Makes my blood boil

bowlhead99

agarnett wrote: »

We true Brits have been at war aaginst bad things happening in the workplace, and you Lord Halifaxes have been staying out of it, largely unaffected perhaps, trying to keep a lid on it?

I'm not unaware that "bad things" can happen in the workplace" but do generally stay out of things I don't have time or responsibility for. Does this make me like Lord Halifax? I'm not sure which of his activities you're associating me with, as you don't know me.

In terms of staying out of things, I'm fighting the urge to ignore your massive nonsense-filled posts, but this thread is like car crash telly, we can't help but crane our necks to see what random tangents you'll dive on to next while trying to somehow prove your point that people shouldn't be allowed to keep their contractual entitlements of which you're jealous.

Well, unfortunately you aren't alright. We're gunning for a reduction in your pensions one way or another now to redress the onvious immoral imbalances to which your peers and colleagues have been too shameless in .claiming entitlement no matter what.

There's been a blitzkrieg out here in private sector land pension-wise and sadly, since your large unions did nothing when asked to assist other trades unionists when they complained about what was happening in private sector land, you lot need to be compulsorily called up like the rest of us to clear the way forward for this country, and to share and share alike.

You're gunning for a reduction in my pensions, and those of my peers and colleagues, because I and they are shamelessly and immorally claiming entitlements that we don't deserve. And my unions and the unions of my peers and colleagues didn't do enough blah blah?

Perhaps if you could get off your soapbox and let your blood simmer down for a moment, it may cross your mind that I'm not a public sector worker; I never have been; I work in the private sector and have never been offered a DB pension; my colleagues are not unionised; my employer contributes 5% for us, to a DC scheme.

Why then would you assume I'm a public sector worker or retiree?

Ah, it's obvious I must be a public sector worker because I calmly and rationally pointed out that you shouldn't employ someone on a compensation package that includes certain salary, certain pension entitlements, and certain other benefits, and then retrospectively rip that away from them when it turns out to be expensive to keep the contractual promises. You think I must be your enemy and in receipt of immoral pensions or other shenanigans if I dare suggest that we pay people what we agreed to pay them.

So, I'm not a public sector pensions beneficiary and yet I find your attitude objectionable and am not unsupportive of people retaining their historic entitlements. Maybe that would clue you in that it is not all "us" private sector versus "them" public sector.

Sure, I think we need to take action to change the very expensive public sector systems where we can (move to career average perhaps, or change rules for new joiners, etc etc, as they've been doing). But please, it is not us versus them. It's you and your jealous friends, versus them.

How dare you dismiss the billions and trillions that the public sector pension arrangements cost as something you needn't be concerned about because it is irrelevant to your original pension promise? You are not taking about some faceless insurance company to whom it is fair game to place your exaggerated claim.

Whether it costs a billion or a trillion, we can't walk away from it. We can pay it, and then we can use that learning point to seek to avoid employing people on contracts that result in open ended rewards, going forward.

As explained, it is not my claim, as I don't have a public sector pension entitlement. I just have a balanced perspective on life.

You are presenting your claim to 5 out of 6 of your working neighbours to pay.
Have you tried knocking on their doors to ask what they feel about it?

As one of the five, I knocked on my door, asked my own thoughts on how I felt about it, and posted here for your benefit, that you may understand there is more than one perspective out here in the real world away from your soapbox.

Now you can either engage with the actual numbers, and start to rationalise using the superior skills you might logically possess if you are a public servant, or you must put up with the likes of me continuing to point you out to the 5 out of 6 of us in the street, paying through our noses in ways that are deliberately hidden from public view by civil servants who want to grab as much as they can while they still can.

I engaged with the numbers by explaining to you that rolling up the retirement compensation costs of everyone alive who's ever been employed in the public sector, and been promised something in exchange for their good work (or bad work, or indifferent work), by us, their taxpaying countrymen who foot the bill for that public service, and discovering that the answer is a trillion (falling due over 80 years), does not mean it's not affordable, or cannot and should not be paid.

In practice, the £30k per person over a lifetime is a smaller than £30k per person cost line in the annual cash budget for the government of the day. As a taxpayer I don't have to pay a trillion now. I can pay a bit from my tax now, and then I can use the rest of my spare income now to invest for the future and my own retirement, and in ten years time or twenty years or forty years time I will pay a bit more out of taxes on my income in those years too.

