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

[Tom D]

At the moment a council worker contributes around 3% of salary to their pension, so for 45 years they contribute just 3% and then if they live to be 85 they get 20 years at full pay in retirement!!! That is an amazing deal, I would bite the arm of any pension broker who offered me a deal like that. Even the new arrangement is several times more generous than anything available to the likes of me. I am paying over 10% of my salary into mine and won't see anything like the return that civil servants get.

 

I wouldn't shoot the strikers, I'd just stop the state sponsored pension scheme and let them get a private pension like everyone else.

[Rob Stringer]

Really?

 

 

 

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

 

:congrats:

[RobArb]

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.

 

 

 

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

 

:congrats:

[RobArb]

At the moment a council worker contributes around 3% of salary to their pension, so for 45 years they contribute just 3% and then if they live to be 85 they get 20 years at full pay in retirement!!! That is an amazing deal, I would bite the arm of any pension broker who offered me a deal like that. Even the new arrangement is several times more generous than anything available to the likes of me. I am paying over 10% of my salary into mine and won't see anything like the return that civil servants get.

 

I wouldn't shoot the strikers, I'd just stop the state sponsored pension scheme and let them get a private pension like everyone else.

 

isnt 3% of 45 years 15 years not 20:confused1:

[skyhuck]

 

 

 

 

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

 

Err I guess you have to hope your not down a mine shaft

[Big J]

My only personal experience regarding the pay disparity between public and private sector is my wife's profession - architecture. Council positions for architects have been advertised at £37,000. Private sector you are very lucky to get £30,000, and if you want to work for an ethical practice, closer to £21,000 is the norm.

 

Additionally, public sector are on a strict 37.5hr week. There were times when my wife worked 80 hours a week up to deadlines with no overtime. And still the company folded.

 

Don't have much sympathy for public sector, I'm afraid.

[Taupotreeman]

There are two discussions going on here. The first is should Clarkson be given the boot for his comments and the second is the value of public sector workers and the strike action. I'll just comment on the first as I know sweet fanny adams about the second.

 

Personally I believe we have become to PC about what people say and take it to much to heart. I'm sure many of us during the working day say stuff that, if it was posted in the media, would have us all hung out to dry. I don't have a problem with Clarkson shouting his mouth, off in most cases he says what many of us think. Even if we don't agree with what he has to say why sweat it? Sometime we get way to wrapped up in what is generally nothing more than words. Do we really think he was serious about shooting all the strikers?

 

On an aside; we have just had one of our radio shock jocks say something very similar about the media (especially the likes of The News of the world) and although there were some comments made (funnily enough, by the media) most people didn't give it a second thought. Now is that because the comment was directed at the media who we probably don't regard as highly as public sector workers?

[WorcsWuss]

For those like me who didn't have a clue what this was all about...

BBC News - Jeremy Clarkson One Show exchange transcript

 

Don't get me started on this. I am a terrible ranter about the unions, socialists and public sector on facebook and have lengthy debates [rows, whatever] with 'friends' who work in the public sector.

 

Uh oh.. too late... I'm off.... sorry....

 

What anyone who works in the public sector needs to remember is this.

The private sector doesn't need you half us much as you need it sadly. If the public sector was to disappear up it's own backside tomorrow, within a few weeks private companies would be popping up all over the place doing their jobs but better and cheaper.

 

If the private sector collapses, which if the public sector workers [although it's principally the union leaders stirring rather than anything else] keep whingeing, striking and doing very little but doing it badly and for a high cost, then it could well do, then there will be no public sector.

As is well proven by the strikes, public sector workers won't work for nothing, they have a vastly overinflated sense of self worth and very little grasp on economics in the real world.

 

The public sector is a service industry. It produces nothing, it generates no revenue, it creates no export market, it simply consumes, in ever greater quantities, from the private sector. As a result of this I'm sorry but they just need to graciously accept what they're given right now.

A public sector worker can't even claim to be a proper tax payer, since I'm pretty sure the money the pay their taxes with comes from private sector taxation in the first place. It's a giant moneygoround and it needs a slap across the face and to be put back in it's place. It needs to follow the private sector.

 

Life is hard, we're all having to work a lot harder for a lot less in the private sector, but we suck it up and get on with it, we will make things better. Why can't teachers etc [who god knows have incredible packages in reality] stop complaining about how hard done by they are and just plaster on a smile and put up with it?

All they seem to do is blame bankers, and although that's an entirely different thread, we really must accept that bankers share only as much blame for all this as we the consumers with our insatiable thirst for cheap borrowing and even cheaper goods, and the vastly overpopulated & complex public sector, and the general unwillingness to carry out low paid menial tasks leading to a collapse in manufacturing & export.

We all played a part in making this situation. We need to face up to it and stop trying to blame everyone but ourselves.

 

Public sector workers striking are doing the total opposite and have absolutely no sympathy from me whatsoever. I'm a fairly reasonable person and have no problem with public sector employees being paid fairly, but that's not happening at the moment. I have also found anyone in the public sector who I have tried to talk to about it to act like a idiot, mostly just raising the volume of their voice while repeating the same thing 'But we deserve it... blah blah bankers... blah blah Tories'... THAT MAY BE, BUT THERE IS NOTHING TO PAY FOR IT!!!.

They're acting like children who have been told they can't have a new toy.

 

So yes, I would take them out and have them shot too.

 

Sorry guys, it does make me cross!

Edited December 1, 2011 by skyhuck
language

[skyhuck]

 

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.

 

 

What like the ones who leave the elderly to die from dehydration or malnutrition on a hospital ward??????

[Tom D]

agg221, I am basing my comments on knowing a lot of people having been in the business for a while, I know that for example that council gardeners, get paid more than the guys who do the exact same job, (strimming weeding etc) for private facilities management companies, I also know that council tree surgeons are better paid than many in the private sector, I am not talking about self employed guys here but paye employees. There will be exceptions that break the rule of course but in general being employed by the state is as good or better than the equivalent private sector job.

 

I should add, I have never bought the daily mail in my life. the only "paper" I read is private eye.