new proposal they want me to pay 15% £550 a month, work another 15 years and get less out at the end. if you really want a 65 year old man carrying out the role of a firefighter good luck he’s likely to kill himself, you or others. firefighters are still in consultation so won’t be striking tomorrow and i think the pension issues will be the only thing that will cause a national strike again. I’m not into striking at all but why should we be robbed while the banks get away with it. Good luck to the members tomorrow.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Its not about well why should you have if I haven’t got it, everyone has choices and I chose the public sector and had low wages for the first 15 years and no pay rise for 2 years for the privilege but could always guarantee a good pension
Putting politics aside (some on here will know mine), let me tell you my experience. I have spent most of my working life as a "contractor". For that I have been well rewarded financially (when in work). One of my friends was a life-long Civil Servant who took early retirement at 58 on a full pension. He's a friend of mine, but when we worked together there was always a hint of, how shall I put this, jealousy - remarks about the car I drove or the house I lived in. Now he is crowing because I'm still working and have no hope of having anything like the pension he's on...
I don't know where I'm going with this - half a bottle of red down, but they've not had it so bad in the public sector.
Putting politics aside (some on here will know mine), let me tell you my experience. I have spent most of my working life as a "contractor". For that I have been well rewarded financially (when in work). One of my friends was a life-long Civil Servant who took early retirement at 58 on a full pension. He's a friend of mine, but when we worked together there was always a hint of, how shall I put this, jealousy - remarks about the car I drove or the house I lived in. Now he is crowing because I'm still working and have no hope of having anything like the pension he's on...
I don't know where I'm going with this - half a bottle of red down, but they've not had it so bad in the public sector.
As a contractor, how would you have felt if you'd agreed a fee for a contract and the employer / commissioner decided not to change the terms of the contract half way through and only pay you 80% of the originally agreed fee?
Hmm great so we should pay for public sector pensions, and have no say. It doesn' really matter as there is not the money now. Unions will strike, time will go on, and the deal will get worse.
Why would you put a deposit on base rate? It'd be murdered in high inflation, or locked in on a shit rate when markets move. If you buy gilts you still have to take a market position, so now when you get QE gilt yields get hammerred, and the pot reduces in real terms. Pensions and many investors made steady returns after WWII because of regulation in the market, such as the Glass Steagall act. Frankly the outstanding bollox that teacher's unions, and they're representatives come out with puts them as balanced as a red top journo.
I have some questions. Firstly the teacher's pension is a private agreement between the Pru and the employee? So how is it raided by the spending pot? I don't know what happened historically. For around a 6% of pay, we put in 14% of contributions. Fine I'm happy for people to have decent pensions, but the payment has to get near to the payout. And when this generation retire it doesn't, a surplus now is not an argument for the continued health of the scheme.
Public sector employees do what you want. Go on strike don't negotiate, but down the line the deal will be worse.
Putting politics aside (some on here will know mine), let me tell you my experience. I have spent most of my working life as a "contractor". For that I have been well rewarded financially (when in work). One of my friends was a life-long Civil Servant who took early retirement at 58 on a full pension. He's a friend of mine, but when we worked together there was always a hint of, how shall I put this, jealousy - remarks about the car I drove or the house I lived in. Now he is crowing because I'm still working and have no hope of having anything like the pension he's on...
I don't know where I'm going with this - half a bottle of red down, but they've not had it so bad in the public sector.
As a contractor, how would you have felt if you'd agreed a fee for a contract and the employer / commissioner decided not to change the terms of the contract half way through and only pay you 80% of the originally agreed fee?
I've had contracts cancelled on me, so I don't think that argument really works. Sure I could've taken them to court, but only if I never wanted to work again.
Putting politics aside (some on here will know mine), let me tell you my experience. I have spent most of my working life as a "contractor". For that I have been well rewarded financially (when in work). One of my friends was a life-long Civil Servant who took early retirement at 58 on a full pension. He's a friend of mine, but when we worked together there was always a hint of, how shall I put this, jealousy - remarks about the car I drove or the house I lived in. Now he is crowing because I'm still working and have no hope of having anything like the pension he's on...
I don't know where I'm going with this - half a bottle of red down, but they've not had it so bad in the public sector.
