Pensions - no wonder there are strikes

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by Pierre

So much boollox posted here, but I today started 2 week holiday so can't be bothered trawling through the detritous to correct it, if this thread is still live after the 26th I'll pick it back up.

Ps weather in Majorca is great!

Things must be really tough in the private sector then

---------- Post added at 01:09 ---------- Previous post was at 01:07 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Ridiculous generalisation suggesting that all public sector pension schemes would be fully funded if not for government intervention. Absolutely ridiculous and a completely pointless post. I was actually on your side of this discussion but if we're dealing with stupid generalisations where public sector pension means fully funded and sustainable by default it's not doing you favours. Be interested in how you reconcile that point of view with say the local government, the national civil service or the MP pension schemes?

I'm talking about public sector pensions as a whole.

[Traduk]

Tim,

What you have to remember, is that there are many people who are gullable enough to believe the government propoganda, that says that public sector pensions are not sustainable.

I have only just started to explore the different funding mechanisms used in various pension schemes and the first thing that has become evident is that there are many variations on a theme which trend from not good to awful.

I gave an example of the Police whereby it appears that serving officers buy nothing with their deductions beyond the right to draw down when their time comes. There is something very wrong with a scheme where deductions recirculate back into the day to day pool from which all expenses, including payment of pensions for retired officers are paid. The fact that the shortfall is met from council tax and general taxation is bad but that is the hand to mouth system going wrong big time.

I have not looked into other schemes within the public sector but if they haven't got huge pension funds of billions sitting in investments then the likelihood then they are probably of the Ponzi variety and not easily sustainable.

My pension payment and those of my employer were paid into a managed fund and accrued by virtue of payments and investment compounding. Although it places some strain on my prior employer the scheme would fall IMO into the sustainable variety.

Wherever the blame is allocated for this total mess there is no doubt that successive governments over many decades have chosen to ignore the end game.

Whether we have or are approaching the point of un-sustainability is debatable but we have a government that appears determined to act as though we have. My viewpoint on their actions is that they have an agenda which in many regards will not bear fruit for years beyond their remit, does not address the failing agenda for which they were elected (?) and is designed to take a wrecking ball to many of the entrenched socialist structures within the UK. BTW I am not a socialist but have a strong social conscience which used to be the British way irrespective of right or left governments.