Makes my blood boil

shortcrust

If you wanted the steak you should have ordered it.

Andy_L

Muscle750 wrote: »

As you quote the pension is of great value and youve managed to get £10,600 by buying more etc i would be very interested to know what i would have to AVC my company pension to achieve that extra pension level.

About the same as the CS extra pension option doesn't get the benefit of an employers contribution

http://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/members/member-calculators/

(Alpha is the only pension scheme now available)

Muscle750

shortcrust wrote: »

If you wanted the steak you should have ordered it.

I did by joining the final salary scheme which was pulled from under my feet throu no fault or lack of investment from me. I like how im told ive squandered my salary and should have put more spare funds into my pension we are not all earning £40k a year plus and ive had one pay increase in 10 years. The company keeps dangling Bonuses in front of us to acheive and get 3% every 6 months however the figures we need to hit are far beyond reach so we never get it " Sorry lads we just missed it.................keep trying".

Muscle750

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3366605/Public-sector-pension-pots-three-times-size-private-ones-gap-continuing-grow.html

I rest my case

agarnett

The question or observation made by the OP is very pertinent to assessing what has happened in the career lifetimes of those of us who could have gone straight into the civil service as easily as falling off a log (I had three firm job offers following the milk round at uni and only had a 2:2 in a science subject) - one was as a government Scientific Officer, at one of their establishments, one was a major insurance co graduate fast track scheme, and the other was graduate entry sales trainee for a major industrial firm - which had a modest basic but good commission potential and a company car.

I chose the insurance company because the salary was a bit higher than the civil service job, the DB pension was said to be as good as the civil service one, plus I got discounted mortgage and company car within the first 9 months.

However, as I progressed and changed employer, the pensions looked as good as I started with but actually they were shifting sands. The only DB scheme that still survives (just) is that first one. I have had three wound up on me, not because of employer financial difficulty, but simply because they were allowed to renege on the pension promise when it became in vogue to do so (by the ineffectual laws of this dodgy land of ours).

Meantime, as dunstonh says, public sector workers caught up in salary terms. But more than that, they have had unfair taxpayer funded protection from having their DB schemes wound up.

Those senior civil servants who have clung on in there through thick and thin, and survived privatisations, absolutely do NOT deserve their £100K a year pensions - they sat pretty on their expected piles and did nothing to protect the private sector pensions from manipulation largely by City spivs who gained control of private sector companies and immediately closed old schemes and wound them up while they still could.

By around the turn of the new millennium, my view is that the mid career civil service had evolved very much into a bunch of parasites who decided that they not only deserved private sector type salaries but that they should be immune from having their reward packages eroded in the same way as in the private sector.

Sure there were the unlucky ones who got privatised and the local authority ones who did get their packages tampered with, but there were some who got semi privatised (like National Air Traffic Services who in fact liked to say they were private rather than public private!) who continued to get the best of both worlds.

That official government statistic suggesting there are just 56 civil servants on £200K plus is clearly questionable by anyone with half a brain. Like most government statistics you have to have the drains up to see exactly how they arrived at it.

So the OP's friend is just lucky. No-one "deserves" or "earns" that sort of package when the average UK salary is only £27,000. They are just in the right place at the right time.

Most of us aren't, although there are of course a small proportion who are the few clever dicks who are smart enough to read the writing on the wall, realise which way the wind blows now, then hold down their existing jobs long enough to use them as launch pads having calculated their next career move and then be adept enough at making it happen so they can come to the internet and tell us how clever they were!

But so clever as to be truly worth 8 x UK national average salary PLUS an astoundingly good pension? That really has to be pretty clever doesn't it? :rotfl:

Good luck to the few - it's all a game - but more of chance than skill I think, other perhaps than office political skill.

Muscle750

http://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/649568/Public-sector-pensions-worth-five-times-more-than-private-sector-pensions

Happy days for us lot it seems .............NOT.
Is it really this bad it certainly seems its not only me whose getting fed up with the unfairness of it all . It wouldnt be so bad if we in the private sector werent paying for it either

GunJack

ok, so compare the 56 CS on high salaries....

..56 pales into insignificance when compared to the number of people in the private sector who earn £200k plus, you'll probably get 3 or 4 times as many in a single bank who are on that much... the people who are slating the CS ought to slate the private sector more, but let's face it, the CS bashing never seems to go out of vogue

agarnett

Yeah - that's the rub - maybe the "Good luck to the few" I just wrote should be reeled in a bit. Taxpayers are funding those inflated pensions directly - there are no pension pots accrued by luck or skill over career lifetimes for the civil service. It all comes out of today's taxes.

In fact, I think I might withdraw the Good luck bit entirely now you've prompted us Muscle750 ! They've had plenty already without continuing to take the p

And GunJack you don't really believe that 56 number? We have over 600 MPs for goodness sakes - don't you think there are at least 56 support senior civil service staff in and around Whitehall on £200K plus? Let alone those dotted around the country and floating about in embassies and other government representative organisations, the secret services, the police of course, GCHQ, other listening stations, etc. etc.?

And bank staff on those salaries are of course working for crooks and condoning crooked ways - you are surely not saying that the Civil Service should be run like those dens of thieves?

GunJack

Muscle750 wrote: »

http://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/649568/Public-sector-pensions-worth-five-times-more-than-private-sector-pensions

Happy days for us lot it seems .............NOT.
Is it really this bad it certainly seems its not only me whose getting fed up with the unfairness of it all . It wouldnt be so bad if we in the private sector werent paying for it either

some of the assumptions in that article are farcial... 4%pa payrises in the public sector? where have you been, 1% pa if they've been lucky over the last several years with no rise on the horizon either, so that just makes a nonsense of the whole thing...

mollycat

Muscle750 wrote: »

http://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/649568/Public-sector-pensions-worth-five-times-more-than-private-sector-pensions

Happy days for us lot it seems .............NOT.
Is it really this bad it certainly seems its not only me whose getting fed up with the unfairness of it all . It wouldnt be so bad if we in the private sector werent paying for it either

I'm a public sector worker, (NHS).

Previous to this worked in private sector, (factory work).

I find your ill informed rant offensive.

I pay contribute to my own pension and pay taxes, just like you do.

After 30 years of carrying out tasks many persons would choose not to do, my pension will be extremely modest. Despite that I count my blessings and do not denigrate those who have been more fortunate in their professional life than I have been.

Like others have said, come and do what I do. I could list my duties, but some of them are of a nature I would choose not to on this forum.

People like yourself use the NHS, hope your kids are educated properly, and want safe streets. You also seem to resent the people who carry these tasks benefiting from their agreed terms and conditions.

Why not focus on aspects of your life you can control?

We have all made choices in life, I take full responsibility for mine.

What about trying to do the same and stop blaming people like ourselves?