Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:51 pm  

ROBINSON wrote:

Fair, if dramatic, point, ..

Very fair indeed ... but not quite as dramatic as you might think, given Cameron's moves to shift electoral-roll registration outside the responsibility of local government.
In the future, when self-disenfranchisement thereby becomes very widespread, the dislocation of the masses from the political system will be be even more clear.
I see in the polls that women are expressing great dissatisfaction with him, they'd better watch out or he might be tempted to repeal universal suffrage.
But never mind, he's already appointed lots of new peers to take up the slack.

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:59 pm  

ROBINSON wrote:

Fair, if dramatic, point, but consider this.

Our grandparents invariably did something to save us from the Germans. Also, private pensions didn't really exist, and people were unlikely to live very long past retirement age anyway. Therefore, the state pension was affordable and appropriate.

Nowadays, however, we're all educated (or should be), and therefore in my opinion at least, there is no excuse for not doing at least SOMETHING to ensure your retirement isn't spent freezing and living on lentils. It's not hard to set a pension up, and if you start one early enough, you'll get a reasonable whack out of it when you've stopped working.

Say you retire at 65 and are expected to live until 70, it's one thing making a pot of, say £100,000 last for 5 years. However if you're now expected to live for another 15 years beyond retirement, you either have to make that £100,000 last 15 years, or find another £200,000 to give you the same money per month.

Where do you suggest that extra money comes from?

I'm suggesting that in fact the saving of money into a pension pot is not as simple as you think, I contributed between £300 and £500 a month for several years (until recently) into a NatWest pension only to find that in three out of the last seven years they have lost money from my pension pot and they have now finally thrown their hands in the air and declared that they don't want to do pensions any more, selling the whole business to Aviva.

My pension pot currently stands (only just) as a very sick looking individual and I certainly cannot now afford to "invest" that sort of money any more as I now earn what is regarded to be a national average sort of wage, my children who are just starting in the workplace now currently have money to waste from their wages and could feasibly start a pension scheme and we are trying to get them to do so but with little faith in what they might be "investing" in - however they are also of child bearing age and (hopefully) might be thinking of setting up homes of their own soon (jesus I hope they are anyway), and so in the next phase of their lives the question of the sort of substantial sums that would be required in a private scheme would be out of the question.

The idea that a 20 year old can put a fiver a week into a pension plan that will pay them a liveable pension at 65 is what governments have always tried to sell in order to relieve themselves of the responsibility - it doesn't work, and sooner or later a government will admit that and make some reasonable provision out of public funding.

To take up your other point I agree with your grandma, I won't need a huge amount to live on in ten (more likely fifteen) years, at todays prices I'm looking at a monthly amount of around £900, which, if my mortgage is paid off is do-able, its not at decadence level by any means but two of us could live on that.

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:01 pm  

ROBINSON wrote:

...
Our grandparents invariably did something to save us from the Germans.

Haven't a clue what this refers to, so will skip it.

ROBINSON wrote:

...
Also, private pensions didn't really exist, and people were unlikely to live very long past retirement age anyway. Therefore, the state pension was affordable and appropriate.

Nowadays, however, we're all educated (or should be), and therefore in my opinion at least, there is no excuse for not doing at least SOMETHING to ensure your retirement isn't spent freezing and living on lentils. It's not hard to set a pension up, and if you start one early enough, you'll get a reasonable whack out of it when you've stopped working...

What proportion of a wage under, say, £20,000 would you say should be put away (and frittered by fund managers) to provide a decent liveable pension?
Then step down a bit, what proportion of a minimum wage should be invested to provide a decent liveable pension?

I would contend that the £6bn that Vodafrone didn't pay in tax would help out greatly in this area.

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:20 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Haven't a clue what this refers to, so will skip it.

What proportion of a wage under, say, £20,000 would you say should be put away (and frittered by fund managers) to provide a decent liveable pension?
Then step down a bit, what proportion of a minimum wage should be invested to provide a decent liveable pension?

I would contend that the £6bn that Vodafrone didn't pay in tax would help out greatly in this area.

That whole post is a pisstake. Come back with something more sensible and we'll talk.

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:35 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Oh yes, all the fault of "the unions".
BL was on the way downhill from lousy decisions from Lord Stokes onwards.
The unions didn't help but they were not the primary cause of the demise.

The loss of virtually the entire coal-mining industry was considered by the Thatcher government to be a price worth paying to destroy the miners' unions.
That was a political decision, implemented illegally.
I despised Scargill as much as anyone did ... but let's be right about what was going on.

Without Unions, working conditions and pay would have remained at Victorian levels, or taken many, many years longer to be remedied.
Look at Germany and its highly-unionised workforce ... seems to work there doesn't it?
Let's not be stupidly short-sighted and blame the very existence of unions for our ills.

Organised labour has a part to play in ensuring reasonable working terms/conditions - the problem comes when they try and operate outside of the core remit e.g. Scargill/Jack Jones/Dean/Reid and their ego overtakes them. Its is no surprise that we no longer have any mining/shipbuilding/newspaper typesetting/car manufacture outside of the Japanese - all had one thing in common!! The demise of mining in this country was down to one person and one person only Arthur.

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:41 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Organised labour has a part to play in ensuring reasonable working terms/conditions - the problem comes when they try and operate outside of the core remit e.g. Scargill/Jack Jones/Dean/Reid and their ego overtakes them. Its is no surprise that we no longer have any mining/shipbuilding/newspaper typesetting/car manufacture outside of the Japanese - all had one thing in common!! The demise of mining in this country was down to one person and one person only Arthur.

Someone better tell the Clyde shipbuilders, Land Rover, Range Rover, Jaguar and BMW Mini...

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:43 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Very fair indeed ... but not quite as dramatic as you might think, given Cameron's moves to shift electoral-roll registration outside the responsibility of local government.
In the future, when self-disenfranchisement thereby becomes very widespread, the dislocation of the masses from the political system will be be even more clear.
I see in the polls that women are expressing great dissatisfaction with him, they'd better watch out or he might be tempted to repeal universal suffrage.
But never mind, he's already appointed lots of new peers to take up the slack.

And on the opposition benches too!! On PMQ's this lunch time one lady MP, in the middle of her question stated Cameron is turning women off in more ways than one! Made me giggle anyway

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:17 pm  

ROBINSON wrote:

That whole post is a pisstake. Come back with something more sensible and we'll talk.

Translation: I am unable to answer any of your points, so I'll try to make out that it's you that's stupid.

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:51 pm  

Big Graeme wrote:

Someone better tell the Clyde shipbuilders, Land Rover, Range Rover, Jaguar and BMW Mini...

How many people are employed building ships on the Clyde? anyone who flies into Belfast City Airport can see how well Howland Wolf are doing!!

Of car production in the UK what % is Japanese? The Honda factory in the NE is claimed to be the most efficient in Europe, just shows what happens when management and employees work together without the interference of the TGWU!!.

Re: Bloody Trades Unions ballsing it up again : Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:58 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

How many people are employed building ships on the Clyde? anyone who flies into Belfast City Airport can see how well Howland Wolf are doing!!

Translation - I made some huge generalisations and now I'm back-peddling.

Sal Paradise wrote:

Of car production in the UK what % is Japanese? The Honda factory in the NE is claimed to be the most efficient in Europe, just shows what happens when management and employees work together without the interference of the TGWU!!.

The workers are the same, the bosses however have had a huge upgrade.