Have they got public sympathy?

ben@31

If you're talking about gambling with private pension pots ? Surely Gordon Brown isn't the only one, it still goes on now through out the world and many people have lost everything.

Pross

ben@31 wrote:

If you're talking about gambling with private pension pots ? Surely Gordon Brown isn't the only one, it still goes on now through out the world and many people have lost everything.

No, he took a windfall tax from them amounting to about £10 billion. Money that would have been reinvested into the pension pots and grown further and which belonged to the people who will be drawing on those pensions. I think Robert Maxwell did something similar and it was called fraud!!!

ben@31

Pross wrote:

I think Robert Maxwell did something similar and it was called fraud!!!

Thats true. But banks can create money out of nothing. If you and I did that by printing a handful of tenners using the office photocopier, it would also be called fraud.

The big guys get away with what they want. While we minions at the bottom have to live by a different set of rules.

tangled_metal

Ben@31 - A lot has been said since I dropped in so I will answer some of your earlier questions and work from there. The directors did take a hit including being banned from director positions for a long time and claims against houses. One is living in rented housing I believe rather than owning a couple of houses (and renting one out). They messed up by taking too long to get a pre=pack in place before the bank caught on and shut them down. They are now doing well as a company but they are still making similar mistakes that got them into difficulty. There are new directors culled from their family ranks but the same old directors and managers are still running the show. I could have worked for them but didn't because a lower pay with a secure company is better than a higher one with a company that could go kaputt any time. The main point is they took a hit as much as I did.

As for your other posts, especially on this page, I would like to say utter drivel! Not meaning to be offensive but you quoted Benn about the no unemployment during the war so why can't we have that outside of war. Well the simple thing is we went broke in the war. We borrowed from the Americans, admitedly at favourable rates, but that debt was only relatively recently paid off. It also put is in the hands of our paymasters. We are free of that but still paying for the WW1 debts. If you want to borrow more to have more welfare then sooner or later the level at which we are unable to pay it back will be passed. I can't remember the figures but it is related to our GDP. Italy IIRC has a high amount of debt in relation to GDP and despite being a big economy it has a lower credit rating and pay out a lot more in interest. They are still able to pay it though at the worst of the crisis they were not too far from the point at which the ECB would have had to step in to save one of the biggest Eurozone economies and the Euro currency as well I believe.

So as much as you don't like it you can not borrow to get 100% employment like during the war without buillding up the debt. Ask people what the 50s were like too. That was when the austerity due to the war kicked in. And you want to listen to Benn on that and create that pain and more by borrowing to fund job creation? how many hospitals do you think would be needed to employ everyone? Admitedly you would lower the class sizes employing more teachers which would have some future benefit due to better education that entails. However not everyone is cut out for a teacher job or a nurse job. You have to have a full mix of artificially created jobs created for 100% employment including soldiers I am sure.

Interestingly a lot of men were fighting and previously unemployed (and not looking for work) women took the men's jobs. not sure of the significance of the comment but it brought a lot more people into the workforce who were never in it before so more jobs needed.

That is an interesting graph BTW. IIRC Gordon Brown and Blair made a big thing of keeping to the Tory spending plans during the '97 election. Didn't that last a good couple of years? My recollection is there was a recession in the tory government before then that they got under control and the spending plans (which usually last anyway for at least a year into a new party of government) were followed by the New Labour project some time aftet the '97 win. They had to or there would have been a problem. However IIRC it led to a period of surplus that was used to buy the next election partly by increasing the size of the public sector. It was at its worst under Darling but all that was due to Brown's time at number 11 Downing Street.

tangled_metal

Earlier in that graph was the Thatcher years when the country was recovering from the Labour years and the short weeks and power cuts that involved. They got the surplus for 2 years but not long before that there was a slight increase in the debt due to the 1984 incident when the NUM was successfully played by Thatcher. I think it was the transport union was similarly run by highly left leaning leaders but they knew not to pick a fight like the NUM and are now doing very well as a strong union.

Then there was the ERM disaster, probably made the Tories truly euro scceptic after that. It was being recovered as I said when the Labour project took it on.

My point is that graph does no party any favours.

