15 % pay cut for Public sector

But taxing the rich minority will barely tickle the defecit. I agree in principle with what you're saying, but it's not an effective way to reduce the defecit. Taking a small amount from a much larger population will have more impact.

Bankers' bonuses is one of the biggest myths of this whole debate. The vast majority of bank employees do not earn massive bonuses. The big bonuses are reserved for a select few, whether that can be justified is a wholly different debate.

I don't think the government should reduce inequality, they're not socialists. Personally, I'm not that bothered if an exec of a company that makes a huge profit gets a big bonus, he/she deserves it. Banks are businesses, there to make money. Some needed bailing out, in part, because many consumers failed to repy their debts. Is that wholly the banks' fault?

I've never received an annual bonus that's equalled more than 50% of a month's net salary.

It's more than a little disturbing when the discussion over the continuing assault on the standards of most peoples' lives is so vapid and prosaic. There was a phrase that made it to the public arena about us all being in it together. Decades of deliberate attacks onthe majority by the rich minority -and the sycophants in Government they buy and sell daily - have left us with a much weakened economy, no way of redressing the current imbalances and only seeing things get worse. We are not in it together. It's disheartening to see suggestions that what has befallen so many should be visited on those -so far- fortunate enough to have avoided being sodomised financially by their employers, leaders, managers.

What we need to do is to hold Governments, institutions and companies to account, and to demand some vision and far-thinking. Reading this thread makes me understand why this is unlikely.

Smokin Joe wrote:

Now they know what the private sector have had to put up with for the last five years. We don't all work in banks.

only 5 years . your industry must have weathered the storms well. crap pay rises in construction for last 15 years. effectively pay cuts year on year as nowhere near inflation level.

public sector average earnings are also higher than average private sector earnings . pensions are better and we have been told for 30 years or more to put in as much income as possible into pensions. why did the public sector think it wasn't going to affct them.

work pension for me and millions of others is career average not final salary. final salary has been abused for years by people getting promotions to high paying jobs they are not good at for last year or 2 of "service"and then getting an inflated pension at the end of it .Fair, don't think so

derbygrimpeur wrote:

Quite an extreme view TB although I don't think things are quite as bad as you suggest.

If things are so bad in this country, maybe you'd all be better off moving elsewhere? Or maybe things aren't quite so bad here!

Deciding which country to live in is not always an economic decision. I would move to somewhere like Austria in a heartbeat, but I know that I would miss my family too much.

derbygrimpeur wrote:

Believe it or not, we still have it pretty cushty in this country compared to many of our European neighbours. We're also in a much better position to emerge from this mess than those in the Eurozone.

What's your logic behind that, and which countries are you comparing us to? Given the massive amounts of private debt and the state of our education system (relative to other EU countries), I'd say that's debatable.

Jeez...lots of bs and rubbish in this thread and most of the viriol is stirred up by the governments spin, nothing more, they are playing Private off against Public sector allowing their message to get accross without any marketing cost to them. Private Sector workers need to wake up and see that they are being used a pawns as well.

Anyway, I'm a public sector worker, my basic pay is less that £25,000 pa, I've had no consolidated pay rise now for going on ten years. It's not just the Tories who have attacked public sector pay and T&Cs, however it does give Milliband and his cronies something to pep up the rage and shout only they haven't. 63% of us earn less than £25000 pa, which is the private sector average.

Reviewing, inflation for the last ten years, most if not all civil servants in the same position as me will be about 20% behind the cummulative inflation pay rises most experience. Even non consolidated rises are limited to 1 or 2% so in net terms we've had nothing but pay cuts for 10 years. You can effectivley live with a lot of this when you know you are contributing to a fair pension when you retire............ oh and yeah this is the THIRD time our pensions have been tweaked and altered in the last 5 to ten years

What this strike action and alleged negotiations all really mean is the following.

A freeze in the "Already Earned" pension pot
Pension contributions will rise by an average of 3.2%
We'll have to work until 66 (for now) to be able to get our pensions
Moving from Final Salary to Average Salary will cost us on average between 15 and 18% of our pensions (What final salary really means is your best salary in the last 13 years of employment)
The pay freeze means we fall behind inflation yet again, the paltry 1% rise is just as pointless

In the end I'll come out about 18% worse off in pension terms, thats in the future and I have time to make some of that up in other ways however the next thing will be salary, the PS unions will soon start shouting about this and rightly so. Perhaps if our successive governments would start treating everyone fairly we'd get on better. My wife's wee business gets taxed at a specific rate and she pay her way, if they taxed the banks and collected it annually we'd be £42billion a year better off for a start instead they collect a small fraction of it. These pensions issues are a smokescreen to allow the governments to do other things, it's sod all to do with saving money, I read in some publication recently the saving will be a total of £2billion, not much of a saving is it.

..and no I didn't strike on Wednesday