Rhetoric media on state gold plated pensions

dean350

There is huge effort made to manipulate the minds of the population by both sides of the political spectrum. Therefore the planting of stories that are often meant to simply distract the population from what is really going on and set them against each other. Hence the proliferation of stories about migrants in boats. Their numbers are nothing compared to the 1 million a year that are now given visas by the government to live, work or study. Similarly much frothing about the price of petrol or gas but less said about the collapse in the GBP which on its own makes our imports more expensive.

sheslookinhot

dean350 said:

There is huge effort made to manipulate the minds of the population by both sides of the political spectrum. Therefore the planting of stories that are often meant to simply distract the population from what is really going on and set them against each other. Hence the proliferation of stories about migrants in boats. Their numbers are nothing compared to the 1 million a year that are now given visas by the government to live, work or study. Similarly much frothing about the price of petrol or gas but less said about the collapse in the GBP which on its own makes our imports more expensive.

 including the divisiveness that the media stoke up when reporting on railway workers or refuse collectors being on strike. As though they cause all the issues. 

zagfles

hyubh said:

zagfles said:

Careful, you'll be accused of a hate crime by giving facts about how good public sector DB pensions are

Seriously though, there are a few advantages in the private sector. For instance, most private sector DB schemes use capped RPI, rather than uncapped CPI. Which is best? Who knows

It's a 'hate crime' to state basic facts...?

Well apparently! Letting people know basic facts apparently stokes up divisions, so we'd better keep it all under wraps

Uncapped RPI pension increases would be extremely unusual... statutory for private sector DB is zero on pre-97 excess and pre-88 GMP, CPI capped to 5% for 97-05 excess, and 2.5% for 05+ excess... Public sector schemes giving full CPI increases on GMP for members reaching SPA from 2016/17 onwards is, moreover, a fundamentally more generous way of equalising GMP than how most private sector schemes are doing it.

ie nothing, ie no indexing of pre-88 GMP. However, the new state pension will make many better off because of the ability to accrue further state pension on top of the contracted out scheme. But there are some losers, eg those who reached SPA just after 2016. As discuss here many times.

zagfles

dean350 said:

There is huge effort made to manipulate the minds of the population by both sides of the political spectrum. Therefore the planting of stories that are often meant to simply distract the population from what is really going on and set them against each other. Hence the proliferation of stories about migrants in boats. Their numbers are nothing compared to the 1 million a year that are now given visas by the government to live, work or study. Similarly much frothing about the price of petrol or gas but less said about the collapse in the GBP which on its own makes our imports more expensive.

I've noticed the biased reporting of issues like illegal migrants has improved on both sides, there's less hysteria, less obvious attempts to give a skewed picture for instance focusing on the tiny minority of women and young children when the vast majority are young men. People see biased reporting for what it is, and it's not as easy to get away with it these days as there's so many sources to check.

If you look across Europe anti immigrant sentiment is far higher in other countries than here, ranging from the hard line Hungarian stance to even countries like Sweden, where the far right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats are polling at about 20% and look like they'll come second in the upcoming general election there in a few weeks! Despite virtually all the MSM being very biased against them. This is Sweden, that icon of progessive socialism!

Re GBP, it's really the whole of Europe, the EUR has collapsed as much. GBP is higher against the EUR than it was 5 years ago. Like with a lot of stuff, what we're seeing in the UK is bad, but it's similar in the rest of Europe. You can selectively chose how to compare, what to compare, and who to compare against, as the media do to make whatever point they want, but basically the problems we're seeing are no different to the rest of Europe.

zagfles

sheslookinhot said:

dean350 said:

There is huge effort made to manipulate the minds of the population by both sides of the political spectrum. Therefore the planting of stories that are often meant to simply distract the population from what is really going on and set them against each other. Hence the proliferation of stories about migrants in boats. Their numbers are nothing compared to the 1 million a year that are now given visas by the government to live, work or study. Similarly much frothing about the price of petrol or gas but less said about the collapse in the GBP which on its own makes our imports more expensive.

 including the divisiveness that the media stoke up when reporting on railway workers or refuse collectors being on strike. As though they cause all the issues. 

