Another voice: Why the strike is right

DZ

Will Straw is Associate Director for Globalisation and Climate Change at the IPPR.

So, not a real job then.

By the way, Mr. Straw, the public sector is very seriously over-manned and needs drastic pruning. You forgot to mention that.

But, I forgot, the "bonfire of the Quangos" never happened, so you will be safe for a while.

Rob

Someone who gets paid £15,000 for working a five day week is low paid. Someone who gets that for a one-day week, for instance a retired local authority executive on a consultancy, isn't; regardless of their total pay packet. They're very well paid, for the work they're actually doing.

Paul Danon

Yet public sector workers work for the rest of us and we have elections to choose who is to manage the public sector. Last year we elected two parties which both subsequently pledged to try to cut Labour's deficit. There was a change of management and it was done democratically. As with all changes of management go changes of policy. This is especially necessary when the previous management (for which many trade unionists voted) have made a huge mess of things. Times change, governments change, and we all have to adapt to that. Only a few of us can hold the country to ransom when things happen that we don't like.

Verity

If the teachers don't want cutbacks, how about getting rid of the absurd "teaching assistants" or whatever they're called. Teachers, for hundreds of years, have taught. Why, suddenly, have they become executives with "assistants"? I'm assuming that this was a Labour gig to make the teachers feel important and to get a few people off unemployment.

Nicholas

RUBBISH!!!

You represent a bunch of left wing monkeys determined to "kick the Tories out" which is what many of your protest placards had written on them. This has nothing to do with the realities of pension funding and everything to do with political ideology and subversion. The usual suspects at the forefront of the marches with their Andes hats, drums and whistles, the sad, noisy dross of Britain's left wing wastrels. Funded twice by our taxes. Once as public sector workers and twice as hard left union activists doing the dirty work of the Labour party.

They are not all Dinner Ladies, despite the use of that emotive leftist code-word as a catch all to intimidate any opposition. Amongst them were plenty of those with PC non-jobs and the shame of Britain's state school teachers who brain wash our young with their nasty left wing cant. There was a prime example of the latter on the BBC News this evening. Trying hard to plead a legitimate cause but in reality just a disgruntled lefty who wants a Labour government.

Shame on the lot of you.

ckanger

All fine and dandy. but this still doesn't justify strike action especially when negotiations are still ongoing (something which the Opposition Front Bench found peculiarly hard to grasp). As for the 700,000 public posts to go, I don't suppose that the one-legged outreach co-ordinators or underwater shove-ha'penny facilitators etc etc will be greatly missed by anyone.

fergus pickering

I hate dinner ladies - bad-tempered old bags.

Dimoto

The BBC question - 'was the strike "justified" or not', should not be taken too seriously.

The public sector is heavily unionised.

Emoluments have become out of line with equivalent private sector emoluments, in a time of enormous financial strain.

The government wishes to make painful adjustments.

There was always going to be a strike.
It is cathartic for those involved, and has apparently been a fairly good-natured and disciplined protest.

If there are a rolling series of strikes, as threatened, with an obvious political agenda, things will get nasty, and probably become self-defeating for the unions.

David Ossitt

As Nicholas has written, Rubbish.

Greenslime

Easy really. If they don't like the terms of service in the 'Public Sector' they should go and get a job in the private sector.

Paul Danon

Indeed, Nicholas, and the BBC has all day been treating the strike as a grand and respectable national occasion, meekly interviewing the strikers and giving them loads of airtime.

daniel maris

I am not convinced that a rise in retirement age is at all desirable. We have over two million unemployed. Already about 700,000 people stay working after retirement age. If we add another million to that, what good would it do if we have to pay out unemployment benefits to younger people.

Public sector pension costs are projected to rise to 2% of GDP by 2027...hardly the stuff of nightmares. Many public sector pensioners are from the low paid ranks. If they didn't have a modest pension they would simply be dependent on state hand outs, a direct burden on tax payers.

With per capita GDP at $35,000 or more, we can easily afford these modest pensions -and we should require the private sector to provide pensions as well.

Technical innovations are going to destroy millions of jobs in the near future. We need to be moving to a shorter working week and earlier retirement.

Holly ......

Unions...The Euro of Britain and heading the same way.

Tankus

Are "dinnerladies" the new "bigot" argument shout-down ?

Woody

Another attempt to fog the facts - "the extra cash generated for the Treasury by these higher contributions is not to boost the pension schemes but to pay down the deficit."
WHen in fact the contributions are not contributions but a return of the taxes passed over to the public sector. So the increase "contributions " are actually a reduction in the tax outgoings, which will reduce the deficit needed to keep the public sector in comfort.

David Ord

look pal.the people who work in the public sector have to put up with the most horrid people on the front line and for what????
try living in the north east where 1 in 8 are unemployed,try pulling someone out of a car crash with multiple injuries without spewing up then tell me we are not worth a decent pension. most of the private sector failed to save for their pension or their greedy employer had pension holidays and back pocketed the cash.if you think this is justified why dont you pay an extra 3% yourself towards the deficit??? then again hurrah henrys cann afford it along with their putrit banker friends

Paddy

Well said Nicholas. I agree with everything you say.

Tiberius

There are a combination of reasons why private sector pensions became unsustainably expensive; longevity, an unfortunate change in accounting requirements, and the removal of the tax credit - this third item being the most important.

Will, if you want to blame anyone for the need to reduce public sector pensions, look no further than Gordon Brown. In helping himself from the private sector pension pool to pay for his client state, he also killed the goose that was laying the golden egg for the public sector.

The squealing from the unions and co demonstrates one of two things: either they are wilfully ignorant of the consequences of Brown's action, or they lack a basic knowledge of arthmetic. The numbers have taken this issue beyond politics.

Vulture

Straw is the second generation of his family never to have had a real job and to have risen to totally unjustified prominence by virture of nepotism.

(Daddy was a student politician turned Labour functionary - and a gutless, stuttering useless one at that).

Straw junior is just a strand off the old Straw. The real question is what on earth is the 'Tory' Spectator doing giving space to this waste?

