Makes my blood boil

agarnett

Puts me in mind of another of the big questions of the day - when does deliberate misrepresentation and/or denial of a financial problem become actual fraud?

hyubh

Wimbrel wrote: »

everything accrued from my 8% of salary contributions up to a certain point is frozen and protected under the old final salary scheme, anything after that point is on career average.

That's not how it works. Service (i.e., membership) from April 2014 earns CARE not FS pension, yes, however unless you've deliberately looked to change the situation (e.g. for tax reasons if you are a high earner), you maintain a final salary link for pre-April 2014 service.

The net result is a fall in my eventual pension..

Erm, you have membership of an excellent (and frankly overgenerous) CARE scheme that is costed to be no cheaper overall than its final salary predecessor.

My retirement age is 67.

Wrong again - your final salary membership keeps the NRA it always had (presumably given the amount of time you've been in the scheme you also benefit from the 85 year rule, no?). Now, your CARE service NRA matches your SPA, and you can't take FS and CARE benefits separately. However, if your pay will continue to be as flat as it has been in recent years, then under the CARE scheme you will earn more not less pension than under the FS one!

If I make it that far

Urgh, spare us, especially after the rather sanctimonious summary of your job at the start of your post

I'll have been paying between 5 and 11% of my salary every month for 44 years by then.

11%?! That must mean you earn well into six figures! Either that or your knowledge of your own pension scheme is a little... imprecise.

http://www.lgps2014.org/content/what-will-new-scheme-cost-me

If anyone not in such a scheme had saved that amount of their salary each month it would have built up nicely too

You are drastically undervaluing LGPS membership.

I get regular forecasts from the LGPS and I can assure you that I won't be rolling in wealth when I retire, especially as LGPS is contracted out of SERPS so my NI contributions won't net me a full state pension.

A silly comment... LGPS membership was far, far more valuable than SERPS/full S2P... and since April you are now earning the equivalent of SERPS/full S2P on top.

It's not all "private sector pensions poor, public sector pensions gold plated".

Have you not noticed that DB pensions are going the way of the dodo in the private sector? Or that your own employer would exit the LGPS 'just like that' if it could? Find out what it's contribution rate is for a flavour.

Many 'admission bodies' like your employer are stuck between a rock and hard place - on the one hand continuing to increase liabilities with active members is undesirable, yet exiting the LGPS could threaten bankruptcy because it would trigger an exit valuation that, by convention, is done using assumptions close to those used when a private sector DB scheme is wound up.

mollycat

BobQ wrote: »

The OPs rant and the discussion since is not of national importance as you think, probably only read by 50 people intrested in pensions (which is about 5% of the population under 55.

Bob, agree with the sentiment but not with your figures

Thread probably read by about 0.001% of the population.

agarnett; if you think this has been a useful "debate" about the subject you must be even more delusional than you have came across earlier.

Misinformed, bigoted, bitter, pseudo-intellectual, puerile, nonsensical, offensive carp does not a good debate make.

As per other posters; this thread is a (not very good), joke.

BTW, everone knows that you and "Muscle" are the same person :rotfl:

Tromking

agarnett wrote: »

Puts me in mind of another of the big questions of the day - when does deliberate misrepresentation and/or denial of a financial problem become actual fraud?

Legally and in so far as it applies to public sector pensions, that would be never. Only an idiot would think it would.

bowlhead99

Tromking wrote: »

agarnett wrote: »

Puts me in mind of another of the big questions of the day - when does deliberate misrepresentation and/or denial of a financial problem become actual fraud?

Legally and in so far as it applies to public sector pensions, that would be never.

Nobody is even denying there is a financial problem.

They are acknowledging there is a problem with the cost of funding very generous defined benefits. That is why the schemes are changing, for example implementing career average instead of final salary etc etc.

IMHO they should go further than they have done, to make future accrual less generous, and pay more salary if necessary to ensure people are still attracted to the roles; this would cut down some of the open-endedness of the retirement funding costs.

Still, I don't think anyone is denying there is a problem with signing up to something that has turned out to be very expensive. Of course there is, because it gives us less to spend on other things (or increases our tax bills).

Tromking

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Nobody is even denying there is a financial problem.

They are acknowledging there is a problem with the cost of funding very generous defined benefits. That is why the schemes are changing, for example implementing career average instead of final salary etc etc.

IMHO they should go further than they have done, to make future accrual less generous, and pay more salary if necessary to ensure people are still attracted to the roles; this would cut down some of the open-endedness of the retirement funding costs.

