Would you vote for Labour/Getting rid of Triple Lock at the next general election?

[mybiggreenfrog]

Yes (YABU)
No (YANBU)

The trouble is that people 45 and under have had most of their adult lives during an extended period of wage stagnation and high inflation of basic costs of living. They are also trying to secure housing and start families at this time of life, which are both now ruinously expensive.
I’ve just had to cancel my voluntary payments into my pension. The mortgage, council tax, childcare bills, food costs etc etc etc have done for me for now. I hope to get back to it when youngest is in school and I can actually afford to work full time again.
I started a pension for each of my kids at 4 years old though so hopefully they will be ok. I’ll be lucky to see any kind of state pension but I can’t see it being in place for them ( though they will still be expected to pay for the older generations I’m sure!).

Yes, taxpayers who are getting rather more for their tax than private sector workers.
Can you not see how unfair that is?

And in many cases contributing rather more in other ways than private sector workers. Contributions to society aren’t just financial.

That's not on public sector workers. Would you rather we got less, or you got more?

Nutshell.

Oh what utter nonsense!
Overworked, underpaid AND heroes into the bargain 🙄
It'd obvious who the public sector workers are on this thread. Honestly, it would do you far more credit to just admit your pensions are pretty much the best out there for ordinary workers rather than twisting yourselves in knots to justify why you deserve them.

We do deserve them. Me, education, husband, social work. There are things we have seen that we can't unsee.

There are babies, toddlers, primary and secondary children that we still talk about and pray they are ok.

When you have driven a 6 year old boy around a city trying to find the "big white house" he was continually raped in, come back to me with your roll eyes.

Nobody mentioned heroes, did they? However it would take a spectacularly shortsighted person to argue that a hedge fund manager makes a greater contribution to society than a health worker.

Underwritten by taxpayers. Guaranteed pension payments no matter what. Unlike the private sector. Also local authority employee pension contributions are made by public bodies which are by definition finanaced by the taxpayer.

No, not underwritten by tax payers. They’re independent pension funds.

If the local authority goes bust and is unable to pay the pensions of its workers the taxpayer steps in.

Reality check time.

A hedge fund manager (earning an average of say £750k) pays around 70 times as much tax as a £30k healthcare worker.

That contribution to society pays for a lot of UC, PIP, State Pensions, and all those other benefits the healthcare worker isn’t supporting.

This is why it is so damaging when the militant left forces these high-net worth individuals to leave the UK.

Well said.

See, it’s all about money for you. Some of us value other things more highly. No amount of money could have saved my bloke’s life without a surgeon’s skill and the team behind them.

That surgeon was paid for by taxpayers. Of which a hedge fund manager would have contributed a large proportion.

Nothing in life is free.

The money would have been pointless without the skill.

The thing is though, all public sector workers are not health workers and all private sector are not hedge fund managers 😂
What about care workers (private) or the many compliance/admin roles in the public sector?
Is a receptionist at the local council any more deserving than a receptionist at as motor dealership? Is the job contributing so much more to society the employee is worth x6 the pension contributions from their employer. Give over.

The skill is paid for by taxpayers. The surgeon is hired by taxpayers.

We don't need to pit one against the other surely. Horses for courses. That surgeon was the most important person for you at that time.

The skill is the surgeon’s. The money is useless without it.

Obviously I would rather I got more. But that's not going to happen as employers will not be able to afford to pay (don't forget, the majority of private sector workers are employed by SMEs).
If the public sector was not funded by the taxpayer, I would have no problem, they can pay what they want. But as it is, I think it's fair to question why their pension provision is so massively out of step with that of the the general workforce, when it is being funded by all of us.
There's scrutiny of state pensions, scrutiny of benefits, calls for international aid to be scrapped, reduced funding for public services, yer public sector pensions are never mentioned. That's my issue..

Reality check again.

Money buys anything and everything of value. Everything.

It buys expertise, quality, care, diligence, vigilance, excellence.

This is why I want the UK to be productive and financially successful. I want it to be a technology innovation powerhouse, developing high value world class products and services.

None of that can be achieved by a large useless money sapping benefits dwelling underbelly.

Ok well we could go round in circles but clearly it's a personal issue for you so we can leave it there.

It’s a personal issue for anyone who needs healthcare. Which is pretty much everyone unless they’re dead.

Well that wasnt really the original point. You were trying to judge people's worth to society using your own personal example. Whereas of course different people are needed for different things. Anyway its a pointless argument. If I was trying to put out a fire I wouldn't be dialling 999 for a surgeon. A fire(person) would be the most important person then. And thats just an example so please don't carry on with this and include your surgeon in this fire scenario 🙏 I couldnt bear the effort to have to deal with it...

I bet you wish you’d never started this now, don’t you?