Autumn Statement

Graham_Devon

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Chucking £50 per household at the Lib Dem constituencies in the south west is so blatant it's embarrassing. If you choose to live in the south west then you've already made an informed decision about the trade offs between slightly more expensive infrastructure and a better standard of living. £50 a year is nothing compared to the costs of moving and the price of housing so it will not change anyone's decision-making. I can't think of a more obvious voter/party pay-off in recent political history.

It's to do with the amount of coast we have. More than double that of any other water area.

All the beaches need cleaning and treating, so SWW use this each and every year to put the prices up again by a new higher than inflation amount, all the time making new higher profits.

MPs (all parties) have, since water was privatised, been campaigning to get some money back from the state as this is how it used to work, as essentially, the residents are paying for the beach cleanups which are required due to none residents.

This has now happened and I agree entirely, it's a nice political statement, however, it's not purely political, as this has been going on since privatisation, and actually, a lot of the area is tory controlled, and the tories have been in power for some years while ignoring this.

I agree there will be some political gain, but the south west water bill has been increasing away rapidly from all other water bills over the country for quite some time now with the gap getting wider and wider, and it's actually seen some business move away from the area.

I just cannot see the point of doing this via the taxpayer while SWW continues to make ever larger profits.

purch

I actually see very little point in it all.

£ 50.00

...this one is bigger :eek:

Dorastar

Working in public sector - no scale to climb, being penalised (will lose CB)for hard work and progressing in my career, a contract which actually doesn't state hours other than "all hours necessary to complete professional requirements", higher pension costs, working till I'm 68, probably no state pension by then, and being told I have low expectations and have caused most of the ills of society and while my school leaks and children have to cross a main road to get to their lunch millions can be found to create new free schools (which presumably won't leak!), pay at 1% added just pales into insignificance really.

Does feel a tad like Mr Osborne saying 'ner ner ne ner ner - you can strike but I can mess up the next few years for you anyway'.

CLAPTON

robmatic wrote: »

Not quite, your benefit will increase by 1/N where N is number of years worked e.g. if you have only been in the scheme for 4 years and work an additional year, your benefit will increase by 25% regardless of the accrual rate.

yes indeed
the correct relation is this
let salary be S
let the scheme accrue at S/P where P is typically 60 or 80 years
let N be the number of years worked
let I be rate of inflation

so each year worked adds S /P to the pension
whilst if you retire then a year will add S x N /P x I

so for S x N x I /P > S x /P

so I > 1/N so

so e.g. N=30 years the Inflation would need to be 3.3% at minimum for the first year to make retirement worthwhile

more complicated for later years

Graham_Devon

Couple of commentators on the BBC suggest that the 5.2% increase in benefits is rather silly (they didn't use those words) and must have been a deal between the lib dems and the tories in order to get the public sector wage issue through. No one seems to understand the stance on this large increase in benefits while attacking workers via working tax credits and the public sector via a combination of both!!

I.e. lib dems would only accept a 1% increase for the public sector if benefits and pensions were increased in full.

Just what the commentators are suggesting.

Graham_Devon

Pretty damning commentator on now.

Suggesting he can't offer any comfort to anyone on the back of all this. We were told we would stop the spending addiction, so we've gone ahead and spent a load more.

He also simply cannot understand the government planning £20bn for loans to business, when were printing money for that reason but the banks are simply holding it. Reckons we are, as a result, now on the edge of a deep depression as we've done nothing but increase debt. "Were not going to do anything, but apocolypse threatens".

John_Pierpoint

wotsthat wrote: »

I'd let pensioners have the 5.2% increase. Maybe limit it to those paying standard rate tax.

There is the 30% tax band that does that for reasonably "well off" pensioners.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Pensionsandretirementplanning/TaxandNationalInsuranceinretirement/GettingyourtaxandNationalInsuranceright/DG_10014681

oldvicar wrote: »

Any one working in the public sector who is about over age 50 and has the opportunity to retire early really ought to think about doing so quickly.

Take your pension now chaps, and in 4 or 5 years it will be worth maybe 20% more, due to inflation increases.

Leave it a while and a final salary pension won't have gone up much if the salary hasn't increased.

When I was faced with the prospect of compulsory redundancy, I did the calculation to work out that every day of the year that I was employed my future pension went up by more than £1 a year.

However as the country continues to live off its national credit card, I think we can rely on an ever increasing inflation as we have to pay the international lenders and finance our country by making all the things that used to be free (such as roads) get charged on a pay as you go basis.

ruggedtoast wrote: »

So with a pay freeze for the last two years, and virtually no rise for the next two years, and inflation running at about 5% per year; public sector workers are looking at a real pay cut of about 20% under these $&&*$nts.

With the various governments departments charging taxes that are obvious, plus all the new stealth ones, (EU Local government Central government), plus compulsory unmitigated charges - hospital car parking at £9 a visit, Electricity bills that include a "green" levy etc. etc.; something has got to give.
We have nearly half of our national income being routed through the government spending machine; compared with the 1960's when the government take was only 27%.

We are heading for the Soviet system: We pretend to work and you pretend to pay us.

It is a global economy, China has all the spare money, and the going rate in China is about 20% of what we get paid. Do the sums.

oldvicar

One of the intriguing schemes in the Autumn Statement is the ploy to use the government credit rating as a front for companies to be able to borrow at preferential rates.

Is this legal? In other circumstances I can think of such fronting would be fraudulent.

For example if doting parent insures a car putting little johnny as a named driver, and not the main user, but Johnny is really the main driver.

grizzly1911

oldvicar wrote: »

One of the intriguing schemes in the Autumn Statement is the ploy to use the government credit rating as a front for companies to be able to borrow at preferential rates.

Is this legal? In other circumstances I can think of such fronting would be fraudulent.

For example if doting parent insures a car putting little johnny as a named driver, and not the main user, but Johnny is really the main driver.

Is it not the same as subsidising our industry which must be against the EUSSR rules.

grizzly1911

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

It is a global economy, China has all the spare money, and the going rate in China is about 20% of what we get paid. Do the sums.

Ah but at some point they will percolate up to our levels and have their own galloping inflation, boom and bust cycles too.

Shame I will be pushing up daisies by then.