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Please Stop Blaming The Banks

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On 30 Jun 2011 at 8:49pm Boris wrote:
Firstly , the national office of statistics today released figures showing that on average, public sector workers earn £20 a week more than private sector workers so lets put to bed once and for all that the reason that public sector pensions are gold plated is because they earn alot less during their careers.
Right onto the banks, it's true , the credit crunch caused the financial melt down of the country. But don't forget , the Labour party , through their FSA had the power to pull the banks back but did nothing. Why? because every bonus was being taxed at 40%.
The real reason this country is in the crap is because the Labour party spent 11 of their 13 years over spending, £4 for every £3 they got in. We have spent just under a third of the countries deficit bailing out the banks the rest was wasted away by Messers Blair and Brown.
The Labour party and the left in general are using the banks as the definitive scape goat.
 
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On 30 Jun 2011 at 9:18pm MC wrote:
No, the Tories are using Labour as the escape goats, as you would expect.

Labour, as all UK governments in recent history have done, lived on feel-good-at-the-time-vote-for-us debt... the last Labour Govt in spades
The massive debt left as the result of bailing out (the still very rich and undeserving) banking system is a one-off event and needs to be resolved. The Tories are not resolving it and by doing that are setting the conditions for another bout of the same. We escaped by the skin of our teeth last time. If it happens again a crash of the western banking system is on the cards. It's hard to imagine how things could be in a crowded little arse-end county where no one can feed themselves without introducing a credit card to Tescos or heat or power themselves without depending upon the foreign private companies.

Get real. Government like debt cos it makes us the voters feel happy and rich and so continue to vote for the incumbents. The banking crisis is in a different league and very dangerous still.
 
 
On 30 Jun 2011 at 9:40pm canoeman wrote:
You cannot compare the average pay of the public sector where there is a large percentage of professionally qualified workers with the private sector where there is less.
I have worked in the private and public sector and have pensions due from both. The teachers scheme i am in is not particularly good. For each year of service i get one eightieth of my final salary as pension. I realise to people who have no pension or only their own one this still sounds good, but in my experience is worse than any private sector pension i have seen or heard of which gives usually one sixtieth of final salary for each year of service.
We are now expected to 'contribute' an extra 3% of our salary to what will be a worse pension. This is as if all my contributions to date (3% at present - I have never had to contribute to my private sector pension scheme) have gone to a big fund which is now not big enough. It is nothing but a 3% reduction in my pay in addition to the 4% pay cut on account of inflation with no pay rise.
I realise the country is in a sticky situation and you may well think that teachers should have a pay cut of 7% in the past year but can we at least be honest about it. What work force would stand around and let that happen to them.
 
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On 30 Jun 2011 at 9:56pm Boris wrote:
Canoeman, Don't shoot the messenger , It wasn't me comparing wages it was the National Office Of Statistics.
The lot of you have got to get in the real world, you've completely lost touch with whats going on out there.
I'll tell you the work force that will stand around and let things like working more for less happen to them. Private sector workers who know that if they walk out there will be no job for them to come back to, probably because their firm has gone bust.
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On 30 Jun 2011 at 11:03pm Trevor wrote:
Please continue to blame the bankers, because most of them are greedy
Tory scum bags. While we're at it can we also blame private schools, the Royal Family,
Thatcher and the Murdoch press.
 
