Public sector pensions nearly over?

bumpoowee

daveyjp wrote: »

Whilever there are the public to service a public service will be required.

We can pay for public sector employed staff to get pensions or we can pay private sector to pay bonuses, sponsor events, pay dividends to shareholders etc etc.

daveyjp wrote: »

Eh? Why the personal attack?

I was simply making the point that there will always be a need for a public service and it needs to be paid for. I don't really care who carries it out.

Your wording very much suggested that it is a straight choice between paying money to public sector pensions or allowing private businesses to actually function, by motivating staff, marketing, pay the people who actually own the company (which are often pension funds) etc.

Primrose

I think those employed in the public sector have had massive job security for years that has never been available in the private sector. It would be very interesting if unemployment figures were available over the past three recessions to see what percentage of public sector employees lost their jobs versus the number of private sector employees who were unemployed. I accept that those employed in the public sector do a very necessary job but the reality is that is the private sector which generates the wealth of the country, yet it is they that take all the risks.

marklv

bumpoowee wrote: »

I've worked at two companies that offered bonus schemes, and although I do agree there is always going to be an issue with brown nosers in the workplace getting more than they deserve, the schemes I was part of were administered very fairly.

Essentially they both worked on a points system where you had objectives at the start of the year and if you met them (and they were clearly mesurable) you would get points. By the end of the year a formula was applied based on your points and used to work out your bonus. I'm the most anti brown-nosing person I know and I've had no problems with these schemes, and did find that they motivated me to work harder.

So in conclusion I have found performance related pay, when administered correctly, to be a very positive thing.

Well, you must have worked for a good company. Unfortunately in the IT industry you get some really dire organisations who openly practice favouritism and don't even bother to hide it. As an example: the last private company I worked for used a matrix management system where the guy giving the appraisals was not the manager I worked for - he just harvested feedback from various individuals I did work for over the last year. Well, my feedback was pretty good and I received a good overall grade, but then my grade was sent to a meeting of all the matrix managers for something called 'normalisation'. This normalisation was a way of 'spreading out' grades so as to prevent too many people receiving a given grade. Well, you can imagine what happened next: I was demoted by two grades (!) with the excuse that another team in the company had done some exceptionally outstanding work while my team had only done what was expected of them (yeah right). The result: I didn't get a pay rise! This was my last experience of the private sector - never again!

marklv

Primrose wrote: »

I think those employed in the public sector have had massive job security for years that has never been available in the private sector. It would be very interesting if unemployment figures were available over the past three recessions to see what percentage of public sector employees lost their jobs versus the number of private sector employees who were unemployed. I accept that those employed in the public sector do a very necessary job but the reality is that is the private sector which generates the wealth of the country, yet it is they that take all the risks.

Well, it's the same in every other country. Infact in many continental nations public sector staff are treated like lords. If you go to somewhere like Italy, civil servants work from 8am to 3pm and get something like 8 weeks off a year. They can also retire at 50 on a full pay pension - many even retire at 45 on a slightly reduced pension! France is not dissimilar to this approach. So UK civil servants are actually worse treated than many on the continent. You talk about recessions, but why should public sector workers be affected by these? Just to make you feel good, to give you that malicious schadenfreude feeling? Get a life.

bendix

And so the picture of marklv becomes clearer. It's quite intriguing. A lower level manager in IT (which explains a lot) who's move to the cosy public sector was driven by a innate sense of grievance and being treated unfairly in the private sector. Those business people just didn't see what he was worth. Outrage!

It's funny, but I think I saw you in a episode of Law and Order SVU last night . .

Gazpablo

What a nasty little thread this has turned into - there has been some truly ignorant and supremely opinionated posting here, displaying some of the worst prejudices and intolerances of our society today - "I'm all right jack"; "the private sector is the only wealth generating sector" and "all public sector workers are lazy idlers". Whatever happened to the view that we all contribute in one way or another to the success of the economy through taxes and work of whatever sort? Reading this thread over the past couple of days makes me seriously consider emigrating to another country.

bumpoowee

marklv wrote: »

Well, it's the same in every other country. Infact in many continental nations public sector staff are treated like lords. If you go to somewhere like Italy, civil servants work from 8am to 3pm and get something like 8 weeks off a year. They can also retire at 50 on a full pay pension - many even retire at 45 on a slightly reduced pension! France is not dissimilar to this approach. So UK civil servants are actually worse treated than many on the continent. You talk about recessions, but why should public sector workers be affected by these? Just to make you feel good, to give you that malicious schadenfreude feeling? Get a life.

Funnily enough I actually agree that the public sector shouldn't be affected by recession - because it should already be run at minimal cost and maximum efficiency, hence there shouldn't be anything to cut back. We would also all know where we are with public services as they wouldn't dissapear in recessions and reappear in boom years, they would just be constant.

The problem is that at the moment the public sector has become massively bloated and wasteful under Labour and needs to be cut back for this reason, not because there is a recession.

bendix

marklv wrote: »

If China was that ultra-free-market paradise you so desire, poverty would be a lot worse than it is now. Russia tried that approach in the Yeltsin years and it didn't work - a bunch of !!!!! types (oligarchs) took control of all the privatised industry and made themselves billionaires at the expense of the state and the people. Putin saw through all this malarkey and put a stop to it.

Again, more nonsense from Mr Naieve.

I was in Moscow in July. An awful place. The biggest company there is Gazprom, run by those oligarchs, with the express support of Putin and his cronies. The banks are run by similar types. It is all powerful. Corruption is endemic. Violence is everywhere. I saw a part of the city centre closed off one night and wondered why - a few minutes later a fleet of limos drove up and outstepped guys with machine guns, protecting the key man and his wife. Some top oil !!!!! guy according to the person at the next table of the coffee shop to me.

Putin stopped it, my a**e.

You just don't have a clue what you're talking about, do you?

bendix

Gazpablo wrote: »

Whatever happened to the view that we all contribute in one way or another to the success of the economy through taxes and work of whatever sort? .

We grew up out of our Enid Blyton idea of Britain and realised it wasn't true.

There are those who generate wealth, and there are those who spend it. Some of that spending is wise and necessary. Much of it isn't.

Expect to see the tensions growing in future years. I'd get out if you can't stomach it.

marklv

bendix wrote: »

Again, more nonsense from Mr Naieve.

I was in Moscow in July. An awful place.

Many parts of Manchester, Leeds and London are as well! :rotfl:

bendix wrote: »

The biggest company there is Gazprom, run by those oligarchs, with the express support of Putin and his cronies. The banks are run by similar types. It is all powerful. Corruption is endemic. Violence is everywhere. I saw a part of the city centre closed off one night and wondered why - a few minutes later a fleet of limos drove up and outstepped guys with machine guns, protecting the key man and his wife. Some top oil !!!!! guy according to the person at the next table of the coffee shop to me.

Putin stopped it, my a**e.

You just don't have a clue what you're talking about, do you?

OK, well Putin is no angel, but you've miseed the point. Under Yeltsin pensioners aere starving on the streets, now they are at least well off enough to eat. Yeltsin created the 1998 crisis when Russia went literally bust and gave the oligarchs free rein. Sure, they are still around, but at least there is more control than previously.

As for 'violence everywhere', just go to a typical British council estate.