Stevo_666

Rick Chasey wrote:

Public sector already compete on a non-monetary basis. But ultimately we live in a free market society. The market decides the pay. Lefty or not. I like how you assume there are enough people who have no interest in earning decent wedge. Faintly patronising.

In previous discussions you've said you don't rate govt tax rules or inspectors. I'd suggest if they paid inspectors as well as on the private side they'd probably save more than they spend in missed taxes. This is ultimately my point. It's a false economy for the public. You need good people in public sector work - otherwise the public sector services will be sh!t. Let the market decide and then tinker with the market.

You want a free market don't you? Then stop trying to distort it.

Do find it odd you're in favour of competition but only when it suits your own interest.

If you were truer to the cause you'd be pleased there was a competitive market for talent between private and public.

Appreciate this sounds off topic but it's the crux of the issue about pay in the public sector.

Rick, good to see you've come round to my way of thinking about the free market

The only problem is, the public sector pay in many ways is not the free market - as has been shown above, the Govt has caused public sector pay to exceed the market. One of the likely reasons for that was the last Labour govt's attempt to create the 'client state' of eternally grateful well paid public sector employees who would then vote Labour...

The Govt as I'm sure you understand is (or rather was) not subject to the same financial constraints as private sector companies and the Blair/Brown administration simply extracted more tax/borrow more to fund public sector pay. Ultimately it came back to bite them.

Maybe if the State slimmed itself down to an acceptable scale, you would not get so many people having an issue with pay for those that are in the public sector? You just don't seem to get the issue that the State is simply too big to be sustainable.

rick_chasey

I don't have a problem with the size of the state.

Nor do I think it's unsustainable.

And the next time someone mentions the debt being so terrible I'll kill a kitten or something. Even Hayekians have been quiet the last year.... Quite confused by your Blair/Brown chat, and it 'coming back to bite them' but will leave that.

Having said that, there are better ways to spend money, but that's another debate.


Problem with stuff like fire brigades is, say you cut the pay or pensions a fair bit, and all the good guys leave, so you're left with a bunch of guys who can't get a job elsewhere and aren't as good as the guys who do it already. By that time, when someone's house is on fire, it's too late to realise they probably should have kept pay up a bit.

I don't know the ins and outs of the fire lot, but they fire brigade budget generally seems pretty tiny to me.

If you do want to save millions, why take it out of pensions of guys who put their life on the line and do what they themselves suggest would save money? https://www.gov.uk/government/news/inde ... re-service

Maybe you're right, maybe the market doesn't want good quality firemen!

Bit like the market not wanting financial regulation, and look where that got us

Looks like I'm contradicting myself there - all I mean is there's nothing wrong with public sector guys being paid more if it's because they're trying to attract the kind of talent they want - and that is often 'market rate'. Shouldn't be a discount per se because they're public sector. Think we can all agree on that.

pblakeney

Rick Chasey wrote:

And the next time someone mentions the debt being so terrible I'll kill a kitten or something..

Try clicking on this link. It is quite scary.
http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk
I dislike cats.

ben@31

Stevo, isn't a "free market" a licence for industries to get away with what dodgy practices they want and act unethical and with no morals?

One example of privatisation and free market is the rail industry... Ticket prices are rocketing up, but is the quality of their service? Rural routes are getting axed and busy routes still have over crowded trains with no extra carrages. They're more than happy to knowingly sell more tickets than seats. Privatisation was all about putting someone's profit first before the quality of service to everyone else.

bompington

ben@31 wrote:

Ticket prices are rocketing up, but is the quality of their service?

You obviously don't remember the good old days of BR.

As for rural routes getting axed, it was the government (google Beeching) that axed the vast majority of them fifty years ago.

tangled_metal

Rural routes getting axed? Where? Which ones? At most I';d imagine all the routes worthy of axing were done under Beeching and later on but still in the BR days. I even remember them opening up rural routes like the one from Blackburn to Clitheroe back when I was younger but after privatisation.

Th only thing wrong, IMHO, with privatisation is the way it was done. They separated the ownership of the route from the operators on that route. That has caused most of the problems which Ben mentioned such as significant increases in ticket prices (needed to enable modernisation to happen on line and train stock due to underinvestment from BR and post privatisation days) and poor service. Let's be honest here, if your train is even 5 minutes late you think bad service. They are never going to be highly thought of no matter whether public or privately operated.

