Cycling UK Forum

Edwards wrote:Jonty you wrote a lot of things about how the past was wrong (including having a dig at teachers). My suggestion is for the now not the then.
You need to think of the future and how we can come up with a better public pension system.
Can you think of a fairer system then the one I suggested. So easy to do and cheaper to administer.
The only ones who have anything to loose are the rich or selfish.

Edwards
It all depends what you mean by rich and selfish. I have friends who are committed socialists who criticise the "rich" when by any reasonable measure of income, pensions and assets they are rich themselves.
Take Meic for instance. He as taken my light-hearted comments about his finances in a "sporting" manner but if he works to retirement and becomes a Head of Department if not a fat cat he will be an over-weight pussy.
A rich and selfish person is often someone else - not you. Please note that I am not for a moment suggesting that Meic is selfish.
In retirement the rich today are well-paid public sector workers who have close to a full employment record. Someone retiring on a final salary of £50k with 40 years' service will receive an index-linked pension of £25k for life AND a tax-free lump sum of £75k.
And when they die their wife/partner will get a pension of £12.5k for life.
To get similar benefits in most private sector jobs would require a pension pot of about £1m.
If they retire early and get added years the sum involved could be much greater.
That's why one of the advantages of a pension scheme based on average earnings is fairer to those on more modest incomes which don't increase dramatically through promotion in the course of their careers.
jonty

Jonty wrote:...In retirement the rich today are well-paid public sector workers who have close to a full employment record. Someone retiring on a final salary of £50k with 40 years' service will receive an index-linked pension of £25k for life AND a tax-free lump sum of £75k....

This sort of guff that gets bandied about by people who have little idea of what they're talking about really gets up my nose.

Speaking for the MOD, the majority of civil servants will be extremely lucky to retire on a final salary of half of that.

I cant speak for NHS managers and council executives, but I think you'll find the vast majority of public and Crown servants are earning a less than £20k, with the prospect of only a small pension to look forward to (even smaller if the Westminster Wonders get their way), so stop tarring us all with your brush and dig out some facts before posting your offensive twaddle.

Guy951 wrote:

Jonty wrote:...In retirement the rich today are well-paid public sector workers who have close to a full employment record. Someone retiring on a final salary of £50k with 40 years' service will receive an index-linked pension of £25k for life AND a tax-free lump sum of £75k....

This sort of guff that gets bandied about by people who have little idea of what they're talking about really gets up my nose.

Speaking for the MOD, the majority of civil servants will be extremely lucky to retire on a final salary of half of that.

I cant speak for NHS managers and council executives, but I think you'll find the vast majority of public and Crown servants are earning a less than £20k, with the prospect of only a small pension to look forward to (even smaller if the Westminster Wonders get their way), so stop tarring us all with your brush and dig out some facts before posting your offensive twaddle.

He did say "well paid" rather than "all".

Guy951 wrote:

Jonty wrote:...In retirement the rich today are well-paid public sector workers who have close to a full employment record. Someone retiring on a final salary of £50k with 40 years' service will receive an index-linked pension of £25k for life AND a tax-free lump sum of £75k....

This sort of guff that gets bandied about by people who have little idea of what they're talking about really gets up my nose.

Speaking for the MOD, the majority of civil servants will be extremely lucky to retire on a final salary of half of that.

I cant speak for NHS managers and council executives, but I think you'll find the vast majority of public and Crown servants are earning a less than £20k, with the prospect of only a small pension to look forward to (even smaller if the Westminster Wonders get their way), so stop tarring us all with your brush and dig out some facts before posting your offensive twaddle.

Goodness, standards have fallen. Obviously civil servants are appointed these days who can't read.
jonty

Jonty wrote:R2.........Do serious conversations frighten you to the extent that you feel oblidged to respond in a personal and unpleasant manner? .
jonty

No I just find you unpleasant,mainly because you do what you castigate others for wanting what they signed up for ie; the pension promised on their contract of employment.
I also find it galling when ordinary working people are being made to pay for the gambling of bankers,one of whom,RBS president(can't remember the [rude word removed]'s name)who led the bank to destruction only to sail off with an umpteen million pound handshake without anyone able to do a thing about it,and thats just one.

Offer them option B, we leave their pensions as they are and when the pot is empty they get nothing, private sector wont even achieve the terms being offered yet its the wealth generated in the private sector which pays for public services, there will be food on the shelves at the shop on the 30th June when the public sector is on strike

Jonty what you would appear to be saying to me is that you want others to have their pensions reduced and not yours.

