bridge too far

wacker

gooseberry

I should have added that public sector employees, like private sector employees, can make Addititional Voluntary Contributions to boost their pension. I think, but don't know for sure, that these are used to buy an addition to the pension pot (not matched by the employer).

Blanchflower

I guess there are two points. Firstly, MOST public sector employees earn less than comparable private sector employees. Two examples don't prove a point but I can tell you that my daughter (again) earns about half of what she should could earn in the private sector as an IT project manager. I earned a lot less than my equivalents as a construction project manager. I don't know how those 'average' figures are worked out - whether on all employees or on full-time only. As a rule of thumb, public sector pensions work on this formula: 1/80th final salary x years of service. The average NHS wage is around £16K so if you earned the average wage and worked for 20 years, your pension would be about £4K pa. However, new employees' pensions are based on average rather than final salaries. Obviously, if you worked part-time, your reckonable wage would be lower. Perhaps an argument should be held with private sector employers about how they could help their employees more. After all, their directors get huge, non-contributory pensions. At least the public sector scheme, for all its faults, treats people on an equal basis.

Sandy

In the NHS, the 'employer' contributes 14%. Again, I refer you to the link wherein it says that the average public sector pension is £7K pa but the majority of public sector pensioners receive £5K pa. Half of all women who receive NHS pensions get less than £3,500 pa. My daughter, who works for a Housing Association (they operate in much the same way) has effectively taken a pay cut this year as her employer is not increasing salaries but her pension contribution % is rising. I've worked with many people in the NHS who cannot afford to contribute to the pension scheme and who have contracted out.

If you work in the public sector, you cannot receive your pension until you are 60 (if female) or 65 (if male). This is changing and the age at which you can receive your pension will increase. The exception to this is that nurses can retire earlier in recognition of the damage they inevitably suffer to their backs. Female nurses currently can receive their pensions at 55, I think. A public sector employee can 'retire' at any age. But they won't receive any pension until they reach the pensionable age I referenced above. And their reckonable pension (which reflects years of service) will obviously be less. If you read the link I've just posted, you'll see the myths about public sector pensions explained in some detail. It might be worth looking at it for your own edification.

chary (see what I did there?)

They do - usually about 6% HTH Have a look at page 5 of this document - employee contribution rates vary between about 3% and 11% http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/publicsectorpensions.pdf

Layne [haven't we been here before?]

benedict

love

earth

With respect, you misunderstand Socialism. Understandable - we haven't seen it yet. Socialists don't want everyone to be the same, as you well know. They just believe that if everyone is given every chance in life to be reasonably housed, well educated, and healthy then they have a resonable chance to develop to their full potentials.

So all the little and large investors would lose their investments overnight?

The Globe (as in theatre)

The payments are already negotiated and written into contracts as 'rent'.

Quite right but please don't lose sight of the fact that the last government didn't introduce the idea of PFI. OK they ran with it once elected in 1997 but it was actually implemented in about 1995 by the Major government. I know this to be so because in 1993 I started to work on a (conventionally funded) hospital scheme. Half way through the design stage, we had to stop and then start again with a PFI partner. The process was halted in 1997, when parliament dissolved, and a moratorium was imposed by the Treasury until the new government was in place. I was always against PFI as a matter of principle but I could see the advantages it delivered: 1)A plethora of new hospitals and schools etc. 2)Transference of risk to the private developer (because most PFI buildings are 'leased' for 25-30 years and then handed back to the developer who is then stuck with a bit of a white elephant. In 25-30 years' time, advances in medicine could mean that large hospitals will become largely irrelevant - think back to medicine in the 1970s and how we've advanced). The bits I didn't like were the soft and hard maintenance contracts. We've all seen what's happened because, for example, hospital cleaning has been contracted out. The other issue was the huge profit being made by the developer. At the design stage the developer had to fund the project at a high rate of interest (because of the risk). Once the building was up and running, the developer renegotiated the risk rate, saving substantial money. Initially this 'gain' wasn't shared with the NHS but it is now. Here endeth the lesson

bob

cake

I thought PFI was 'off balance'? It certainly was at its inception in 1995.

duckworth

I've just had an email from Harriet Harman :cool: If you join before 8 September, you are eligible to vote. Along with the close to 6000 who have joined since the election, apparently.

aloes