To think that nurses who choose to strike over pensions will not get any sympathy from the general public??

[McQueasy]

Unison have voted to strike on the 30th, this means that nurses within that union have the choice to participate. As a result of this the NHS may have to operate as an 'emergency only' service for the day. Cancelling routine work, clinics, operations etc.

The governments pension proposals are ridiculous, in essence the average worker will pay between £50-£200 a month more towards their pension in what is realistically a levy. They will not see a penny of that when they retire (if they ever are allowed to retire as the age or retirement gets pushed back and back)

However, as operations, clinics and routine work is cancelled in an already stretched system, I cant help but think that public sympathy for this strike will be minimal.

The point is that 'the taxpayer' isn't paying anything that isn't for due to be paid by the employer to the employee for services rendered under the terms of there employment. Pensions and employer'd pension contributions need to be looked at as the total remuneration cost of employing a worker.

Does it not help everyone that public sector are appropriately rewarded for their work? Do they not have spending power that keeps the private sector employed?

Think of it is way, pay cut by way of increased pension contributions = less disposable income to spend = less income for private sector. Likewise for reduced pension income. The grey pound is worth £££££££££££.

We're all linked. You want the public sector to suffer to make you feel better? Step back and see the bigger picture.

X post Gaelic but bloody well said.

woolly it would be hypocritical for the government to say that the ballot has no merit because what % of the population over the age of majority actually voted for the ConDems?

I am not a nurse but I work for the NHS in an area where the average pension for a degree-educated professional with a massive area of responsibility is 9K

yes

9k

hardly "gold plated"

and that is for 30+ years of service

working to 68 ?

in a physically-demanding job, one that I have done repetitively for the last 47 years ?

ok...I shall carry my zimmer frame as I attempt to rehabilitate elderly patients on a ward that are younger than myself

many HCP's will go off retired on medical grounds, because they are physically not up to the job, when a fully qualified 25 yo will lounge in the dole queue

does that make sense to anybody ?

and to those DM readers who bang on about "tax payers funding public sector pensions" please remember that we contribute to our pensions and we are also tax payers, thus paying twice

what the govt are trying to impose will effectively double my contributions annually, make me work up to 13 years longer and reduce my pension by up to 25% (that had already been renegotiated downwards in 2008)

please, educate yourselves

Quite well educated thankyou.

If you double your contribution Anyfucker, you still wont be paying near to the true contributions needed to pull down a 9k pension for 30 years. And at least those small extra payments are into your own pension, and not some other fuckers.

gaelicsheep - hardly the same is it because you have choice. Try not paying taxes and see where that gets you.

Oh and on another note - the concept of a job for life is over. The public sector just haven't caught up yet, hence all the deadwood and aging workers out to pasture waiting for their big pension payoff. Its so transparent its laughable, but the public arent laughing now they realise they are being taken for fools.

Bring on the strikes. More fuel for the public sector bonfire. The people have had enough and the condems were voted in to sort it.

So, you truly have missed the point, lassylass. 'Those small extra payments' are NOT going into public sector workers' pensions. There will be no gain AT ALL for the people paying in. That's why everyone is so angry.

(Surprised you need to have this spelt out....)

The rest of your post is just vitriolic bollocks, so I won't bother with it.

Surely that's exactly the point - by raising the pension age we will all one day be the dead wood in our jobs only hanging on for a pension that's not worth a lot?

I think that were the politicians expected to subsist on the same pension terms that mere mortals have, there would be nothing to complain about because the terms would be miraculously improved.

How can anybody sit in judgement of NHS staff forced into those awful pension terms? They'll be forced to lose money to strike too. :(

And the whole thing will become unsustainable if public sector workers stop their contributions to the scheme (as I suspect many)

Don't forget the public sector has had a payfreeze and inflation has rocketed. I'm not saying the private sector hasn't felt the squeeze too - they have - but many of the governments proposed changes I believe will have a massive impact on the future of the services the public have come to expect. You won't notice it until you need to access them.

It would be a good start lassylass if you got your facts correct, in the first place.

Just for a start. No-one was voted into ''to sort it out'' - no party won the last General Election. And no-one voted for the coalition government unfortunately it's formation was legal under our 'constitution'.

As for ''jobs for life'' As just one small example, I prefer, for me and my family, a surgeon who has been working and gaining experience in the same job for as long as possible - like her/his whole working life !! The same is true of many, many other public sector workers.

Let alone the massive waste of my taxes [see we can all pay the my taxes game] to expensively educate & train any workers and then not employ them; don't expect me to be pleased about them leaving the country or being needlessly paid unemployment benefits. Wasting my investment in their future and also the future of my children and my country.

Many UK trained junior doctors are already working overseas and more will follow them because there are no jobs for them, here. It has always been the case that medics have gone to Australia, NZ, USA to gain additional experience and training and then returned to the NHS. This cohort is heavily indebted with student loans [and subsequently may be less loyal to the NHS] and maybe won't be returning so quickly. So, for each non-returnee that at least a third of a million £££ wasted.

The exact same argument is true for other healthcare professional, educators, social workers, research scientists, etc etc etc. Welcome back to the eighties 'brain drain'.

I understand that Germany is the current beneficiary of our UK science graduates.

Total support and will continue to support this even if it inconveniences me because I am bloody sick of the public sector bashing. Find a way to get Vodaphone and co to pay the sodding tax they should be paying instead. Ridiculous that public sectors workers get talked about as if they are the bad guys and then slated for having the temerity to strike.

