We are all in this together, well not if you are in a union.

dopester

marklv wrote: »

That's bad enough, and it's for two years! What about if the Conservatives win? They will be even more savage. All I can say is: THERE WILL BE BLOOD!!

marklv wrote: »

If the government had simply talked about 'pay restraint' and left individual areas to decide their own pay budgets that wouldn't have been so bad, but the arbitrary imposition of an all-round 1% pay cap (2.7% BELOW inflation) has really angered a lot of people. There will be blood.

Whose blood? Your own and other protesters against no rises/pay-cuts? The authorities? Hopefully not the children's.

Baron Rothschild, an 18th century British nobleman and member of the Rothschild banking family, is credited with saying that "The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets."

He should know. Rothschild made a fortune buying in the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon. But that's not the whole story. The original quote is believed to be "Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own."

It is told of this Baron Rothschild that in the days following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, when the mob ruled Paris, that a friend went to him and said “What are you going to do to protect your interests in this dreadful hour?” The Baron said to him, “Can you keep a secret?” He said, “Yes,” and the Baron said, “Well, if the truth must be told, I am protecting myself by buying real estate.” His friend said, “Do you mean to say you are buying real estate with the gutters of Paris running with blood and the city in the hands of a mob?”

Rothschild said, “Yes, my friend, I mean that very thing, and that is the only time, when the gutters are running with blood, that you can buy real estate at 50 cents on the dollar.”

marklv

dopester wrote: »

Whose blood? Your own and other protesters against no rises/pay-cuts? The authorities? Hopefully not the children's.

I was speaking metaphorically of course - I didn't mean that there will necessarily be violence, though that is not impossible. I meant that the government will pay a high political price (the 'blood', so to speak) if it forces through pay policies that are against pubic sector workers.

PrivatisetheNHSnow

marklv wrote: »

I was speaking metaphorically of course - I didn't mean that there will necessarily be violence, though that is not impossible. I meant that the government will pay a high political price (the 'blood', so to speak) if it forces through pay policies that are against pubic sector workers.

Burn down the public sector, that'll show the left a thing or two

ninky_2

PrivatisetheNHSnow wrote: »

who needs the public sector? ronald reagan fired all those air traffic controllers when they went on strike - did the airports stop working? No, they just replaced them.

No-one needs the public sector, sack all 6 million of them.

would you count the armed forces in this? now as something like the 4th biggest spender on defence in the world that is certainly one area the uk could massively cut back on. but strangely the republican minded don't seem to care about taxpayers spending out on anything military related.

JasonLVC

The personal allowances are being frozen this financial year and so everyone who has a job will be taxed the same as last year, but will find their spending power slightly reduced as a result.

Perhaps the whole country should go on strike then as we've all had a pay freeze (and don't tell the public sector workers they've already had a paycut;), they'll be livid).

chewmylegoff

marklv wrote: »

No! The net salary might be lower, but the base salary is exactly the same. This is not what I define as a pay cut. So, by your reasoning, contributing to an AVC is giving yourself a pay cut, is it? Nonsense.

no, because if you make an AVC, then your pension entitlements go up.

if your contributions to your pension scheme go up, but your pension entitlement stays the same, your remuneration has been reduced.

i'm not bothered if you don't understand that, because it means that we won't have to put up with a massive rant from you when it happens, as you won't understand that you have been given a pay cut.

Even if what you say is true, all this should have been budgeted for by the government. There is no shortfall, as the pension costs should have been factored in as part and parcel of the salary bill. Why should we consider the pension costs as something extra? They are not. They are part of the overall remuneration package - what I would call a part of the salary that is not actually paid out to the employees.

wait, so you do understand?

try this:

you are paid to do a civil service job, you receive the following salary:

gross: 100
tax: -10
pension -10
net: 80

as a result you accrue a pension entitlement of 10 (these are just arbitrary numbers)

in the next year you are told your pension contribution is going up, but your pension entitlement will be the same.

