should he stay or should he go.....(Clarkson)

[Tom D]

ha....the ironic thing is that the whole pension arguement is largely a mute point as anyone in the 40's and under age bracket is deluded if they think there is actually going to be such a thing as pensions when they reach retirement age.

 

unless they work for the state in which case they will be minted...

[Paul Barton]

Clarkson's well known for overblown statements for comedic effect. It was probably a silly thing to say on a prime-time programme like the One show.

 

BUT the reaction today has been ridiculous! Why can't people understand the concept of dark humour or context? If everyone knows he's a bit of a goon and says things for effect why worry that people would take him literally?!

[RobArb]

So why say it

 

good point:blush:

[skyhuck]

ha....the ironic thing is that the whole pension arguement is largely a mute point as anyone in the 40's and under age bracket is deluded if they think there is actually going to be such a thing as pensions when they reach retirement age.

 

Ain't that the truth!!

 

In the future people will look back at the post war generation, that had superb pensions, as a utopian generation.

 

We need to remember that a great many people died in the war and their wealth was passed on to others, meaning their was a great deal of money for those who survived the war.

 

We know have a situation where people are living longer and longer, so the wealth is getting spread thinner and thinner.

[skyhuck]

unless they work for the state in which case they will be minted...

 

No they won't, they just think they will:sneaky2:

[MATTMOSS]

unless they work for the state in which case they will be minted...

 

:lol: All i can say is i know a few arborists and the ones with the readies dont work for the council.:lol:

[Mark Bolam]

I don't know what he said.

 

I agree with him though.

[NFG]

Much as I despise those No 10 petitions (as if theyre going to take any notice), I did sign the 'Jeremy Clarkson for PM' one!

 

Theres a lot in his manifesto Im quite happy with.

[Sam Thompson]

All this fuss just shows how pathetic, childish and out of touch the unions really are!!!!!

 

How can they say he is like Gaddafi, do they not know the difference between words and actions?????

 

It reminds me of being back at school, teachers detached from the real world and with no sence of humour, Oh yes thats who's striking!!!!

 

 

Need to get a bloody grip the lot of them. My best teachers where all ex-military.

[agg221]

Sorry but that is rubbish, in like for like situations council workers are almost always paid more than their private sector equivalent, private sector hospital cleaners are paid less than council employed cleaners as are bin men, gardeners, tree surgeons and any other trade. Its is in the white collar jobs where the council pay falls behind the private sector. Plus they get shorter working weeks, longer holidays, and even under the proposed scheme a far better pension than most private sector workers could dream of.

 

Really?

 

Care to quote some references on that, or did you read it in the Daily Mail? Can you actually quote any average salaries for these jobs in private and public sectors?

 

Not a personally directed comment, but there is a lot of rubbish talked, by a lot of people with no, or very little, knowledge, derived from biased sources.

 

Some facts:

 

Why do public sector workers still have final salary pensions while the private sector ones collapsed? Simple - in the 1990s when the markets were performing well, a lot of private sector schemes took pensions 'holidays' where they didn't pay in for a few years. When the markets dipped, they were very short on funds, so collapsed. It was also legal to invest the pension fund back into your own company, which trustees often did, as a source of loan funds on favourable interest rates. Company goes under, pension pot's gone.

 

The government of the day ended up bailing out company pension funds. To stop this happening again, they put very stringent requirements on the value of the fund, what it could be invested in, and the assumptions to be made on the liabilities to be met. For example, pension fund 'hole' valuations now assume that the life expectancy for a 40yr old man is 93 for liability purposes. Would be nice, but a bit optimistic perhaps? Funds were also required to hold enough value to meet their future liabilities, rather than, as had always previously been the case, to allow their future employees to cover the current liabilities, and so on ad infinitum.

 

The first two factors resulted in the collapse of funds, the latter two factors resulted in schemes finding they couldn't meet their massively revised, predicted liabilities and closing.

 

So what were public sector workers doing in the meantime? Well, it varies, but in the case of teachers, steadily paying in from Paycheque 1 to their very last paycheque, at 6%. No pensions holiday, no dodgy investment practice.

 

It is a legal requirement (government legislation) to carry out a valuation of the fund liabilities every 3yrs. It's 4.5yrs since the Department of Education last conducted one. Given the position it was in at the last one, and the likely performance over the past interval, why do you think that might be? Simple, because probably it isn't costing anybody anything like as much as the government would like to apply as tax on pensions.

 

And no, it's not unaffordable. The Hutton report does not contain the word 'unaffordable' at any point. Try searching it (it's on line). In fact, public pensions will drop in cost to the taxpayer after a peak in 2011, so we're already on the down slope.

 

Another fact about teaching. Starting salary of £25k after a 4yr course, which is virtually impossible to come out of without a >£70k debt, to be serviced at £5k/year, straight off the gross, and will never be paid off, so is for life. To get their pension, take a further 6% of the £25k off, rising to 10% if the government get the current plan through, so that's a gross of £17.5k to work with. Rather different picture from that in the press, isn't it.

 

Sub-inflation pay rise for 3yrs, pay freeze for 3yrs, 1% cap for 2yrs. Can't exactly just 'sell a few more loads of lessons (logs), work weekends, up their price a bit on the 'extras' can they?

 

Or maybe, if the press are to be believed, teachers are just free childcare. Fine, so they don't need 4yr degree courses then do they, except the government says they do.

 

sorry, what did clarkson say? reference strikers, they're lucky they've got a job.

 

Really? Most public sector workers are providing a service. You might think you don't want the service - fine. Imagine you could opt out. So, you don't have to pay NI or income tax, so you're maybe £8k per year better off on £30k gross?

 

Do you think you can educate your kids for £8k?

So you have an accident in a tree, or your parents are sick, how much hospital care do you get for £8k?

If your house is burning down, do you want the fire brigade to turn up?

If you're burgled, or your wife is mugged, or your kit is stolen, do you want to have to pay the police to turn up?

Do you want your bins collected?

Do you want your neighbour to build a massive wall outside your house, right against your windows, and not have any recourse to a planning system to get it taken down, or not built in the first place?

 

Assuming you want these services, you have to pay tax to cover them. Or do you think the people who deliver them should do it out of the goodness of their hearts? Or maybe they should live on benefits and do it as volunteers - oh yes, there wouldn't be any benefits as they're paid for by tax. So, if you get injured you'd better have some very good insurance because you're not getting any healthcare or housing benefit or sickness benefits. Insurance would be priced based on risk, and arb is high risk...

 

Or perhaps, if they want living wages they should all go and get 'real' jobs? If they do that, who is going to provide the services when you want them? Simple - the dregs and wasters who can't do anything else. Fine, if you want your parents nursed by monkeys, pay them peanuts.

 

It's simple really. If you want public services, which most people do, then they need to be paid for. That includes paying people to deliver them, and if you want them delivered properly then you need to pay a good enough wage to get good people to do them. Yes, there has been a lot of waste, some of which could have been avoided, but lumping everyone whose wages are paid by the state into one bracket is only possible if you are very uninformed, very bigoted, or gullible enough to believe government propaganda (any colour of government) or gutter press (any political persuasion).

 

Alec