Where will the cuts fall

Generali

Jack_Jn_the_acorn wrote: »

In reality, our net pay is lower than it was last year. Certainly doesn't feel like a "colossal" pay rise.
Pension example for EO Executive officer.

Ben is 26 and currently a member of the Nuvos section. He works full-time and he earns £23,500 and he predicts he will want to retire at 67. His estimated future pension if he stayed in Nuvos will be £18, 245. In Alpha (all civil servants are being moved onto this scheme) his future pension will be £16,207, a reduction of £2,040.

And his life expectancy is about 90 if he doesn't smoke so will, on average, be drawing that pension for 23 years.

When the pension was brought in your life expectancy at retirement was about 18 months.

Loughton_Monkey

cells wrote: »

you need to consider that some people just can't help it or change. In the same way true alcoholics find it near impossible to quit drinking some people find it just as difficult to spend their limited money in a good way

I do indeed 'consider' such people.

But I would thunder that these are the last people at which to throw extra money.

I strongly suspect that the school leavers during the first decade of this century, found Gordon Brown exceedingly generous. He created a large set of "sit on your !!!!!, have a few more kids, enjoy life in your free house" merchants.

We can have as much idleness, obesity-ridden 'disability', and alcoholism as we are prepared to pay for. Personally, I don't wish to pay for it.

ukcarper

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I do indeed 'consider' such people.

But I would thunder that these are the last people at which to throw extra money.

I strongly suspect that the school leavers during the first decade of this century, found Gordon Brown exceedingly generous. He created a large set of "sit on your !!!!!, have a few more kids, enjoy life in your free house" merchants.

We can have as much idleness, obesity-ridden 'disability', and alcoholism as we are prepared to pay for. Personally, I don't wish to pay for it.

Did he or did he just continue what had already started.

Thrugelmir

ukcarper wrote: »

Did he or did he just continue what had already started.

He had 13 years to influence the direction of the UK. On public record that Brown and Blair were in disagreement about welfare spending as far back as 2005. Blair was of the opinion that it should not be increased further. Brown won the argument so for a further 5 years the burden on the UK taxpayer continued to increase. The result of which we are still addressing today and will be for the next couple of decades.

ukcarper

Thrugelmir wrote: »

He had 13 years to influence the direction of the UK. On public record that Brown and Blair were in disagreement about welfare spending as far back as 2005. Blair was of the opinion that it should not be increased further. Brown won the argument so for a further 5 years the burden on the UK taxpayer continued to increase. The result of which we are still addressing today and will be for the next couple of decades.

I know he introduced WTCs etc but did he alter out of work benefits that much. Admittedly he didn't do anything to reduce it, but stay at home have a baby and let the state pay started before 1996.

fordcapri2000

cells wrote: »

you need to consider that some people just can't help it or change. In the same way true alcoholics find it near impossible to quit drinking some people find it just as difficult to spend their limited money in a good way

You are wasting your time with this guy, he is just another classic case of someone(how he sees it) in the bracket of "boy from the gutter made good". I have met dozens of people with this attitude until the day adversity comes knocking on their door and they join the ranks of socialist overnight.

I have worked with the homeless on a voluntary basis and the one word that comes up in my mind all the time is CIRCUMSTANCE. Where they started in life, what hand were they dealt etc etc, but for the grace of God and all that...

I was and have been dealt a good hand in life, but still life can be tough as it is with everyone, so imagine what it is like with no family, no brains, no looks and an illness or that the only people you should have trusted in the world abused you.

Take heart that you have some decency in you and don't be turned by the more ruthless, this blokes time will come in one way or another as my own arrogance once did years ago.

Thrugelmir

ukcarper wrote: »

I know he introduced WTCs etc but did he alter out of work benefits that much. Admittedly he didn't do anything to reduce it, but stay at home have a baby and let the state pay started before 1996.

From the Telegragh August 2009.

