Comments on: Unions provide yet more amusement during conference season

By: Grumpy Old Man

Grumpy Old Man — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:11:09 +0000

LFAT. I made the point that these pensions would come from a pension fund jointly paid into by employee and employer on restitution of the pension fund dividend scheme. That is not the same as the present unfunded system. It was a somewhat long post, so may be you’d ran out of patience by then. You will have noticed the pledge by the future govt. to replace that tax break when affordable? ( even Nick Robinson has stopped denying the inevitable!)

By: RayD

RayD — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:35:03 +0000

I think I must have missed something. How can a pay freeze be much of a hardship if, as the chancellor tells us, the economy is in danger of deflating? Have we now accepted there’s going to be some serious inflation?

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:26:20 +0000

Clearly the unions are spoiling for a fight with DC in the hope of crushing his reform plans while they are still nascent. Hopefully he has the smarts to find a way to take them on one at a time to avoid anything like a coordinated strike – the alternative of spreading the pain thinly may work but probably won’t make enough of a difference.

Sorry to come back to this, though, but it has to be MPs first on this otherwise there will be a very easy stick to beat them with…

By: aron

aron — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:26:10 +0000

Am i the only one thinking that a pay freeze in two years time is nowhere near enough.

By: Shaun Pilkington

Shaun Pilkington — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:49:07 +0000

Hmmm. With unemployment/out of work between 3 and 5 million by most estimates, these union fellas are about to find out just how easy it is to replace relatively unskilled workers…

By: LFAT

LFAT — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:40:08 +0000

Julia, he was purely being self-centred and thinking about HIS members, not saving the entire British economy.

GOM, final salary pension schemes have left this country with a public sector pension deficit of over £1 trillion pounds – surely you don’t want this to get worse?

WT, makes me think of Silvio Berlusconi, who is currently trying to keep a law in place that prevents him from being prosecuted on the grounds that the law should regard him as “first above equals”. Great stuff!

By: Wight Tory

Wight Tory — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:02:56 +0000

What really makes me laugh is that they complain that it won’t save much money. The reverse of that argument is that they won’t lose much money either! and that’s wrong?

The words “but some animals are more equal than others” spring to mind. Unbelievable….

By: Grumpy Old Man

Grumpy Old Man — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:00:14 +0000

Dear LFAT. You are, of course, quite correct. I would lay odds that the union responses had been prepared weeks in advance and it was just a matter of chosing the best adjectives to fit the occasion. It must be hell for those GP’s struggling to get by on £100,000 pa when daily being faced by their patients seeking treatment for the stress caused by losing their jobs. It is truly amazing how organisations based around the concept of collective responsibility rapidly shift to protecting their own in hard times. Tory MP’s committment to
“we’re all in this together” will be severely tested the next time MP’s sit to discuss their own remuneration. Who voted for what will be an area of legitiment public interest, and I am sure that bloggers of all political colours and none will be heavily involved in publicising the results.

Georges plan is easily sold as spreading the shrinking resource of taxpayers’ money as thinly as possible to avoid as much pain as possible to a morbidly obese public sector. (Caring Conservatives, anyone?) After the first knee-jerk response, I am quite sure that Union leaders realise that violently objecting to the Tory plans in principle will be politically a self-inflicted injury. Furthermore. it’s an option they would have considered themselves.

On the subject of Public Service pensions. We should not be following the socialist policy of levelling down rather than Conservative aspiration of levelling up. Restore pension tax credits to the pensions industry and allow public bodies to set up final salary pension funds. Immediately the savings ratio will rocket, providing investment income to the Nation and underpinning the countries’ finances. In a generation there will be an enormous sum of protected funding available to British enterprise for all the good things Dyson was talking about, creating a wealthier group of retired people who will be less of a burden upon their descendants. A win-win situation?

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:34:49 +0000

“We see this as pretty divisive gesture politics because of the small number of people involved.”

Really? The hysterical cries yesterday were warning that ‘4 million people will be affected!’

So which is it? Lots of people affected or not many? You can’t have your cake and eat it…