Ellis

If I wanted to read what this prat has to say I would subscribe to the Staggers and not the Speccie. Is there nowhere we can get away from these misguided left-wing idiots?

letsactuallytryandhaveadiscussion

Well put Nicholas? No. Dreadfully put. I mean by all means agree with him because he's saying something you like but it's difficult to agree with him on the grounds he's actually making any sense or cogent argument.

To accuse strikers of forwarding a political ideology and then cake his post in dreadful agenda-ed cliches like 'left wing wastrel' and 'emotive leftist-code word' and 'PC non-jobs' is an abject contradiction of his own professed desire for discussion of the realities of pension funding.

This is the worst kind of garbage. And the line about State schools 'brainwashing children' is plain silly.

And no, where is everyone saying it's about dinner ladies? No one is. It's about all the workers who work dilligently on behalf of society. Who were the people who were out today at the marches. Including myself, a social work manager in child protection.

Now if anyone wants to make a cogent comment like Paul Danon that I disagree with but at least puts across a meaningful point then I'm happy to argue the toss. But Nicholas's comment shames the Spectator, which i expected to be a place of reasonable discussion. And I find it frankly weird that someone would go 'Well put, I agree'.

James de la Mare

David Ord (7.26) Yes, some jobs can be nasty occasionally. However this strike is wrong - very wrong - because it is hitting at the wrong people. It is hitting the public who pay for public services in good faith and rightly expect them to be delivered, come what may.

If the unions have a gripe about pensions, then they must discuss that and resolve it with those responsible for setting the terms. The iniquity of hitting at the public - not the employer - in disputes has been going on for sixty years. It's time it stopped. We're all forced to pay for these people, some of whom have 'essential' jobs, and many who don't, and it's time the workers got off their high horses and treated the public with due respect.

They should remember too that the state pension is a mere £100 per week, which many of us have to live on while paying out a very significant part of that in tax of one kind or another for "services" we'll never use and probably never even be aware of.

liz wilson

will Gordan Brown be next to voice his opinion.

dorothy wilson

I once met Mr Straw on a course called 'The Successful Self'. Ummm!

However he is talking garbage when he claims that: "The truth, of course, is that the extra cash generated for the Treasury by these higher contributions is not to boost the pension schemes but to pay down the deficit"

The truth is that the higher contributions will be paid into the general taxation pot because the pensions are paid out of the general taxation pot.

If Mr Straw thinks the public sector workers would be better off if their contributions were paid into a dedicated pot with the employer also making a contribution as they do in the private sector he might get a very rude awakening.

Peter From Maidstone

Many of my family and family in laws are in the public sector. They have good salaries and are almost impossible to sack. They work no harder than people in the private sector. There are plenty of people in the private sector who have to work very hard, and there are plenty of people in the public sector who don't work very hard at all. Vice-versa is true. But in the private sector there is always the possibility of a failing company making people redundant. Most public workers avoid that threat all their lives, even when their job is no longer required.

ButcombeMan

Tiberius has it right. It is not very long ago, within living memory, that the UK had some of the best funded private pensions in Europe. Brown raided the tax relief on those pensions and helped destroy their viability. Though I recall, maybe incorrectly, that the Tories had done some minor destruction before?

On the wider point, public service pensions ARE unsustainable, plainly we are not all in it together, I have such a pension and have been receiving it for many years. A quick calculation tells me that to buy my pension (and it includes a widows pension for my spouse) in the private sector, I would need a capital fund a long long way into seven figures.

I know of no one in the private sector, who had my sort of responsibility, who saved such a fund. I do not think it possible, with or without tax relief on contributions.

Nicholas

Come on David Ord, cut the crap. Yes, there are public sector workers that do nasty, stressful jobs. Heat and kitchen? But there are also plenty of diversity officers, five-a-day co-ordinators and all the other commissars and PC wallahs that New Labour stuffed into the public sector from 1997-2010. Workers in the private sector are constantly at risk of redundancy. People with small businesses, up to their necks in the treacle of public sector red tape, work 80 hour weeks and just get by without enough to fund a pension.

So get off the violin and get back to work, stop wasting my taxes on your party political agitation for the Labour Party and STFU.

Paul Hughes

This teacher went into work today, as did 2/3 of the staff at his school. It may suit Straw and his ilk to paint a picture of an enraged public sector, but the reality is that it only takes a minority of staff to be absent in order to close a school.

I voted tory and so would have been a hypnocrite to protest at cuts to my pension. Those who didn't vote tory voted for that irresponsible fiscal policy which made these cuts necessary. So, Mr Straw, if you vote to splurge today, don't complain when the belt is tightened tomorrow.

Mycroft

" A better solution would be to restore the RPI-link once the deficit has been paid down. "

Maybe, but when in fact will the deficit ever be paid down?

wrinkled weasel

In March 2005 the Independent wrote that:

Two in every five jobs created since Labour came to power have been in the public sector, swelling the size of the civil service workforce by almost 600,000, according to analysis published yesterday.

It went on:

The surge in public sector employment means that one in five of the entire UK workforce is now employed by the state. Since Labour was elected the number of public sector jobs has risen by 11 per cent to 5.74 million.

And that was in 2005. God knows how worse it got after that.

All in all Labour bought their way to successive victories by keeping the public sector sweet. 1 in 5 people (or is it more now?) were effectively being paid for by tax-payers.

These jobs were not front-line jobs, they were micky mouse jobs that were just dandy for people with mickey mouse Socialist inspired degrees.

Nearly a million new public sector jobs were created under Labour for what result? What improvement?

Labour kept its dirty debts off the book by the back door, PFI scam. A scam we are all paying for now and one we shall continue to pay for long after the gerry-built hospitals and schools are declared unfit for purpose.

Ministers can indeed take a tough stance without any political risk because only a handful of loonies really believe they have a case. At one large public sector institution today, near me, there was little enthusiasm for the strike - indeed most ducked the issue by taking annual leave.

Today's legacy, the legacy of Labour, is that people were conned into thinking it was all roses and diversity consultants. I am afraid the public, whom the public sector are after all supposed to serve, have caught on at last.