Who said this? "The development of an underclass of people, cut off from society's mainstream, living often in poverty, the black economy, crime and family instability, is a moral and economic evil." It was Tony Blair in 1996, when, as leader of the Opposition, he visited Singapore to look at that country's "stakeholder" society, in an attempt to convince us that he was serious about reforming the welfare state.
Now who said this? "It is the social breakdown in our most deprived communities that creates the environment in which crime can flourish… Family breakdown has reached a scale where many young people grow up with no vestige of stability in their lives and no concept of family-focused upbringing." That was Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, speaking on Tuesday in a speech comparing the social breakdown in parts of Britain to that seen on the US TV series The Wire.
What happened during the 13 years in between; and will the next 13 be any better?
Today, Theresa May, the Conservative social security spokesman, will highlight figures that show millions of people of working age remain locked in dependency on state benefits, with little incentive to get off them, and are able to exploit a system that encourages !!!!lessness. "Labour has built a wall between the working and the workless, hoping to keep their failure out of sight," she will say. The Tory analysis is spot on, just as Blair's was in the 1990s. We know what is wrong; and we know pretty much how to go about trying to fix it. The big question is whether anyone has the political will to make a difference. If the Tories are serious about this, they should learn from what has been Labour's biggest policy failure.
Blair's mistake in 1997 was to cede near total control of domestic social policy to Gordon Brown at the Treasury. Brown quickly set up a tax and benefits task force to find a way "to streamline and modernise the system to fulfil the objectives of promoting work incentives, reducing poverty and welfare dependency, and strengthening community and family life."
Harriet Harman, then the social security secretary, said: "We are determined to tackle the scandal of one in five households of people of working age having no work. Work is the best form of welfare for people of working age. We will be exploring the scope for the tax and benefit systems to act as an incentive to move off benefit and into work. We want to tear down the barriers that keep people out of jobs and trapped on benefit."
Brown saw himself as a cut above the normal jobbing chancellor. He wanted to be a reformer in the Lloyd George mould, and his Big Idea was the tax credit. He was determined to press ahead with this, despite work of a different kind being undertaken at the Social Security department, principally by Frank Field, the minister for welfare reform. Before joining the government, Field had developed a bundle of ideas, such as ending means-testing, scrapping tax for the low paid, and personal welfare funds topped up by National Insurance contributions or tax allowances payable into savings plans. Field was kept in the dark about what was going on at the Treasury, before finally being forced out.
"I would learn about these announcements when they appeared in the press," Field later said. "He and Blair went on about ending child poverty within 20 years, without ever asking me whether this was realisable. I wasn't allowed to see the papers. That is how Gordon operates. The more you do that the less anyone has the chance to say, 'Hold on Gordon, will that work?' That is meant to be the point of having discussions with colleagues. Working for him meant getting the thing up and running rather than getting more money into the hands of poor people, getting it to the right people and saving taxpayers' money."
The problems were compounded by an incessant, almost compulsive, tinkering. From 1999 onwards, the government – ie the Treasury – abolished family credit, introduced working families' tax credit, introduced the disabled person's tax credit, introduced a childcare tax credit, introduced an employment credit, abolished the married couple's tax allowance, introduced the children's tax credit, introduced a baby tax credit, abolished the working families' tax credit, abolished the disabled person's tax credit, abolished the children's tax credit, abolished the baby tax credit, introduced a child tax credit, abolished the employment credit and introduced a working tax credit.
The tax credit was essentially a benefit, but was grafted on to an inflexible tax system that could not respond easily to people's changing needs. Coupled with the usual IT fiasco, it turned into a massively expensive way of putting money into the pockets of poor people. Studies show that the British taxpayer and benefit recipient get less from each pound spent than almost anyone else in Europe. Our welfare state is expensive, inefficient, bureaucratic and fails to deliver what it is supposed to. The tax credits also changed behaviour, since couples had to work much longer to obtain the same benefit as a single parent. What message did that send out to young mothers, at a time when the number of single parent families in this country was rising steeply?
Labour in the 1990s wanted to reform welfare, not simply because of its baleful impact on society, but because it cost so much. Blair said then that "we have reached the limits of the public's willingness simply to fund an unreformed welfare system through ever higher taxes and spending". His government would "cut the bills of social failure" and use the money saved for schools and hospitals. With rights would go responsibilities; and something would not be given for nothing unless the recipient was incapable of doing anything. Benefits would be linked to work and work would be rewarded, not discouraged by tax and poverty traps.
The fact that little of this happened was masked by a long period of economic growth and low unemployment, which has now come to an end. None of the putative savings were forthcoming, but buoyant tax revenues ensured the extra money could be spent anyway – even if this helped bring about the deep indebtedness we now face. Far from diverting money from welfare to schooling, we spend more on benefit than on education.
Very late in the day, Labour has proposed changes in incapacity benefit, which in pilot schemes have rendered some 90 per cent of recipients ineligible. But 13 years after Blair's fine words, five per cent of British men aged under 50 are still classified as ill or disabled – three times higher than in Germany; and three in four benefit payments are still made on a something-for-nothing basis.
The Labour Left would have you believe that their party's failure to do many of the things it promised in 1997 can be attributed to the dominance of the Blairites. In reality, throughout this period the policy was in the hands of the current Prime Minister. If he wants a monument to his years in power, the failure effectively to reform welfare provides it. Can David Cameron avoid the same epitaph?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/6095095/David-Camerons-biggest-challenge-will-be-reform-of-the-welfare-system.html

ukcarper

Thrugelmir wrote: »

From the Telegragh August 2009.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/6095095/David-Camerons-biggest-challenge-will-be-reform-of-the-welfare-system.html

That might be true and Labour failed to solve the problem, but as far as I can see Labours main failure was to try and make work pay by the introduction of tax credits etc which is where the big increase in welfare spending is. The point I was making to Loughton was that the benefit culture started before Brown.

BobQ

Generali wrote: »

And his life expectancy is about 90 if he doesn't smoke so will, on average, be drawing that pension for 23 years.

When the pension was brought in your life expectancy at retirement was about 18 months.

Actually when the civil service pension was brought in he was not born. If you mean the current pension scheme that was introduced in 2007 (retirement age 65). Are you seriously suggesting that life expectancy has risen from 67 in 2007 to 90 in 2015?

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

BobQ wrote: »

Actually when the civil service pension was brought in he was not born. If you mean the current pension scheme that was introduced in 2007 (retirement age 65). Are you seriously suggesting that life expectancy has risen from 67 in 2007 to 90 in 2015?

No.... but he is clutching at straws