The truth about Francis Maude's pension...

[malakadoush]

So apparently the public sector have 'gold plated pensions'.

It would appear that, actually, MP's are referring to themselves.

Did you know that MP's pensions have been excluded from the current review and they won't have to pay additional contributions like the rest of the public sector.

And just in case anyone has missed this:

"Last week ministers tried to raise a scare about the alleged cost of the day of action. The fantasy figure they came up with was £500m. Even were it true, you would have to multiply it 248 times to get to the minimum calculation of the sum taxpayers have lost bailing out the banks: £124bn. That is why the "all in it together" rhetoric has attracted such ridicule. And there is no respect in which it is less true than pension provision. Cabinet members Francis Maude and Eric Pickles can look forward to more than £43,000 a year in retirement at the taxpayers' expense ? about £37,000 a year more than the dinner ladies they are now asking to pay more to get less. For those striking it is a very different picture. They are victims of the elite policy of taking money from the taxpayer to give it to the bankers and then plugging the budget gap at the expense of some of the poorest."

MPs are the biggest scandalous thieves out there. Doesn't surprise me their pensions are ok. Lets face it with their generous expenses it doesn't matter how high fuel, food and housing bills get because they pay for nothing. Makes you wonder why they get a wage - what do they spend it on?

I'd be for giving them a pay rise and then cutting expenses. Anyone out with London could stay at a hotel or perhaps have some kind of MP accommodation outfit like students have.

Don't forget, Baroness Uddin stole £125k, cannot afford to pay it back what with only having 3 houses and all...imagine the outcome had she been on benefits?

These people simply have no moral code. Why the heck were they voted in? And, by whom? Who and why do we have these people running our country.

Is Edith a Tory MP do you think?

That is a very good question zoe as they don't have a mandate to rule.

Thank you OP for posting this!

Nope.

And I agree about Francis Maude's character, and the expenses scandal.

But the OP was about MPs pensions, and was factually wrong about inaction by this administration, especially when compared with the planned boost to taxpayers contributions to the scheme which is what they inherited.

Francis Maude is just an awful, awful man like all Tories.

But "Lets face it with their generous expenses it doesn't matter how high fuel, food and housing bills get because they pay for nothing" - this isn't really true. They definitely don't get their food paid for (!), fuel is only paid for when they go to constituency events as part of their job (like borrowing a company car, effectively), and they have to pay for their own houses (or they bloody well do now - a few of them obviously played the system but that was ILLEGAL), just not for housing in London if their constituency is far away. Love the idea of the student-style housing for MPs - actually a lot of them live in things like this anyway (tiny rented bedsit) as they are hardly there except to sleep.

Seriously though, if I see one more smug Tory mush talking about how terribly inconsiderate and greedy those public sector workers are, I will punch him/her/the screen. Doubly so if there is any more talk about inconveniencing "mothers" - oh the irony.

The inconveniencing 'mothers' is part of the Tory script - they're trying to show that they care about women but the poor dears get all confused and forget that alot of the public sector workers that they are currently 'in disagreement' with are actually the women and mothers that they are supposed to be showing that they care.

This government is attacking public sector pensions and public sector workers while conveniently forgetting to mention their own very generous pensions funded by the taxpayer. I'm sorry but you can't excuse it by bleating about the previous government - this is happening now.

This government is also stuffed full of people with links to the financial services industry, which has made private sector money purchase pensions a joke. Previous government ditto, but it's this government that is in power now. A deadly combination of lax or actively harmful regulation and accountancy standards, plus allowing firms to stop paying into occupational pensions during the 90s (because they were claimed to have far more money than would ever be needed ) has seen a collapse in the value of private pensions for everybody except the fat cats.

The government is also being mendacious about public sector pensions, lumping all the different schemes in together in their public statements, although civil service/local government/NHS/teachers etc. etc. etc. are all very different schemes, some of which are fully funded and not in any difficulty at all. The cost of public sector pensions is barely going up as a proportion of GDP. So why is the government picking a fight? For entirely political reasons.

Edam:you seem to be wilfully misreading what I posted. This government is taking action on MPs pensions. The previous one was increasing taxpayers contributions - that would have been scandalous! This one a) cancelled that increase, b) is preparing amendments similar to those for other public sector schemes, c) ended MPs voting on their own pensions. This is all welcome progress.

You've omitted the role of taxation changes to private pensions - the biggest single detrimental factor.