But that's always been the trade off Saga. Steady work at a modest wage followed by a decent pension, or higher rewards but with less security. You could've had the option of the pension he's on, but you chose the more immediate rewards instead. Now the public sector is no longer secure - reorganisation upon reorganisation, outsourcing, 700,000 jobs going - AND they're getting screwed over on pensions, which has always been the main attraction of public sector Ts&Cs .
Why does HMRC not collect the outstanding revenues from Major telecoms companies and others?
Why do the government not close tax loopholes that allows billions of pound in revenue to be avoided?
just a few thoughts.
This argument has been made by those on the left for years. It always makes me smile. Tories came to power claiming to crack down on benefit cheats and Labour came to power claiming to crack down on Tax avoidance.
If was that easy, why don't they actually achieve it, especially tax avoidance. The problem is that our tax code is extremely complex. Every time they right a Finance Act, they open up unintended loopholes.
This Government has, to be fair, talked tough about avoidance and has apparently taken on additional highly skilled staff to go after avoidance. They have also done a deal with the Swiss over monies held in secret accounts.
The reality is that the super rich and large corporations have enough money and expertise to avoid tax that the average person cannot do. I worked for a large corporations HQ. They had a whole taxation department devoted to finding legitimate loopholes for minimising the tax the company pays.
I am afraid I have long reached the view that governments are persuaded that in the same way as it is right for a well functioning economy to have a large amount of compliance, (unlike Greece and Italy for example), They are also sanguine and accepting of the reality that tightening things too much will end up forcing more profits offshore, ending with less tax taken overall. It may be that they are wrong but government has truly had balls to tackle it head on.
Putting politics aside (some on here will know mine), let me tell you my experience. I have spent most of my working life as a "contractor". For that I have been well rewarded financially (when in work). One of my friends was a life-long Civil Servant who took early retirement at 58 on a full pension. He's a friend of mine, but when we worked together there was always a hint of, how shall I put this, jealousy - remarks about the car I drove or the house I lived in. Now he is crowing because I'm still working and have no hope of having anything like the pension he's on...
I don't know where I'm going with this - half a bottle of red down, but they've not had it so bad in the public sector.
As a contractor, how would you have felt if you'd agreed a fee for a contract and the employer / commissioner decided not to change the terms of the contract half way through and only pay you 80% of the originally agreed fee?
I've had contracts cancelled on me, so I don't think that argument really works. Sure I could've taken them to court, but only if I never wanted to work again.
I don't know what field you are in Saga so can't make a comment on the never wanted to work again statement but you did have the option to act on this/ I have the option too, I'm taking action.
I'm on the fence on this one, I can see both points of view. I am thankful however, that my children go to a wonderful school which is still open tomorrow.
If it is £2.50 per hour would that be a good deal for you?
If a teacher, with a class of 25 children, taught them for 21 hours per week, and each child brought in £2.50 per hour for that service, and the teacher taught for 39 weeks in a year, then before tax, the teacher would get:
25x21x39x£2.50= £51,187.5 per year.
If you made it £3 per hour it would pay for the school infrastructure.
Most teachers teach groups of more than 25 by the way.
Most teachers try to teach something too, rather than only childminding.
Is it possible to buy childminding at £3 per hour in the private sector? Or even £4 or £5?
Very few teachers are on more than £50k per year before tax and other stoppages such as pension contributions. Young teachers start at about £24k per year (before stoppages), less than half the figure I have come up with
It looks to me that state schooling is a very cheap way to occupy children compared to private sector provision
I am striking tomorrow. I have taken an age to come to this decision. Finally making at about 1 hour ago. Having spent a long time today talking to colleagues, management and union reps where I work.
I agree that public sector pensions are good. I still pay into my own private scheme on top of my work based contributions simply because I do not trust the government to look after my money. currently my contributions are about equal in both schemes yet my projected benefits are much higher at retirement in my public sector scheme. The downside is that I have to wait till I am 67 to get at those benefits. My private scheme will pay out much sooner.
when I took the job I was enrolled into the scheme and told the benefits. This scheme currently pays out around £2billion a year less than is contributed to it and at it's current level would be fine for the next 20 years or so without the need for members to pay a higher percentage of earnings essentially this means in basic terms the government benefit from this scheme). I am perfectly happy to pay a little more each month to keep my benefit levels the same. I am not however happy to be doing the job i currently do when I am into my late 60's it would be to the detriment of my health and that of my patients. I am even less happy to pay this extra money and get less for it, especially when it is being forced onto us as a group with little willingness on the part of the government to try and reach an amicable settlement.
