What on earth could you mean by "underfunded"? Public service pensions are not "funded" at all. Public servants do not accumulate a "pot", individually or collectively; what they get after years of service is simply a promise that they will be paid a pension in the future. In each future year, the pensions which have to be paid out are part of public expenditure within that year. The question is: will those promises be honoured, or reneged upon? As a member of the EU for the past 40+ years the UK has contributed its share of EU expenditure (as part of its 1%). It has also promised to pay its share of pensions in future years to those who are entitled to them. The UK can, as we all know, withdraw from the EU if it chooses, but the obligation to honour its share of the promises would remain for many years to come. The UK could, no doubt, dishonour those promises and renege on its commitments. This would be a disgraceful and despicable course of action, which would obviously lead to other highly adverse consequences. Perhaps that is why you favour it, @Recidivist .
They can have the same amount of pension that i will get then. when they are 67 they should get the equivalent of £150 per week . Paid for by all 28 member states . after all fair is fair .
So the 'transfer value' if it applies -how is that valued -counted in promises, or pounds shillings and pence? I think the answer is clear.... Civil Service Pensions : Important information about new transfer restrictions
Indeed. Those in receipt of unfunded "final salary" pensions, to be paid for from future public spending according to @Pete1950 , have in some cases been transferred to "defined contribution" type schemes and handed large sums of public cash, from where exactly ? This is yet another case of having your cake and eating it in the public sector. Fortunately this has been, quite rightly, stopped.
I am not so sure it is as cut-and-dried as you maintain, Pete. Jeremy Woolfe: British officials fret over EU pension obligations | News | IPE Apparently it is a "notionally funded" scheme. It would not surprise me if the EU has not clearly defined various aspects of what obligations are for a departing member. After all, nobody expected any departure, and the Euro appears to have no exit mechanism.
I don't think he will have any money worries! Peter Mandelson can claim £1 million in European Union pay-off and pension - Telegraph
Again. Let's revisit Civil Service pensions as they apply/used to apply to low- to mid-rank Civil Servants. The comparatively lucrative pension scheme arrangements for civil servants who joined prior to a certain date constituted part of the T&Cs of the employment. Employees accepted the terms of the employment - which at many times in the past thirty years or so have been otherwise inferior to the private sector in terms of salary and many working conditions. In other words, you accepted a crap job with crap prospects because you would at least have a relatively comfortable pension. Oh, and the annual leave was good. Remember though that if you're unemployed, the annual leave is good for that too. However, you do a job for the wages, not the annual leave since you cannot actually eat time off work. Anyway. For anyone who joined the Civil Service on Final Salary pension terms, and spent an appreciable amount of their career in the Service, they are entitled to receive the benefit of what signed up for, or be suitably compensated for its withdrawal. This is equitable. The private sector may be entitled to do a Philip Green or a Robert Maxwell on occasion, but not our government. They really ought not act like a robber baron. High-end Civil Servants can look after themselves, as far as I am concerned. They are good at that, in fact it's what they're best at.
kind of telling when most political conversations on here end up with talk of pensions. with an ageing population more concerned about their final settlement figure than our youths future what chance have we got?. :smileys:
not true. probably even less once the 50 is triggered a lot less scope for rising through the ranks in industry for many ordinary folk. unless you mean becoming assistant manager at Starbucks. will it be harder to seek employment on the continent unless your a graduate? the colonies has gone (more to follow) what else? hmm.
Nothing new here. Cooperative/collaborative folk will keep the wheels spinning whilst those with pronounced sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies continue to fight their way to the top of their respective ladders. All will be as it ever was. Stop being so cynical finm! Where's the cheery, joyful Scottish cherub I remember?
shifting roofing shit from the front to the back. 4 weeks that crap has been sitting there still no show from the joiner person. nob. anyhoo. i aint cynical,i see opportunities.
Finn, pensions have become something they were never meant to be. They were meant as a means of funding people in retirement when they are too old to work. What they have become is a way for the more elite of society to finish work early and live a life exactly as they were when they were working. Final salary pensions were never ever likely to be funded by those receiving the benefit.
and a way to pay them less on the day. meh, let someone else worry about. was and is still the order of the day. v.tory/blairite so it is. torys say we need to live within our means then take on MSD's, hinkly, bonuses increases the H.O.L's whatever all bolox.
Moreover, when the state pension was introduced it was assumed the life of pensioner would be ten to fifteen years. Now they could live another 30 or even 40 years, even if they retire at 60. There is no possible way to fund that for everyone and it is completely impossible for public sector pensions to be funded on that basis out of general annual expenditure without an investment fund, especially with falling tax revenues, an ageing population and an ever expanding and ever more profligate state. Our socioeconomic model is broken. We either need to die sooner or work longer, produce more and spend less, but instead our politicians think the answer is to expand the population without reforming the structural flaws of the model, which will make the problem exponentially worse for each succeeding generation. But its OK because with a vast population wholly dependent on big business and big government for everyday survival, the politicians will have bigger budgets and more human lives to play with therefore more power, and that's the main thing.
So how come these people are entitled to what they signed up for,because it was in the T & C's,but people like my missus,who started work/paid her contributions all her working life/just like millions of others,on the promise of retirement at 60,can have their working life life extended by 6 years? It seems that the country can afford to stick to the terms for some,but not the majority...
I don't disagree with a lot that you say there, gimlet. The socioeconomic model is broken but the ones with the power and money will ensure that they don't lose out. The system HAS to be fairer to all for it to work. But the way it's going is to not educate many, let them live off the State, make the hard working majority work harder and longer still so they fund it and let the elite carry on living in luxury until the day they die.
Because you and your wife are just the hard working people who pay for the elite to carry on as they were. Don't be fooled by the political system be it Tory or Labour, you are just a pawn in their game.
This applies to civil servants as well as private sector employees. That seems to be a pattern, does it not? The government will no doubt eliminate entirely the final salary calculation for retiring civil servants, once the potential beneficiaries represent only a small minority of public workers, ie when the fallout from slashing pension arrangements becomes manageable. There are possibly too many public employees with too much to lose, for Government's liking, at this point. That will change. It won't make it right though.