By the way, what does Dave Prentiss' pension pot stand at? I am willing to bet it is more than any that of any elected member of the present government.

Darran

The public sector is a cost centre. They do not actually create any real wealth in this country. This is not to downgrade them, but at the end of the day, we cannot afford the weight of the PS as it stands and it needs curtailing. All this country's interests need to be bent towards trading, exporting and producing the goods and services the rest of the world desires ... not paying for multiple layers of public sector mouths to feed. To be brutally honest, it's cheaper to put a teacher on the dole and pay for them than it is to keep them employed on a good wage. The state can then re-employ when we have the money to be able to afford that job. The state needs to behave more like a business and less like a dictatorship.

TrevorsDen

'Will Straw is Associate Director for Globalisation and Climate Change at the IPPR.

So, not a real job then.' - took the words right out of my mouth.

it would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

ancien prof

"If I were a teacher, I’d be on strike today." I was a teacher (now retired) and I wouldn't be if I were still working.

TrevorsDen

Mr Ord - you talk bigoted ignorant rubbish - 'not worth a decent pension'

Pensions have to be PAID FOR. Where do you think the money comes from - ? well I'll tell you - from people worse off than the people you espouse.

You are truly pathetic.

Paul Hughes

Excuse my typo: "hypnocrite." My new career as a hypno-psychotherapist is evidently well embedded within my subconscious...

ancien prof

@Verity "If the teachers don't want cutbacks, how about getting rid of the absurd "teaching assistants" or whatever they're called. Teachers, for hundreds of years, have taught. Why, suddenly, have they become executives with "assistants"? I'm assuming that this was a Labour gig to make the teachers feel important and to get a few people off unemployment." I occasionally used to get a teaching assistant in my classes - they were there to help stop those who couldn't read and write English and who in many cases also had behavioural difficulties completely wrecking the education of the other three quarters of the class in lessons taught in the target language (ie a modern foreign language). I assure you they were not there to make me feel important.

Nicholas

Person with illegible pseudonym, I am not trying to make a cogent argument you silly man, I am COMMENTING in anger. It is called freedom of expression. The idiots marching today are well beyond cogent argument. The left wing idiots who barrack and heckle on QT are well beyond cogent argument. So don't bleat to me about cogent argument.

Anger, speaking one's mind and free expression. Remember those? They were something people could do before a bunch of stupid po-faced socialists imposed PC on us. Before they legislated anger and outrage so they could only be expressed in certain PC-approved causes.

It is no good behaving like noisy, rowdy, spoilt children to get your own way and then complaining because those who disagree don't conform to cogent argument.

And yes, you muppet, our young have been brainwashed.

Banquosghost

At the police station where I work there was one person who struck. One. One solitary individual. 60 police officers had leave and rest days cancelled to cover for the strike which didnt appear to have happened. Plenty of police presence today!!

No one had to stay at home for child care as most schools in the vicinity were open.

You see Mr Nepotism, not all public sector workers are Labour parasites, we do recognise that the pension situation is unsustainable. Yes its a pain in the bum to have to work longer but with the country financially on its arse sacrifices have to be made.

I was proud of the public sector parasites at our nick that all but one thought of the people we help and support rather than themselves. Would you have been so good? I certainly think not.

Incidentally there were so few strikers in the county that they couldn't even raise a quorum to picket the police stations as they promised/threatened!

Gawain

I agree that the Unions have rarely had a better cause than protecting pensions. As this government has proved signally incapable of controlling or cutting government expenditure any arguments they spout in the cause of saving money cannot be believed.

The problem is that the Unions have already lost this battle. In fact, they weren't even there when the battle was lost. The battle took place fourteen years ago when Gordon Brown launched his tax raid on private pensions. At the flick of his pen he destroyed what had been one of the best private pension systems in the world. Private pensions were shut down or Americanised into low value money purchase schemes.

The Union leaders said nothing. Will Straw's father said nothing. No-one in the Labour establishment did anything to stand up for private sector pensions. I don't recall Will Straw leading demos against the rape of the pension system when he was a student union activist.

That is why many of us in the private sector have very little empathy with the talentless goons who are leading their unions into this protest. Look in the mirror Mr. Straw, smell the sickly scent of hypocrasy and you will understand why the battle has already been lost. All those honest, modestly paid, hard working Labour voters in the public sector unions are going to have to swallow the bitter pill left behind by the last government.

Sean Haffey

Erm ... the general public doesn't seem to agree. See the comments in the following article

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15953806

and as far as the poorly paid public sector is concerned, see

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/ashe-results-2011/ashe-statistical-bulletin-2011.html#tab-Public-and-private-sector-pay

where you discover to your surprise that the public sector is paid more highly than the private sector.

Sean Haffey

Hmmm

According to the BBC web site "Many thousands at strike rallies".

Thousands?!?!? I thought millions were out on strike. Sounds like a bit of a damp squib.

john gerard

Aw, boo hoo! Has reality finally collided with their ludicrous taxpayer funded world? Whingeing, whining babies screaming for the warm, milky, taxpayer teat. No sympathy whatsoever.

David Lindsay

The public sector is not overpaid. The private sector is underpaid.

You are the ones who wanted all the blue-collar work contracted out. It is still being done at public expense, of course. Just no longer by staff (although they are very often the same people as before) who have to paid and treated properly.

Central and local government contracts are one of many examples of how there is not really any such thing as “the private sector” in the sense that is usually meant. It exists only because of numerous forms of central and local government action. It therefore has vast public responsibilities, to which it is very high time that it was held.

Here in the North East, we can almost smell the difference between highly unionised people with national pay bargaining schemes, and not. But that difference did not used to exist. It ought not to exist. I shall tell you why not.

Even leaving aside the private sector’s obvious dependence on education, healthcare, housing provision, transport infrastructure and so on, take out bailouts or the permanent promise of them, take out central and local government contracts, take out planning deals and other sweeteners, and take out the guarantee of customer bases by means of public sector pay and the benefits system, and what is there left? They are all as dependent on public money as any teacher, nurse or road sweeper. Everyone is.

And with public money come public responsibilities, including public accountability for how those responsibilities are or are not being met.

Collateral

I've fought three wars on behalf of you heroes here and now you think it is 'fair' to steal the pension I signed up to over 20 years ago. Not to mention the enormous pay cut I am undergoing while still risking my legs, balls and life for you sneering, lowest common denominator bastards.

And Nicholas is angry is he? The lines are drawn as far as I'm concerned.

Maria

I don't read The Spectator to find out what Will Straw thinks. I could have guessed it anyway.

Richard of Moscow

Will Straw is Associate Director for Globalisation and Climate Change at the IPPR

- As already pointed out in several comments, this person is obviously not performing a public service. Shedding all such jobs would be better for all.

If I were a teacher, I'd be on strike today.
- I've met many dedicated and intelligent teachers from the UK; they move to Russia, Singapore, and many other countries in order to work for an education system and escape from the farcical, politicised UK version, which is failing children and costing far too much. It should not be impossible to catch up with other countries by implementing a cheaper and better version.

once the deficit has been paid down,
- there are no plans to do this, which suggests the writer is indeed living in a fantasy world, or rather globe - one that is still warming.

- This is not 'another voice' because similar sentiments have been on TV all day, as the media endlessly interview those taking a day off (hardly a strike, is it?)

Another voice would be a public sector worker trying to justify hard-working people subsidising the salaries and pensions of Associate Directors for Globalisation and Climate Change.

Richard of Moscow

Collateral
November 30th, 2011 10:44
"I've fought three wars on behalf of you heroes here ..."

- The last three wars involving our forces which could reasonably be termed to be "on behalf of" the nation and its citizens were the Falklands, WWII and WWI, so either you are a liar, or a bit thick, or dead.

daniel maris

Some good comments here. The government is making a serious error at a time of national crisis to seek to divide the nation.

We now know that public sector pensions costs are going DOWN as a percentage of GDP. And with the huge job cuts in the public sector this trend will accelerate.

Teh government should be giving the lead in stressing what unites us as a nation. Public service is not to be sneered at: nurses, doctors, soldiers, airmen, sailors, librarians, prison officers, youth workers, court workers, police, police support, teachers, carers in old people's homes...who exactly do you want to get rid of?

Of course public sector efficiency is important. But we will not solve our economic problems by pauperising public sector workers or slashing public sector expenditure.

David Lindsay

Richard of Moscow, no one could have been more opposed than I to the wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, but your remark to Collateral was completely uncalled for, and your apology ought to be both immediate and unconditional.

fergus pickering

Workers who work diligently on behalf of society? Are you for real? A dinner lady does that? I thought she did it for the money like the rest of us.

Frank P

Suck it up Straw! This 'general strike' manifestly lacked the support of anyone except left-wing ideologues/subversives (such as yourself) and useful idiots who swallow your twisted logic. The inflated estimates of both numbers and disruption were quite obvious and risible.

I'd like to think that whoever invited you to write this crap for the perusal of Coffee Housers knew you'd get torn to shreds here, as you have. You're not even a Straw in the wind - just a fart in a colander.

Your shifty-eyed, shit-headed father and his co-traitors have pissed our sovereignty down the drain and contributed greatly to the sabotaging of the global economy. May they and their issue all choke on their own lies rot in hell.

The fact that you're a prime mover in the IPCC scam is surely proof that you are a chip off the old crooked block.

Jon Stack

The Trade Union's militant leadership and the lack of support for the strike among all workers, not just the public sector, is the real problem. That's why it's important for the government to tough this out. It's simply the other side of corporatism, which is so corrupting and which now attracts a consensus of loathing. Oh, and by the way, it's "dinner person", not "dinner lady".

Stepney

"With less than 15 per cent of private sector workers in trade unions, it is very difficult for the TUC and others to claim credibly to be standing up for the interests of British workers as a whole"

And that's the whole point. It's the workers in the private sector who are footing the bill for this largesse. You speak of unfairness? What's fair about paying more tax for the pensions of those who earn more than you do, with the result that you can't even afford one of your own?

THAT'S unfair. The cleaner, the mechanic and the waiter paying taxes for the pension of the Footpath's Co-Ordinator.

I used to think the Unions stood up for working people. No longer. They're screwing the low paid to feather-bed the comfortable.

Paul Hughes

I don't think Richard of Moscow should apologise, David. Collateral was somewhat aggressive in his post and deserved the response. Whilst I have every respect for soldiers (I also respect policemen and binmen and the like) there is no conscription at the present time and hasn't been for decades. If you choose to become a soldier, life and limb is risked of your own volition.

Nicholas

Collateral you think you are the only one? You think that people who have fought in Britain's wars can't be opposed to the strike and angry about the left wing ideology motivating it too?

Don't presume too much about other commentators, Mr Boastful. My post was about my anger not my wars.

BigAl

How bizarre to call a pension contribution which has tax relief and which will result in a future payback a tax. Typical misinformation from the Left. I wish for the day when my tax of 20, 40 and 50% is paid back with growth - dream on!

Why not give the pension funds for public sector workers to the Unions to manage? They claim there is a surplus in them so should be no problem and no risk to employees. Also, you won't have to pay the '3% tax'. If you really believe this rubbish public sector workers then go for it. I can't wait to be shot of the liability.

Nicholas

"Public service is not to be sneered at: nurses, doctors, soldiers, airmen, sailors, librarians, prison officers, youth workers, court workers, police, police support, teachers, carers in old people's homes...who exactly do you want to get rid of?"

What we want to get rid of is the left wing ideology that infests what should be an impartial public service. A public service which is dominated by people wedded to and promoting the Labour party via hard liners in the Unions is no good for Britain. But especially in teaching. A teacher who spoke out on behalf of the Conservatives was sacked but thousands of left wing teachers openly promote their socialist politics and agitate in front of the children they are responsible for. Good role models? Only if you are Gramsci.

There is a horrible presumption amongst left wingers that their political creed is right and the right are wrong. It is beyond just disagreement. They are fundamentalists. In my view they lost their argument when they picked up the banner with "Kick the Tories out" on it. The government is a coalition and the economic crisis driving the cuts is shared by the whole country.

And yes, there are all those people. There are also plenty of "jobs" you haven't mentioned. Jobs which are involved wholly with promoting left wing political ideologies and PC.

AAE

The management of the London Ambulance Service thought they had an agreement with the Unions that if they needed to call on the services of the 40% of their staff who were striking, they would text, call, email, and the strikers would turn up. Well, as it turned out the caring paramedics didn't turn up, and 50 police cars were needed to help with emergencies. There have been plenty of horror stories this morning on London radio stations with Union Reps roboting meaningless platitudes about providing Bank Holiday level of services, which only goes to show that one shouldn't fall ill on a Bank Holiday.
So the next time all the Lefties repeat all that guff about hard-working, dedicated, selfless public workers, please read, selfish, malicious, callous public workers.

Andy Leeds

When the Teachers Pension Scheme was founded it has on the basis of equal contributions - the teacher put in a £, the employer put in a £. The burden now falls disproportionately on the taxpayer. So I'm all for restoring the scheme to its original basis - pound for pound. Teachers will of course readily agree !

Andy Carpark

RoM - Your put down of the soi-disant hero and de facto troglodyte, Collateral, was entirely apposite and in excellent taste and, with his pompous demand, the arch-buffoon David Lindsay has provided it with the ultimate accolade.

Collateral - The military are one of the few segments of society I do not actively despise but you sound like a bit of a thug and a moron to boot.

'while still risking my legs, balls and life for you'

Nah, not for us, chum. We never asked you to choose the career you did, we never voted for the wars you fought in and the risk remains your choice. Far as this lowest common denominator bastard is concerned, you can carry on risking.

Ruairidh

To be honest I stopped reading this when I read that it was a '...spurious notion that public sector pensions are ‘unsustainable’...'. I realised the author was a fool.
What nonsense. Getting a pension of 50% of final salary was fine when people live a decade or so after retirement. Life expectancy has risen and risen over the years to the point now that many retiring public sector workers (thinking especially of those retiring in their 50’s) can expect to live as long on their pension as they did working. If their pension pot was in any way based on their contributions then the scheme would have collapsed long ago – instead the burden is shifted onto the rest of us to prop up these overly generous schemes. With life expectancies continuing to rise the burden of supporting public sector pensioners will only increase.
I come from a family of public sector workers (although not one myself) and I understand their resentment at the loss of this privilege but times have changed and their deals are relics from a lifetime ago.

GDT

Good to see there is a rump of society riling against social democratic largesse. Let's be honest folks blue, yellow or red, they'll all part of the problem.
And for those who think this government would do any different if it was led by Gordon Brown, dream on.

michael

All Employers and employees without schemes are facing exactly the same 3% tax rises through NEST.
perhaps the SIX figure (Tax Payer funded) salaries of union leadership and their blatant tax avoidance wheezes need reassessing in light of an obvious debilitating affliction.
... collective selective amnesia.

Kevin

Public sector strikers may lack support because, unlike private sector strikers, they do not strike against the people who pay their salaries (in this case, taxpayers). They strike against third parties (politicians), who have no personal stake in the money they hand over.

Nicholas

"Jon Trickett , Labour's shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said: "No one wants these strikes but most of today's strikers are mums, not militants.""

How typical. Left wing Union, Labour and Communist activists can't be mums or vice versa?

These left wing types constantly engage in emotional blackmail to intimidate disagreement. It is time they were called on it. John Trickett sounds as stupid as his name which should be changed to Trickem.

TomTom

Will, I don't recall your father in Government proposing reducing his pension plan as an example. Which seat are you looking at, Blackburn ?

Richard of Moscow

David Lindsay
December 1st, 2011 12:06amReport this comment

"Richard of Moscow, no one could have been more opposed than I to the wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya..."

If our angry man was one of the very few to have exchanged fire with al Qaida early in the Afghanistan intervention, then he can claim to have fought on behalf of ordinary UK taxpayers. Once.
It would be startling ignorance if any civilian believed that any three of those campaigns were launched for the benefit of people like Nicholas and other regular contributors on here.

"Collateral" claims he was unlucky enough to have "fought" in three separate theatres, and still not noticed that in at least two of them he was risking his life to aid the political grandstanding by political pygmies.

One of my current colleagues was in Basra, and his thoughts on the UK establishment are far from printable.

This "collateral" character is, as they say, full of it.

strapworld

Now, who was that young fellow, son of a highly placed Labour politician, arrested for drug offences? Can anyone help?

I see young Straw is carrying on a family tradition. Milking the country. Mum a civil servant. Dad a failed politician and now this chap. I just wonder if this job is paid for by the EUSSR?

Obviously he believes in Daddy knows best. Student leader, just like Dad. No doubt a safe seat (probably Dad's in Blackburn) and then a seat at the top table. Another prospective leader with absolutely no idea of life whatsoever. Just like Daddy.

Wily Trout

The shops and pubs were packed with striking teachers etc yesterday. So Mr Osborne could do with a few more strike days to give the retail sector a welcome boost. Plus he saves all that money from their day's pay. What's not to like!

Simon Stephenson.

daniel maris : 6.54pm

"I am not convinced that a rise in retirement age is at all desirable. We have over two million unemployed. Already about 700,000 people stay working after retirement age. If we add another million to that, what good would it do if we have to pay out unemployment benefits to younger people."

I suggest that if you were familiar with the lump of labour fallacy, you wouldn't have written a paragraph which assumes that an economy can absorb only a fixed amount of labour. It is certainly true that it is not straightforward to sustain a high level of demand for labour in the UK economy, but I submit that to start from the premiss that we have a built-in inadequacy is to lead us into a whole series of inappropriate and counter-productive policy provisions.

starfish

@SAndyCarpark
I agree. Anyway if the pension he signed up to 20 years ago was the Armed Forces Pension scheme it is not under any threat under these changes,so his apparent outrage is misplaced

I really think these strikes have been counter-productive and have hit the wrong people. But then strategy has never neen the unions' strong point

Work to rule, cease form filling and statistics reporting, don't perform any extraneous duties, clock off to the dot that uis the way to press your point home and without hurting the people who actually fund your pensions

Does any union boss really think inconveniencing the parents of the country is a good move?