My reticence to strike is not simply because of the nature of my job but also because I think the government actually want a fight with the unions to strenghten their position prior to the next election (and the unions have fallen for it big time).
I am sitting here now still feeling guilty about my decision because the loss of a days pay will have a direct impact on my families income at a time when we are already aware that we are not as well off as when I worked in the public sector.
Unbelievable how supposed sensible Lib Dems like you Bing have been such rabid Tories, or have you always been a Orange Booker
:-)
All my Labour mates say the same Rothers.
New Labour though - supported and defended by my Labour supporting mates was much further to the right than I ever was on the "filthy rich".
The fact that under Miliband Junior and Balls, new Labour has now morphed into "true" Labour and are now airbrushing out of history, the lassez-faire Tory like economics of their time in government, coupled with their part in spending the proceeds of the lassez-faire excesses, doesn't convince me that they are embarked on anything more than tactical maneuvers, rather than ideological shifts.
It has always been a typical liberal balance for me on these issues. At the moment, I don't think that what Labour is offering economically is actually credible.
My view is that we are where we are. As I said in my earlier post, both Tory and Labour contributed to the current mess.
Politics is about hitting your opponents with the biggest stick you can. Labour is hitting the coalition with the "cuts are down to you" stick and the coalition is hitting Labour with the "we wouldn't be in this mess but for you" stick. Both are not entirely correct. The problem for me with Labour's current position though is that:
a) Labour tax cuts this year (under Darling) would have been £17 of cut to every £18 that the government is cutting. b) There is a "timing" issue over the speed of cuts but there was a balance that needed to be struck between showing strength of resolve to the markets, and choking off demand. If the charge is that the Governments cuts strategy has "flat lined" the economy, then my point a) above suggests that it would have been pretty much the same under a Labour Govt. c) Balls was Browns key ally at the Treasury when they decided to throw out prudence and bust their own rules on deficit management. It is hard to take him seriously when he calls for more structural spending/tax cuts.
For these reasons, it is not hard to see why the public don't have Labour twenty points ahead in the polls.
You may say this is Tory bullshit. I actually think its true.
As I said, I am essentially a Keynsian at heart but Keynes will have known that despite the essential truth of his statement on the paradox of thrift, he will know, as the IMF knows, that those who can stimulate should stimulate, those who need to pay down the deficit need to do that.
What we have seen with Osborne's statement in my view, is trying to do both at the same time without spooking the markets.
So Orange Booker or Social Liberal? I hate such labels. What is needed is to focus on what the priorities are in a given situation. Everybody (Labour, Lib Dem, Tory) including all the leading economist know that the trick is to cut the structural deficit at the same time as getting and maintaining growth, and to achieve this without spooking the markets or the winds of external economic hurricanes blowing you off course. I don't think we would be anywhere much different, were Labour now in control - its circumstances which dictate how you play this out. Given the debt contagion in Europe, it would be a brave Chancellor Ed Balls, to buck the current austerity trend by borrowing more (other than through the economic cycle as the government now is). He will have to balance the need to stimulate the economy with money he doesn't have against the risk of a run on the £ and a big hike in rates or worse, a sovereign debt crisis.
As for the strikes tomorrow, well my daughter and a friend will be at home with Daddy, so I am doing my best to support the strike of teachers at her school. Frankly my view is that it is futile and I lose some respect for so-called professionals who have not gone into teaching because of the brilliant pension, and won't leave teaching because their pension is not as good as it was. I am sure you won't agree but there we are, that is how I feel.
Comments
This was a major contribution to private sector pensions moving from surplus to deficit, and hence the closure of final salary schemes which had been constructed on different actuarial assumptions.
