So, of course you would expect Mr Maude to be leading by example, wouldn't you.... Well, you'd be wrong. Mr Maude is not.
According to the Daily Mirror, old Maudie is collecting a massive pension pot of £731,000, at our expense. This will give him a massive £43,000 a year income when he retires. That's eight times the amount of the average government worker.
And he says that the current pensions are simply unsustainable.
Well his is!
I'm inclined to agree with Len McCluskey who called him and his minister pals shameless hypocrites.
When oh when tris will the underlings who are being shafted by people such as Maude wake up to the facts and refuse to work for these hypocrites!
ReplyDeleteTear them down from their lofty heights I say and MAKE them breathe the same air as the rest of us!
Well, in honesty, probably never nomine...
ReplyDeleteBut isn't Westminster a private club with all costs spread amongst taxpayers to keep the members fully funded and in a position to help their friends.
ReplyDeleteNod nod wink wink!
Yes, that's what it's all about....
ReplyDelete...and we know that there is one rule for that lot and one rule for the rest of us.
After all systematically and purposefully cheating the taxpayer out of hundreds of thousands of pounds has frequently landed a member of parliament with a bit of a ticking off, where as stealing a couple of bottles of water from a shop that is open to the public, gets an ordinary young person 6 months in the pokey.
Nothing odd about that. It's a matter of status, position, social class, old school tie. That is what makes one so incredibly proud to be british!
Vomit.
Spare a thought for the self-employed who saved for their own pensions. Inflation proofing is not usually available. Annuity rates are piss poor but you can operate something called a "draw down" which allows you to realise some capital as well as income against the prospects of future growth, The Government Actuary's Department (GAD) decides what is prudent, so that you won't run out of money before you die. The amount is reviewed every three years.
ReplyDeleteI started drawing from such a policy three years ago and opted to take the maximum permitted (on the basis that you're a long time dead). I have just received notification that this amount will now be reduced by 40%. This is a combination of the Actuary's view of the present economic situation and how long he thinks I (on average) am likely to live. So philosophically speaking, it's a mixture of bad and good news.
People in the public sector cannot expect to be totally insulated forever from the same reality which affects us lesser mortals whose function is to pay the taxes.
Thanks to Prudent Gordon's raid on private occupational pension funds and inflation, the amount that I was drawing was around two thirds to half of what I could reasonably have expected when I started paying the contributions. Fortunately I only had a small part of the fund in Equitable Life!
Of course, the figure of £5,600 which you quote will be additional to the Old Age Pension, as is my occupational pension.
I just had a quick look at annuity rates for a man aged 65. with a private pesnion "pot" of £100,000
ReplyDeleteIn May, this would have bought him an income of £6813 per year, today that is
only £5972
not far off the figure you quote for the average public service pension. BUT the private annuity is not inflation proofed. I haven't time to look it up in detail but reckon you would have to more or less double the amount invested to get an inflation proofed income.
So, roughly speaking, the public service pension which you quote is equivalent to £200,0000 of saving by a privately employed person.
I don't think that will have been funded out of the superannuation contributions.
Well Mr S
ReplyDeleteI didn't mean to imply that people outside of the public sector (and many in 'projects' in the public sector, but not covered by the public sector pension scheme...(me for example) had it good. They don't, and I know that, and yes, largely it is the fault of Mr brown and the disastrous government of Tony Blair.
What I was complaining about was that the man who was tearing one section of public sector pension to pieces was in fact not applying the same measures to his own generous publicly funded pension.
I'm alright Maude, as it were
I sympathise very much with people who have had to pay for their own pensions, with no input from an employer. As in your case, many incomes drop and drop, until they are not worth having.
And the state pension of around £100 a week is an insult. It provides around £5,000 a year, not enough for a person to live on.
A quarter of it would easily be swallowed by heating bills.
BTW, I take your point that the public sector (or some of them) do very well on pensions. We subsidise that. And they don't any longer have the excuse that they are badly paid by comparison with private enterprise as was once the case.
ReplyDeleteProbably the only people who could claim that now are very senior people who simply cannot compare with the 49% pay rises that CEOs of large companies are giving themselves.
However, these were the terms and conditions that they signed up for, so I can see where their anger is coming from.
I also think that, as everyone is suffering (we are all in this together, aren't we) they should try to reach some compromise.
But all being in it together would be a little more comforting if our 'betters' tried being in it with us.
I suppose their idea of all being in it together with us is that they accept that they are allowed to steal rather less in 'expenses' than they used to.