SWC how on earth do you work that out? the drop in value of many private pension pots is absolutely down to the economic crisis which absolutely was brought on by poor control and behaviour in the financial sector.

I'm not wifully misreading anything, thanks very much. I'm not sitting an exam set by you!

And yes, the financial services industry has fucked ordinary customers over many many times. Starting with mis-selling scandal after mis-selling scandal. If you look into what's happened to occupational and private pension values. Start with mis-selling, with conning people into opting out of Serps, look at the regulation and accountancy standards, the 'pension holidays' where they encouraged firms to stop making any contribution at all for years on end - the benefits of the schemes accrue to the ruddy people who manage the investments and earn fat bonuses from exploiting everyone else - while of course the people who manage pension funds have also allowed executive pay to race out of control.

Edam, are you clear and articulate in RL too? Cos if you are, is there any way you could get on the telly to say your bit? Please? I just get a bit fed up with the astonishingly low standards of debate on the news and in the media generally. Specifically the unchallenged 'race to the bottom' where the failure of private pensions is put forwards unquestioned, inevitable, and as a reason to force public pensions to similarly fail. Does my head in.

Of course it's not an exam!

But I have been pointing out repeatedly the factual errors, and despite doing so several times they continue to be included. But it was wrong for me to attribute that to something deliberate, rather than simple mistake.

Nightlark, you are very kind! I am a journalist so get paid to be clear and articulate (although cannot claim to live up to this biling all the time or even most of it...)

Edith, pax? We disagree but can probably do that without getting cross with each other?

SWC, this is my point too, though. Commentators here and elsewhere name issues like 'Brown's tax grab', or 'pension holidays' but all the uninformed (like me) hear is the message that private pensions are crap, therefore public sector pensions should be crap too.

From my POV, why is the argument not 'how can all pensions be better'?

Not 'lets make them all equally crap'.

Cos it's still a problem, isn't it, if even more people have no pension, or a uselessly tiny pension.

And then there is the whole misuse of the 'gold plated pensions' message, and the conflation of deficit reduction with the imperatives of demographic change...

I dunno, I just know that there is a world of economic background out there that I don't understand, but crucially, that isn't discussed.

And I declare my conflict of interest here - in our family we have contributed to NHS, University and private pension pots in various jobs, seen one lot go bust (and loose 10 years of contributions, cheers Equitable Life) and currently pay in an immense proportion of pay to buy more years in a public sector scheme as we are both in our 40s now.

I just feel energy should be focused on making things better all round, not setting worker against worker and making things worse for all.

And I can't see that happening if all we ever get from the media are soundbites, and those with the information and intelligence to question matters just resort to party political squabbles all the time.

Rant over.

Good post Nightlark and I agree there is little useful intelligent debate going on. The government are - quite deliberately IMO - pitting private against public. They use phrases like '...that taxpayers in the private sector can only dream of' when referring to the pension terms that they want to impose.

As these are clearly educated (if misguided) people, I can only assume that they don't want an open and honest debate and from that I can only deduce that the reason for that is that the changes they wish to make are steeped in Tory ideology and are actually being made as part of a 'race to the bottom' as this will then make the PS easier to take apart and privatise. Thus creating profit for the (mainly) Tory supporting Outsourcing Companies.

Sadly though until the government are honest and open about their reasons for what they are proposing - and if they really believe they are doing this for the good of the economy and their supporters then why wouldn't they be - all we are going to get is more of the rhetoric and posturing.

The thing is - I know that PS pensions would have been changed if Labour had stayed in power, as the process had already been started - so this really isn't a party politics thing. But I also know for a fact that Maude and Alexander have told numerous lies and given out huge amounts of misinformation - quite deliberately and shamelessly.

And that basically is my problem with it all.

And - what this government should be doing is spreading the wealth and ensuring stable employment during this turbulent time. Not making hundreds of thousands of people unemployed and pushing pensioners of the future into poverty. This isn't good for anybody - private or public sector, as somebody further up the thread pointed out we will by then all the same - simply pensioners.

If you look at the numbers of pensioners in this country who die from fuel poverty related illnesses you will see that there is already a crisis and the changes this government is making is only going to add to that problem.

I misread this as the truth about Francis Maude's penis.

I dunno, I know I shouldn't be more interested in his penis than his pension, but somehow I find I've lost interest now....

As you were.

yeah, that would be interesting too!