Mopar Dave,
Hope you're well.
Everyone reckons that the MP pay increase last year was quite reasonable under te circumstances - yes, it was a big one but it was supposed to reflect their middle/senior management responsibilities. But in reality, the buggers gave themselves a HUGE pay increase recently, indirectly, when IPSA awarded them a pension fund injection of (it claimed) £10m. IPSA focused on the estimates of the cost of the pension to us all but no one bothered to look at it from the perspective of its value to the MP. We'll never get the deficit down (the Autumn Statement waffle shows us that) or get the public sector pay review right.
Some Sqn Ldrs/Wing Commanders get pinged by breaching the annual pension allowance when they get promoted. Apart from that, no one can contribute more than £40,000 per annum into their pension. Our illustrious legislators got around that by slight of hand. They only contribute (ostensibly) about £9000 per annum, or 13%. But.. the Exchequer contributes another 29% or so - staggeringly generous, it represents a huge benefit, but to keep the rabble quiet, IPSA's view is that it costs the taxpayer 20.4% of MPs' pay or £14,000 a year. After the pay rise an MP with 15 years of service will get an extra £2,850 a year in retirement. On the open market this would need a pension fund of £100,000 to provide. Across 600 MPs this translates to about £60m of value.
It's all about perspective and leverage. Talking of which, this from last week might be of interest to you and your colleagues.. paras 13-17 refer. Reading between the lines, I wonder if the real horse trading, negotiation and/or capitulation about the fire fighters pension dispute has started. In light of massive cost cutting that became clear on Wednesday, this might be priceless for you (all). It seems that the actuarial starting point for the fire fighters pension fund has been revised (downwards) to the tune of 5% over 10-15 years because of a (gosh!) last minute discovery of type of dog up. This will give the employer lots more room to absorb costs itself rather than pass on increased contributions when the pension scheme cost cap is breached and contributions need to be changed. In other words, I wonder if the hand of Sir Humphrey can be detected in this..
I used to help out in a homeless shelter in Peterborough - not often, just a couple of days a week. Out of every 30/40 'guests', 15 or 20 would be ex forces, and many ex RAF (possibly because of the concentration of RAF camps in the region). The council gave preferential treatment at the time to immigrants and women. I make no comment on that other than to reflect the official policy in the city. The most tragic case I remember was that of a former CT/FS in his late 40s who went from retiring on a good salary and to a good pension to losing his wife to divorce, his kids to a manipulative former wife, his home to a sleazy and uncaring financial services sector and his pension to a greasy solicitor. He lived under a plastic sheet opposite the multiplex cinema.
He had no fight left in him, I often wonder what happened to him. He had no sense of entitlement, he simply had no concept of the notion that he could raise his hand and reasonably be able to expect help. It wasn't pride that kept him from doing so, he simply wasn't wired to doing it. A mate e-mailed me a FoI request done after last month's widows pension announcement. The savings by not making it retrospective is relatively, a pittance. Certainly a hell of a lot less than the £15m the g'ment is currently crowing about by wishing to save on cutting immigrants rights to benefits. The Covenant isn't worth much, just a bauble to put on a political xmas tree.
Al R
I'm fine thanks.
Another highly informed post and only serves to reinforce my view that our "leaders" continue to get a way with murder. I, and my rather long in the tooth, but well balanced, moderate colleagues had the dubious pleasure recently of being lectured to by a very young, very well bred, very well educated and extremely bloody patronising, prospective parliamentary labour candidate. She was there to drum up support from, what she thought would be an audience that would hang on her every word. When we posed various reasonable questions to her, you know, the kind of questions that most law abiding, tax paying, law abiding guys would ask.......she made it quite clear to us all that we were a bunch of dinosaurs who needed to get with (her) programme! Before any one says anything, we were non threatening, professional and reasonable. She did clarify something for me that day.......that your average politician is not actually interested in what people think. I could go on, but I wont. There are decent politicians, I'm sure......I wouldn't know who they are, but they must be out there I suppose?
But the most despicable thing of all is, they keep expecting you guys to dig us out of the **** that they get us into........and then don't even have the good grace to bloody well look after you when you're in need!
My apologies for the rant......but I really am embarrassed for them as a profession!
cheers bruv
MD