The problem with the public sector demands, although I have some sympathy, is that there is no pot of cash to pay them, but they will have to be met by the contributions of those without any pension provision of their own. I will be poor in my old age because, in part, I am funding your retirement. So the government didnt keep its promise? Neither have they made good the victims of Equitable Life whose pensions were supposed to have been monitored by a public sector department. Governments break promises - it's what they do.
In the end, there just isnt enough to go round.
My wife works for the NHS, she gets a decent contributory pension. I work in the private sector, for me to get the kind of pension she gets would require me to make a contribution of more than 50% of my earnings.
The true value of Public Employees pensions is far greater than the unions will have you believe.
Of course on the one hand its all the wicked Tory led coalition and the bankers fault and on the other, its those in the Eurozone who can't sit the right way on a toilet seat.
Lets not forget however that the last government was happy to hose up the taxes paid by rich bankers and city slickers to bankroll structural spending that the country now can't afford. It is those massive tax receipts from the City and increased borrowing when times were good that paid for an increase in spending in the public sector on staffing costs and allowed the pensions on offer to be very advantageous.
The economy was allowed to get massively out of balance and now its very painful to put things right, especially during a sovereign debt crisis.
Labour, Tories fell over one another to toady to the city slickers who were their paymasters. Labour had a "light touch" regulatory framework only surpassed by the Tories who wanted a "no touch" framework.
It is very sad for those who's living standards are being damaged and whose pension rights are being reduced. Unfortunately thats what was always going to happen which ever Government was in power. The Governor of the B of E knew his and said as much prior to the General Election.
When I listen to the odious Mr Balls, one of the architects of the mess we are now in, spouting off about a fantasy five point plan to make it all better, it makes my blood boil.
Its the structural part of the deficit that needs to be dealt with. Current spending will rise during the economic cycle but as Balls former boss knew, (until he re-wrote the rules) that borrowing had to be balanced over the economic cycle - he and Balls didn't do that so the structural deficit become too high as a proportion of GDP. A cogent plan for reducing that has been the only way to keep the markets sweet. Losing that financial competency will spook the markets, increase interest rates, make a deep recession an absolute certainty and leave us closer to the brink along side Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.
Keynes talked about the paradox of thrift but the reality is those who cannot afford to keep borrowing have to pay down some debt, other players who are cash rich like China, Brazil and India need to stimulate their economies. That is really the only way out of this mess.
My living standards have dropped considerably over the last few years and as I said before, my pension is paltry compared to comparable pensions in the public sector. You can either whinge on about it, or you can try to find other sources of income/work that will supplement your shrinking income. That is what I decided to do.
I respect peoples right to strike - my grandfather took part in the General Strike and my family suffered real hardship as a result. i just wonder who is pulling the strings and will this strike achieve anything apart from allowing a pressure value to let off some steam?
Yes promises have been broken but if the money ain't there, it ain't there.
Don't listen to the false profits like Mr Balls who will kid you on that there is some magical panacea to make this economic nightmare go away. He was one of the principal participants in producing this terrible dream which has become a reality.
You know what? I've had a really sh###y day doing my best under difficult circumstances to give the public the best level of service I can and promised myself that I would not get involved in the inevitable CL pensions thread as I knew it would be full of opinions that would wind me up and ignorance of the issues involved. Golfie, you are fully entitled to your opinion even though I disagree as you would expect but what shocks me given what you do is that you are unaware the local authority scheme is funded and in fact has been performing very well. It is far from unaffordable as it the NHS scheme for another example.
You have also lumped them all into together, which is precisely what the government wants the public to when in fact the LA scheme has already been significantly changed to the detriment to it's members. The govt agreed that but has now come back in for another chunk of the pie. How is that fair?
IMO this is not about the sustainability of the pension schemes, it's about running them down to the extent they can flog them off to the private sector with the consequential change in emphasis that will involve, towards making money and not serving the public.