Paying obligations as they fall due is how a lot of finance works, you do not need to be a public servant with "superior skills" to grasp that, even someone like you might have the mental capacity for it.

agarnett

bowlhead99 wrote: »

...
As explained, it is not my claim, as I don't have a public sector pension entitlement. I just have a balanced perspective on life.

My bad, bowlhead99. I apologise if you are offended, but are you suffering as a private sector prospective pensioner? Do you realise just how the majority of private sector workers haven't a clue what their pension requirement are, let alone on how their pension will come together? I am guessing not.

I haven't any confidence that I know with any kind of reasonable accuracy what recent government new state pension reforms will do to my prospects, let alone the enormous ongoing risks associated with whether or not my private sector pensions will perform.

Might be interesting to know where in the grand scheme of things you do actually sit, as between 5 or 6 neighbours in the street, its not good to get the wrong idea about one another without understanding a bit about background and motives, is it?

As one of the five, I knocked on my door, asked my own thoughts on how I felt about it, and posted here for your benefit, that you may understand there is more than one perspective out here in the real world away from your soapbox.

Yes you are right, and thank you for putting me right

I engaged with the numbers by explaining to you that rolling up the retirement compensation costs of everyone alive who's ever been employed in the public sector, and been promised something in exchange for their good work (or bad work, or indifferent work), by us, their taxpaying countrymen who foot the bill for that public service, and discovering that the answer is a trillion (falling due over 80 years), does not mean it's not affordable, or cannot and should not be paid.

But that £1T is not due over 80 years. My understanding is that it is an unfunded liability and that there is no plan other than to suffer it as it comes. Its exceptionally risky and it is getting worse not better. In risk management there are tools to use in the box in order to manage ... wait for it ... risk! The £1T figure is today's money and for proper risk management purposes it all ought to be paid right now into a scheme designed solely to takeover responsibility for paying it using investment nouse and all other financial skills available to make that £1T last into perpetuity. It is due right now. But of course we don't have it. That part of it which is for exising pensioners and for deferred not active working members (and I guess that's a very big part) is surely a 100% shortfall if looked at like a private sector DB scheme ? Many private sector DB schemes are also kicking such shortfall cans down the road to various extents. None of it is "safe". All of it is short-termist and is certainly not long-term planning as can too easily be wrongly deduced by the repetition that somehow it is straightforwardly diffrayed over 80 years.

You, bowlhead seem to be saying, nah, it's small change each year which we won't miss given all the other stuff we'll have to pay for?

Paying obligations as they fall due is how a lot of finance works, you do not need to be a public servant with "superior skills" to grasp that, even someone like you might have the mental capacity for it.

It is also the way a lot of finance does not work now. Risks and liabilities are routinely securitised and diffrayed separately from the core business. God forbid that my very suggestion of this does drive HMG into the hands of vultures like Goldman Sachs which is what has happened to many private sector schemes, but many would argue that's what it might take. However, have we any family silver (or gold or nationalised utilities) left to give them instead of £1T cash? I think we are out of reserves also! Its not even a case that we could sell them a few international airports! Maybe a few military ones with planning permission thrown in to do as they like?

I worked in insurance. At it's basic level, that's about taking the worry out of nasty surprises in order to free up customers' "management" time for wealth producing ventures which would otherwise be wasted on wandering in the smoke between car-crashes, (firefighting) actually achieving nothing much and maybe finding oneself totally without transport to the next adventurous destination - ever!

Are you condoning self insurance by the UK government? I am not sure they are qualified to underwrite risks they really haven't bounded at all! Thirty years ago, it was in vogue for the biggest corporates to insure themselves. Results were very mixed!

Of course if the public sector is as skilled as some say, who knows ... perhaps they could nationalise the entire London Insurance Market and the UK private pensions industry and do a better job than either for us?

System

uk1 wrote: »

So how much of your posting is genuinely about the morality and how much is it about envy?

What's wrong with envy?

Supposing you have been wrongly convicted of a crime, and take up your complaints by posting on a forum. Aren't you entitled to be a little bit biased, and don't need to feel obliged to take up the cases of those who are wrongly aquitted with quite so much moral outrage?

