But you need more than £31k just to live in London, that's why there's all them fat-cat cleaners in hospitals, living it large at taxpayers' expense

I did see on a graduate jobs forum somebody asking the question about that Bank of England scheme, saying "I like the scheme but the starting pay looks surprisingly low for London, does anybody know how quickly the increases are and what you could be earning in 5 years". I think some grads don't understand the current market.

That's the "real word" for ya

In simplistic terms you take a scheme - look at its potential liabilities based on earnings growth and life expectancy of its participents comparae that to its current assets and the potential growth of those assets from its various income streams - the difference is the surplus/deficit of the scheme. This is what actuaries earn their money for.


Maybe you could provide evidence of all these companies that have taken an extended pension holiday - we are not talking about paying in for 20 years and having a year off we are talking about extended pension holidays - Royal Mail apart I doubt you will be able produce a handful out of all the companies that have pension schemes.

You are the only person I know that think final salary schemes are affordable - maybe you could share your knowledge with the wider world because you are in a minority of one. To maintain these schemes companies are having to top up the deficit - the company I work for put £20m yes £20m into the pension scheme this year. To do that you need to have that amount of surplus cash - in these times of working capital squeeze that is not something most companies have. In doing that it means you have less funds to invest in capital projects that - if you believe Keynes - is what drives growth. In fact what you are doing is sacrificing the future to cover the costs of the past.

Maybe you should re-train - currently a tube driver earns £46k a year that is £22/hour so for an 8 hour shift that is £176, at quadruple time that is £707.

As I said simple maths

Do yourself (and us) a favour and have a read of [url=http://www.havingtheircake.com/content/3_Consequences/3_Cannon%20fodder/fact%20and%20opinion/A%20Short%20history%20of%20UK%20Pensions%20and%20Savings.phpTHIS[/url. Although given recent experience of your inability to comprehend even the simplest of messages, I doubt we'll see any benefits from your enlightenment any time soon

What utter nonsense. I suggest you say that to my wife's face and we can run a sweep stake on how many broken bones you end up with.



If there is little support for them is it because people believe tripe like the above. The vast majority of Local Government jobs are low paid and the employees accrue a low pension despite these so called generous terms.



That has nothing to do with the proposed strikes at the end of the month. However anyone of a right leaning political outlook can't complain because if the tube drivers command this wage it is simply capitalism in full flow. They are obviously in demand and so while bankers claim that have to pay huge bonuses to get the staff it appears whoever it is who employs the tube drivers is in the same kind of boat in having to pay through the nose to get the job done.



As has been said many times before the Local Government Pension Scheme is sound and fully funded which means this is a money saving exercise not one born out of necessity due to the scheme being underfunded in any way.

The terms and conditions of the employees who pay into it were set when they took the job and it is simply not right to change these terms when many people have been paying into it for many years and crucially have budgeted for their retirement based on those terms and conditions. If the government wants to change things it should be for new employees only as happens in private industry when final salary schemes are closed.

Right. You don't know. Fair enough.

A pension fund deficit (or surplus) is calculated by taking its current value and comparing it to total liabilities (ie, it measure whether a fund, if it closed today and received no further income from contributions or investments, could pay out all the pension benefits of its members, including those who've just started work at 18, until their death). Future income only comes into the calculation when considering what needs to be done to reduce or remove that deficit.

eg My own pension scheme had a deficit of around £100m at its last valuation. We sat down and negotiated with the employers and scheme trustees a plan for eliminating that deficit over the 20 year period required by law: part of that plan was an increase in employees' contributions, some cost savings, and using different actuarial assumptions about fund growth.

So not £31k for a 40 hour week then? You figures by the way.




These figures are shifting pretty quick, I used the figures you gave, again.

If LU want to provide a service on Boxing Day then they need to pay, if the price is too high then don't run, it is only recently that the started to run on Boxing Day, the world still rotated when they didn't.



Indeed, if you have the right figures that is...