So a simple straightforward question, that should be answered with a yes or a no.
Why should these changes not apply to all who are receiving and who will receive.

reohn2 wrote:

Jonty wrote:R2.........Do serious conversations frighten you to the extent that you feel oblidged to respond in a personal and unpleasant manner? .
jonty

No I just find you unpleasant,mainly because you do what you castigate others for wanting what they signed up for ie; the pension promised on their contract of employment.
I also find it galling when ordinary working people are being made to pay for the gambling of bankers,one of whom,RBS president(can't remember the <i>[rude word removed]</i>'s name)who led the bank to destruction only to sail off with an umpteen million pound handshake without anyone able to do a thing about it,and thats just one.

My views on Fred Woodwin are about the same of yours. I would have had him hanged, drawn and quartered. What you may not be aware of is that following the banking crisis thousands of ordinary bank workers on modest salaries have lost their jobs. It wasn't their fault that the crisis occured: it was the fault of the Chief Executive and the board of Directors who made the decisions and the previous Government, particularly Gordon Brown, who encouraged the banks to lend, lend and lend and who made Fred Goodwin a peer.
Also I have not castigated others for getting a pension for which they have signed up to no matter how generous. If the pension is available they would be irrational not to contribute to it and take what's on offer. The best of luck to them.
What I have said is that the pensions made available to public sector employees by their employers, especially to the higher paid, are too generous, unfair, unsustainable and unaffordable and they should be changed along the lines the Government is suggesting.
I haven't said that public sector workers shouldn't take what's on offer.
Can I suggest you try and sharpen your analysis and critcism.
jonty

reohn2 wrote:No I just find you unpleasant,mainly because you do what you castigate others for wanting what they signed up for ie; the pension promised on their contract of employment.

IME, in the private sector a contract of employment isn't worth the paper it's written on.

I also find it galling when ordinary working people are being made to pay for the gambling of bankers,one of whom,RBS president(can't remember the <i>[rude word removed]</i>'s name)who led the bank to destruction only to sail off with an umpteen million pound handshake without anyone able to do a thing about it,and thats just one.

Me too, but I learned to live with it because there's no choice, hey I even bumped up my pension contributions to try and make an effort to cover the shortfall.
I can hardly complain about my situation, I'm a professional earning professional wages, but even so the sorts of numbers I see on here - even from those who complain about the 'poor' level of public pensions is frankly astounding, I put a bucket of money into mine every month and will be lucky to see even a tenth of monthly wage back.

There's one thing Jonty does have right and that's that public service workers don't have the foggiest just how good their benefits are.

But what gets my goat about the whole pension thing isn't the amounts though, it's the way the public service workers seem to think only they are affected and that they shouldn't shoulder the burden. Instead they expect me to not only sort my own shortfall out but theirs also!

Kwackers, I would have thought you had more sense than to help the employers in supporting a race to the bottom.
Have you been sneaking a read of those Daily Mails in the toilet before using them for their proper purpose?

Edwards wrote:Jonty what you would appear to be saying to me is that you want others to have their pensions reduced and not yours.

So a simple straightforward question, that should be answered with a yes or a no.
Why should these changes not apply to all who are receiving and who will receive.

I think what you are asking is "should these reduction apply to people who are already retired?"
That would be very difficult IMO. Retired people have often planned for their retirement and worked out what what they consider to be a reasonable income to live on.
To revise that retrospectively would IMO be unrealistic and unfair.
However, the Government could do it if it considered it necessary in the national interst so to do as I've stated in a previous post.
jonty

meic wrote:Kwackers, I would have thought you had more sense than to help the employers in supporting a race to the bottom.
Have you been sneaking a read of those Daily Mails in the toilet before using them for their proper purpose?

A pension scheme based on average earnings which is index linked and the surviving spouse gets half the pension is "a race to the bottom".
Well, I never...
jonty

meic wrote:Kwackers, I would have thought you had more sense than to help the employers in supporting a race to the bottom.
Have you been sneaking a read of those Daily Mails in the toilet before using them for their proper purpose?

Race for the bottom is very much a function of private enterprise and unsurprisingly is dictated by whether or not there is a surplus of employees.

The world changed many years ago, it just seems the public sector hasn't figured it out yet.

It doesnt have to be that way.

Jonty wrote:I think what you are asking is "should these reduction apply to people who are already retired?"That would be very difficult IMO. Retired people have often planned for their retirement and worked out what what they consider to be a reasonable income to live on.To revise that retrospectively would IMO be unrealistic and unfair

Yet you appear to support the reduction for others who are about to retire and do not have time to do anything about it

Jonty wrote:However, the Government could do it if it considered it necessary in the national interst so to do as I've stated in a previous post.

If you did not waffle on so much with aspirations and using examples to mislead people may have spotted this.
Even when asked a question with a yes or no answer you still could not bring yourself to do that.
Have you still got the Civil Service handbook from the 1980s as written by Sir Humphrey

Oh and by the way your standards are slipping you are making spelling mistakes.