RPI to CPI Early Day Motion 1032

Ripoff_2

Housing costs are supposed to be included in CPI by March 2013 and the ONS are working on a pensioner index I believe, but will this awful Government honour any of that?

They could switch back to RPI if CPI then proves to be higher after the changes, the Judges, the fools have given them that option, but they do have to justify why, so the judgement says, they can not just choose a lower index at will so it would appear ( I have heard that before).

The problem is I do not TRUST them! My question therefore is "DO YOU?"

By the ONS including Car Tax and TV licences in March and housing costs albeit in 2013, doesn't it go to show that CPI was never fit for purpose and therefore never did and doesn't reflect pensioner inflation as Webb insists and thus it is not a better measure of pensioner inflation. So how the hell the judges thought otherwise beggers belief.

That said, Pensioners now have to make as much noise as possible politically, starting with the forthcoming local elections. Pensioners need to use their VOTE wisely and take their disgust and anger directly to the MP's by using that VOTE. Send a message at the local elections, write to MP's telling them why you are not voting for them, remind them of your anger.

To get justice and RIGHT this WRONG Pensioners need to take the fight to the politicians, they need to make a stand and the best way of doing that is to USE YOUR VOTE! If 12m pensioners said ENOUGH is ENOUGH, the MP's would have to listen!

Still not convinced? then think about this!

QE knocks further £90bn off pension funds, NAPF says. The first round of QE, which started in 2009, is estimated by the NAPF to have increased the cost of funding the UK's final-salary pension schemes by about £180bn. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17287566

and this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17862986 backs that up.

I have seen Statistics from the ONS that also show that the switch from RPI to the lower CPI rate of inflation, cut the Governments public sector employee pension bill by 10% and we also know that it also cut many private pensioners income at the same time.

Pensioners are being used as a Cash Cow by this Government to cut the deficit, Pensioners who saved for their retirement and did the right thing are now being punished, robbed and cheated, BIG TIME.

PENSIONERS need to make a stand, they need to do that NOW and they need to make their voices heard before they are ROBBED even more. (More QE, change of indexation to an even lesser index again, and don't get me going on Savings interest)

Start that process at the Local Elections, USE YOUR VOTE WISELY!

hugheskevi

I have seen Statistics from the ONS that also show that the switch from RPI to the lower CPI rate of inflation, cut the Governments public sector employee pension bill by 10% and we also know that it also cut many private pensioners income at the same time.

This is very relevant and interesting - whilst the Government quantified the impact on private sector DB schemes (£73bn) in an Impact Assessment, it did not do likewise for public service schemes (although it came very close, and by playing with a few numbers it was possible to calculate the impact...but to the best of my knowledge there was never a single quantified impact calculated).

Yesterday, the ONS published statistics which quantified the impact (see here):

Thus the total saving to government (of the RPI-CPI change) in respect of public sector employee pensions was £127 billion (10 per cent of total liabilities at the start of 2010).

Making the total impact across public and private sector a nice round £200bn.

According to the Occupational Pension Scheme Survey, there are 12.5m members of public sector occupational schemes and the same number of private sector DB schemes.

Dividing the total impact in each sector by the number of members shows that the average financial impact on private sector members was £5,850 and public sector members £10,160.

Ripoff_2

Here we go again, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18396107 ONS wanting to make a CPIH, fine but WHY......Just RESTORE RPI but no doubt the Gvmt will pick and choose the worst measure and say "Its a better measure of pensioner inflation" so now it's going to be RPI, CPI or CPIH for them to pick from!

It beggars belief that they are able to get away with fiddling the inflation measures in this blatant manner.

All we want is a correct accurate measure of inflation that we can trust, that's all, not too much to ask is it. Mind you there again didn't we have a measure we used for 30 years that people believed in, trusted and felt was fair????? Oh yes I remember it was called RPI.

hugheskevi

Oh yes I remember it was called RPI.

Which method of collecting data on women's clothing might you have in mind with that - you might find this article interesting.

Ripoff_2

hugheskevi wrote: »

Which method of collecting data on women's clothing might you have in mind with that - you might find this article interesting.

You and I know all they are doing is fiddling the figures anyway they can to make the gap between CPI & RPI less, it looks better, (it's too wide at the moment, it's too obvious how wrong CPI is), and lower the reported UK inflation rate, not the real inflation rate of course, the one people experience everyday.