The announcement re:the salary cap has topped my day as you might imagine so I think I might dip out of this one for tonight :-(
As for private sector pensions, yes the Brown reforms didn't help, but nor did the pension holidays in the boom years, and nor do the ridiculous levels of fees and charges levied by our much vaunted financial services sector now. Your taxes may pay public sector wages and pensions, but their taxes also help pay tax credits and pension credits for private sector workers whose employers don't pay them a living wage or who didn't save for a pension of their own. Guys, if you want to organise a national demonstration about the poor state of private sector pensions, and lobby for a national scheme with reasonable overheads, I'd be with you all the way. But we can't strike over it, as that'd be secondary action, and we're not allowed to do that since Thatcher outlawed it in the 80s. :-)
And the statistics about average pay and pensions in the two sectors often neglect to mention
* pensions are accrued over a 40 year working life, and just because average public sector pay may be better right now while we're in a recession, historically it hasn't been
* while pay may be better on average, that's because most of the low pay jobs have been outsourced to private companies. Like for like - teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, accountants - private sector jobs pay better.
* public sector workers are more likely to pay into a pension scheme and (excluding the army) generally pay a higher proprtion of their salary in contributions than the private sector workers do
I'm not striking tomorrow because I booked leave before the ballot results were announced, but I fully support the strike. I also find it quite funny, the difference in attitude here to striking where employees are protesting about employers trying to force through change terms and conditions, depending on whether the employees are electricians or public sector workers.
When I was 18, I started paying NI contributions that were to go to my pnesion when I retired at 65.
Today I've been told, I will not get my state pension until I'm 67.
So that's two more years of contributions and two less years of pay out - I reckon about £15k of my money has been 'stolen' from me by successive Governments and who's to say it won't change again in the next ten years?
Good job I have other provisions.
when i joined the fire service 22 years ago i signed an agreement with the government to join the national pension scheme, now they want to change the contract if i was to leave the scheme i would not be entitled to my pension until i reached 65, i pay 11% into the scheme . With the new proposal they want me to pay 15% £550 a month, work another 15 years and get less out at the end. if you really want a 65 year old man carrying out the role of a firefighter good luck he’s likely to kill himself, you or others. firefighters are still in consultation so won’t be striking tomorrow and i think the pension issues will be the only thing that will cause a national strike again. I’m not into striking at all but why should we be robbed while the banks get away with it. Good luck to the members tomorrow.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Its not about well why should you have if I haven’t got it, everyone has choices and I chose the public sector and had low wages for the first 15 years and no pay rise for 2 years for the privilege but could always guarantee a good pension
If was that easy, why don't they actually achieve it, especially tax avoidance. The problem is that our tax code is extremely complex. Every time they right a Finance Act, they open up unintended loopholes.
This Government has, to be fair, talked tough about avoidance and has apparently taken on additional highly skilled staff to go after avoidance. They have also done a deal with the Swiss over monies held in secret accounts.
The reality is that the super rich and large corporations have enough money and expertise to avoid tax that the average person cannot do. I worked for a large corporations HQ. They had a whole taxation department devoted to finding legitimate loopholes for minimising the tax the company pays.
I am afraid I have long reached the view that governments are persuaded that in the same way as it is right for a well functioning economy to have a large amount of compliance, (unlike Greece and Italy for example), They are also sanguine and accepting of the reality that tightening things too much will end up forcing more profits offshore, ending with less tax taken overall. It may be that they are wrong but government has truly had balls to tackle it head on.
Sadie, lets look at your school.
How much per hour is private child care/minding?
If it is £2.50 per hour would that be a good deal for you?
If a teacher, with a class of 25 children, taught them for 21 hours per week, and each child brought in £2.50 per hour for that service, and the teacher taught for 39 weeks in a year, then before tax, the teacher would get:
25x21x39x£2.50= £51,187.5 per year.
If you made it £3 per hour it would pay for the school infrastructure.
Most teachers teach groups of more than 25 by the way.
Most teachers try to teach something too, rather than only childminding.
Is it possible to buy childminding at £3 per hour in the private sector? Or even £4 or £5?
Very few teachers are on more than £50k per year before tax and other stoppages such as pension contributions. Young teachers start at about £24k per year (before stoppages), less than half the figure I have come up with
It looks to me that state schooling is a very cheap way to occupy children compared to private sector provision
I am striking tomorrow. I have taken an age to come to this decision. Finally making at about 1 hour ago. Having spent a long time today talking to colleagues, management and union reps where I work.
