Poor Ed Milliband!

[David Johnson]

"Cue, the usual stream of abuse and insults..........."

Not from me. I will leave all that to you.

"For a start there must be millions of public service workers and people on "Bennys", who've returned to the New Labour fold after dallying with the Coalition."

Given the Tories were committed in their campaign to hammering public service workers and getting rid of the deficit within a parliament and reducing benefits, unless these people rather like turkeys voted for Xmas, your point is highly unlikely.

"The realisation that New Labour, for 13 years, lavished them with a life of splendour, security and generous final salary pensions,"

According to the government's own statement, the average public sector pension is ?7K. Not a huge amount, one would have thought, allowing people to live a life of "splendour", particularly when together with a state pension, it would be taxable. I doubt if people on ?65 a week on jobseekers allowance are living a life of splendour either.

Message to RoddersUk from Jimbo "Rodders get off the gravy train with your gold plated public sector pension paid for by us poor private sector workers. Have you no shame?"


Here's the speech I am referring to. No reference to promises "to reinstate pensions"

http://www.newstatesman.com/2011/06/res ... ociety-pay

Obviously there may be no observable connection between speech and practice once in power.

As always, time will tell.

Cheers
D

[RoddersUK]

Take note all of you, I do not work in the public sector.
I served in the Army and have a pittance of a pension.
I have always worked in the private sector before military service and since and paid my taxes and been shafted by succesive governments.
I would love a gold plated pension but being a realist and an engineer, who despises public service arseholes, I can only dream of one.

[David Johnson]

Maybe you should address your comment specifically to Jimbo.

It was Jimbo who stated

"For a start there must be millions of public service workers and people on "Bennys", who've returned to the New Labour fold after dallying with the Coalition. The realisation that New Labour, for 13 years, lavished them (ie. public service workers) with a life of splendour, security and generous final salary pensions, all at the expense of those in the private sector, will have them frantically clawing their way back onto the New Labour gravy train. No one has told them that the "Gravy train" has crashed!

You say
"I served in the Army and have a pittance of a pension."

Whether you like to think of it that way or not, Rodders, clearly anyone in the armed forces is not in the private sector, unless the armed forces have been privatised and bought by Macdonalds without my noticing.

So in short, the armed forces, like other public services are paid for by the government, funded by the taxpayer. And it is these people i.e. non-private sector workers who are castigated by Jimbo for having a "life of splendour, security and generous final salary pensions", paid for by people like him.

This is what people who castigate non-private sector workers need to understand. It's about squaddies risking their lives, school canteen ladies, nurses, lollipop ladies much more than fat cat council executives that make up the vast majority of workers funded by the state.

Cheers
D

[RoddersUK]

Oh you pratts who think the forces get their pensions for fuckall piss me off. We paid over the top on our NI contributions for our pittance, which we cannot live on alone. We have to serve 22 years to draw it on discharge. Less than 22 years and you have to wait until your 65th birthday to draw it.
It is reakoned on 35 years service for a full pension. Officers get a full pension as they can serve 35 years. Others are allowed 22 years so get 22/35ths and those who do less get 18 or 15 or 12 or 9/35ths. It is based on final salary. In 1986 my final salary as a SNCO was 10k.
Not a fucking lot.

[David Johnson]

Hi,

I agree Rodders. Non-private sector pensions are not the gold plated, fantastic deal that the Tory government and people like Jimbo go on about.

What the government is trying to do is set one group of workers (private sector) against another (non-private sector) in order to push through their attempts to reduce pensions substantially. Britain already has one of the worst basic state pensions in Europe.

I do not see why there should be a race to the bottom in terms of pensions. If private sector pensions are even worse than the average ?7K a year non-private sector people get, then there is obviously something wrong with the pensions in the private sector.

I don't see any great calls in Parliament to hammer MPS' pensions.

Cheers
D

[RoddersUK]

All thanks to that morose bad temperd twatt Broon. He is the one who murdered the private sector pension funds. The BASTARD. I hope he rots in hell.

[David Johnson]

Yeah, I think Brown did hammer pension funds.

I'm against the rich avoiding tax by using intricate pension scheme dodges but to me it doesn't make much sense to hit Joe Public and their pensions.

I would have thought it would be better to incentivise people to save so that they are less dependent on benefits in old age.

Having said that, I think a lot of private companies took a holiday from paying into the company pension fund in order to support their bottom line profits.

Cheers
D

[RoddersUK]

They did indeed, but not all of them. My company stopped enroling new engineers into a final salary scheme 4 years ago, so having been with them 10 years I am lucky to have a final salary pension, which I contribute quite a lot to I may add.
No thanks to the fucking one eyed bad tempered bastard Brown. Fuck him.

[Ned]

What a complete twat. And I say that as a Labour voter.



Incidentally, anyone who wants a good read should get hold of Andrew Rawnsley's book, The End of the Party. Brilliant book about Blair, Brown, the power struggle and the internal factions fighting each other. Also some delicious put downs of Tories like Michael Howard.