Labours legacy: 172 civil servant paid more then PM

StevieJ

Andy_L wrote: »

As an aside, Only one of them (the NHS CE) would be affected by the proposed "20x lowest paid employee" cap on public sector pay. Even then he's only just affected

Not for long he would probably privatise all the cleaners

marklv

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

Just because the private sector isn't funded directly from taxation, do you not see that you and I are still paying their salaries.


GG

Absolutely. The big pay given to the CEOs of Tesco and M&S, among others, is reflected in the inflated prices we have to pay for their shoddy goods.

Pennywise

CLAPTON wrote: »

it that because the civil service top jobs aren't as important as runing supermarkets or is it because the civil service doesn't pay enough to get the best people

It's neither. It's simpler than that. The private companies are paying far too much. End of story.

It's nonsense to say that all capable people are earning hundreds of thousands of pounds - a lot won't be anywhere near that kind of money - there's a huge talent pool of people with an appropriate skillset who are more than able to take on the top jobs who would be delighted with a salary of £100k plus.

Just because you have a skillset doesn't automatically mean you get propelled into the top jobs on million pound plus packages. The only ones reaching such dizzy heights are the ones who know the right people. The public sector certainly shouldn't fall any further into the same trap of nepotism mattering more than ability.

We are only looking at a very small number of top people earning mega bucks. The job could easily be done by loads of people, equally capable, for far less money. Private sector doesn't matter because the company owners are the ones daft enough to pay over the odds and who suffer because of reduced profits. In the public sector, it is taxpayers who suffer when the pay for the top people is too high.

ILW

marklv wrote: »

Absolutely. The big pay given to the CEOs of Tesco and M&S, among others, is reflected in the inflated prices we have to pay for their shoddy goods.

Well don't buy their goods then.
You have a coice of making your purchases from the companies with the lowest paid executives if you wish. Civil service is a different matter as you can go to prison if you do not wish to contribute to their salaries.

marklv

princeofpounds wrote: »

You do know what the 'government contributions' are right?

IOUs.

Seriously the government contributes nothing for most central government pension schemes except a promise to underwrite the obligations. So the obligations are (some superficial employee component aside) largely unfunded by any normal commercial pension accounting. Anyone with a bit of pension accounting knowledge can see through the smokescreen. Unfortunately not many people have that.

This wouldn't matter if the people paying the tax for the pensions were the same generation as the people accumulating the benefits, but they are not, by and large.

So the older public sector workers and voters (except the councils, where contributions were ramped up much earlier in the main) essentially wrote themselves a big future paycheck which they would never have to pay.

Take away these IOUs and the total deficit is something like £1 trillion.

THAT is what is wrong.

What you say is correct, but the government in the past should have ringfenced the notional public sector pension contributions instead of using them to pay for other things. Why blame the employees for the incompetence of previous governments? Mind you, similar situations emerged in the private sector when companies took 'pension holidays' and refused to make contributions while the liabilities mounted. No surprise that the pension funds collapsed! The point is that if an employer contributes a set percentage, either notionally or in real terms, that contribution must be constant and ringfenced, otherwise the whole pension structure will fall apart.

marklv

ILW wrote: »

Well don't buy their goods then.
You have a coice of making your purchases from the companies with the lowest paid executives if you wish. Civil service is a different matter as you can go to prison if you do not wish to contribute to their salaries.

But the point is that all companies are the same in this - you have to buy food from somewhere! And buying something costs you. Nothing is free.

ILW

marklv wrote: »

But the point is that all companies are the same in this - you have to buy food from somewhere! And buying something costs you. Nothing is free.

All companies are not the same, Mr Patels shop does not pay its owner a £1m plus salary, you can buy direct from farm shops etc, and you a perfectly free to shop there if you wish thereby making no contribution to Tescos etc.

robin_banks

ILW wrote: »

All companies are not the same, Mr Patels shop does not pay its owner a £1m plus salary, you can buy direct from farm shops etc, and you a perfectly free to shop there if you wish thereby making no contribution to Tescos etc.

I'd be somewhat surprised if Mr Patel is a limited company though and if he was trading on the Fulham Road for example, long busy road in West London with 11 Tesco's on it I doubt he'd be able to trade for much longer.

ILW

robin_banks wrote: »

I'd be somewhat surprised if Mr Patel is a limited company though and if he was trading on the Fulham Road for example, long busy road in West London with 11 Tesco's on it I doubt he'd be able to trade for much longer.

He would if the people who keep moaning about how much CEOs get paid actually put their money where their mouths are and shopped with him rather than the Tescos.

princeofpounds

Why blame the employees for the incompetence of previous governments?

I don't actually. I blame all the voters.

A fair solution is now impossible. You have to either deny previous employees their contractual agreements, or you have to impose punitive taxation on a generation that never signed up to such agreements.

The fairest things to do would be to go back to the taxpayers of the last 40 years and say 'oops, sorry, we messed up our sums. Please pay the extra 20% bill we should have been paying all along into the pension pots'. Which of course is utterly impractical.

In many ways, it is an example of inter-generational extortion. Not dissimilar to someone signing lots of juicy contracts with related parties before selling out of a company, then threatening to sue for their 'contractual rights' when the deception is uncovered.

Of course I don't believe there was malicious intent. But it has amounted to a malicious outcome. I don't know if the younger generation will twig, but the impact of standards of life over the next 30 years will cause social strife at some level.