Tromking

If its any solace to some on here, the nature of public service employment is changing. The era of the time served public sector worker is seemingly at an end. The lure of a career where a decent/generous pension can no longer be accessed at ages 55-60 is waining and is now causing massive recruitment and retention issues.
This, along with minimal salary increases is causing many public services to haemorrhage staff and as result the quailty of our public services will suffer. Interesting times ahead I would suggest.

uk1

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

What's wrong with envy?

Supposing you have been wrongly convicted of a crime, and take up your complaints by posting on a forum. Aren't you entitled to be a little bit biased, and don't need to feel obliged to take up the cases of those who are wrongly aquitted with quite so much moral outrage?

Where did I say that there was anything wrong with envy?

Jeff

uk1

Tromking wrote: »

If its any solace to some on here, the nature of public service employment is changing. The era of the time served public sector worker is seemingly at an end. The lure of a career where a decent/generous pension can no longer be accessed at ages 55-60 is waining and is now causing massive recruitment and retention issues.
This, along with minimal salary increases is causing many public services to haemorrhage staff and as result the quailty of our public services will suffer. Interesting times ahead I would suggest.

I suspect that as a generality there is a legacy presumption amongst some, particularly older people when it seemed truer for some reason or other, that better more able people went into industry and lesser able people went into the non-professional parts of public service. I can think of teaching for example where there use to be a phrase along the lines of people that can "do" and people that can't "teach".

Do you think there was that undertone and if so, do you think it persists?

Jeff

agarnett

uk1 wrote: »

... I can think of teaching for example where there use to be a phrase along the lines of people that can "do" and people that can't "teach".

Do you think there was that undertone and if so, do you think it persists?

Jeff

The question was I think for Tromking, but I am anxious to admit to being influenced by that undertone both in terms of whether I would switch to teaching during my degree (which I could have done at any time in the blink of an eye logistically - switching colleges at London University and sacrificing my "honours" degree for an ordinary degree plus a Certificate of Education) and in eventual choice of career path. I wasn't the best judge of course, but I saw teaching as an easy option, but not a valuable one.

To be just one who might answer uk1's question about cultural bias - As I have suggested earlier, upon leaving university as a late baby boomer, I had a full job offer as a government scientific officer but that looked an easy and rather dull option compared to what else was on offer, especially because I had a presentable personality and an ability to sell both myself, and technical concepts for my employer.

This was also the time when accountancy was seen as a very dull career path.

So I will admit that when I am talking about my peers who did go into those areas I still have an inbuilt sense that they were not the cream of the crop, but then neither were those who went into insurance! I mentioned earlier I think that I got a 2:2. If I'd been a less outgoing type, I could easily have decided that I didn't want to work outside the office as a company representative. and I might have still been a government scientist today with a pointy head and all! I really don't think I'd be claiming I was any great shakes however, just because my fortunes had overtaken many of the outgoing high achievers at university when measured in net wealth and pension prospect terms

Forgive me. I'd be interested like uk1 in others' thoughts about the perceived bias or 'legacy presumption' in the mindset of us older private sector types.

uk1

I'd add to those presumptions the one we have already touched on and that is being overpaid at higher levels and middle levels. I would include the BBC in that even though some will say they are not public sector, they of course are as we are obligated to fund them or go to prison!

I use to be in the entertainment industry and the BBC were the most aspirational employer for those seeking employment. There was a time when people would have almost paid to work for the Beeb. It has always been difficult to reconcile the earnings, and the high number of high earning people there are. I'm talking about the numbers of levels and their earnings. This coincides with the impression that they have become so bloated that they are now remote from their customers and seem to have lost their touch completely.

I wonder how much non-public sector people feel that this general malaise permeates all of the public sector, when it may or may not be true.

Jeff

LXdaddy

This thread is another that needs an ignore button - but like car crash TV* drags you back wondering what crazy ideas will come out next.


* as per Bowlhead

hugheskevi

Interesting how many thanks you got very fast before 10am having posted at 7am. I can't help but wonder how many are public service pensions beneficiaries ... today being a first workday back from a long weekend, I mean.

Today is one of the most common days to be taken as the Queen's Birthday privilege day - link here to read more about it...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege_day
I'm sure they were all up early to raise a glass to her maj, for her generous gift :beer: