#TheUnions vs The People

In the US the real reason for failed public services and bankrupt tears of government is coming home the roost, see below.



How long before this happens in the UK ? Or did Gordon bribe enough people with their own money and make the public payroll so large that only financial destruction awaits us ?

Public sector employees get four times bigger pensions than private sector employees

I think the interest in Ayn Rand's John Galt is only starting.

Apparently the Pru calculated that for the same pension contributions public sector employees can expect to gain four times higher pensions.

The stories on pension funding I've been reading over the last week are truly scary.

My own money purchase pensions have put in returns between -15 and -18% this year. Gordon Brown's stealth taxation and destruction of wealth is starting to be noticed.

How is a society going to insist on lavish taxpayer funded extortion to fund gold plated public sector pensions when those who earn the money we all spend in doing the productive things live out their retirements in poverty ?


Update: See Also John Redwood on "The death of the final salary pension fund - for the private sector"
Also note the government has just backed down on raising taxpayers contributions to MPs pensions - already some of the most generous in existence.

Labour shadows Conservative policy again

There have been a whole series of announcements as the most partisan and political of prime ministers tries to remove the lines from the next Conservative manifesto.

Examples recently include:

• More Health workers ( despite Labour cutting their numbers till recently ).
• And now talking about and thinking about reducing public sector pensions (which are unaffordable, but Brown and Johnson failed in their duty to deal with before the 2005 general election because they needed to buy votes with other peoples misery ). [ Picture right from when Labour failed the taxpeyer ont hsi last time. Note they are just talking about this - you shouldn't believe them even when they annouce it ! ]
  

But this old tactic of Brown's won't work this time as its Labour who people now instinctively hate. Remove the gap between the parties and Labour loses.

Public sector snowed in - Private sector at work

Yesterday I took some time of work to walk into town to pick up a package from the central sorting Royal Mail Office. ( Interestingly they managed to deliver two other packages that day, by using the common sense "safe place", but this package was obviously in a different delivery ).

The pavements here in Woking are ice, as are many of the roads. However I made it in, passing a post man with his bicycle on the way.

What greeted me at the sorting office ? Closed because of weather. So I took a few photos to show how the people who don't get paid unless they work managed to function.
The Woking central sorting office is next to the Railway Station and in the middle of town. Most other businesses functioned. ( The photo's below are taken just across the road from the closed Royal Mail office).
Normally I have the highest respect for Royal Mail, especially Woking's excellent postmen/women. They do a good job with a high degree of accuracy almost all the time.

But yesterday Royal Mail let the side down.

So if half the civil service deserve the sack - where are the efficiency savings Gordon ?

Lord Digby Jones is reported by the BBC with the following extract:

Ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones says he was "amazed" to discover how many civil servants "deserved the sack".

This is Civil Serf's point, until she was silenced.

Lord Digby Jones suggests that better results could come from half the amount of staff!

Now given the high salaries and gold plated pensions that many of us are going to die in poverty paying for, this is just point blank not acceptable.

In my personal experience of the state sector what I've found is good people, but a lack of responsibility or urgency or ownership of problems.

I have worked on a contract for a government quango - which was frustrating as they just didn't understand what was involved in a fixed price piece of work. And it got worse when I spoke to the then DTI. ( Such problems almost never occurred when dealing with other private sector organisations. )

This just goes to back up what Iain Dale and others have been saying about the lack of business experience in ministers. The problem is that they accept this bad performance.

Lets be clear the public is being cheated out of its taxes because the current ( and maybe previous governments ) lack the experience to know that the service the civil services provides is sub standard and ineffective.

We are entitled to ask where the efficiency savings are that Gordon Brown claimed he was going to make - to try to defuse Conservative proposals.

Its a scandal. Remember the protests when the Conservatives suggested there should be a reduction in civil servants in 2004 ?

See also previous post "How good is the civil service ?"
And the report in the Telegraph on the same subject, which has more of Lord Jones' views.

An opportunity

It occurs to me that shortly the government will have a alerge number of shares and loans to the banks on its books.

It also has a large unfunded pension system for civil servants and politicians.

Can you see where I'm going here ....

How about transferring their unfunded pension rights to become money purchase pensions based on some of these shares they think its worth the tax payer spending money on ?

This could be a great policy for an incoming Conservative government.

Just say no to MPs pay rise

One of the great problems with the public sector is there is no effective market for their employees - hence sdalaries are set based on dusbin men being seen as equivalent to dinner ladies.

You could just pay the right amount to supply yourself with dinner ladies or dustbin men - which is what happens in the world that has to pay its way.

So MPs was £40k more ( that's £80k to the Balls family ) not to fiddle their expenses.

At the same time we have party leaders (all three of the main ones as far as I can see) arguing that the main qualification for your post should be your genetic make up (male/female, black/white ) - apparently you can determine to fill 1/3 of your cabinet on that basis. Skills and experience are unnecessary or not relevant - so why not reduce their pay until we get problems getting any MPs ?

Frankly its time MPs and civil servants share the dire financial world of destroyed pensions, unbearable taxation and th prospect of being crushed in the future by Gordon Brown's failure to reform and reduce the state sector.

The public sector millionaires club

Socialism is good for some - for those who don't have to pay for it.

The Tax payers alliance has identified that every house hold int he country will have to pay up to £40k to fund public sector pensions over the next few decades.

Most shocking they have found:

8,500 retired NHS employees with retirement benefits of £1 million !!!
To add to the 3,500 civil servants with that money.

Wow - its good to be involved in government - crap to be involved in wealth generation or other work as your money will have to be taken from you to pay for the new ruling elite in this country.

No wonder people want to emigrate. ( There was a good article in The Times on Saturday about the fact that the skilled and professional middle classes are the ones leaving the country right now - my neighbours are off to New Zealand).

Public sector pensions are doomed, but Gordon will deceive as long as possible

As with a number of things the current Labour government has shown cowardice in the face of action clearly required for the good of the country.

This fact goes to show how unsustainable public sector pensions are:

In 2009 the average private sector worker will be paying more for civil servant pensions than for their own. ( See Matthew Elliot on Centre Right blog).

Now Gordon Brown has done his best to maximise the pay roll vote by massively increasing the numbers of civil servants, but even their votes surely can't contend with this fact.

At the same time that Gordon Brown has mortgaged the future of many private sector workers with his ten billion pounds a year stealth tax on their pensions ( showing further his signature of cowardice as the effect isn't going to be fully noticed until well after Brown and his fellow New Labour parasites are enjoying their spectacular pensions guaranteed by the state. )

Remember Brown making the naked self interest decision before the last election of letting many civil servants retire at 60 still - when many of the rest of us will now die before we can draw our pensions ( but we will have paid for the civil servants ones anyway ! ).

Maybe this is part of David Cameron's plan to close the MP's pension scheme and replace it with a defined contributions scheme like the rest of us have to use.

One thing is sure - the current situation is unsustainable and many public servants who are now day dreaming of cruises and round the world trips paid for by poor private sector pensioners are going to be rudely disappointed as a massive realignment of public sector pensions is inevitable.