I agree that public sector pensions are good. I still pay into my own private scheme on top of my work based contributions simply because I do not trust the government to look after my money. currently my contributions are about equal in both schemes yet my projected benefits are much higher at retirement in my public sector scheme. The downside is that I have to wait till I am 67 to get at those benefits. My private scheme will pay out much sooner.
when I took the job I was enrolled into the scheme and told the benefits. This scheme currently pays out around £2billion a year less than is contributed to it and at it's current level would be fine for the next 20 years or so without the need for members to pay a higher percentage of earnings essentially this means in basic terms the government benefit from this scheme). I am perfectly happy to pay a little more each month to keep my benefit levels the same. I am not however happy to be doing the job i currently do when I am into my late 60's it would be to the detriment of my health and that of my patients. I am even less happy to pay this extra money and get less for it, especially when it is being forced onto us as a group with little willingness on the part of the government to try and reach an amicable settlement.
My reticence to strike is not simply because of the nature of my job but also because I think the government actually want a fight with the unions to strenghten their position prior to the next election (and the unions have fallen for it big time).
I am sitting here now still feeling guilty about my decision because the loss of a days pay will have a direct impact on my families income at a time when we are already aware that we are not as well off as when I worked in the public sector.
All my Labour mates say the same Rothers.
New Labour though - supported and defended by my Labour supporting mates was much further to the right than I ever was on the "filthy rich".
The fact that under Miliband Junior and Balls, new
Labour has now morphed into "true" Labour and are now airbrushing out of
history, the lassez-faire Tory like economics of their time in
government, coupled with their part in spending the proceeds of the lassez-faire excesses, doesn't convince me that they are embarked on anything more than tactical maneuvers, rather than ideological shifts.
It has always been a typical liberal balance for me on these issues. At the moment, I don't think that what Labour is offering economically is actually credible.
My view is that we are where we are. As I said in my earlier post, both Tory and Labour contributed to the current mess.
Politics is about hitting your opponents with the biggest stick you can. Labour is hitting the coalition with the "cuts are down to you" stick and the coalition is hitting Labour with the "we wouldn't be in this mess but for you" stick. Both are not entirely correct. The problem for me with Labour's current position though is that:
a) Labour tax cuts this year (under Darling) would have been £17 of cut to every £18 that the government is cutting.
b) There is a "timing" issue over the speed of cuts but there was a balance that needed to be struck between showing strength of resolve to the markets, and choking off demand. If the charge is that the Governments cuts strategy has "flat lined" the economy, then my point a) above suggests that it would have been pretty much the same under a Labour Govt.
c) Balls was Browns key ally at the Treasury when they decided to throw out prudence and bust their own rules on deficit management. It is hard to take him seriously when he calls for more structural spending/tax cuts.
For these reasons, it is not hard to see why the public don't have Labour twenty points ahead in the polls.
You may say this is Tory bullshit. I actually think its true.
As I said, I am essentially a Keynsian at heart but Keynes will have known that despite the essential truth of his statement on the paradox of thrift, he will know, as the IMF knows, that those who can stimulate should stimulate, those who need to pay down the deficit need to do that.
What we have seen with Osborne's statement in my view, is trying to do both at the same time without spooking the markets.
So Orange Booker or Social Liberal? I hate such labels. What is needed is to focus on what the priorities are in a given situation. Everybody (Labour, Lib Dem, Tory) including all the leading economist know that the trick is to cut the structural deficit at the same time as getting and maintaining growth, and to achieve this without spooking the markets or the winds of external economic hurricanes blowing you off course. I don't think we would be anywhere much different, were Labour now in control - its circumstances which dictate how you play this out. Given the debt contagion in Europe, it would be a brave Chancellor Ed Balls, to buck the current austerity trend by borrowing more (other than through the economic cycle as the government now is). He will have to balance the need to stimulate the economy with money he doesn't have against the risk of a run on the £ and a big hike in rates or worse, a sovereign debt crisis.
As for the strikes tomorrow, well my daughter and a friend will be at home with Daddy, so I am doing my best to support the strike of teachers at her school. Frankly my view is that it is futile and I lose some respect for so-called professionals who have not gone into teaching because of the brilliant pension, and won't leave teaching because their pension is not as good as it was. I am sure you won't agree but there we are, that is how I feel.