John Ward November 21, 2012 PESNION RAID: Can-kicking replaced by George the can-cruncher

OSBORNE’S PENSION RAID: the most blatant buck-passing in British history.

Never go on long journeys with strange men

Sorry to start the day off with a blast like this, but the malign incompetence of the Chancellor has now reached the point where satire has nothing to offer his enemies.

The following points are probably of some relevance:

1. It is the avowed intent of this government to reduce every last chance of otherwise self-sufficient people needing to fall upon the mercy of the State.

2. To this end, for example, the percentage I can take off my own, private draw-down pension was last year reduced yet again: this despite the fact that annuity rates are at an all time low, and interest rates have been Zirped for the last four years.

3. Ian Duncan-Smith has in turn tried to rationalise the welfare system, and thus reduce the chances of a future dependency culture. Whatever you think of IDS’s efforts here, I applaud the idea: there is no greater cultural cancer than people who are still potentially active seeing the sofa as a way of life. But the damage to the Tories (and IDS himself – a good man who is a proper MP) has been incalculable.

4. Now Osborne proposes to hit the pension savings of people in their forties and fifties for no other reasons beyond (a) they’ve got some money and (b) when they suddenly fall short at retirement, it’s not going to be on his watch.

This act goes beyond can-kicking. Gordoom of course did the same thing: but at least the Scottish Problem did it when the economy was on a high and we were in good fiscal shape. It seems to me that the territory we’re in now is one of crunching the cans into the tarmac and going “Lalalalalalalalalalalala look I can’t hear anything”.

Financial advisers have reacted angrily to proposals to lower the highest tax bracket for pension holders from £50,000 to £40,000, saying the Government should look for other ways to lower the deficit.Well, they would say that: they’re salesmen. But that doesn’t make them wrong. Increasing the chances of pensioners being poor further down the line is suicidal self-interest – nothing more, nothing less.

Sadly, yet again we are left asking where the Party claiming to be Your Friend in Tough Times is in all this. I’ve Googled Ed’s Miliband and Balls uphill and downdale today; as far as I can tell, they haven’t uttered a peep. Maybe they will at PMQs tomorrow. And then again, maybe they won’t.

Or where was the scourge of all things Camerlot as Osborne announced his cynical raid? The Daily Mail: ‘High earners could have tax relief on their pensions cut by George Osborne under plans to make the rich pay more to tackle the deficit’

Every paper and every press release has called these victims ‘the rich’. Bollocks: doctors, head teachers, and senior civil servants are not ‘the rich’. The mandarins – fine, they embezzled their pension pots and should all be shot anyway. But the rich are the crooked bankers, property developers, multinational companies and others all demanding their special non-dom treatment via access to expensive ranks of tax avoidance accountants.

Cameron drivels on about Jimmy Carr, but signs off on the rank misbehaviour of Starbucks, Facebook, and a hundred other top firms whose sole rationale for paying less tax is that the money they get by paying less tax can afford more and more tax accountants so next year they pay even less tax.

This government in general – and Camerlot in particular – lack balls. And the Party opposite them in the den of thieves is too busy re-renting its properties to high-rollers at the taxpayers’ expense to get off its pimply backside and start man-to-man marking this team of unrepentant cloggers.

The Labour Opposition in this country lacks both the spine and the moral authority to take a convincing and radical position on fiscal policy as a whole, and the raising of banker-bailing taxes in particular. Be the issue expenses, property fiddles, paedophilia, perverting the course of justice, or waving their eager rings at the EU yardbrush, they are merely the Red Cheats. Meanwhile, the Blue Cheats are in power, and so the Red Cheats are looking at every chance for unprincipled opportunism as one more grubby means of regaining power.

The right thing? The national interest? An ethical revival? A radical set of inspiring new ideas? A bold throw of the dice as a means of grasping power back from the neocon crooks gradually privatising Westminster? Well sorry dears, but our radar’s a bit crowded now, and look how well Mandy’s done landing that Lazard’s job. Now buzz off and bother someone else, we’re busy.

Listen, Evangelo mate. When you get bored of Greece. You know, when they chuck you out and that. We’re about ready for you here I reckon. I can see it now: Evangelo Venizelos, Minister of Sport.

46Comments

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1

Lupulco on November 22, 2012 at 5:49 pm

nice one Caratacus.

