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"And ring-fenced it where others' are failing, due, in no too small a

part to the £5 BILLION a year Flash Gordon has stolen from the pension

funds..........A bit like the 75% wage increase they voted themselves, JUST AFTER

voting to keep increases to 3% for us...........and less for the health

and public services.

Thats odd because real newspapers report this

Politicians at Westminster and Holyrood have been made to share the

pain with public sector workers after they were effectively given a pay

cut. Their salaries will rise by 0.66 per cent - well below inflation, at

2.7 per cent for the consumer price index and 4.2 per cent for the

retail price index.

So MPs did not get a 75% pay

increase after all where did you read that FA?  It was reported in the Evening (Daily Mail published)

Standard that some back benchers (INCLUDING SOME TORIES God forbid[:-))] ) wanted a 66% increase not that it had

been agreed.  The Sunday Times
reported that some Labour and

Conservative MPs had written to the Senior Salaries Review Board

calling for the increase to their £60,277 annual salary
, so if that was after a 75%

increase they must have been very poorly paid before[Www]
.

You got a 3% increase FA did you, well done you, above the rate of inflation?  Not too much for you then? No doubt you took the excess that you really did not need and donated to a fund for the children of illegal immigrants as every Daily Mail reader should, considering how much money the paper makes from stories about them.[:P]

For the record there  has been no cap on wages increases in the private sector since the £1 +4% under a Tory Government in 1973, so just out of interest who are the poor WE who only got 3%? You are not a Civil Servant are you, if so. how much do you pay for your pension or did I pay for it for you?  Mind you isn't it good to well off under a Blair government?  Well enough for many members here to afford two houses[kiss]  Anyhow, percentage figures mean buggar all,  I would rather have a 3% increase on a £10K per month pay packet than 50% increase on a £75 a week pay packet wouldn't you?

Anyway just getting back to facts and not what is printed in the Daily Mail for mugs to buy and believe, and remember it was such an outrage it took the Daily Mail 10 years to think about it,  £5 billion was not taken from any pension funds, in fact NO money was taken from any pension funds.  What happened was the tax concessions were removed from the cash rich and very well off pension funds in 1997 and the money received invested in creating jobs.  Now call me a cynic but isn't that what a government is supposed to do, make the best use of taxes?  Maybe that is why unemployment in the UK is one of the lowest rates in Europe.  Mind you is it true?  Can it be true?  Shouldn't the Daily Mail be congratulating New Labour for going from 3 million out of work under Thatcher to 1 million instead of throwing up 10 year old stories that really meant that due to the fall in stock values some pension funds were worth less than before and because they now had to pay taxes like everybody else?  Also strange is that since to FTSE climbed over 6000 again the pension crisis has suddenly gone away and not a bleat has been heard from the CBI or the Pension Funds since.[Www]

Anyway it will be good to see how the right wingers with second homes in France feel when they are compulsory purchased by the commune if Sarkosy ressurects the pledge from Chirac about every French person being entitled to a home and taking over empty ones.  Did you miss that FA?  Try reading the French papers, much more interesting.[Www]
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[quote user="Ron Avery"]
What happened was the tax concessions were removed from the cash rich and very well off pension funds in 1997 and the money received invested in creating jobs. [/quote]

It comes to the same thing.  Private pension funds, which had enouh money to pay the pensions their investors expected and planned for, now haven't.  Up till then pensions had been a relatively popular and sensible way of saving for later in life.  The funds were a useful way of getting people to invest in industry, too, so there was a double benefit to the country, lots of investment money available to industry, and less of a load on future generations of taxpayers to maintain pensioners.

It also means your pension savings are taxed twice, which rather defeats the object of putting it away in an untouchable fund, and infringes the convention that you pay tax on your pension only when you actually get the money.

People prefer to invest in real estate, now.  Or just spend the money instead.  That's Gordon's legacy - unaffordable property prices for first time buyers and a pensions time-bomb for future governments.

Oh, and Gordon's frequent use of the word "investment" to mean paying the same number of public sector workers more money to do the same work they were doing before, is one you won't find in most economics textbooks.

Patrick

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[quote user="Patmobile"]

In a hundred years time all they'll know about Blair is that he brought about the end of the United Kingdom.  Whether this will be seen as a good or bad thing, only time will tell.

What history probably won't record is that it was all the result of a typical slippery Blair manoeuvre for short term political gain resulting in long term unforeseen consequences.  Except that, of course, they were foreseen by lots of people.

[/quote]

Amen to that, Patrick!

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Pat you have point about pension fund investment potential etc  but most have their funds tied up in Government bonds, property, works of art and stocks, not out for investment capitalists.  But the loss of value of the private funds was not quite as you state, the value of many funds deteriorated not because of the removal of the tax concession but because the stock market that was by all measures overheated, (over valued) crashed and severely reduced the "nominal" value of many funds.