Fu

C0llateral

The person who started the angry posting and raised the temperature was Nicholas who said he was posting in anger, called someone who disagreed with him brainwashed and a muppet and to STFU (which means Shut The F*** Up to those of you not in the text generation). Charming. In response to that approach I called him and people like him here a lowest common denominator bastard. I think that is a fair and measured response in the circumstances.

I have already concluded that Nicholas is ex-military from his previous posts, many of which I agree with. He therefore clearly feels qualified to opine on the forces. The question I would pose is whether he served long enough to draw a pension (I don't think so) and if so I assume he is prepared to have it retrospectively reduced now? If he didn't make it to pension perhaps the government could make him return some of his pay because "we're broke and there is no money" While he does that perhaps we could make hostile and abusive remarks about how he has had it coming.

True enough, Labour created a ridiculous client state which needs to be reduced but in its eagerness to assault that mountain Cameron/Osborne/Maud have whipped up people like you into a state of frenzy against anything and everything public sector.

This has allowed them to behave like some banana republic and tell its employees that they will not pay them what they agreed to pay them. For me this is not some abstract debate, it is personal and amounts to a huge reduction in my family income. Forcibly changing my pension mid stream after over two decades of service is an absolute breach of trust. I am disheartened by people baying like some French revolutionary crowd the lines to take from the govt in order to justify this breach. Meanwhile money still gets fire hosed according to whim and to whatever place the research data tells them will get elected next time.

In the process of that they are severely damaging things that one day as a country we will regret. Trust is the main thing - once that's gone it's gone. It's not too late but getting perilously close.

But you people here are loving it and I'm a fool for even appearing here so you can cackle and lob more slings and arrows at a virtual embodiment of that which you hate.

Ian Walker

Dear Will,

Since 2008, I've seen a 20% cut in my earnings in cash terms. Heaven knows what that is when adjusted for inflation.

I can't afford to pay into my own pension pot at the moment, and it's hardly growing thanks to Gordon Brown's raid on the dividends.

I've sat down with my children and told them to ignore the disgusting Littlewoods advert, and that we're going to have our own little 'austerity Christmas' where family time together will be valued over material goods.

The fact that family time is valuable is because I'm having to travel the length and breadth of the country gathering up the little scraps of work that are out there. I'm away from home five days a week.

So, Will, please can you exlain to me exactly why the hell I should put more of my money into the pensions of public sector workers?

Make no mistake, it's not 'government' money, it's not 'bankers' money - it's mine, and ordinary taxpayer working bloody hard in the private sector and having to face the harsh reality of an economic downturn.

Time for public sector workers to face reality. In the words of a famous post-it, there's no money left.

Simon Stephenson.

letsactuallytryandhaveadiscussion : 7.57pm

The problem with what you are asking for is that it concedes the relativists' case before the discussion has even started. You see, if you start from the point of view that nothing is fixed, nothing is absolute, right and wrong are just matters of interpretation, you just can't have a constructive discussion with someone who believes that the only way to make worthwhile decisions is to attempt to draw lines in the sand.

To most of the people on this site the relativists are just behaving like adolescents of above-average intelligence who've learned how to construct and dissect arguments, but who haven't yet learned that successful social decision-making simply cannot take place in an atmosphere of linguistic sophistry.

HJ

Will Straw:

"once the deficit has been paid down"

Could Will Straw please explain what is meant by this phrase as we constantly hear it from the left. How, exactly, do you "pay down" a deficit? I have no idea what is supposed to be meant by this.

Michael Roberts

Off line yesterday, spent the last half hour catching up, and banging the table. Wonderful stuff folks, can't really add anything - they just don't get it, do they?

Just wanted to congratulate James de la Mare (8.02pm yesterday) on his remarkably restrained and patient response to the loutish James Ord: anyone starting a post with 'Look, pal' just needs a good slap. :o)

daniel maris

Simon Stephenson -

Given the choice between economic reality and economic theory, I choose reality every time.

Under your theories, Germany with its high tax, workers representation, renewable energy commitment, minimum wage and so on, should be a complete basket case.

The reality is we have had a large pool of unemployed for far too long now. We have mass immigration which takes 70% of any new jobs.

Top priority now is that all our citizens below the standard retirement age should be in in proper gainful employment if able bodied or part-able bodied. And the priority should be to get our young people working and sensing their is a future for them.

Fernando

Will mentions that the extra contributions will go towards cutting the deficit rather than the pensions. Superficially this is true. In a conventional private sector scheme the extra contributions would go into a fund which will then pay the pension when the employee retires. In most public sector schemes there is no fund and the pensions are paid from current tax revenues. However, because there is no fund the employee is assuming that the tax payer in the future will be able and willing to pay the pension. By paying down the deficit the employee is increasing the likelihood that the future payments will be made.

Longer term I think it would be preferable to actually have pension funds for public sector employees. This would show the direct link between the pension and the fund to provide it. Any issues such as declining annuity rates, links with inflation and longer life spans would show up clearly and early on, as they do for those of us in the private sector.

daniel maris

Ruairidh -

How are public sector pensions "unsustainable" when about 10-15% of the workforce is going and when contributions have been raised already.

You also fall for the lie that these schemes are not proper pension schemes - many are inlcuding the local government schemes I believe (i.e. they invest on the open market). In the good times the state had creamed off profits from such schemes.

It has already been reported that the cost of the pensions has actually fallen as a proportion of GDP over the last few years and is porjected to rise to no more than 2% over the next 20 years.

Is that really unsustainable? You have to remember that your government is claiming we will be back at 3% growth soon... and long term trend growth is over 1.5% per annum. Even with such "low" growth, over a 20 period you get a huge increase in national wealth.