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Le Gin on November 22, 2012 at 3:42 pm

You might not have asked me to pay your pension, but I suspect that I will have no choice, and neither will you. The alternative being that you do not receive anything, highly likely in my (largely ignorant) opinion.

I understand compound interest fine.

So, the Private Pension Contributions a person pays monthly goes in to a pot, that is subsequently used by some pension firm to gamble on the markets.
The interest works out fine (actually, using the oversimplified but still illustrative example below, it doesn’t cover the shortfall in any way whatsoever), so long as the firm gambling your money manages not to lose it (How did pensioners do after AIG collapsed, AIG having spent all those years of working peoples pensions contributions).
So, the pensions gambler looks like it’s going to go bust, but at the last minute is underwritten by……the taxpayer, aka yours truly.
That’s how I, the public, end up paying for the pensions of people who paid in to a privately funded pension scheme.
As for public sector pension schemes, the current phrase I think is “…largely unfunded…”.
The rules were never going to work.To me, the average Joe Public pension result at maturity sounds like a good deal, almost too good to be true. And you know what they say about things that sound to good to be true!
If someone came up to you and asked for a 120k 40 year loan, with the promise that they would double your return, would you go for it?

No superior tone, the statement stands – why the f**k should I pay yours, or anyone else’s, pension. If you gave it to someone else to “invest” and they lost it, tough. You lost it too. So, as @Col says, any readjustment of lifestyle after retiring will have to be readjusted again. Cut your cloth to fit and all that, even if some buggers pinched some of your cloth.

As for discovering….being aware….of what?That I have been paying other peoples pensions? I know. What a pisser, eh. But for how much longer?

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Carys on November 21, 2012 at 9:59 pm

The maths are against you. The rich may have a lot of cash individually, but they are comparatively few. The poor, though they are far better off than they were, and pretty numerous, are nonetheless rather short of assets. The only place where there are big numbers of people and relatively juicy low hanging financial fruit is the middle to upper middle class. That is where politicians of all colours get their funds from. While they last…

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Paul.J on November 21, 2012 at 9:40 pm

These figures leave out national insurance, so they’re a bit of joke.

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John Ward on November 21, 2012 at 8:15 pm

Thnx for that Ray’s mom: allpower to yr elbow

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Ted Treen on November 21, 2012 at 6:06 pm

“It reminds me of our choices at the ballot box”

That almost called for a new keyboard: Must stop having a culpa at the computer.

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Cris on November 21, 2012 at 5:36 pm

The further you can get your money away from governments, the better.

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Mark on November 21, 2012 at 5:25 pm

This tax (or lack of UK tax) on the large multi nations keeps coming up again and again. What the public doesn’t know and the politicians would rather not tell them is that this situation has arisen as a result of our EU membership and the treaties they willingly signed us up to. Basically when a multi national company trades within and across the European Union for the purposes of taxation the EU is regarded as a single country and they are only required to pay taxation on their EU profits in the EU country of their head office.
Hence and rather unsurprisingly many have chosen to base themselves in Luxembourg which has the lowest rates of corporation tax. This is not a loop hole it was by design. Perhaps if our dim witted politicians had paid more attention during EU summits as to what they were signing up to this situation would not have arisen. As the EU is a one way ratchet of ever closer union unless Brussels agrees to change this situation there is absolutely nothing they can now do unless we up sticks and leave. Pity our Prime Minister Mr Slippery can not simply admit this so we can all move on and get over it.

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dearieme on November 21, 2012 at 2:53 pm

Dear God, you’re getting worse, slogger. The one thing it clearly isn’t is a “raid” – the proposed policy (if proposed it be) leaves the the money in your pension untouched and its tax status untouched.

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Andrew Duffin on November 21, 2012 at 2:40 pm

Who’s this “we”, white man?

You mean where else can the State get the money from, I take it. Well frankly they can go take a hike – SPEND LESS you bastards, that’s what everyone else does when the money runs out.

And Le Gen, you don’t pay my pension, my former employer’s fully-funded properly-invested pension scheme pays it, all of it. Maybe you’re confusing me with one of the parasite class, I dunno.

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Andrew Duffin on November 21, 2012 at 2:27 pm

His self-indulgent life?
What, you mean trying to live on the savings he himself accumulated from a lifetime of productive work?
THAT kind of self-indulgence?

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12

Phil on November 21, 2012 at 2:04 pm

Uhhh sorry, that reply has got muddled up by a copying and pasting accident.

