brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 14, 2011 12:52:27 GMT 1
Right, we are on the verge of going back into recession as we plough headlong on with cuts. They are blaming the global recession, yet when the last one happened it was all Labour's fault and not in anyway anything to do with global economics.
Riots happen and they lock them all up. Apparently, gang ties are strengthening in the prisons as people never before associated with gangs join up for protection. There are also a large number on suicide watch. Way to go Tories. Fuck up a whole generation like you did in the 80s.
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 14, 2011 12:52:47 GMT 1
Oh and just for Merk. Rant over.
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Post by markelt on Sept 14, 2011 12:59:49 GMT 1
I thought this might have been another appeal for the rest of us to continue to pay for the job security and happy retirement of public sector workers while being unable to retire ourselves.
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 14, 2011 13:28:52 GMT 1
You really have become him haven't you?
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Post by AndyM on Sept 14, 2011 13:48:58 GMT 1
They are the same person. Just like Denby and Sion.
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Post by markelt on Sept 14, 2011 13:59:31 GMT 1
brispie
You started it. The difference between me and Merk is that I've come to despise everybody in politics and he still thinks one side is better than the other.
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merkin
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Post by merkin on Sept 14, 2011 14:13:58 GMT 1
Sort of
I know they are all c****.
I just pick the c**** that will hopefully do the best (or least wankest) for all decent people whether that is their prime concern or not.
Besides, it would be boring if I didn't pick a side.
Not sure you have that right Brispo.
Labour's greatest failing wasn't that they took us into recession (you expect these from time to time) - it was they they had built up such a massive deficit for the last 10 years and saddled us with a shit load of liabilities that are very difficult to reverse.
People predicted that we were fucked for a generation well before the Coalition got started.
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ab
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Post by ab on Sept 14, 2011 16:11:01 GMT 1
The majority of rioters and looters already had criminal convictions didn't they? Hardly a case of poor innocent lambs getting caught up in righteous anger at the withdrawal of EMA (etc etc) and being punished excessively for a bit of youthful hijinks. Things are pretty poor on the economics front, but fairly rosy compared with a number of other countries. Greece looks to be on course to take out either Germany or France - the former if it is bailed out (and this commits Germany to bail it and the other Southern European basket cases) the latter if it fails (as its banks have bought vast amounts of soon to be worthless Greek debt). Meanwhile, having a self-described socialist in power across the pond who was keen on community organising and spending to refloat the economy hasn't really helped the US much. Anyway, who'd really prefer Blinky Balls as Chancellor to someone who's allegedly snorted coke off a dominatrix hooker's tits and who rightly called the readers of cowards porn a bunch of wankers? I'm looking forward to a winter full of strikes that I won't notice (but which might harm those who are most in need of public services rather more than the reduction in pension terms will) in favour of maintaining pensions that I can't afford to get for myself, all opposed by Bert Miliband and Ernie Balls. Meanwhile, the clowns in Parliament will carry on being more worried about whether they can stay on the gravy train for another 5 years after 2015. wp.me/p1kusD-6E
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 14, 2011 17:33:21 GMT 1
I agree that 99% of politicians are twats, but I seem to share more of a view of the world with one bunch of twats than the other. And it isn't the same lot as markinelt.
Did the majority of looters and rioters already have criminal convictions? And what kind of convictions? I had a caution when I was a teenager, but apparently this got wiped when I turned 18.
I think the States will be fine. They are doing the right thing i.e. investing at a time when growth is slow to the point of being almost non-existant.
France and Germany would also be fine if they didn't have to prop up their EU project. Whereas we are going to be fucked for many a year to come.
It smacks of the recession in the late 20s/early 30s when Hoover refused to interfere with economics and it wasn't until FDR got in power and started to invest that people began to actually value their lives again.
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leonie
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Post by leonie on Sept 14, 2011 19:28:44 GMT 1
Where's Bono when you need him?
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Post by BoltonTerrier on Sept 14, 2011 22:29:49 GMT 1
Where's Bono when you need him? being a c***?
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Post by jimharrogate on Sept 14, 2011 22:32:04 GMT 1
Most politicians are liers and cheats and I liken them to second hand car salesmen,estate agents and ambulance chasing lawyers but the public sector have to learn to live in the real world- and they don't like.
The unions spouting on telly claim to have many more members than they actually have and when I recently left our local council I think only half at the most were in a union.
Vast amounts of public money is wasted every day by all public sector organisations but the bonfire of quangos that Cameron promised hasn't happened.
We need to get the banks and government spending, on well chosen works like new housing, railways etc.
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merkin
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Post by merkin on Sept 15, 2011 8:02:19 GMT 1
brispie
the States are fucked. they have been 'investing' - their deficit is fucking huge and it took them to the brink of bankruptcy - yet they are giving it another go.
France are fucked because their banks did exactly what ours did it seems- borrow to the wrong people.
Germany don't have to do anything they don't want - they will do what is best for them. If they prop Greece up or any country up, then its because they think it helps them.
Nobody has to prop up 'their' EU project, they just choose to.