The present pensions, which for most people are very modest, are eminently affordable, as long as we don't have an idiot like Osborne in charge crunching the gears and driving into the nearest wall.

Sir Everard Digby

So let me get this straight:

1. Private sector workers take a pensions benefit reduction from employers. Public sector workers and their Unions say not one word and take no action to express outrage..now they look for sympathy and support? Oh and we will have to pay for it.

2. The notion that benefits of this kind are sustainable is a joke - sure, fund cashflow has increased as the public sector workforce increased but so have pension liabilities. as people retire and draw on the fund,the liabailities increase as the cashflow decreases.
3.How the hell can Hutton 'find' what will be happening in 50 years time? Mortality rates,population changes,scheme membership,amongst others are unknown variables. Let alone be able to predict what GDP will be then.

I suggest Hutton's finding was a fudge to avoid Labour actually having to take a tough decision which upset their Union sponsors.

Ducking the issue was the real crime -the longer it is left the worse the solution gets.

PS passed by 'a demonstration yesterday'

Amongst the speeches:

'We are fighting for the whole of humanity'
'We must win this fight,or our children and grandchildren will have to continue it'

'This government is seeking to wipe out the public sector and finish the work Thatcher started'

Heaven help us if this is what the Unions perceive is the argument. Might explain why they are becoming a sideshow.

Frank Sutton

Any pension scheme (private or public) which offers some form of guaranteed return on contributions is an enormous privilege.
I wonder if people in salary related pension schemes are aware of the complete lack of security facing those with personal pension plans?
A personal pension makes no guarantees whatsoever about what you'll get back, and involves a double gamble - one, that your fund will increase in value; and two, that the annuity you're eventually forced to buy will pay anything better than a pittance.
I don't blame public sector strikers for defending their enormous privileges - but I can't feel much sympathy for them.

daniel maris

There are plenty of pension funds in the public sector. Whether there should be more, is a fair point but not one that could be considered in a rational manner with this government's approach.

Simon Stephenson.

Collateral : 11.05am

"True enough, Labour created a ridiculous client state which needs to be reduced but in its eagerness to assault that mountain Cameron/Osborne/Maud have whipped up people like you into a state of frenzy against anything and everything public sector."

I don't think this is wholly fair. The political problem we are in, and which we have been falling into for at least 25 years, is that both the ideological left and the ideological right have adopted fixed, polarised argumentative positions from which joint discussion can achieve nothing. We've reached a position in intellectual contest where neither side can prevail, because one side is unprepared to accept that emotion plays any part in social decision-making, while the other side rejects the idea of rationalism playing any part. The reality is that neither end of the spectrum will yield a satisfactory result, and we will remain in an impasse until both the political camps realise that neither side can actually win under the current arrangements.

Yam Yam

The true measure of how hard done by public sectors workers are: can I hear a stampede of disgruntled diversity officers, sustainability managers and policy & strategy commissioning executives queuing up to go and perform real work for Tesco, Marks & Spencers or Stagecoach?

No, thought not.

Publius

@Simon Stephenson
"...is that both the ideological left and the ideological right have adopted..."

Is there an ideological centre as well, in your view? Or is this phrase of yours mere polemic?

Publius

@Collateral
"Forcibly changing my pension mid stream after over two decades of service is an absolute breach of trust."

Then more fool you, I'm afraid, for trusting the empty promises of here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians. Tell me, will you be holding Gordon Brown to account?

If it is any comfort to you, I have no state-guaranteed pension at all, and my own private savings for my own old-age provision have been devastated by the economic incompetence of the last government.

Don't trust the state. It is merely a reflection of the fickle and irresponsible people.

Verity

Except for the government (by which I mean the Houses of Parliament), there should be no "public", i.e., taxpayer-funded at the point of a gun, sector.

The whole country should be privatised. Profit is the best motivator to the provision of first class service.

Hexhamgeezer

Pay down the defecit? You can't you tit. You can pay down a debt though.

Nicholas

No, Collateral, the people who started the anger and raised the temperature were the Labour/Leftist/Union collective determined to bring this government down. I am merely reciprocating rudeness towards them and those who support them. STFU is my equivalent "placard" to "Kick the Tories out".

My personal pension arrangements are no business of yours or anyone else and have no bearing on my right to comment on the forces or anything else. You clearly feel entitled and seem to think your situation gives you some special right of opinion. It doesn't because the pension you are bleating about is paid for by me and other taxpayers - who I dare say have paid tax for a lot longer and in far greater amounts than you. When those taxes also fund Unions that in turn fund the Labour party in order for them and their friends to agitate against a government they don't like - yes, I get angry. I'm as mad as Hell. I understand that if a person in the private sector were to contribute to a pension equal in value to a public sector pension after these reforms it would require 37% of salary.

So stop whinging, suck it up and move on, which I might reasonably expect from someone who boasts of participating in three wars.

Swiss Bob

Have any of the Straws done a proper days work in their lives?

PS Will, how do you feel about parents supplying their under age children with alcohol?

Stuart Seacole Smith

Nicholas and others have every right to be hopping mad about the left's insinuation of itself into every cranny of the public sector (which is where this discussion began, given that these strikes are a function of leftist agitation and politicking through the public sector unions). And I'm afraid that dodging this sickening reality with retorts along the lines of: "ok mister nasty, so you've got it in for dinner ladies and the armed forces then eh?" don't cut any ice whatsoever, no matter how heartfelt they may or may not be.

Barbara

"If I were a teacher, I'd be on strike ..."
Quelle surprise.

And if we'd got highly-placed, well-connected Daddies, we might all be given cushy 'climate catstrophe' jobs and soft columns in influential national media to propagate our own personal opinions.

And your point was?

anxiouswarrior

i see the facist bastards and the clarksons of the world are alive and well on these threads, right wing scum

EC

Frank P, December 1st, 2011 1:25am

Excellent, Frank.