Lassylass you are so bitter about the public sector. Is the axe you are grinding is due to the shit that you've been spoon fed by your allegiance to the Conservative Party? Having read though the posts you've made (which only appear to have been under this username for the past month) it seems that you only pop up and chip in when you can mention 'the taxpayer' or your belief that Labour buggered up the country.

I think we should ignore Lassylass. Let her peddle her evil elsewhere.

................and our engineering graduates.

Germany is also supportive and respectful of it's public sector workers - and why wouldn't it be? They are invaluable to the wellbeing of the german people and a large proportion of public sector workers are also essential workers and could bring unteutonic mayhem if they withdrew their labour. Indeed it generally treats all it's skilled workers well preferring to co-operate and negotiate with them rather than denigrate, scapegoat, bully and threaten .......like here.

And Surprise, Surprise. Germany doesn't have the same dreadful history of industrial action, strikes, rapacious bonus culture, non-tax paying, class warfare etc.

pessimisticmiss I suspect lassylass is some kind of mouthpiece for the shady Tax Payers Alliance from the fact she/he/it is trotting out all their usual cliches, cognitive distortions, anti-union, anti-welfare state bile etc in the posts.

Some of the posts are so stereotyped that they look as tho' they may have been generated by a botnet rather than an individual?

So more of an extremist right wing lobby group, 'think tankery' and propoganda type organisation with links to the tory right but also non-tax paying multi-national companies.

I'll stick with my facts thanks farscape, because the condems are the reality of political life for the next couple of terms. Live with it.

(or maybe just the Tories? The nation lives in hope...)

I'm not bitter. I'm just thoroughly enjoying watching selfish little piggies squeal and try to argue for other people funding pensions that they couldn't afford themselves. The economy has moved on, and so must the public sector. Labour know it, which is why they promised reform when they got into power (chickened out though - typically).

Oh and on a final note, the fact that you are being asked to contribute more for no extra benefit is because the pensions are too generous and some of that needs to be clawed back. It really doesn't matter where that money goes as long as the taxpayer gets a better deal. And there is scope in the contracts for these negotiations, so its all legal, all justified, and all good.

I highly suspect LassyLass is a troll fool ive encountered on a previous forum with issues against nurses and other healthcare staff despite the fact she herself doesn't mind burdening the NHS several times with her imaginary psychosomatic illnesses and trips to A&E due to not properly watching her child....

'selfish littles piggies'

What no one seems to be pointing out is that, in regard to NHS pensions, that they NHS Pension fund makes a PROFIT which is then put into goverment coffers each year. So our pension increase, within the NHS (remember, all public sector areas have different pensions) will simply be going to the government.

When this comes in, along with some other "money making" ideas at the hospital I work at, I will once again be earning less than I pay in childcare. I think I'll simply give up work, claim some benefits and not pay tax for the next how ever may years. And then, when I return to work, I'll end up returning to a much lower paid job due to the career break and pay peanuts in tax. That should make the government much better off.

'too generous'

Average 8k a year ? are you actually taking the piss???

unfortunately the media, fuelled by the Govt's agenda, are putting out a lot of misinformation

I saw something on the news the other day, looking at a nurses "pension"

it said he/she, with a final salary of 34k, would retire on a pension of 27k

that is so wrong it is laughable, and actually a criminal attempt to influence the "general public" (many of whom are public sector worker themselves, or have family that are) in a shit stirring fashion

I think a minority of rather stupid people are falling for it...or those that have a very strong right wing Tory bias. Those two being interchangeable of course...

they have my support and respect. I need nurses' help nearly all the time but will still back them all the way.

Fully supportive of nurses going out on strike. And the rest of the public sector too. And hopefully the media and the public will direct their frustration towered the Tories who are the ones to blame and the ones who can prevent this strike by not robbing public sector workers of pensions we work bloody hard for. And then vote the Tories out next time.

Well bloody said Sarahplane!

I do have a degree of sympathy with the striking public sector workers. I can see how from their point of view these changes are unfair.

The National Audit Office says the cost of paying pensions in the four biggest unfunded schemes - those covering the NHS, teaching, Armed Forces and Civil Service - was £19.3bn in 2008/09. Employee contributions were £4.4bn. This leaves the taxpayer to fill the £14.9bn gap, either from the budgets of the public bodies or direct from the Treasury.

The cost of bridging this gap has risen 38% over the past ten years. Left unchanged there will be a £1 trillion pound shortfall.

So who is going to pay? Well it wont be me. By the time all that money is due, I'll be retired. It'll be my/your kids and grandkids who will have to pay the extra taxes to fund the shortfall. My 15yr old was very sympathetic to her teacher's plight until I pointed out that it is her who her teachers expect to fund their pension gap. Suddenly she was less so.

The problem here is that this problem isn't a political one. It's a mathematical one. There simply isn't enough money to fund everything we want. Our economy no longer supports the lifestyle we want. So we have to make choices. If we want to fund these pensions then we have to cut elsewhere.

So to the striking workers. Sure ok, if you want your pensions, what do you suggest we cut instead? Benefits? NHS? Education? What?

Many local government pension schemes are 'fully funded' though. I know mine is.

Why does the only alternative have to be yet more cuts? Why not start collecting proper tax revenues from companies like Vodaphone?