 
On 30 Jun 2011 at 11:15pm Deelite wrote:
Yes. And let's make the poor pay for it. That seems fair.
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On 30 Jun 2011 at 11:35pm HilaryV wrote:
Just back to Boris - I think as a messenger you are pretty poor -
1 - it is the Office for National Statistics not the National Office for Statistics
2 - what report published today? - there was none - you are just picking up on press reports of the annual survey - called the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings - which is usually published every year around December - this did indeed show gross weekly earnings of full time workers (excluding overtime) as approx £20 per week more in the public sector compared to the private sector.
3 - BUT - This is a very simplistic comparison as public sector workers on average tend to have higher qualifications - so this will include people in education, health, and the judiciary. Perhaps you would prefer less qualified people in these professions?
4 - many of the jobs with the lowest salaries have simply been hived off into the private sector (care workers, security and some basic admin)
5 - the biggest differences you see in the public and private sector wage structures are that the private sector is dominated by lots of jobs at the very low end and a few jobs at the very, very high end of earnings. In the public sector you get less inequality.
6 - so compare like with like - private doctors against public sector doctors, private school headteachers against state school headteachers
PS Boris do you also take all your health advice from the headlines in the Daily Express? And as for the real world - I'm public sector employee and work in one of the busiest A&E departments in the country - feels pretty much like the real world to me!
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 1:13am Mike wrote:
Well said Hilary. The problem is that there is so much misinformation being peddled by our partisan press that it is difficult to really get an accurate view about what is the true comparison between public and private sector. I work in both sectors and still do not really feel that I understand whether one is better off than the other in general. At the end of the day , no matter what the public vs private comparison, I do think it wrong for peoples' pension arrangements to be altered unilaterally by the employers and for that reason alone I support the strikers.
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 1:34am expat two wrote:
Equally weak argument is the "The Labour party and the left in general" one.
Get it into your thick Daily Mail skull, the Labour Party is NOT left wing. Like the Tories, it does what the big businesses tell it to do.
Can anyone name one left-of -enter policy they implemented in their 11 years.
Abandonment of clause 4?
An oil war?
University fees?
Bank Degulation?
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 7:05am MC wrote:
Thank you HilaryV. At last some sound and informed opinion derived from sources wider than the tabloids.
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 9:02am Vesbod wrote:
Well, as an ex public sector worker I can vouch for the fact that private sector pay is DEFINITATELY better than the public sector. I had the same job in both areas and received 50% more salary when I left the public to join the private sector. However, the pensions the public sector get are obscene - I only worked a short while in the public sector and for that I had a small but not insignificant pension as a result of a final salary pension - I would be a millionaire if I worked all my life in the public sector .... when I retired !!
And, yes, THE BANKS ARE TO BLAME !! For heavens sake, get real. The banks should be taxed heavily to pay for the rising cost of public sector pensions, end of.
Ah, nice day isn't it, BBQ later methinks, isn't it nice to be retired and (partly) funded by the civil service !!
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 9:15am fairmeadow wrote:
Dear Expat2. You have probably forgotten New Labour introduced the minimum wage. Tories said at the time that it would be a disaster, but only on the very far right is it controversial now. They also introduced the tax credit system, which had a significant equalising effect, and indeed the 10% tax rate. Admittedly they were over-relaxed about permitting stupidly high wages, fostered inequalities thereby, and did lose their way later in their term, with Blair (not to his credit Brown) all too evidently anxious to join the super-rich himself. Even then they introduced the temporary 50% income tax band (not high enough, and see how long the Cameron Tories keep that) and the 50% claw back on bankers ludicrous bonuses (Tories already zapped that, in favour of a regressive VAT rise). You could fairly say neither of them was left wing, but they are not both the same.
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 10:19am Pivot wrote:
HilaryV - well said.
Also - has anyone noticed that any time the private sector (with all its 'efficiencies') does anything in the public sector (new computer systems etc) they completely c*ck it up and waste loads of money.
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 11:08am 'ere be monsters wrote:
Seriously Pivot is that anytime the private sector does anything?
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 1:42pm bastian wrote:
I'm going to introduce some new words for boris.
1, sophistry...meaning confusing the issue by using snatchets of statistics that are unrelated but simillar enough to explain something that sounds convincing but is actually rubbish.politicians revel in this.
2,oligarchy, which is a system of government where the elected council is only a puppet to the rich(or rich companies)who form policy with the elected council for their own gains.
If any of this sounds familliar it's because we are not living in a democracey,this is an oligarchy so there is no left or right.
Everyone deserves a pension that is a living wage if they have worked their b*ll*ks off,and if they were unable to work,for what ever reason they still need to live on something.
As for banks they have hundreds of years of history of bad behavior with other peoples money.It is only in the last few years that the government agreed to insure money held in banks by little people,the bail out was not so much a handing over of the countries money for nothing as you and me not losing our months pay swallowed into the banks debt,but paid for by the treasury to stop us,the little people losing our money.You are not seperate from your bank,they do not tell you when you open an account that they will float your money in turds on the stock exchange and by the way it's a gamble,we may lose all your hard earned money.They are,without a shadow of a doubt,to blame for our countries state of affairs.You all deserve a living pension,now get out there and demand it instead of bleating on forums.