BTW I'm not a trainspotter but I used to read the Railway Times newspaper a lot back in the day as a kid. Both Grandfathers were railwaymen through and through. They always got the BR freebie paper and out of boredom I would read it. Things were never as rosey as you make out back in th BR days. Part of the reason, apart from ideology, was because BR and the government would not and could not fund modernisation. If you get higher prices now it is more than partly because BR and later rail network companies never put the money up over the years to modernise what is had. Part of that was down to the separation of asset ownership from the operating companies. They should have sold of routes and areas with the line included, with obvious saveguards of course.

tangled_metal

It really amazed me that people with a left leaning view on things still think rosily of BR. I have a lot of things to thank BR for, mainly providing the job and income for my Grandparents (one in particular who was a day away from getting kicked out of the UK if he hadn't got that job with BR due to no automatic right of residency). The one thing I don't thank them on is the poor service we had back then. AS bad as Ben makes it out to be now it is better whenever I use it now than back then. In fact I actually think the Virgin west coast operation is pretty good considering the line it is stuck with due to underinvesment by the network company and the fact it has to go into Birmingham New Street (that well known train blackhole of a bottleneck).

ben@31

Tangled Metal wrote:

Rural routes getting axed? Where? Which ones? At most I';d imagine all the routes worthy of axing were done under Beeching and later on but still in the BR days. I even remember them opening up rural routes like the one from Blackburn to Clitheroe back when I was younger but after privatisation.

Where I live on a saturday there's a train at

09:48
11:40
13:29
15:08
17:00
18:55 etc etc

The government wants us to use public transport more (allegedly for the environment, cough cough). In this area public transport is so inadequate and inconvenient that it's not an option. At the nearest airport the airport buses stop running before the last landing aircraft.

I'm sure I once found a place in NE Scotland that has a bus, once a week on a tuesday. Yey for public transport. Here is the timetable http://www.stagecoachbus.com/pdfs/XAAO253.pdf

Pross

ben@31 wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:

Rural routes getting axed? Where? Which ones? At most I';d imagine all the routes worthy of axing were done under Beeching and later on but still in the BR days. I even remember them opening up rural routes like the one from Blackburn to Clitheroe back when I was younger but after privatisation.

Where I live on a saturday there's a train at

09:48
11:40
13:29
15:08
17:00
18:55 etc etc

The government wants us to use public transport more (allegedly for the environment, cough cough). In this area public transport is so inadequate and inconvenient that it's not an option. At the nearest airport the airport buses stop running before the last landing aircraft.

I'm sure I once found a place in NE Scotland that has a bus, once a week on a tuesday. Yey for public transport. Here is the timetable http://www.stagecoachbus.com/pdfs/XAAO253.pdf

That doesn't tell anyone anything without knowing what pre-privatisation services were like. In my area several lines have been re-opened in the past 10 years and stops that hadn't been used for years have been re-opened even if only on a request basis.

Stevo_666

ben@31 wrote:

Stevo, isn't a "free market" a licence for industries to get away with what dodgy practices they want and act unethical and with no morals?

No. Bit of a sweeping generalisation that about 'industries' (take it you mean private companies). What do you propose?

ben@31 wrote:

One example of privatisation and free market is the rail industry... Ticket prices are rocketing up, but is the quality of their service? Rural routes are getting axed and busy routes still have over crowded trains with no extra carrages. They're more than happy to knowingly sell more tickets than seats. Privatisation was all about putting someone's profit first before the quality of service to everyone else.

BR has already been mentioned - you may be too young to remember how crap it was. Not sure how a government monopoly on the trains is going to do a better job this time round?

And don't forget - all those lovely taxes you socialists need tend to come when profits are generated

finchy

Regarding BR... yes, the state could run a decent rail service IF THEY WANTED TO.

Stevo_666

ben@31 wrote:

In Norway ( a successful socialist country, capitalists don't talk about).
The Norwegians built enough hydro electric power stations to be fully self sufficient and not dependant on oil or gas. It produced 99% of it's electricity from free, abundant and pollution free water.
Norway then nationalised it's oil and gas industry and sold the oil and gas to other suckers who are dependant on it. The Norwegian govt saved the revenue wisely and use it to pay for their welfare system.