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Phil on November 21, 2012 at 2:01 pm

I agree almost entirely, Mickey.

My mother is one of the people who has been lumped in with the ‘evil public servants getting too much pension’. What kind of society are we living in where the government whips people up to say, ‘I’ve got a shit deal, I want everyone else to have a shit one too’?

Who exactly are we talking about in the public service? My mother has been a local government officer for the last 14 years trying to stop private care homes and grasping children fleecing their vulnerable parents. Her pension will be £4000 a year. And this is AFTER 29 years in the private sector prior to working for the council.

JW, re your remarks about IDS and Welfare reform – what infuriates people is the way straw men are set up to be knocked down as a way of wrecking the entire social security system.

IDS and his made up ‘think tank’, the Centre for Social Justice does NO fieldwork. It comes with ideological assumptions which are fed by Daily Mail propaganda. My friend works for Save the Children and had a stand up row with these people because what they are saying and presenting to the public has no connection with REALITY.

They talk about the cap on benefits as if EVERYONE on welfare was getting more than £500 a week. They’re NOT. I have been unemployed twice in 16 years. The second time was the episode when I really didn’t know where my next job would come from. I was NOT offered all the benefits under the sun. I got £67.50 a week – this is nothing compared to on the continent and one might say it is not much after 16 years of National Insurance. And don’t forget transfer payments are a way of keeping some demand in local economies. What would all those towns and cities trashed by Maggie have done if they’re hadn’t been a social security system. It was this shower of a party which reintroduced Structural Unemployment and has never sought Full Employment since 1979.

It is not true to say that there are thousands of large families out there just sitting on the sofa. When the latest piece of Daily Blackshirt hate was fact checked they couldn’t find anything like ‘120,000 problem families’ – in fact they found that it was based on interviews with 16 dysfunctional families.

The majority of welfare in this country is spent on the ELDERLY. And following that the disabled – do you know why so much is spent on the disabled? Because private companies charge local councils a fortune for disabled services. But hey! The private sector is ALWAYS better than the State isn’t it?

25% of people getting Housing Benefit are WORKINGI agree almost entirely, Mickey.

My mother is one of the people who has been lumped in with the ‘evil public servants getting too much pension’.

Who exactly are we talking about in the public service? My mother has been a local government officer for the last 14 years trying to stop private care homes and grasping children fleecing their vulnerable parents. Her pension will be £4000 a year. And this is AFTER 29 years in the private sector prior to working for the council.

JW, re your remarks about IDS and Welfare reform – what infuriates people is the way straw men are set up to be knocked down as a way of wrecking the entire social security system.

IDS and his made up ‘think tank’, the Centre for Social Justice does NO fieldwork. It comes with ideological assumptions which are fed by Daily Mail propaganda. My friend works for Save the Children and had a stand up row with these people because what they are saying and presenting to the public has no connection with REALITY.

They talk about the cap on benefits as if EVERYONE on welfare was getting more than £500 a week. They’re NOT. I have been unemployed twice in 16 years. The second time was the episode when I really didn’t know where my next job would come from. I was NOT offered all the benefits under the sun. I got £67.50 a week – this is nothing compared to on the continent and one might say it is not much after 16 years of National Insurance. Don’t forget transfer payments are a way of keeping some demand in local economies. What would all those towns and cities trashed by Maggie have done if they’re hadn’t been a social security system.

It is not true to say that there are thousands of large families out there just sitting on the sofa. When the latest piece of Daily Blackshirt hate was fact checked they couldn’t find anything like ‘120,000 problem families’ – in fact they found that it was based on interviews with 16 dysfunctional families.

The majority of welfare in this country is spent on the ELDERLY. And following that the disabled – do you know why so much is spent on the disabled? Because private companies charge local councils a fortune for disabled services. But hey! The private sector is ALWAYS better than the State isn’t it?

25% of people getting Housing Benefit are WORKING – and the majority of the rest are the ELDERLY. These are the figures – go luck them up!! Cameron sets up the straw man about 16 year olds going straight from school to a sofa in a flat paid for with Housing Benefit. It’s BULLSHIT! Young people in that position will be those who can no longer live with their parents for reasons like abuse – you know JW’s current (and correct) crusade. Do you know who the biggest beneficiary of HB is? PRIVATE landlords. The rented house opposite me is ONLY let to HB recipients – the buy-to-let parasite.. sorry landlord, wants his steady monthly income. Do something about the ridiculous rents in this country and we can bring HB right down.