We would have been alright as well if Labour hadn't propped up their 'wank money away' project
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Post by markelt on Sept 15, 2011 9:31:47 GMT 1
bris
The fact is that asking one section of the population who simply can't afford to retire to pay large amounts for another section to be able to retire very well and early has been recognised as a problem for years. I'm a Labour voter by instinct but that's just a fact. It's not anything to do with Government investment. This is all about public sector workers being completely ignorant about the circumstances of people in the private sector who don't enjoy guaranteed year on year pay increases or the same degree of job security and certainly have nothing like the pension provision. Somebody will correct me but I think the average proportion of council tax revenue that goes on pensions is something over 20 per cent once you factor in other contributions from taxation. That simply isn't right.
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 15, 2011 10:24:25 GMT 1
...but you are making the same mistake as your average Daily Mail reader makes in that you lump all the public sector together. Osborne *c**** makes the same mistake. The LGPS is funded and actually takes in more than it currently pays out. However, I believe that some other sectors of the public sector may not be the same. We took our medicine a few years ago when our contributions were upped to nearly 10%. I currently pay out nearly £200 a month on pension contributions and whilst I get paid comfortably, I don't earn megabucks.
The private sector have had their pensions fucked over that is true. This has been in the name of profit. Most large companies could easily fund a final salary scheme, but it reduces profits slightly and people now seem to accept that smaller pensions are OK. Surely they shouldn't be?
Why should we all aspire to have worse benefits?
As for pay increases. The best I have ever received in my 8 years in the public sector is 2.95%. Most years it used to be around 2%. This was in the boom times. I'm guessing that most private sector employees were getting significantly better than that.
We haven't had a pay increase for 2 years and won't get one next year. Whilst some people still get increase on the pay scales which amount to about £400 a year, I don't as I'm at the top of my scale. Most people in my office are.
Oh and Jim Harrogate. So based on your experience you think they are lying? Based on my experience I think they are underselling it. In my office union membership runs at about 80% of employees.
Oh and merkin. Show me where the tories would have done anything different? Osborne was asking for less regulation of banks as late as 2007.
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Post by Wizaard on Sept 15, 2011 10:43:00 GMT 1
We are not retiring well or early.
One or two isolated examples of Department heads who have put in over 40 years is being quoted as being the norm.
The average Civil Servant pension is £7,000. I can't imagine many going on world tours on the strength of it.
Personally, I'm having to pay a load more into the scheme and have 6 years added to the retirement age, with probably another tacked onto that before I get there; I signed up to something completely different 30 years ago and they should keep their side of the bargain with existing members who have based their retirement plans on one agreed set of assumptions, only to have that taken away and another imposed 5 years before what you thought was the end . It's not right that they can just come in and change those terms so far down the line.
If there has to be reform then start with new entrants and keep your word.
The whole argument is the breaking of the terms, forced through by a change in the law without consultation.
The fat cat gold plated pension is a myth put about to turn public opinion against a hard working sector without whom you'd all be up shit creek.
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Post by markelt on Sept 15, 2011 11:03:17 GMT 1
There's no doubt we rely on the public sector but then you'd be up shit creek without the private sector because we are the people who earn the money to pay your wages. This idea that private companies can easily offer final salary pension schemes is just nuts. The problem is, as I've already said, that the equivalent of up to one quarter of local authority spending is on pensions. That is insane and it needs to stop.
I have a lot of sympathy with Wizaard's point that they should stick to the original agreements. But it is a strange argument that bris is making when he asks 'why should we all aspire to worse benefits?' Well unfortunately that is exactly what the public sector unions are asking everybody else to accept.
I'd avoid that argument about Osborne and the banks. Merk's always argued black is white on that one.
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 15, 2011 11:08:02 GMT 1
Why is that what the public sector is asking everybody else to accept? All I see is private sector employees saying 'We've been fucked over, so you should be as well'. That's never a good reason.
I understand that smaller employers may struggle with a FS scheme, but larger employers have ditched pension schemes because they eat into profits.
This generation are going to be the first to enter retirement poorer than their parents. Why should we all continue to accept that?
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merkin
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Post by merkin on Sept 15, 2011 11:27:38 GMT 1
I haven't argued black is white on that at all. I just put the banking crisis into persective. The Tories wouldn't have bloated the public sector to the extent it has and that's the main problem. Labour voting dick...thank God you'admitted it.
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Post by markelt on Sept 15, 2011 11:31:41 GMT 1
Why is that what the public sector is asking everybody else to accept? All I see is private sector employees saying 'We've been fucked over, so you should be as well'. That's never a good reason. The argument seems to be carry on with an economically unsustainable pensions policy which falls on the back of everybody else. There's a reason why private sector companies don't like employing ex public sector workers on the whole and it's do with rigid thinking and an inflated sense of entitlement. I'd also add that I don't think public sector workers are unique in being unemployable in certain types of businesses. People from large companies can also find it difficult to adapt to the expectations of smaller businesses.