Still, I don't think anyone is denying there is a problem with signing up to something that has turned out to be very expensive. Of course there is, because it gives us less to spend on other things (or increases our tax bills).

I think the mindset among public sector workers is changing to a more helpful one for those worried about the cost of their pensions.The government is seemingly willing to spend billions on overtime and temporary staffing costs in an attempt to keep the headcount and and ergo longer term pension liabilities down. At my place the number of people opting to go part-time and thus have the flexibility to earn more in the way of enhanced overtime rates is growing exponentially. None of the overtime is pensionable of course and with the advent of career average schemes, employees will be hit financially when they draw their pensions. They don't seem too bothered though.
Perhaps encouraging short termist financial planning among its employees is part of the plan.:)

uk1

This threead now appears to be on a continuous loop with just the odd stutter here and there.



Jeff

agarnett

mollycat wrote: »

Misinformed, bigoted, bitter, pseudo-intellectual, puerile, nonsensical, offensive carp does not a good debate make.

If that's your idea of a useful contribution to UK society, I suggest you might find another one to haunt.

As per other posters; this thread is a (not very good), joke.

And who appointed you the judge?

BTW, everone knows that you and "Muscle" are the same person :rotfl:

And now you have just shown what a poor judge you are. You are in a world of your own. People like Muscle750 and me exist in large numbers. You call my contribution carp? Well we are not smooth operators who swim along together in a fine old school of overfed sharks, that's for sure.

Legally and in so far as it applies to public sector pensions, that would be never.

Oh - the getting away with it school? Morally corrupt but not fraudulent?

Only an idiot would think it would

You mean when did fairness ever count - every man for himself? Ah yes. Wear your badge of politics with pride, eh?

I do have to point out I think, that for a thread with a blunt non-specific title like "makes my blood boil", the only way it can still be running near the top of the list after a couple of weeks is if a collection of people continue to contribute to it. Just imagine what an even more enhanced viewing it might receive this coming weekend if the title was changed to "Over generous public sector pensions makes my blood boil" :rotfl:

So either the detractors are saying no-one reads MSE (which is a nonsense) or, if they believe the validity of their own put-downs, they haven't the intellectual capacity to understand what causes a story or a set of views to promulgate in 2016.

This thread may not form the most academically sound report of the state of things, but it will certainly have reminded a few people of the ridiculous inequalities members of our successive weak and self-serving governments have been, and still are, prepared to tolerate in order to maintain their own little worlds and their positions seated at the top of their selfish little heaps. They reflect society at large.

We're it. You're it. Stop denying inequality. Stop insisting on attributing inequality to poor personal choice - that's blatantly fraudulent assertion if you have any real intelligence. Take responsibility for the whole of society. No-one is interested in personal claims of taking responsibility for oneself - we are not trying to survive at the South Pole in 1912 or at the top of an Andean mountain after a plain crashed but no-one noticed. When one's lot is as much influenced by external factors as it is by anything ordinary individuals can influence for themselves, then claims of having made clever choices are wrong and very uncaring, especially when the clever dicks are prospering at the direct expense of the unfortunates.

Well_excuse_me.

kidmugsy wrote: »

For all I know our civil service may be like the Federal civil service in the USA. There the lowly paid are paid more than they'd make in the "private sector" and the highly paid are paid less. By "paid" I mean what Americans call "compensation", so pay, pension rights, medical insurance, and doubtless other bits and bobs.

I think you're right.
Having visited my council offices and made numerous phone calls about (of all things) rubbish, I have given up, they seem totally inept, and slow doesnt cover it. I doubt anyone in industry would employ any of the people I dealt with.

uk1

Well_excuse_me. wrote: »

I think you're right.
Having visited my council offices and made numerous phone calls about (of all things) rubbish, I have given up, they seem totally inept, and slow doesnt cover it. I doubt anyone in industry would employ any of the people I dealt with.

I think the higher up the scale they get, many become more and more insitutionalised. It seems to me that there is also a greater tendency in the public sector to see the customer as "the enemy" compared to the private sector. People I suspect deal with more complaints and more "entitlement" based calls than in the private sector and perhaps this makes them more defensive? And if you don't have to work hard to attract and retain customers because the go to prison if they do not pay then this can easilly lead to what we see.

I do not believe there is any real inherent difference in the quality of the people on the coal face in both private and those in the public sector. All people are capable of great customer service if they are led competently by decent and enthusiastic management who care about what they do. This is a management disinterest issue rather than the people you encounter imho. I think it is management that leads the degree of complacency and perceived disinterest you encounter.

Jeff