That meant that according to the rules brought in after Maxwell that funds must have assets to meet all potential liabilities, IE if the whole membership retired tomorrow they could pay their pensions, so many were left struggling and many companies had the stark choice of either to plough money into the funds to top up the value or to limit their liability by closing the funds to new entrants.  None of this had anything to do with the tax concession removal in 1997.

Two other points, pension money is only taxed twice in the way that money spent from wages is already taxed and when spent is subject to VAT, the money going into pension funds is not actully taxed is it?

Investment in public sector jobs. One of the fallacies of Thatcher's policies was the theory that it was better not to pay people to do unnecessary jobs and she employed "cost cutters" all over the place cutting jobs that had no apparent cost benefit, putting thousands of people in the public sector on the dole where they and their families had to be supported by the state for doing nothing, costing more to the country than they ever did than they did in their work.  In work, they had earnings that generated income for local businesses etc, but she did not care as she wanted to ensure that the richest people in the country who voted for her, did not have to pay income tax or rates to support these people. The only problem was that in the end that is what happened, the Social security bill escalated out of control because of the need to give money to people not working. So if investment is made in providing jobs private or public sector and that gets people off benefits and into work, that gets my vote, anyway, why should public sector workers be treated as second class citizens and be kept at heel, don't they deserve wage increases then?  If you don't reward people properly in the public sector they leave and go to the private sector and in some cases you end up employing them back again as consultants at a higher cost, there is also an old adage, pay peanuts,  get monkeys and in parts of the public sector, particularly the NHS that is exactly what has happened.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.

You only have to look at where it is from to know that it is politically biased. Now I wonder who reads and feeds material to the TORYGRAPH????????

Tag,  think for yourself for once and not believe all you read, or alternatively, buy the socialist worker or Private Eye for a balanced view.[:D]

By the way Isn't the former owner of the Telegraph, knighted amazingly by Blair for services to the Tory party in the courts for something trivial???

 On 15 December 2005, four new federal charges were laid against Black by Fitzgerald in Chicago. The new counts included racketeering, obstruction of justice, money laundering and wire fraud. Under the racketeering count, Fitzgerald was seeking forfeiture

of more than $92,000,000 (USD). The obstruction count against Black

related to a video that appears to show Black illegally removing more

than a dozen boxes from the Toronto office of Hollinger Inc [7]. Black returned the boxes about a week after the video had become public.

To read more on the pillar of society go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black

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[quote user="Ron Avery"]

"And ring-fenced it where others' are failing, due, in no too small a part to the £5 BILLION a year Flash Gordon has stolen from the pension funds..........A bit like the 75% wage increase they voted themselves, JUST AFTER voting to keep increases to 3% for us...........and less for the health and public services.


Thats odd because real newspapers report this

Politicians at Westminster and Holyrood have been made to share the pain with public sector workers after they were effectively given a pay cut. Their salaries will rise by 0.66 per cent - well below inflation, at 2.7 per cent for the consumer price index and 4.2 per cent for the retail price index.


So MPs did not get a 75% pay increase after all where did you read that FA?  It was reported in the Evening (Daily Mail published) Standard that some back benchers (INCLUDING SOME TORIES God forbid[:-))] ) wanted a 66% increase not that it had been agreed.  The Sunday Times reported that some Labour and Conservative MPs had written to the Senior Salaries Review Board calling for the increase to their £60,277 annual salary, so if that was after a 75% increase they must have been very poorly paid before[Www].

You got a 3% increase FA did you, well done you, above the rate of inflation?  Not too much for you then? No doubt you took the excess that you really did not need and donated to a fund for the children of illegal immigrants as every Daily Mail reader should, considering how much money the paper makes from stories about them.[:P]

For the record there  has been no cap on wages increases in the private sector since the £1 +4% under a Tory Government in 1973, so just out of interest who are the poor WE who only got 3%? You are not a Civil Servant are you, if so. how much do you pay for your pension or did I pay for it for you?  Mind you isn't it good to well off under a Blair government?  Well enough for many members here to afford two houses[kiss]  Anyhow, percentage figures mean buggar all,  I would rather have a 3% increase on a £10K per month pay packet than 50% increase on a £75 a week pay packet wouldn't you?
Anyway just getting back to facts and not what is printed in the Daily Mail for mugs to buy and believe, and remember it was such an outrage it took the Daily Mail 10 years to think about it,  £5 billion was not taken from any pension funds, in fact NO money was taken from any pension funds.  What happened was the tax concessions were removed from the cash rich and very well off pension funds in 1997 and the money received invested in creating jobs.  Now call me a cynic but isn't that what a government is supposed to do, make the best use of taxes?  Maybe that is why unemployment in the UK is one of the lowest rates in Europe.  Mind you is it true?  Can it be true?  Shouldn't the Daily Mail be congratulating New Labour for going from 3 million out of work under Thatcher to 1 million instead of throwing up 10 year old stories that really meant that due to the fall in stock values some pension funds were worth less than before and because they now had to pay taxes like everybody else?  Also strange is that since to FTSE climbed over 6000 again the pension crisis has suddenly gone away and not a bleat has been heard from the CBI or the Pension Funds since.[Www]

Anyway it will be good to see how the right wingers with second homes in France feel when they are compulsory purchased by the commune if Sarkosy ressurects the pledge from Chirac about every French person being entitled to a home and taking over empty ones.  Did you miss that FA?  Try reading the French papers, much more interesting.[Www]
[/quote]

Sweet Jesus, Ron, you REALLY get wound up, don't you?