Rubbish. Norway (like the other Scandies) is capitalist, strongly free market but with a relatively high welfare spend. If it was socialist the state would own the means of economic production - it doesn't.

Norway is also helped by the fact that it is the 5th highest oil producer per capita in the world which accounts for a lot of it's relative wealth - 23% of the entire economy in 2012.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/Production/Per-capita
Although the state owns less than 25% of of the oil reserves. Surprisingly un-socialist don't you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State's_Direct_Financial_Interest

Interestingly the Centre-right government in Norway is undergoing a privatisation programme - wonder why they think it's a good idea?
http://www.corporatefinancingweek.com/corporate-financing-analysis-privatisation-efforts-norway-are-slowly-gaining-momentum-27-oct-2014

Stevo_666

johnfinch wrote:

Regarding BR... yes, the state could run a decent rail service IF THEY WANTED TO.

They didn't manage it last time (and I assume they wanted to make a decent fist of BR), so why give them another chance to mess things up?

Anyway, why should the State be in the business of running a railway business?

finchy

Stevo 666 wrote:

They didn't manage it last time (and I assume they wanted to make a decent fist of BR), so why give them another chance to mess things up?

BR didn't have the same level of government support as, say, the SNCF or DB. Also, you can't compare BR to companies operating with much higher subsidies, charging more for tickets and benefiting from far superior technology to that which was available 20 years ago.

Stevo 666 wrote:

Anyway, why should the State be in the business of running a railway business?

Because a decent transport system is vital to our national interest. It needs to be run in such a way. Also, it's called democracy.

Stevo_666

johnfinch wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

They didn't manage it last time (and I assume they wanted to make a decent fist of BR), so why give them another chance to mess things up?

BR didn't have the same level of government support as, say, the SNCF or DB. Also, you can't compare BR to companies operating with much higher subsidies, charging more for tickets and benefiting from far superior technology to that which was available 20 years ago.

Stevo 666 wrote:

Anyway, why should the State be in the business of running a railway business?

Because a decent transport system is vital to our national interest. It needs to be run in such a way. Also, it's called democracy.

Re: France and Germany - so rather than screw people directly on fares they screwed people indirectly via high taxes? Either way, you pay...

National interest? It's also in our national interest to have enough food to eat but you don't see people demanding that farms and supermarkets are nationalised. The logic just doesn't work. Add to that the State is usually less efficient than the private sector, so the national interest is usually served by running these things privately

pblakeney

Stevo 666 wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

They didn't manage it last time (and I assume they wanted to make a decent fist of BR), so why give them another chance to mess things up?

BR didn't have the same level of government support as, say, the SNCF or DB. Also, you can't compare BR to companies operating with much higher subsidies, charging more for tickets and benefiting from far superior technology to that which was available 20 years ago.

Stevo 666 wrote:

Anyway, why should the State be in the business of running a railway business?

Because a decent transport system is vital to our national interest. It needs to be run in such a way. Also, it's called democracy.

Re: France and Germany - so rather than screw people directly on fares they screwed people indirectly via high taxes? Either way, you pay...

National interest? It's also in our national interest to have enough food to eat but you don't see people demanding that farms and supermarkets are nationalised. The logic just doesn't work. Add to that the State is usually less efficient than the private sector, so the national interest is usually served by running these things privately

Anyway. About those fireman's pensions......

Stevo_666

PBlakeney wrote:

Anyway. About those fireman's pensions......

Good point. They are probably still better than my pension.

finchy

Stevo 666 wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

They didn't manage it last time (and I assume they wanted to make a decent fist of BR), so why give them another chance to mess things up?

BR didn't have the same level of government support as, say, the SNCF or DB. Also, you can't compare BR to companies operating with much higher subsidies, charging more for tickets and benefiting from far superior technology to that which was available 20 years ago.

Stevo 666 wrote:

Anyway, why should the State be in the business of running a railway business?

Because a decent transport system is vital to our national interest. It needs to be run in such a way. Also, it's called democracy.

Re: France and Germany - so rather than screw people directly on fares they screwed people indirectly via high taxes? Either way, you pay...

