When Gordon Brown raided and ruined private sector pensions, I don’t seem to recall the comrades at the BBC getting too agitated, can you? But now today, when the Government seeks to bring a degree on equality to public sector pension provision, the horror of it all. Lord Hutton was on Today and Breakfast News and was, as expected given a hard time by the BBC. On Today, they trotted on trade unionist leader Dave Spart (or something like that!) to whinge and bleat about the sheer unfairness of it all for his underpaid oppressed masses. He was careful not to attack Hutton per se but rather heap all the blame and guilt on the Conservatives. At every point on every issue, the BBC acts as a conduit for class war driven by the Left against the Conservatives and worst of all, the Conservatives do not fight back. The BBC seem incredulous that public sector workers must be treated the same as private sector workers – to the rest of us it is incredible that they aren’t already.
PUBLIC SECTOR BLUES…
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The union leader was allowed to spout virtually unchallenged, including (unless I’m mixing it up with another interview because I’ve heard it so often, uncorrected) the old chestnut about bankers causing the deficit. No, continual overspending year-on-year causes the deficit, you ignoramus.
Yes, it’s unfair that those who signed up to a deal may not get what they signed up for, but the deal should never have been offered in the first place. The country simply cannot afford it and all the bleating about unfairness doesn’t alter that fact. You may as well complain that gravity is unfair as you fall down the stairs.
I saw a union stalwart this morning issue a bizarre Ringo Starresque ‘peace an love, peace and love’ threat about what would happen if they didn’t get to keep all their money and get more from the finance fairy.
Then, by way of logic only certain sectors can manange, he darkly alluded to the Government preparing for unrest (after what he was mouthing off I’d be surprised if there was not contingency for armed insurrection) and this ‘proved’ they were not ‘serious’ about ‘negotiating’.
Not the sharpest knife in the £100k+pa union infirmament.
I am sure Newsnight will be tweeting with him for tonight’s next great single source rant broadcast as we speak.
To which the rest of country will reply ‘yeah, bring it on!’ to his pathetic requests for insurrection.
The threat of BBC strikes came and went with thunderous yawns, and so will his!
If the public sector pension promises are as enormous as what the experts are saying, then everyone in the state sector will have to invest much more into their plans. Either that or slash services further. Or take a risky gamble that stock market returns will be higher in future.
Many government plans assume an 8% investment return, but even a cursory look at FTSE / S&P data over the past decade will show that this has not been the case. Too optimistic, and the money has got to come from somewhere.
Politicians have lacked to courage to confront this problem for some time, and should be lauded in their present efforts to do so. After all, this timebomb will truly hit us 20-30 years down the line, when many will have long departed this mortal coil. The BBC is giving too much importance to the naysayers.
Making them pay more than they have been is only fair – I am struggling to made adequate provision for my own retirement. Unless I really start increasing contributions, unlikely at this moment, then I will not be well off. Why the hell, then, should I subsidize those in the public sector to get a better pension than me, while struggling myself? They have only themselves to blame for these serious shortfalls and should therefore deal with it themselves.
What strikes me is how so many councils and public sector departments are allowed to get away with spiteful layoffs and closures which hit the public in the face, rather than cutting other types of spending, weeding out deadwood administrative positions, etc.
Not a single second has been spent by the BBC investigating just how spiteful and deliberately harmful any of this has been. The unions and state mandarins (not to mention the BBC, let’s not forget) have had many options open to them of what to cut, and they have deliberately chosen to harm the public rather than cut waste and dross, yet nobody has been allowed on air to say it.
Once in a while we hear a Government figure say something along those lines, but where’s the Panorama program on councils cutting services while hiring Social Media consultants at healthy salaries? The BBC is in league with all of them, and will be doing the exact same thing themselves.
“Incredibly, not one penny, bean or cookie has been set aside for the future pensions of UK’s doctors and nurses. But don’t worry, they are in good company. I stand to be corrected but I believe the same to be true for Britain’s teachers, civil servants and police officers’
Albert Edwards, SocGen.
Any comments BBC?
Don’t get BBC-NUJ-Labour started again on how public sector pensions must be sacrosanct. Vested interest of BBC-NUJ-Labour’s own pensions, over which they strike with alacrity.
Just like in the US, nobody wants to talk about how public sector workers were promised pie in the sky that we simply don’t have and could never have paid them in the first place. Yes, they’re getting hit, but who set them up for it?
The unions? It is time the UK and the USA stopped acting as though those who work for the government are the heroes of the working people. These very same union people eg in Wisconsin are now fighting like wildcats against any kind of reform.
Public sector employees have gotten terrific benefits and pension deals through buying Labour politicians with their votes and campaign money. But now when elected officials in the UK/US are trying to balance the books MSNBC and the BBC are reporting it as though were are the 9-11 attacks.
Public sector workers have always pursued their own narrow financial interests to the detriment of everyone else, which is fine, but the BBC needs to stop pretending that it’s virtuous.
It’s ludicrous to suggest that union contracts were ever fairly bargained. Only one side has ever been at the negotiating table – the public sector unions, and their bosses (the politicians), who are essentially also public sector and hence co-conspiritors. Ordinary people working in the private sector have never been at meetings where public sector compensation was discussed.
The long and short of it is that the country can’t afford public sector pensions as is.
Unfortunately the BBC has no-one that recognises this. If The Great Oracle, Peston, was a tenth as smart as he thinks he is, he would recognise this.
But he isn’t, and he doesn’t.