On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:19:02 +0100, The Reid
No, Largely right.
The contributions won't be enough to provide the benefits. I've seen it written somewhere tha 40% of council tax will have to go to buoy up local government pensions, and they are *still* letting people retire early on a full pension EG my next door neighbour, just retired at 57.
For one thing it means the people who the government mostly have to deal with are sitting pretty and ministers get a distorted perspective.
Schemes had originally built up surpluses during the time when people who changed jobs lost out big time in favour of people who stayed with one employer-scheme all their working life. To achieve this contrived "loyalty" was why employers paid into private schemes, it saved them money recruiting and training. This was a disincentive to mobility of labour and encouraged lard arsed time serving. Margaret Hilda (IIAC) got it sorted. Unfortunately poor performance of investments has since compounded the problem
Don't think so. In the '60s you could join the Post Office as a telegraph boy and end up as a senior civil servant. The security, conditions of employment, and promotion prospects (on a Buggins turn basis) were unmatched anywhere in the private sector. The only way an individual could get prospects anything like that in the private sector would have been for them to get qualified at their own expense in a subject that was currently in demand. If, years later, that subject is no longer flavour of the month because the entire industry has been outsourced to China -tough.
Organic will NOT feed the world. 699I believe that ATM the problem is political rather than quanbreasty. Quanbreasty may become the ruling factor in the not-too-distant-future, though. We'll be a third world country then, I expect. Other...
DG