It is NOT true to say that Labour has a ‘client state’ – as Fraser Nelson admitted in the Spectator – poor people DON’T vote. Labour lost 5 million votes after 1997 – only 1 million were ”middle class” (whatever that term means – you work for a salary don’t you?). The Tories have already reduced the number of public workers to LESS than the total in 1997 – and it’s still not enough! Because it will never be enough for hateful zealots.

*This is not a defence of Labour btw – the spineless shower that they are.

We are living in a time now where the Right is using pure prejudice and social hatred to knock down everything they always hated but never had the mandate to change. They have no connection with reality and have simply decided that they want to cut a arbitrary figure off the welfare budget – all to repay the money borrowed to save their backers in the City. They know damn well the debt has been made unmanageable by throwing £1.3 trillion at a failed free market banking system and by Labour’s refusal to tax multinationals properly – because they were so desperate to be taken seriously by ‘BIG business’.

And to this end, they and their friends at the Sun, the Express, the Mail, the Times, the Telegraph and on Sky will set the working against the unemployed (in a recession!), the accountant against the nurse, the able bodied against the disabled, the young against the old

And yet still the Tories wrap themselves in the Union Jack… It makes me want to scream.

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Full stop on November 21, 2012 at 1:51 pm

“The problem is is that the rules were never going to produce the desired outcome, do the maths. Why the f**k should I pay for your pension.”

More specifically, when did you discover this and what have you done about it?

Because whether you have been aware of it for years and done nothing to correct it, or you have only just discovered it and want to do something now you have, you surely can realise that you are merely no better or worse than anyone else. So why the superior tone?

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Full stop on November 21, 2012 at 1:15 pm

Whoa up Monsieur Le Gin, I haven’t asked you to pay my pension and when (and if) I finally get it, it will be about £100 a week, won’t it? That’s £5,000 per annum or are my sums wrong?. Don’t know where your 13k comes from.

As to the sums for invested and private pensions, can I introduce you to the concept of compound interest?

If not, perhaps you can tell me why those who invested in private pensions are asking you to pay for anything? They are not. Perhaps you are confused with public sector pensions?

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Ray's Mom on November 21, 2012 at 1:05 pm

We in the USA share your concern and disdain for the elected who live off the population and can’t bring themselves to return to their prior career or retirement without a pocket full of our money. To keep themselves in the style they have become accustomed to in office – they raid our pensions, savings and those of the next generations. They can all talk a good talk then exempt themselves from the final product of their lies and thievery.

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Le Gin on November 21, 2012 at 12:58 pm

No Edit…..should say “…He pays 6%…”

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Le Gin on November 21, 2012 at 12:57 pm

The problem is is that the rules were never going to produce the desired outcome, do the maths. Why the f**k should I pay for your pension.

Very oversimplified calculation –

A man works for 40 years, average income over 40 years is say 25k per annum.
He pays 65 and his employer pays 6% of his gross earnings. This is 3k per year.
Multiply by 40 and you have a pension pot of 120k when he retires at 67.
But he is expected to live to 87, so that 120k has to last him 20 years.
However, he was told he would get 12-15k per year as a pension. Say 13.5k.
Multiply this by 20. 270k. So, where does the difference of 150k come from?

The difference comes from me, and I can’t afford it any more.

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MickeysDad73 on November 21, 2012 at 12:37 pm

I am still puzzled by all this talk of embezzlement by civil servants over pensions, or ‘recently hugely increased civil service pensions’. I’d love to be the civil servant who is receiving all of this. However, I do know (being a civil servant) that in 2005 civil service pensions were cut for new starters. Existing civil servants did not receive any increase. The rationale behind this was to bring the cost of civil service pensions down, and Lord Hutton, in his 2010 report on this matter, did say that 2010 was the peak year for civil service pensions costs, and predicted that over the next 50 years, the costs would fall relative to GDP.

Notwithstanding that, the government has wihin the last year pushed ahead with reforms to civil service pensions which has meant my colleagues and I paying more, to receive less at a later age.

Whatever you think of the merits of either of these actions by the government, this does not strike me as an increase in pensions (huge or otherwise), or embezzlement by civil servants.

I may be wrong, but I am unaware of senior civil servants pensions being treated particularly more favourably than the pensions of plebs like my close colleagues and I.

