Labour isn't working - Thread 21

[TheNuthatch]

A chat thread for those who don't like this Labour government. 💙

We are bracing for the budget 😬

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

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Yes I read that too. I am thinking they must have really lost the plot and gone completely bonkeroonie.

Genuinely one of the dumbest things I have read. It won’t help British students. Foreign students just won’t come. Less to go round. Many unis are already at financial breaking point. Seriously, what are they on?

Not everyone should be going to uni anyway. Blair's ridiculous scheme to get 50% of young people to uni was insane. What we actually need is apprenticeships and on the job training like we once had. So many people aren't right for university and will not benefit from taking on 100k debt. My dd1's friends are struggling to get work. They did degrees that are two a penny and now regretting it. It's outrageous to treat our young people like this. It's a travesty.

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@Legolava thanks that's interesting

Agree with posters saying people should not have been pushed to university, but I always thought that that was a way of amending unemployment statistics at the time.

Yes it probably was to a certain extent. Also Labour's "everyone must have prizes" mantra. Honestly I despair for young people today. I have 3 of my own and worry so much about what the future holds. When I was young in the 80s, you could leave school and get a job in admin or PA work. Many of my contemporaries had training in banks and estate agents. Now you need a degree to be an admin assistant. How could things have got so bad. Honestly, politicians just fuck things up, waltz off into the sunset and get a fat pension for life. It's not acceptable.

I have also found that private pension matches have become much stingier over the past decade.i have recently returned to salaried employment after a period of freelancing and before I left I was getting something like 10% of my total salary as a longer tenured senior employee, and new hires had at least 5%.

now an increasing number of employers are only offering the statutory minimum for new employees, even fairly senior hires. That means 3% of wages between 6240 and 50270, so max of a little over £100 a month. Unless you contribute early and significantly more than the minimum I don’t see how a private employee builds a sufficient pot. It is hard enough motivating younger people to pay into pensions voluntarily, the picture for private pensions will be dire if reeves attacks private pensions as is rumoured.

Ik it’s so bad.

@Labraradabrador the most generous contribution to pension I've had from a private sector employer is 4%

It took me a while to realise that people who are obsessed about pensions are assuming that everyone's getting a really big chunk from their employer.

Absolutely. University (or should that be "uni"?) has become a rite of passage; madness. Education is, or should be, wide-ranging, encompassing all strengths - practical and academic.

The demise of many excellent technical colleges robbed many people of the chance to earn a good living based on their abilities - much like getting rid of the SEN qualification for nurses, thereby depriving the profession of many talented and caring individuals while introducing a new breed of nurse - those who are too posh to wash.

When I started the application process for my job, my degree was irrelevant save for the requirement to have good basic GCSEs. The recruitment process was based mainly on aptitude and assessments - and that hasn't changed despite all the ramping up around the need for a degree for some very basic roles.

The other benefit for public sector workers is that, as I understand it, their pensions cannot be brought within the scope of inheritance tax, precisely because there is no individualised “pot”.

private sector workers DC pension pots will now be brought within inheritance tax.

Yes I agree with you about university being a rite of passage now. I was reading something the other day about how stressed parents were about funding their children to live away for university. The comments were, "oh but I want to have the uni experience." I mentioned that my children live at home and commute to local universities. People seem to think they are failing their children if they don't have the experience. Getting that much into debt for an experience seems insane to me. Thankfully, my children get it and don't mind being at home but they have taken years out to save and be self sufficient. I wish mine had chosen apprenticeships but they are doing good degrees which should set them up well. They won't be sticking around to be milked by UK governments though.

Re stingy pension pots. Start your own private one.

at this point 3% of my total salary would be a major uplift - I get less than 1% from my employer. And don’t get me started on rules around reducing taxable allowance on higher salaries - it makes it impossible to plan in a sensible way, as I frequently don’t know what my final salary will be until the last month of the tax year. The cap on final pension size was also poor policy and hopefully never returns.

there have been far too many changes in pension policy over the past decade, and it makes it impossible to plan finance. Attacks on private pensions also seem nonsensical from the perspective that we shpuld want individuals taking more ownership and reducing reliance on an underfunded state pension. I am very concerned that people my age (mid 40s and younger) will end up with lower personal pensions and also lower state pensions as well.

I know of someone who wanted the university experience, @Catatemyhomework.

A three course in Make-up and Hair Design undertaken at a former technical college whilst living in halls (despite the family home being only 10 miles away) to "max out" the social life has resulted in a job selling Benefit cosmetics in Boots.

I'll bang the drum for education in all its forms all day long, but I've often thought Blair had his eye on empire-building and profit rather than the long-term employment prospects of young people.

I can add as much as I want (subject to government limits which I'd never get to) to my employer's pension. I can't afford to, however (not to the extent that it would make a massive difference anyway). The disparity is the employer's contribution. Are you saying that private sector employees should make up the 25% difference between their (minimum) employer contributions and the public sector employer contributions? That isn't an ideal solution!

