Labour propose confiscating 10% uk equities - pension planning response?

Turpinr

Do you know any Leyland Motors union leaders personally or by name.
I'd love to go back to the 70's and full employment, a manufacturing industry, proper apprenticeships etc etc and before zero hour contracts

bostonerimus

Paul_Herring wrote: »

Really? I remember it differently

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547173/Browns-pension-grab-secret-is-revealed.html

There's plenty of blame to go around. New Labour and Conservative governments together with industry have used neo-liberal policies to scr@w employees over the last 30 or 40 years. Brown is certainly a major figure in this

Thrugelmir

bostonerimus wrote: »

Whether Labour's plans are the right way to do it is debatable, but the problem of income inequity needs to be addressed.

QE has benefited those with assets such as property and equities at the expense of those who don't.

bostonerimus

Thrugelmir wrote: »

QE has benefited those with assets such as property and equities at the expense of those who don't.

Hardly surprising as it's people with equities and property who get to set the strategy and make the rules.

With the 10 year anniversary of "2008" many US politicians and economists are reassessing "The Bail Out" and the distribution of the money. I've heard some lament that not enough was done to help individual mortgage holders, but when these decisions get made there's rarely an advocate for the little guy in the room so a top down strategy that protects the banks etc and hopes that the healing trickles down wins out.

Malthusian

bostonerimus wrote: »

I've heard some lament that not enough was done to help individual mortgage holders

If reducing interest rates to zero wasn't enough help then you are beyond helping.

Thrugelmir

bostonerimus wrote: »

Hardly surprising as it's people with equities and property who get to set the strategy and make the rules.

Far simpler than that. It's where the cash has gone.

bostonerimus

Malthusian wrote: »

If reducing interest rates to zero wasn't enough help then you are beyond helping.

Low interest rates didn't help those whose house value fell well below the level of the outstanding mortgage or those with fixed mortgage rates who couldn't refinance.

Silvertabby

Turpinr wrote: »

Do you know any Leyland Motors union leaders personally or by name.
I'd love to go back to the 70's and full employment, a manufacturing industry, proper apprenticeships etc etc and before zero hour contracts

I actually had the misfortune to work for Leyland Motors for a few months in the 1970s. Closed shop rules meant no union card/no job, so they had you by the short and curlies. Obey the (union) rules - which included wild cat strikes and being a flying picket - or you were out on your ear.

On my first day there one of the union bods (no, I can't remember his name) came round selling copies of the Red Worker or some such carp during our lunchbreak. To my amazement, my colleagues each bought a copy (I later found out that they were too scared to say no) but I refused on the grounds that I already had a newspaper - and brought out the Daily Telegraph. War was declared. As far as I am concerned, I got the last word - but the union applied their bully boy sanctions by declaring that I was expelled and thereby had to be sacked. Didn't bother me as I'd already put in my notice prior to starting my RAF training - but my poor colleagues had no options but to toe the party line.

Sapphire

bostonerimus wrote: »

There's plenty of blame to go around. New Labour and Conservative governments together with industry have used neo-liberal policies to scr@w employees over the last 30 or 40 years. Brown is certainly a major figure in this

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. Competition from foreign countries, especially places like China, can provide goods far less expensively than Britain, where a generation at least has been brainwashed into thinking it needs all kinds of unnecessary knick-knacks, and wants them on the cheap. Countries like China can use very cheap labour (paid at rates that are unheard of in Britain, today), under a system that is no democracy and does not tolerate dissent. Many excellent British companies were probably sold off (often with the consequent loss of great skills) partly precisely because of this; they could not compete with the cheap foreign 'stuff' (I can remember a time when 'Made in England' was a sign of quality, while Chinese goods were generally regarded as tat and avoided). Allowing into Britain a constant stream of cheap labour from abroad has also not helped.

However, going back to the 'good old 70s', which were a time of much greater poverty for a great many more working people than is the case nowadays, is not the answer.

Turpinr

I don't remember it being like that but yes it was a closed shop.
I know we had a very good final salary pension scheme that at the time, we didn't apprecate.
Which factory where you in and what did you make?