Time to start a thread on public sector pensions

nicko33

abaxas wrote: »

All the union members are not doing any work

at the Department for Work
I'll leave it to TWH to rant about how they are traitors to the nation and should be shot (or something)

abaxas

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

I am struggling to follow this? Are you advocating making it illegal for me to enforce my property rights under a contract?

What contractual rights did fox hunters with the government have in relation to carrying out their activities?

Do you seriously think for one minute that the Tories will make it legal for the state to ignore contractual obligations? That would make it legal for the state to sequester any asset they saw fit without compensation! They could privatise an asset and then immediately reclaim it! Think about the wider consequences!

No,

What I'm saying is if the law allowing pensions not be be illegal is repealed, you have no pension.

Pensions are fraud by any legal means as they are not completely funded. However the law exists to allow this in the case of pensions.

It's a quirk/loophole, your pensions is only as good as that law remaining or being challenged for legality. (a law can exist but be illegal)

If you tried to legalise them now, you would get laughed at.

Sir_Humphrey

abaxas wrote: »

No,

What I'm saying is if the law allowing pensions not be be illegal is repealed, you have no pension.

Pensions are fraud by any legal means as they are not completely funded. However the law exists to allow this in the case of pensions.

It's a quirk/loophole, your pensions is only as good as that law remaining or being challenged for legality. (a law can exist but be illegal)

If you tried to legalise them now, you would get laughed at.

Oh, you are a tin-foil nutter! I see now.

ruggedtoast

ILW wrote: »

Care homes, Transport etc etc.

Would you care to elucidate on the etc etc, because if you needed medical care, a school for your kids, or your house was on fire I dont think Shady Willows Retirement Complex is going to be much help to you.

ILW

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Would you care to elucidate on the etc etc, because if you needed medical care, a school for your kids, or your house was on fire I dont think Shady Willows Retirement Complex is going to be much help to you.

Private healthcare, Private schools. Most of these are done better by the private sector. I will give you fire, police, etc, though.

Radiantsoul

ILW wrote: »

Private healthcare, Private schools. .

Private education receives about twice as many resources as state education on a per pupil basis.

abaxas

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Oh, you are a tin-foil nutter! I see now.

Maybe if you do the research you would know the answer to your questions.

Any investment scheme that has no investment vehicle other than the paying in of others is defined (by law) as a pyramid scheme.

Pensions are AND always will be defined as this (ask any pensions guru). However they are allowed to exist due to further legislation.

Please learn that lots of things are illegal however parts of them have other laws which override this. Take for example the police, every time a police officer arrests someone they commit assault, however laws exist so that can do this legally.

The law is a strange and convoluted beast, one which can never fully be understood by anyone. Some override others, some complement each other, sometimes no-one has any idea at all. Then you get case law, which we wont go into :P

I'm not saying someone is going to take your pensions away. I'm saying it's only as good as the law that allows it not to be classes as fraud. Just as the law allows an ambulance to travel at greater than the speed limit, allows disabled people to park on double yellow lines and allows diplomats to break the law without recourse other than international relations.

Times change, morality changes and what we thought was right becomes wrong. Any law or right can be changed.

Loughton_Monkey

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Would you care to elucidate on the etc etc, because if you needed medical care, a school for your kids, or your house was on fire I dont think Shady Willows Retirement Complex is going to be much help to you.

There is an overwhelming recourse to emotion in these matters. Doctors, nurses, education of our children, keeping crime off our streets etc.

The number of 'essential' services is large, and 'most' would agree with 'most' of them.

That, however, is not the point. The point is for every £1,000 raised in taxes and 'spent' on health care (or education) what proportion of it actually does what we expect it to do? And the sad answer is extremely little of it.

This was Brother Brown's biggest mistake. His decision to expand public spending every year was arguably a bad one anyway - even if the expenditure had been effective. But just look at where the money went. Primarily into higher pay (and thus pension cost). Extra layers of management. Increased bureaucracy....

Police and nurses now fill in forms. Policing and nursing is now performed by lower paid 'community' police and student nurses/nursing 'auxilliaries'.... And how come schools have been allowed to spend hours and hours muli-assessing children to come up with 21% of the entire school population being 'special needs' and thus requiring a dedicated 'teaching assistant' - giving extra pay to the supervising teachers and head teachers? How effective has all this been and how confident are we our kids are much better educated?

The biggest concern, now, is that although 'the game is up', reducing the public expenditure is going to remove the cost not from where it was wastefully spent for the last 15 years, but it removes it from the bits that matter. Yes, we need to freeze salaries. Yes, we need to curb and control the add-on pension costs. But more important than all of that, we should weed out the HUGE bureaucratic middle layer and let the 'real' workers get on with it.

It's a form of 'cancer' that no Private enterprise could possibly live with and survive. Why do we tolerate it in the town hall, Whitehall, and similar places?

tomterm8

abaxas wrote: »

Maybe if you do the research you would know the answer to your questions.

Any investment scheme that has no investment vehicle other than the paying in of others is defined (by law) as a pyramid scheme.

Pensions are AND always will be defined as this (ask any pensions guru). However they are allowed to exist due to further legislation.

Please learn that lots of things are illegal however parts of them have other laws which override this. Take for example the police, every time a police officer arrests someone they commit assault, however laws exist so that can do this legally.

The law is a strange and convoluted beast, one which can never fully be understood by anyone. Some override others, some complement each other, sometimes no-one has any idea at all. Then you get case law, which we wont go into :P

I'm not saying someone is going to take your pensions away. I'm saying it's only as good as the law that allows it not to be classes as fraud. Just as the law allows an ambulance to travel at greater than the speed limit, allows disabled people to park on double yellow lines and allows diplomats to break the law without recourse other than international relations.

Times change, morality changes and what we thought was right becomes wrong. Any law or right can be changed.

All the words appear to be english, but the assertions of fact are rather strange.

Fundamentally, if the government refuses to honour its promises, it is a default. It is no different than refusing to pay government bonds. And yes, the government could pass a law to refuse to pay government bonds... but then no one would lend to it.

If the government, in retrospect, breaches its promises by removing already accrued benefits, then people will take that in account when negotiating salaries.

abaxas

tomterm8 wrote: »

All the words appear to be english, but the assertions of fact are rather strange.

Fundamentally, if the government refuses to honour its promises, it is a default. It is no different than refusing to pay government bonds. And yes, the government could pass a law to refuse to pay government bonds... but then no one would lend to it.

If the government, in retrospect, breaches its promises by removing already accrued benefits, then people will take that in account when negotiating salaries.

That would depends on the legality of the original contract. You cannot default on something that is deemed to be illegal. Also there is a huge difference between default and changing of terms. Since the inception of 'national insurance' the terms have changed more times than anyone could possibly count, have that already defaulted on that? They could ban retirement altogether and never have to default.

Promises are just words, contracts are bits of paper inside a legal framework.

I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of .....