@EmeraldRoulette my nephew I'm ashamed to say is one of those swanning about whilst on PIP. He does have a genuine medical condition but it does NOT prevent him from doing anything. He has a car and drives around quite happily, he's been on several holidays abroad this year.

And yet he told the PIP assessor on the phone that he can't leave the house because of his condition.

He's 20. His parents both work in the public sector and always feel hard done by. His younger brother is a NEET although not on benefits as far as I know. He's DHs brother's son and it's hard to believe DH and his brother grew up in the same family.

DH is an additional rate taxpayer and it's hard to take that he does a stressful job and pays thousands in tax only for it to go straight into the pockets of my nephew and others like him. The system needs a complete shake up, PIP assessments must be done in person and there should be spot checks on people who claim to be unable to function and passport tracking. If he wasn't my nephew I'd report him.

the reduced ability to contribute when you hit higher salaries is a major problem, though. Prior to the introduction of reductions in allowance for high earners, I had a couple of bumper years pre kids where I managed to put full whack (50-60k) into a pension. The decision to do so probably secured my retirement, but is no longer an option for hig earners and many high earners only have a handful of years at that level, so need to make hay while the sun shines.

I would like to continue to fund my retirement but it is hard to plan contributions when bonuses are awarded in February and basically dictate what I am allowed to contribute without penalty by end of tax year on April 5th

@Legolava my DD has just started teacher training and I'm seriously wondering whether it's worth her paying into the pension scheme. Her contribution rate is quite high around 7.4% approx and will be even higher next year as she'll get a bit jump in salary.

She's 22 and I don't think she'll be able to take it until age 69 because it's linked to state pension age which will keep going up. This means she's probably only get the benefit for say 20 years compared to those who were able to retire at 55.

I think she might be better off saving into a SIPP although the rules on those could change too. As could the rules on the DB pension.

It's all such a mess and only going to get worse. I think she should emigrate. I have family in Singapore and they seem to have a very good lifestyle.

well, I agree with starting any form of saving even if it's not a pension

But what I'm questioning here is the generosity of the public sector pensions. I used to think it was because they couldn't attract people in by any other means - but I'm not sure that explains the generosity. If they were comparing it to private companies, and they feel they've got to compete in order to recruit, that's still massively over what they would actually need to offer isn't it?

I'm completely open-minded here. I have no idea what public sector recruitment is like.

@Woollyguru blimey. I don't think I'd be able to speak to somebody who I knew was doing that.

£15bn!!!! I swear I just read an article in the Times yesterday where Rachel said she wanted to make work pay and that people were in a benefits trap. Did she have a complete change of mind overnight?

I keep telling my husband about all of this and this morning he said to me why do you care? He’s not British and didn’t grow up there - it was the place for a great finance career and so lots of Europeans came - and of course lots have now left. But it’s my country and I’m just bloody horrified. And yes on the other thread we make people feel physically sick and no doubt if we ever go back to the UK we should not be allowed to use the NHS despite paying 45% income tax on high incomes all our lives in the UK because we had the greed to leave. We have paid multiples of our average lifetime cost to the government already! And if we come back then we will again be paying 45%! And it’s not going to get better because people that think that we can just print more money and just give everyone a sack of cash and therefore eradicate poverty and all the ills of the world are able to vote!

They are implementing policy designed to keep them in government in perpetuity.

The UK will truly become a ‘welfare state’.

You are best off out of it.

I think this kind of thing could catch on more broadly - not just council tax, but other tax not levied at source…

Anti-migrant protesters have been urged to stop paying council tax if asylum seekers are housed in a military barracks in East Sussex.

On Sunday, campaigners marched through the streets of Crowboroughcarrying signs and flags, many wearing plain white T-shirts and chanting: “Send them home.”

Crowborough Training Camp is one of two barracks set to temporarily house asylum seekers, along with Cameron Barracks in Inverness, as part of the Government’s attempt to close asylum hotels.

The site, which has the capacity to house 540 men, has been offered to the Home Office for a period of 12 months by the Ministry of Defence.
The protest was the second of three organised by residents and supported by Crowborough Shield, a campaign group.

If I were her, I’d leave. Singapore is an amazing country to teach in. They pay really well and respect their teachers. Yes, you have to work but the rewards are high. In England, you have to work hard and are generally hated. Teaching is a great job but not in England. Like I said further up, the highest attrition in the western world and that’s for good reason.

I think pre the Blair era, it’s hard to understand how university was available only to a small % of the population. I didn’t go to any sort of elite uni, but most of the students there had private or grammar school backgrounds. Comprehensive school pupils were a minority.

I went to a school that had 2,000 pupils. There were many that I knew in my year that would have been more than capable of university level but they weren’t really pushed, didn’t see it as something for them or needed/wanted to get jobs.

Access did probably need to be widened but unfortunately I think it’s now unarguable that standards have slipped and some courses really are a waste of time.