(just testing out a piece of html, but 100% agree)

Nicholas

"i see the facist (sic) bastards and the clarksons of the world are alive and well on these threads, right wing scum"

Yes, despite the fact that muppets like you would probably like to put us in gulags. Alive and well indeed. As are the fascist bastards of the left and the livingslimes of the world, left wing scum.

Give me Clarkson over Milliband and his gang of commies any day.

Simon Stephenson.

daniel maris : 12.17pm

You've re-acquainted yourself with the lump of labour fallacy, then?

Simon Stephenson.

Publius : 1.43pm

There is an ideological centre, but this is being drowned out by those in the majority who are happy only when arguing from one of the intransigent poles. Regrettably, the majority's discussion position seems to need to be protected behind a shield, so that they never learn anything of the other side's thinking, but, more importantly to them, they never have to lose face by coming off second-best in contest. Both sides "win" by entering only on terms that make it impossible for them to lose.

Simon Stephenson.

Nicholas : 6.37pm

Yes, I think perhaps that we need to bring to a close the 75 years of treating the hard-left as a bunch of unsavoury but basically harmless malcontents. The rise of people like Brown, Balls and RedEd to senior positions within the Labour Party means that this sect is no longer harmless, and needs instead to be counted as a threat to the civilised world, and treated accordingly.

Collateral

Well, well, Nicholas gets all protective and snippy about his own take from the public purse. None of our business he blusters.

Something to hide Mr Angwy?

toni

What happened to my comment posted at around 2pm?
Lost, or too strong and rejected?

daniel maris

Simon S. -

Only a fool would think the sum of work or the sum of labour was fixed. I am no fool.

But equally only a fool would think you can promote a huge increase in post retirement working in the context of mass immigration, recession or low growth, increased labour productivity and globalisation and have no impact on employment among young people.

David Lindsay

The gap between public sector and private sector pay is entirely a product of the deunionisation of the private sector and the privatisation or contracting out of the blue collar aspects of central and local government activity. The private sector was made all white collar, with pay to match, even though the same people were still doing the blue collar work, and were still doing it at public expense, but no longer had to be paid or treated properly.

If that particular penny ever drops on the Right - that the solution is the return of all aspects of public service delivery to the public sector, together with the reunionisation of the private sector - then who knows what else might finally get through? The fact that the problems presently related to mass immigration could not have arisen if it had still been a case of "no union card, no job", and could be remedied immediately by a reversion to that state of affairs? The fact that a party financially controlled by the unions, rather than by a handful of politicised moneybags from the 1968 generation, could never have become a vehicle for the New Left, and might very well be ceasing to be such a vehicle even now as the older pattern of funding reasserts itself?

Nicholas

Collateral, really? Well, well, just a rather predictable (and tiresome) piece of typically left wing theatre. A predictably aggressive demand to make a personal and private specific part of a public debate - a bit like George Osborne's skiing holiday vs dinner ladies wages.

You seem to like to make your heroic endeavours on our behalf and their remuneration a matter for public angst but some of us, born in a different era, still believe in a little more reticence and reservation when it comes to such matters. Is that being protective and snippy? At the moment I can assure you that my single emotion towards you is one of sadness rather than protective snippiness. I cannot help comparing your brash, aggressive sense of entitlement with the selfless courage of some dear friends and comrades no longer here and whose last concern, if they ever thought of it at all, was the size of their pension. And I'm wondering what they might have made of the likes of you.

toni

SS "The rise of people like Brown, Balls and RedEd to senior positions within the Labour Party means that this sect is no longer harmless, and needs instead to be counted as a *threat to the civilised world*, and treated accordingly."

Good grief! Send for the white coats!

Collateral

Nicholas, you've got nothing left but insults and an attempt to turn your aggression into victimhood.

You seem to derive some pleasure from this kind of exchange and I think your carapace of aggressively self-righteous anger, presumably hypocritical given your reluctance to own up to your own tax take, is impenetrable. So I'll not indulge you further. Good day.

Simon Stephenson.

daniel maris : 12.17pm

"Top priority now is that all our citizens below the standard retirement age should be in in proper gainful employment if able bodied or part-able bodied. And the priority should be to get our young people working and sensing their is a future for them."

I couldn't agree more that people of working age should be able to feel that there is remunerative work available for them to do. My question to you is how do we go about establishing this? I sense that you believe that this is a state of affairs which can be constructed by a benevolent state, and that this can be done without disturbing very much the individual freedoms around which the rest of our society is built.

In my opinion, you delude yourself. I think the state has already gone way beyond the point at which it can helpfully influence a basically free society. Many of the breakdowns and dislocations we are seeing are a direct result of too much state interference, not too little. The idea that the state can continue to add to the pool of good through tinkering is, I believe, a false one.

What we need to re-discover, I think, is the thought that constructive ideas are far more likely to arise spontaneously from a free population than they are from a political committee, and that the economic function of the state should be limited to that of a referee - to promote fair play - and not be extended to that of a coach, for which it has no worthwhile qualification.

Publius

@Simon Stephenson
"There is an ideological centre..." etc.

Then how do you yourself distinguish between the "ideological" centre and the centre, the right and the ideological right, the left and the ideological left?

Do you see political ideas as clearly identifiable on the analogy of a continuum, with left at one end, and right on the other?

Think, if you like, of the analogy of good and evil. Do you think it is better to be good, evil, or kinda in between? -- in the centre, as it were.

Moreover, what is ideology to you other than a boo-word?

Simon Stephenson.

toni : 10.03am

White coats? No, I don't think they're mad, just obsessional, and they are no longer so deep in the undergrowth that they can sensibly be ignored. The hard left operates by selling its window-dressed self, and camouflaging the frightfulness of what it being in power would mean to all those who weren't part of the favoured few. As long as the chances of it coming to power were remote, confrontation of this deceit was more hassle than it was worth. In my opinion this is no longer the case.

Richard of Moscow

Hexhamgeezer
December 1st, 2011 3:07pm
"Pay down the defecit? You can't you tit. You can pay down a debt though"

I assumed, first of all, it was a clumsy way of saying 'reduce the deficit' since paying down the debt is decades away at least.
He can't be that thick, surely. Can he?