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 15, 2011 11:53:20 GMT 1
They are only economically unsustainable in so far as the employer has to contribute and that employer happens to be the state. Like I've said the LGPS is actually fully funded, but the condems just don't like the level of the funding that they have to pay.
If your employer said that you were going to pay more into your pension, but you'd get less at the end and also have to work longer before you receive it most people would be angry, hence why we are using the right to strike.
The public sector is nowhere near as bloated as most people would lead you to believe. I remember having this debate with AB a few years ago. I think he quoted 500k extra employees, whereas the number was actually a fraction of that.
Certainly where I work the team I am in has remained pretty stable in the last 8 years, with if anything slightly less employees now, even though work levels have actually gone up. I know that is par for the course for the private sector.
I also agree with you to some extent on public sector and corporate employees Markymerk. Some of my colleagues would die on their feet in the private sector. However, the system is not always to blame for this. Some people are just more comfortable in certain work environments. Personally I hated working for a corporate as I knew that the scant wages I received for my efforts was actually being billed externally at a hugely inflated rate to keep the fat cats at the top in caviar.
At least at small firms you are more likely to share in the benefits, see your efforts directly appreciated and understand that the bloke at the top deserves to earn more.
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Post by markelt on Sept 15, 2011 12:03:13 GMT 1
Actually of the people I've employed, only some of them think like that. Some on the other hand don't see any difference between a firm with 4 employees and Omnicorp.
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Solihull Terrier
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Post by Solihull Terrier on Sept 15, 2011 12:29:12 GMT 1
So, Brispie, we shouldn't jail people because they're making friends whilst in prison?
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 15, 2011 12:36:57 GMT 1
Yous shouldn't jail people for petty crimes.
Really marky? So they took the piss?
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owlie
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Post by owlie on Sept 15, 2011 13:39:11 GMT 1
Rioting is petty crime?
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merkin
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Post by merkin on Sept 15, 2011 13:51:23 GMT 1
yes...just like stabbing people.
Just like Krays...just got up to a bit of mischief now and again.
Fred West - just a misundestood scally....
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brispie
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Post by brispie on Sept 15, 2011 14:57:21 GMT 1
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe that most of those convicted during the recent riots weren't actually convicted for rioting?
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ab
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Post by ab on Sept 15, 2011 15:09:53 GMT 1
"France and Germany would also be fine if they didn't have to prop up their EU project. Whereas we are going to be fucked for many a year to come.
It smacks of the recession in the late 20s/early 30s when Hoover refused to interfere with economics and it wasn't until FDR got in power and started to invest that people began to actually value their lives again. "
The French and the Germans don't really have a choice - they're in the euro and they will get hit hard whether Greece defaults or whether they decide to carry on bailing it and other EU states out. There's no third option of just saying "sod this EU lark", they're committed in any event.
The effectiveness of FDR's policies is not anything like as clear as you make out. The US economy only really recovered once it got into tooling up for WWII.
"The private sector have had their pensions fucked over that is true. This has been in the name of profit. Most large companies could easily fund a final salary scheme, but it reduces profits slightly and people now seem to accept that smaller pensions are OK. Surely they shouldn't be?"
We need denbers really but that nice Mr Brown nicked £5bn a year off pension schemes to pay for public spending in IIRC changing the tax treatment of share dividends. He also changed the tax treatment of companies' payments into their pension schemes, viewing this as a tax avoidance measure and an economically inefficient use of company money which ought better to have been invested in the business and R&D.
Pensions are not just a problem in the UK - they've got the same issues in other European countries. People are living a lot longer than when the current pension provisions were established and so they are becoming a much bigger future burden. Where pensions are paid by the State, that is a cost that everyone bears. The retirement age of 65 was fixed back in the 1940s - life expectancy and the number of years a pension will have to fund payments for has gone up massively since then. A scheme that is fully funded for today's pensioners, if it stays exactly the same, will not be fully funded in 10-20 years time when it has a much lower ratio between pensioners and contributors. Delaying when pensions can be taken, increasing contributions and decreasing benefits seems to be the only way in which schemes can continue to be fully funded.
It's a bugger if you've planned on the basis of the assumptions of 30 years ago but in the end, someone has to pay. The questions are, who and how much? If there's no change, the answers are, as markelt points out, "private sector workers" and "most of the additional costs whatever they might be".
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ab
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Post by ab on Sept 15, 2011 15:19:21 GMT 1
Re previous convictions of those convicted of offences relating to the riots. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/15/three-quarters-rioters-criminal-convictionsThree quarters had previous convictions, a third of those had spent time in prison and the average number of previous convictions of those who had any at all was 15. They did get stiffer sentences than they would have got for "merely" burgling commercial premises in isolated and independent instances but the majority of those involved look to have been rather further up the scrote index than brispie with a single caution while under 18.
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Post by markelt on Sept 15, 2011 15:48:42 GMT 1
Yous shouldn't jail people for petty crimes. Really marky? So they took the piss? I wouldn't say they took the piss, but there is a common failure to recognise the nature of a small business. They're not alone in this because the Government doesn't always distinguish between Unilever and the 98 per cent of businesses in the country that have one or two employees.
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