Incidentally, if you really want to save £900m+ from the LGPPS, there's a very simple way [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/8872087/Government-and-the-unions-should-unite-against-the-pension-fat-cats.htmlcombine the investment funds[/url: this wouldn't require increasing contributions (by employers or employees) or reducing benefits.

The only people who would lose out would be the financial services industry currently making a mint (though not as much as they make managing individual defined contribution pension funds) - I can't possibly imagine why the government isn't looking at the idea …

That is simply not true, there are three main ways of calculating the deficit if I recall from my CIMA days:
Funding - which includes future revenues into the scheme as I suggested normally using future bond yields as a guide
Accounting - which is more in line with your proposition and meets the demands of the various IFRS'
Buyout - usually the most pessimistic

We are both correct - as usual with all accounting - there is no exact science.

Now all these companies that have taken an extended pension holiday!!

Yes. Yes it is.


… as you yourself admit

I never said that was what they earned - all I did was illustrate how the £720 was a reasonable figure and how it could be calculated - another Mod who struggles with basic comprehension.

Unbelievable you should read back on some of your stuff - still never used your car's breaks in hurry



You are hardly posting from a position of superiority!!

I have no idea what you're on about now but if it makes you happy, my car gets regular breaks, it gets a good rest every night too.

Oh the irony.

I'm in unison and I intend to strike on the 30th. The main reason a lot of people in in the PS are striking is because final pensions will soon be based on average salary rather than final salary. Its a total myth that every PS worker receives a "golden handshake" when the retire.

It might even be a little easier to swallow if those grunting, snivelling bastads in Westminster had sorted their own grasping, tax-payer funded, defined-benefit pension scheme out first

Very much the same thing is about to happen to the armed forces. Pensions will be based on career average rather than final salary. Unsurprisingly, no-one is planning to strike, partly because they are Crown servants and can't.

A brilliant article in The Independent today. It basically said that some in the public sector have completely unrealistic expectations. The make up around 1/5 of the workforce and are generally paid better than people with similar qualifications in the private sector. They get better terms and conditions and a pension that those in the private sector would have to pay around 37% of their salary to match. If we are all in this together, then so is the public sector.

As for Tube drivers (who earn £45,545 a year) all we are asking them to do is what lots of other people do....work Boxing Day. Aslef members don't like the idea of doing what everyone else who works weekends and bank holidays does, which is take it in turns.

Did this brilliant article provide significant examples of such unrealistic expectations? Or any evidence of this mythical better pay that public sector workers receive? As for the pensions, my mum retired last year after 20 years in the public sector. Her pension is less than £6000 per year. My dad also retired last year after over 40 years in the NHS, with a pension of £12,000 per year. Which private sector workers would have to pay in 37% of their wages to gain this kind of gold-plated pension?
My current private sector pension scheme is similar to the one I was on in the NHS, but my total remuneration package is far better than what I was on in the NHS because the wages and benefits are far higher for a far less demanding job.
But wait, I can't be in the real world? Can I?

In fact, just had a quick look on a few websites, we already know the private schools pay more than the public sector, we already know that doctors & nurses get paid more for their work in the private sector than for the NHS and a quick vacancies check sees admin posts in private hospitals with far higher wages than in the NHS.

I've heard a lot said by right-wing media and free-Market apologists about how the pay, pensions & conditions are far better/gold-plated etc in the public sector. I'm yet to see any evidence for this.

I love how the press and the government are trying to pitch the public sector average joes against the private sector average joes while the richest public and private sector workers laugh it up with massive pay rises, massive bonuses and massive pensions.

Out of interest, I was wondering what people on this board consider to be a 'good' salary and a 'good' pension?

Should society begrudge people a decent wage if they have worked hard to get it?

Is this just another opportunity for some to be part of the 'us' in the never ending battle against 'them'?

I think you should start the ball rolling by answering a slightly different question. What do you consider to be a "Gold Plated Pension". You know like the one my wife was bound to get according to you.