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On 1 Jul 2011 at 2:58pm 'arfur winner wrote:
I'm just can't see that all the sh** and bickering on this forum will resolve the issues. Why do some posters get so personal as it's only other peoples opinions after all that are being voiced?
Our future is in the hands of the party(ies) which the electorate, who could be bothered to vote, chose. Whatever party is in power we should give them a chance to try to extract us from the mire that the Country is in.
Perhaps if we try the solutions that they are trying to impose we might be pleasantly surprised. (cue flying pigs).
By all means voice your opinions and solutions and consider other people's also, despite me being the only one that's right! You know it makes sense!
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On 1 Jul 2011 at 3:23pm Realist wrote:
Hilary V, all this ranting and comparison of the public and private and sectors has not, in any of the postings that I have read, referred to the sterling work done by many within the NHS.
It is enlightening therefore to read a constructive posting such as yours and also to note that despite all the deserving cases working in the NHS who are affected by the proposed changes, they chose not to join the recent strike action. Thanks on behalf of many!
 
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On 1 Jul 2011 at 4:25pm bastian wrote:
arfur, our lives are not in the hands of the government,elected or not,they are in the hands if the IMF and various other monetary bodies.How badly do you,personally have to be affected by cuts before you to stand up and say,"hang on a minute,I worked for that".
I can only presume you do not have a disabled child who's care centre is about to shut,or an old relative in one of the threatened nursing homes,and obviosly you will never be unemployed,will you.Anything can happen to anyone anytime and if it does you might want that safety net there to catch you,because you may not be able to afford the same thing privately.let's not just sit back and let this happen,let's do something truely alteristic and stand up for other,less well off people out there who don't have a voice in this so called democracy.
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 4:39pm MC wrote:
And it is a 'so-called' democracy. For a society to be called a democracy the government need to represent the people (look up definition of democracy). A first past the post system does not provide a representative government. Indeed, in recent history the party that gains power has been voted in by only a minority of the population, not even a majority! And even if they were, the first past the post system makes the realistic choice of parties so small and limited it's hardly worth the while of anyone with a bit of imagination voting at all.

And once in power the whip ensures that the party implement their policies whether the electorate wants them or not and usually disregarding the pledges made at the time of the election (as the Tories and Lib-Dems have been doing).

Not a democracy at all.

Rant over.
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 6:16pm cyclist wrote:
New Labour are not and never were truly left wing. They are not the same as the tories, just not quite as bad. Now re pensions. Public sector pensions are affordable - if you listened to the interview with Francis Maud on the today programme yesterday even he had to admit this. As far as teachers pensions go there never was a fund. Pensions are paid by the people currently working and paying their contributions. Until fairly recently this was in surplus and the extra money was not saved and invested for a possible future when current workers were no longer paying in enough. Instead the surplus was hived off into general taxation. So the teachers were subsidising other tax payers. Now it looks as if there is a possibility that we have reached payback time. So no, it is not unfair for taxpayers to subsidise these pensions. NB Public workers also pay taxes, unlike many rich people and businesses who make use of tax loopholes. Now as far as the quality of the private sector pensions go. I am sure there are some good ones and equally some awful ones. So there should be regulation in place to bring the poor ones up to a higher standard. If you are in a pension scheme which is independent of the company you work for then it must be realised that in many schemes a high % of contributions goes to pay for 'commision' and 'charges'. These are then used to pay the eyewatering salaries of the fatcats who run them who get huge bonuses which appear to be totally unrelated to the performance of the scheme. This is what needs dealing with to ensure that everyone has access to a decent pension. Rant over.
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 8:11pm bastian wrote:
cyclist,I love you and want to have your babies.well said...no seriously you are absolutely right.we must stop drinking in the daily mail headlines people,they are LIARS.under this so called government the rich stay rich and the poor are driven to the wall,that's freemarket capitalism.If you want to be driven into a hole in the ground then go on,vote tory,or lib dem but remember the tories will screw you over a barrel...and the liberals will watch.(yuk..pass the brain bleach someone,I feel most unwell)
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 8:16pm MC wrote:
You been drinking bastian?
 
 
On 1 Jul 2011 at 8:18pm Fairly Sain wrote:
I bet you're looking forward to junior school Bastian so you can learn the basics of punctuation and spelling!!
 
 
On 2 Jul 2011 at 12:35am Harold wrote:
I think which ever party is in power we will suffer, either during ( like now ) or after( the last ), we on here are just fodder to all of them , they will use us to line there pockets, and we have no power to stop it , just keep your chins up, work hard and be proud of what you leave behind ....
 
 
On 2 Jul 2011 at 9:10am bastian wrote:
no mC i am very tired,and as for spelling i am also dyslexic so fairly sain can go f**k off.
 
 
On 2 Jul 2011 at 9:38am MC wrote:
Just tired, not tired and emotional then? :-)
 
 
On 2 Jul 2011 at 1:14pm bastian wrote:
I am now


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