And anyone that posts anything that YOU don't agree with is a right winger, Daily Mail reader etc etc etc ad infinitum.Boring.

OK, Ron, I think you are a lefty Guardian reader...........now run off and complain to the mods, see if they'll ban me. Isn't that what people like you normally do?

Freedom of speech? Not for anyone not of the left[:(]

Oh, and no, I DIDN'T get 3%, I got NOTHING, thanks very much. How much did your much vaunted MP's get in the PREVIOUS pay round Ron?

 

And if you, or anyone else believes that inflation is 3%, you are more naieve (sp) than I thought[;-)]

Shan't bother posting on this agin, LWBD.

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Ron, are you suggesting that the only way to get a balanced view in the UK is to read the Socialist Worker or Private Eye? Or is this meant to be a counterbalance to the Telegraph? I actually give myself the leisure to read the online versions of pretty well all the dailies but never considered Socialist Worker to be more than toilet paper. And do not brand me as a Tory or anything else if you don't mind.
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[quote user="Dick Smith"]Ford - you quoted figures that just weren't true to advance your argument.

I, and I'm sure others, would love to hear your explanation of why you did that.

[/quote]

Any answers - or are you too clever for all that proof and validation stuff?

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No FA, not wound up at all,  chilled right out,  I deal in facts and accuracy not the smoke and mirrors that you continue to churn out.  As for

" OK, Ron, I think you are a lefty Guardian reader...........now run off

and complain to the mods, see if they'll ban me. Isn't that what people

like you normally do?"

Well Grudian readers are normally Liberals, but I actually read The Sun,   I like to see the twin images of you on Page 3 and your post quoted above is nominated for the most pathetic and childish post on this Forum ever,  have you taken your ball home with you as well[geek]
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Yep Tag, you dust of the dirt where it has been lying in the dust where it was dropped , start at the left hand end of the headline, stop a the end of the first line, then look at the  breast feeeding equipment section on page 3 then move to the sports section ignoring the world shattering headlines about William, harry, Prezza, Roon, Toon, Macca, Biffa, Wizza  etc in between[:P]

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I think that it's important to see what the Sun says. It is the biggest-selling newspaper in the UK, and can't be ignored, however sniffy we may feel about it. I also look at the Mirror, the Times and the Guardian most days. Occasionally the Mail, but I do feel the need for a shower afterwards.

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Ron,

You state that 'the value of many funds deteriorated not because of the removal of the tax concession but because the stock market that was by all measures overheated, (over valued) crashed and severely reduced the "nominal" value of many funds.'

If Gordon Brown had not removed the tax concessions, the pension funds would have been able to better cope with any crash in the stock market. It was for this sort of volatility that the then pension fund surplus was intended to cater for.

The problem with pension funds was due to 3 major events (stock market crash, contributions holiday and the removal of tax concessions by Gordon Brown). To think otherwise is to deny the facts.

Glyn

 


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 Glyn who is denying facts? What I disputed was the "reported" £5billion taken from the funds, that was not true.  The facts of the matter are that in 1997 nobody realised what was going to happen and the fact that payment holidays were being taken all over the place raised the issue of whether these asset rich funds should  enjoy a tax concession to the detriment of non members and whether the money could be used to create jobs.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing and had the stock market crash not occured we would not be discussing this now.  Plus the fact it was politically expediant of the paper that raised this issue to dredge it up and spin what had happened 10 years earlier into the then topical isue of pension fund collapses due to bankruptcy and that Gordon Brown was tipped to be the next Prime Minister.  However, maybe, just maybe, Downing Street started all this off just to get rid of the dirty laundry  in No 11 before Brown takes office and lessen the impact of the "criticism of his judgement" after he becomes PM.  You never know do you[:D

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[quote user="Dick Smith"]I think that it's important to see what the Sun says. It is the biggest-selling newspaper in the UK, and can't be ignored, however sniffy we may feel about it. I also look at the Mirror, the Times and the Guardian most days. Occasionally the Mail, but I do feel the need for a shower afterwards.
[/quote]And their headline writers are occasionally truly inspired.  Whilst we might imagine that some of those who read the Sun are dummies, those who produce it most certainly are not.  They have their audience figured out to a tee.
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I can remember the documentry on pensions some time back in the new year, 25th Jan to be exact and the program was called 'Wheres my pension gone' (http://www.itv.com/pension/). There was an artical about Gordon Brown and pension funds in the Telegraph ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/02/npension102.xml ) and there is some more information at http://www.itv.com/news/7851371e743dfadd55993f85e0ea0788.html where there are acusations of incorrect information being given out.

I have my own thoughts but you might like to have a look at all of the above then make your own mind up.

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