gross: 100
tax: -10
pension: -20
net: 70

accrued pension entitlement: 10

did your total remuneration for the second year increase, stay the same, or fall. i.e. have you been given a pay cut.

chewmylegoff

marklv wrote: »

No, I am not entirely wrong. And it doesn't make any difference whether the money is in a fund or not, because even if it was in a stock market fund, like private sector defned benefit schemes, the fund would almost certainly be in deficit, due to the poor performance of the stock market since the bubble burst in 2000/2001. Look at all these wonderfully funded schemes like the ones pertaining to BA, BP and many others. All in deficit and requiring bigger company contributions. Ironically, had the funds simply been placed in a high interest account they would be worth more today.

you actually are entirely wrong because there are no assets, and you said there were. it's difficult to be more entirely wrong than that - but i think you have a good political career ahead of you if you are convinced that you were not, in fact, entirely wrong.

if there were assets invested, even if there was a deficit, then at least the schemes would be partially funded- presumably you agree it would be better to have an unfunded liability of say £500 billion as opposed to £1 trillion?

chewmylegoff

marklv wrote: »

OK, so what's your point? If the schemes are unfunded, as you claim, then the government had better fund them! This is the fault of the government, not the poor !!!!!!s who work in the civil service etc. If the schemes have to be funded through tax revenue, so be it.

yes, it is the fault of the government, and every government since the pension schemes were introduced. someone should really draw a line under all this as soon as possible and turn everything into money purchase schemes going forward, rather than just continuing to increase the off balance sheet liability. the problem with this approach is that it will require greater spending now - as the govt will have to pay the current contributions inwards to the schemes and pay existing pensioners out at the same time. the schemes were designed so that only one group would be paid at a time, but for this model to work within budget, it relies on the number of public sector employees remaining the same, rather than exponentially increasing.

the only real solution to fund this is to enormously decrease the free money that the government gives away to people who don't do any work at all, and use it to fund pension scheme contributions for people who do go to work.

marklv

chewmylegoff wrote: »

you actually are entirely wrong because there are no assets, and you said there were. it's difficult to be more entirely wrong than that - but i think you have a good political career ahead of you if you are convinced that you were not, in fact, entirely wrong.

if there were assets invested, even if there was a deficit, then at least the schemes would be partially funded- presumably you agree it would be better to have an unfunded liability of say £500 billion as opposed to £1 trillion?

You're just playing with numbers and terminology. None of this matters. The govenrment isn't a company that can go broke - the money can always be raised through taxation, and besides, the pension requirements shoud have been factored in to start with. It's just playing with figures in the way that accountants like to do. Meaningless.

marklv

chewmylegoff wrote: »

yes, it is the fault of the government, and every government since the pension schemes were introduced. someone should really draw a line under all this as soon as possible and turn everything into money purchase schemes going forward, rather than just continuing to increase the off balance sheet liability. the problem with this approach is that it will require greater spending now - as the govt will have to pay the current contributions inwards to the schemes and pay existing pensioners out at the same time. the schemes were designed so that only one group would be paid at a time, but for this model to work within budget, it relies on the number of public sector employees remaining the same, rather than exponentially increasing.

the only real solution to fund this is to enormously decrease the free money that the government gives away to people who don't do any work at all, and use it to fund pension scheme contributions for people who do go to work.

Money purchase, more properly called 'defined contribution' schemes, will almost certainly be brought in for all new joiners to public sector jobs. I don't personally agree with this move, but it's a 99% certainty that this will happen regardless of who wins the general election. However, moving existing contributors by ending their existing pension arrangements would be hugely controversial, and I doubt that even Cameron would do this. What is more likely is that the employee contribution rates on pensionable salary will increase.

What do you mean by 'free money' to those who don't work? When you lose your job you are entitled to JSA for up to 6 months on the basis of your own NI contributions - it certainly isn't free money as you claim. It could be argued that means tested social benefits are 'free', but would you rather see thousands of people begging on the streets? Do you want to bring us back to the Victorian age? Some kind of Dickensian slum society? If you do you are an even bigger idiot than I take you for - and that's already pretty big, pal.