I think it is worth remembering the monumental levels of tax avoidance, and the estimate that a third of the world’s wealth is held in tax havens, when the country’s and world’s economic problems are discussed.

It is also worth remembering the banking crisis (which seems still to be with us), and the recession which resulted from the credit crunch, when it is considered why the UK government’s deficit is so high.

I am most certainly not a supporter of the Labour party, but when you look at the figures for UK deficits since 1980, on average (apart from after the banking crisis occurred in 2007), the Labour governments ran lower budget deficits than the Conservaties ever managed. The Treasury’s figures are reported at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8636701.stm

I think it is inaccurate of people to blame the current malaise on overspending by the last government.

Let’s not forget, what we are seeing around the world is an ongoing crisis of capitalism, not of social democracy. The super-wealthy would love us all to believe there is insufficient money to afford various social programmes such as the NHS and the welfare state. However, when you consider how much tax is avoided and evaded, and how much wealth is stashed in tax havens, it is not that there is too little wealth, it is that the wealth (which we all create, let’s not forget) is concentrated among too few people.

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OyiaBrown on November 21, 2012 at 12:32 pm

Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.

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Bemused on November 21, 2012 at 11:37 am

Written by Dr Madsen Pirie | Wednesday 21 November 2012
Those who think that all our problems can be solved by taxing the rich more would do well to study this year’s tax facts mentioned by City AM editor, Allister Heath, in Tuesday’s edition.
1. The top 1% of earners earn 10.8% of all income, but will pay 24.2% of all income tax.
2. The top 10% earn 33.2% of all income but will pay 55.3% of all income tax.
3. The top 31,000 individuals (earning £0.5m+) will pay £14.8bn, which is more than the £13.9bn paid by the bottom 13,600,000 people earning below £20,000 pa.
4. Those earning £0.5m+ per year pay 43-44% in income tax, plus National Insurance plus indirect taxes. The very top 2,000 earners pay on average £2m each in income tax alone.
These facts are sobering, but a real injustice comes from the fact that those earning the minimum wage (for a typical working week) have income tax and National Insurance taken out of that minimum wage. Those on minimum wages would earn a ‘living wage’ were it not for the money taken from them by government. It seems wrong that people struggling to get by on the minimum wage should lose some of that meagre sum to government.

From the AdamSmith website.
I can’t help but think the UK governments simply spend / squander too much.

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steviefinn on November 21, 2012 at 11:32 am

:)

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Full stop on November 21, 2012 at 11:24 am

“It is not beyond the wit of man to introduce standard, flat-tax type taxation that would eliminate all tax avoidance, what is lacking is the political will to do so, mainly because to do so would limit political room for manoeuvre.”

And reduce by thousands the need for state employees to administer the absurdly complicated tax rules, thereby reducing the number of people in the debt of the state. As you say not in the interests of government and the 1% who work the complexities to their advantage.

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catvet on November 21, 2012 at 11:21 am

Perhaps we ought to consider similar to Warren Buffet’s suggestions, adding a little more realism into the Politicos!
Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just
pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more
than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible
for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds)
took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple!
The people demanded it. That was in 1971 – before computers, e-mail,
cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year
or less to become the law of the land – all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to
a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask
each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will
have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed
around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2012

1. No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no
pay when they’re out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social
Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the
Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into
the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the
American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all
Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and
participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the
American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void
effective 12/1/12. The American people did not make this
contract with Congressmen/women.

Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in
Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers
envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their
term(s), then go home and back to work.

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Peter C on November 21, 2012 at 11:13 am

What do you expect, John? Like it or not the political consensus since WW2 encompassing all the main political parties and the entirety of the developed world is that the only acceptable political system is Social Democracy; Big State, Big Welfare, Big Regulation, Big Spending, High Tax, Big Redistribution and Big Social Equality. All the main UK political parties are signed up to it and ALL UK governments since WW2 have implemented it, even the Thatcher administration only succeeded in curbing some of the previous excess while advancing Social Democratic policies.

A necessary part of this is manipulating society to go along with it, thus we have scatter gun welfare, universal benefits like child welfare, dumbed-down education, positive discrimination, promotion of minorities, ever increasing regulation, targets, ever more opaque methods of maximising government income, all-encompassing Health and Safety and ever more restrictions on freedom. Another necessary part is protecting or bribing the elites that could damage the system, big business, banks, national institutions, thus we have ridiculously skewed and complex tax laws that are full of loopholes which the likes of Amazon, Starbucks, BBC celebrities and politicians can exploit to minimise their tax bills.