National interest? It's also in our national interest to have enough food to eat but you don't see people demanding that farms and supermarkets are nationalised. The logic just doesn't work. Add to that the State is usually less efficient than the private sector, so the national interest is usually served by running these things privately

France and Germany may well pay higher taxes, but they do so on higher incomes, possibly due in part to the fact that they have superior infrastructure to us. Farms and supermarkets just can't be compared to rail because they don't require the same sort of central coordination.

And please, don't give me all this BS about private sector running public services so much better than the state. They might be more efficient if you just look at lowering costs, but just to take 1 example, when I was at primary school we were fed by the council. The food wasn't the best in the world, but we got a healthy meal every day. The private sector got involved and what happened? Children being fed complete and utter crap for over a decade and it needed a celebrity chef to get involved and even then the changes were only made with increased government subsidies! So the long-term costs to the nation would probably outweigh any savings that short-termist, penny-pinching bean counters manage to make.

There are plenty more examples (hospitals not being cleaned properly being the one which is closest to my heart, seeing as my great-grandmother died of MRSA that she contracted in hospital) but I don't want to go into a big long list at this time.

Anyway, back to the firemen. Yes, they have my sympathy for reasons others have mentioned earlier in the thread.

ballysmate

Why should i subsidise a railway network I don't use through higher taxes for the wingeing bastards on the 8.15 to Paddington?
I accept we need a viable railway system, but having the Government run it is not the answer. Can't think of any industry that the Government has managed to run successfully.

Pross

Ballysmate wrote:

Why should i subsidise a railway network I don't use through higher taxes for the wingeing bastards on the 8.15 to Paddington who are only travelling to London to earn more money than they can in Swindon and without paying london house prices? .

Fixed

Actually, I'm with Finchy on this one with the caveat that it needs to be run efficiently by government (which is where it obviously falls apart). It should be run on a similar basis to the Highway Agency, if rail companies are making a profit, which is obviously their whole purpose, that's money that could be used to reduce fees or be re-invested in infrastructure and rolling stock. The main problem with it be privatised is that there's no real scope for competition, you can't chose which company you use for a trip to London from Bristol based on cost.

rick_chasey

Stevo 666 wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Anyway. About those fireman's pensions......

Good point. They are probably still better than my pension.

Should spend less time on BR and more time earning more money then .

Stevo_666

Rick Chasey wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Anyway. About those fireman's pensions......

Good point. They are probably still better than my pension.

Should spend less time on BR and more time earning more money then .

Says the man with 23,000-odd posts maybe if you did the same you might be a bit less left wing

Actually the money is not an issue, it's what my pension will be worth as its a just a normal defined contribution scheme, not the final salary Ponzi schemes that a lot of the public sector think they are entitled to by right.

ben@31

Stevo 666 wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Anyway. About those fireman's pensions......

Good point. They are probably still better than my pension.

Firefighters have to contribute to their pension and pay in a large % of their salary. So their pension maybe better than yours but they paid for it.

*Edit = I've been informed the contribution used to be 11% a few years ago but the contributions are now on the increase. Anyone on here contribute more ? Most public sector schemes are non contributory and others like the Prison Officers pay about 5%

mamba80

I don't begrudge the firemen a penny, dammed if I d want to cut a dead kid out of a wreck or go into a burning factory or house and bring out someone's charred kids, may not happen often but when I dial 999 I don't want dads army turning out.
But on the pensions, they have a great deal, the employers ie tax payers, also pay in a lot too, maybe its a lot worse for new recruits but it shouldn't be.

Stevo_666

ben@31 wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Anyway. About those fireman's pensions......

Good point. They are probably still better than my pension.

Firefighters have to contribute to their pension and pay in a large % of their salary. So their pension maybe better than yours but they paid for it.

*Edit = I've been informed the contribution used to be 11% a few years ago but the contributions are now on the increase. Anyone on here contribute more ? Most public sector schemes are non contributory and others like the Prison Officers pay about 5%

Here you go:
http://www.yourpension.org.uk/Files/Files/HCC%20Fire/FPS%20Scheme%20Guide.pdf
They pay 11%-15% of pay depending on salary (tax deductible at the individuals top marginal rate)

The fire service pays in 26.5% of pensionable pay :shock: That is properly generous. I see no reason why the public should be exempt from the financial pain that the private sector has suffered, especially when the pensions are that high. After all, we are 'all in this together' are we not?