And the political divisiveness, as if the govt cause all the problems and so should have a magic wand to fix them...

QrizB

zagfles said:

Re GBP, it's really the whole of Europe, the EUR has collapsed as much. GBP is higher against the EUR than it was 5 years ago.

But a lot lower than it was seven years ago. It's almost as though the UK did something immensely harmful in the spring of 2016 and had never recovered.

JoeCrystal

QrizB said:

But a lot lower than it was seven years ago. It's almost as though the UK did something immensely harmful in the spring of 2016 and had never recovered.

Ah yes, the greatest mistake that the "people" have ever made in this country, in my view. I fear it will only worsen in the coming years and decades. I still get annoyed having to ensure that my passport gets stamped when entering and leaving the countries. The last airport I went to was in Copenhagen earlier this year, and I was told I needed to ensure that my passport got stamped when leaving! I was thankful for a reminder since one can walk directly from the security area to the gate without going through passport control in that airport.  

It will only worsen once they introduce biometric checks, which means they must collect your facial photo and fingerprints when entering the EU. It is okay if you are in the airport and doing it one by one, but if you got a whole coach or a family car in the ports, you would need to get everyone out and take their details which will delay the process—a photo of your face and four fingerprints as a minimum. 

And, of course, don't forget about getting ETIAS filled out with all that information you need to supply, from medical conditions to criminal records. If any EU country doesn't particularly like you, it will fail, and you will have a chance to appeal to the EU country directly even though you are entering a different EU country altogether. 

But hey, that's what the people voted for. You can tell that I am still bitter! 

Albermarle

If you look across Europe anti immigrant sentiment is far higher in other countries than here, ranging from the hard line Hungarian stance to even countries like Sweden

Also the liberal Netherlands has its fair share of anti immigrant feeling. Like the UK, the established immigrants from the old colonies are well assimilated, but there is a lot of concern about the 'new waves' . Also they share an open border with Germany who famously opened their doors to very large numbers of Syrians.

jimi_man

JoeCrystal said:

QrizB said:

But a lot lower than it was seven years ago. It's almost as though the UK did something immensely harmful in the spring of 2016 and had never recovered.

Ah yes, the greatest mistake that the "people" have ever made in this country, in my view. I am afraid it will only get even worse in the coming years and decades. I still get annoyed having to ensure that my passport gets stamped when entering and leaving the countries. The last airport I went to was in Copenhagen earlier this year, and I was told that I needed to ensure that my passport got stamped when leaving! I was thankful for a reminder since one can walk directly from the security area to the gate without going through passport control in that airport.  

That will change next year with the introduction of ETIAS. Also it's fair to say that the policy is more due to the intractability of the EU rather than the UK. We allow Europeans (in fact 39 other countries) to use our e-gates with no stamps required and have much more generous immigration rules - the same is not true of European countries. 

JoeCrystal

jimi_man said:

That will change next year with the introduction of ETIAS. Also it's fair to say that the policy is more due to the intractability of the EU rather than the UK. We allow Europeans (in fact 39 other countries) to use our e-gates with no stamps required and have much more generous immigration rules - the same is not true of European countries. 

Yeah, I am painfully aware of that! I edited my comment to include that as well.
It will only worsen once they introduce biometric checks, which means they must collect your facial photo and fingerprints when entering the EU. It is okay if you are in the airport and doing it one by one, but if you got a whole coach or a family car in the ports, you would need to get everyone out and take their details which will delay the process—a photo of your face and four fingerprints as a minimum. 

And, of course, don't forget about getting ETIAS filled out with all that information you need to supply, from medical conditions to criminal records. If any EU country doesn't particularly like you, it will fail, and you will have a chance to appeal to the EU country directly even though you are entering a different EU country altogether. 

But hey, that what the people voted for. You can tell that I am still bitter!