It is not beyond the wit of man to introduce standard, flat-tax type taxation that would eliminate all tax avoidance, what is lacking is the political will to do so, mainly because to do so would limit political room for manoeuvre.

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Full stop on November 21, 2012 at 11:13 am

@col

Your observation was so stunning in it’s absurdity I almost couldn’t be bothered to respond, no doubt many others feel the same. However, if we don’t you might get to thinking you’d said something sensible, too great a risk, so see below:

“But where else can we get the money from.”

For what?

To pay MP’s to maximise their expenses, or salaries or pensions?
To fund an NHS which can’t afford to treat those who contribute so it can treat anyone and everyone who comes here from wherever?
To fund benefits for many of those same coming here from anywhere they don’t get funded?
Or the gold plated and recently hugely increased pensions of the so called mandarins?
Or to bail out the Bankers from the effects of their own stupidity?
Or to reimburse the speculators who have gambled and got it wrong?
Or to fund an ever more corrupt and incompetent EU?
Or to pay compensation to our fishermen who have been put out of business by ludicrous fishing policies (One of many EU actions)
Or to fund truly moronic subsidies to so called ‘green’ policies on energy like Windfarms?
Or to fund armies of Quangos which achieve nothing except draining the public purse and jobs for the gravy train boys?
Or to repay over 300 billion pounds of money printed in so called QE.

I could go on but hopefully you get the point.

And as for your final sentence, “When you stop working you need to adjust.” There are two possibilities, either you are a compulsive stater of the bleeding obvious, or you have been surrounded all your life so far by such steaming idiots, that you haven’t yet come across any of the many, many people in life who spend their whole working life over decades planning so they can ‘adjust’ on their retirement. No doubt JW was one of them, what on earth makes you think he was stupid enough not to recognize he has to plan for retirement?

The problem for JW (and a lot of others) is that he has spent 60 years playing by one set of rules and then the scheming lying PTB have popped up and changed them all, as in destroyed the previous rules.

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Whoflungdung on November 21, 2012 at 10:47 am

Left or right, red or blue. Why be surprised, they are doing exactly what they need to do.

“A society of sheep must in time begat a government of wolves.”
― Henry de Jouvenel

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous
misattributed-albert-einstein

We keep trusting government to do the right thing for the people. Ergo- we are insane.

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MaxC on November 21, 2012 at 10:44 am

Who is rich and who isn’t? The figures are from the USA, but UK figures are likely to be similar … The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Owns 40 Percent Of The Nation’s Wealth
In full, including a pie chart .. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/?mobile=nc

JW is right on this one. Osborne should be going for the top 1% – except that he’s afraid to; they own politics.

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Jason Aris on November 21, 2012 at 10:38 am

The reduction in draw down income has happened to ym father in law (who being an ordinary man who has worked all his life he just cannot understand what it has got to do with the Government as to how he spends his savings and I agree with him).

All this is doing is making pensions even more unnattractive to younger people if things carry on we will see a collapse in investment activity and the whole economy could implode spectacularly

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johnnyrvf on November 21, 2012 at 10:33 am

I have spent my life from the age of 17 working, in my late forties I emigrated to another part of Europe and invested all I had over here in France, I have a small ( well below the present tax level ) U.K. private pension which would be laughed at by any one on benefits, it would have been O.K. except it was with E.L. which b*ggered it up big time 15 years or so back. but what I have I WORKED for and now the govt. wants to steal that as well, to fund their pathetic social state? Telling people like John and many others including myself to adjust just does not cut it. If you do not like your situation, get off your a*se and change it, I can’t see myself retiring until I am in my seventies, how about you?

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Altergoman on November 21, 2012 at 10:21 am

Recently the Coalition floated the idea that a goodly proportion, £45 Billion comes to mind but i’m not certain, of Local Government Pension Funds should be invested into infrastructure projects.

The unsaid reason for this is great new idea to get growth back into the UK Economy is because the Private sector are not touching infrastructure projects with a bargepole as they are too likely to fail to produce adequate returns for them and they view them as much too difficult and risky!

One gets the idea that they (the gov.) really do not care/know/are charlatans.