The RPI can not be adjusted/fiddled that easily because by law any changes have to have the BOE's consent. They can not just alter the mean average formula method say to narrow the gap they have to use other methods, this is just one way to do that.

What this clearly shows to me is that the CPI is and never was fit for purpose and that RPI is being manipulated to make the wedge smaller to reduce costs, anyway they can, (and the gap will look better), nothing to do with making the inflation measure true and accurate and most importantly TRUSTED by people as so.

Funny how RPI was fine for 30 years and only now they need to fiddle around with it to this degree don't you think?

It's ALL a con trick and blatant ROBBERY from pensioners and the like. This will hit the bond market returns on RPI index linked bonds and all those people with RPI index linked pensions linked to the pension rules who thought they had escaped the CPI robbery index. Even more unhappy bunnies me thinks, when the penny drops!

There is also no guarantee that if the CPIH proves to be the best most accurate index and therefore better than both RPI & CPI that this Gvmt will adopt it for indexing pensions & benefits, especially if it proves that inflation is higher than they want it to be, they will just use the measure that gives the least increase like they did with CPI.

We want a correct accurate measure of inflation, one that can be trusted and that can not be fiddled with by law by any Gvmt and that people can have confidence in but unless this Gvmt does the right thing then any measure CPIH, CPI, RPI etc will be useless and meaningless. They may as well just do away with the measures altogether and just say what inflation figure they want, this is nearly what they are doing at the moment anyway, do you believe inflation is 3%?

Without confidence and trust, this whole measure set is worthless and this Gvmt has already lost that trust with the fiasco of the CPI robbery index change. I certainly do not believe pensioner inflation is 3% as stated by the CPI, and without housing costs it never will be correct for pensioners, no where near, so they should at least switch to CPIH but will they?

Ripoff_2

You ALL may like to read the following article on the RPI change http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/pensions/article-2157753/Inflation-pincer-movement-pension-payouts.html

Fiddling the inflation figures/measures is discraceful and dishonest!

bigadaj

Ripoff wrote: »

You ALL may like to read the following article on the RPI change http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/pensions/article-2157753/Inflation-pincer-movement-pension-payouts.html

Fiddling the inflation figures/measures is discraceful and dishonest!

It's in the daily mail so it must be fair and accurate.

There's a reason why journalists are the only group of people to Regularly come below politicians in polls of honesty and integrity, if the DM wants to propose alternatives we can see who else they want to take the money off.

Ripoff_2

bigadaj wrote: »

It's in the daily mail so it must be fair and accurate.

This is not a proposal by the Daily Mail, this is what the ONS and CPAC are advocating, nothing to do with the DM, they are in this case just reporting the facts.

The Government bodies are going to create a CPIH and are trying to change RPI so that the wedge between the to measures are closer and they are going to do this by altering RPI down. Since the change to CPI the variance between the two measures is widening, so the action now is to make the RPI closer to the lesser CPI, this is FACT, not fiction by the DM, they have just reported it in this case, it is not made up by them.

BaldGringo

Excuse me for being cynical but is it only me that suspects that the chancellor's motive for postponing the Fuel Duty hike from August too January 2013 is geared to keep CPI low for September when most pension increases are based.

viridens

[FONT=arial, verdana, sans-serif] A snippet from Weiss research (U.S. financial advice) report:-

..."Yet the U.S. Government continues to lie to you about inflation. In fact, starting in 1980, they deliberately changed the formula used to calculate the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in an effort to undermine those pesky cost-of-living-increases for Social Security checks.

It's no wonder Seniors can no longer afford to make ends meet on Social Security... the government artificially lowered the CPI!

Today the "official" CPI is about 3 percent. But if you use the "old" 1980 formula, the real CPI is closer to 12 percent. Now that explains your grocery and gas bills."...

---

Now what do you make of that?

The USA has a long history of using CPI for indexing. There are obviously questions about CPI validity versus 'real' inflation there.
It's still early days here, bu It seems that on this side of the pond the RPI/CPI swindle is a done deal and pensioners are content although CPI continues to lag behind RPI as predicted.
I'm not content. How are you feeling?[/FONT]