Why do MP’s believe that they and their pals should be very well paid, have enormous expenses and superb index linked pensions just to float hare brained schemes and do the ever so difficult task of spending vast sums of other peoples money?

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32

ronnie101 on November 21, 2012 at 9:54 am

FYI
UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli’s last phone call with bosses – audio
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/audio/2012/nov/20/ubs-rogue-trader-audio

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33

savepenrhos.co.uk on November 21, 2012 at 9:53 am

Rich? I’d say anyone in the top 25% of salary earners is rich. The next 50% middle and the last 25% as low.

Check the data. Not the average wage, but the full-time median salary. You’ll be in for a shock. We are nowhere near as well off in this country as a society as people think. 25K is a good salary, above median. 30K and upwards is very uncommon.

Then you’ll realise why 70% of the children that come from families where at least one adult is in full time work, those families are reliant on tax credits, and why nearly three quarters of families in work not only have no savings, but their unsecured debts (excluding cars and houses) exceed their monthly income.

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34

theguvnor on November 21, 2012 at 9:52 am

I remember catching my eldest as a toddler in the kitchen with a handful of his own faeces in one hand and a handful of catfood in the other deciding which to eat first! It reminds me of our choices at the ballot box. Here’s Cameroons latest blunder of his own making (but unlike the blogger I in no way feel sorry for him!)
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83350

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35

Me again on November 21, 2012 at 9:51 am

Mustn’t blame the politicians chaps. They only think they are in charge.

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36

steviefinn on November 21, 2012 at 9:51 am

Does this public you mention include those who have trillions stashed away in tax havens ?

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37

Me again on November 21, 2012 at 9:50 am

Everything is relative. I’d love to be in a situation whereby I could weep over this but hey they’re rich compared to me.

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38

HarrysDad on November 21, 2012 at 9:43 am

Perfectly true. The red and blue parties will be quite happy to play “pass the shitty parcel” forever. Just extend the shelf life of the “look at the mess we inherited” mantra to five years so none of them can ever be blamed, and they’ll all have successful and profitable careers at our expense

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39

col on November 21, 2012 at 9:31 am

But where else can we get the money from. The rich old are going to have to pay more. Your generation holds all the gold John. You run two homes (good on you), but maybe the time is coming when you will need to prioritize. When you stop working you need to adjust.

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40

kfc1404 on November 21, 2012 at 9:25 am

Never ceases to amaze me that anybody thinks there is any difference between the two parties, that’s why there is no credible opposition, they are only concerned for their own comfortable existence and they support each other in maintaining the status quo.

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41

Andy on November 21, 2012 at 9:17 am

Exactly right. The Public have been conned into believing you can have your cake and eat it too. You can’t. The States finances are in a disgraceful mess and most of that is because Labour spent money like a latter day Viv Nicholson. The truth is that the State needs to do less and spend less, much less. We need a balanced budget. Wardy has just become a grandfather. What he fails to see is that his self indulgent life is being paid for by that new born child. That is outrageous. We need radical reform, but we wont get it.

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Caratacus on November 21, 2012 at 8:54 am

With you there Stevie … here’s a temporary antidote to the Ungodly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C0fAnwX76aI

The majority of folk are good people; today I have resolved to look out for them a tad more keenly!

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43

Old Nick Heavenly on November 21, 2012 at 8:49 am

just because the general public have lived in a totatlly fantasy world for most of the time that they have been breathing does not and cannot make those fanasies real

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steviefinn on November 21, 2012 at 8:47 am

Never mind the morning blast John, it can hardly be avoided, it’s a sign of the times. I would personally think of the three bunches of careerists who fight for the right to sell us out as 3 shades of blue. Seems to be the same everywhere, so called progressives being anything but. Like this faux socialist in Ireland, they simply cannot keep their snouts out of the trough :

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/eamon-gilmores-wife-moves-her-92000-job-to-ruairi-quinns-office-3300568.html

Obviously tough for you to keep up with the amount of crap out there. but when you can, how about a breath of fresh air, some anecdotage.

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45

ALD on November 21, 2012 at 8:39 am

Correction for mistypes
AS Above……………-so apart from making you feel better we continue down the plughole.

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46

ALD on November 21, 2012 at 8:37 am

The trouble is there really is nothing we can do. If Conseratives put this in place , Labour will never reverse it so its a downward spiral. Writing about is all very well but no one will do anything-so apart from making you feel continue down the plughole.

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