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Facts and figures on public sector pensions
From: Derek Hollingsworth, Roman Road, Darton, Barnsley. I'M afraid your correspondent Phil Bland (Yorkshire Post, September 10) has got a bit mixed up in his comparison between public sector and private sector final salary pension schemes.
While he correctly states that private sector schemes (tend) to accrue service in 60ths, most public sector schemes accrue service in 80ths. This means that a private sector scheme generates a pension of 2/3rds final salary after 40 years service, while a public sector scheme produces a pension of half final salary also after 40 years. The advantage seems to be with the private sector until account is taken of the important matter of tax-free cash lump sum payment. Private sector pensioners have to commute part of their pension in order to receive a a cash-free lump sum. Public sector pensioners get a cash-free lump sum of up to 50 per cent of final salary without losing any pension.
Mr Bland's assertion that he could retire from a private sector scheme after 30 years service on a half final salary pension just wouldn't happen like that. An employee might have been allowed to retire after 30 years service, but his or her pension would have been subject to significant actuarial reduction, to reflect the age of retirement. On the other hand, not so long ago, in the public sector, when employers were trying to persuade employees in their fifties to retire early they would give pension enhancements.
While contribution holidays didn't help private sector schemes, the actions of Gordon Brown and New Labour have had far worse consequences.
Even worse, this Government has allowed employment in the public sector to grow by 800,000, and the public sector pension liability, which is not shown in the Government's accounts, now exceeds 3 trillion. All money which will have to come from future taxation.
I hardly think public sector employees will be enthusiastic about changing the present pension system – a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas - and doubtless bleating will be heard that contributions are paid for public sector pension, but six per cent of salary for 40 years doesn't buy the sort of pensions public sector employees are paid. And they know it.
Life in a land of the busybodies
From: John Watson, Hutton Hill, Leyburn.
I AGREE entirely with the letter from Michael Booth (September 10).
I have been extremely frustrated and annoyed that children are forced to wear protection when playing conkers, council men are not allowed in to flood water because they have had no training on wellies and a postman is advised not to
drive up a bumpy road
because it may hurt his back, and of course the silly stories about wheelie-bins which
seem never ending and
give the impression that we are living in a land conjured up by Jonathan Swift. It is so nonsensical.
We also have busybodies interfering in the maturity
of our children by
proposing sex lessons for four-year-olds. Do the kill-joys responsible for this ever
think about their own childhood?
One of the best parts of growing up was finding out about the "birds and the bees". Who are they to deny all our children this lovely experience? Don't blame them for the pressures put on them.
It would be more productive
if the powers that be tried to do something about the trash turned out by the TV companies and the internet, most of which is abhorrent
to a civilised nation, and I am sure it is this that has led to a rise in the number of cases of paedophillia reported in the Press.
The bulldog breed is starting
to behave more like a chihuahua.
Exit the Bard
From: R Simmons, Mill Lane, Pannal, Harrogate.
I WAS utterly dismayed to learn that the 14th Shakespeare Festival had been cancelled due to lack of support from Leeds City Council (Yorkshire Post, September 4).
This is an important high quality event in the cultural life of Leeds and as such I feel that the council should make sure that it is given the support it needs to continue. Robert Williamson has successfully put on his very popular and well supported festival for many years now without any financial help from Leeds Council. Now is the time for the council to make sure that this excellent event does not disappear from Leeds for ever.
My wife and I first came to the Shakespeare Festival in 2000, when visiting our family in Leeds from our home in Essex. Since then we have seen every production. It is a highlight of our summer.
Come on Leeds City Council, stop trying to make excuses
and help out one of your
own people to stage this much-loved and needed festival.
We look forward to the return of Robert and his players in 2009.
Hot and cold reaction to energy price crisis
From: Terry Marston, Doddington Park, Lincoln.
I AM astounded that David Cameron, who has put his party on an electoral war footing, is not advancing his electoral advantage by claiming the credit for which Gordon Brown is being acclaimed.
Why should Gordon get all the plaudits for the state of our energy supply (but most of all for its prices, profits and surpluses), when it was David's friends and predecessors who created the market that now is so successfully plundering the shallow pockets of our populace? After all, what use was an equitably costed service for the whole community? David, nail your colours to this mast.
And, again, it's Gordon who gets the kudos for the housing market. What are you doing, David, to allow him to gain this electoral advantage? It was your Thatcherite antecedents who reformed the mutuality of the building societies and turned them into the profit-gobbling creators of despair, paying their "over-stretched" CEOs such attractive bonuses, even in the face of failure. Take the credit, David – or lose the vote!
From: Jim Trickett, Campsall, Doncaster.
GORDON Brown is now making noises about giving "poor people" an allowance towards loft insulation to help them save on fuel costs.
Quite apart from the fact that, if this goes on, we will all qualify, do they really think we are stupid enough not to recognise this as the token gesture it is?
Yes, insulation will help "poor people" to save fuel but it only meets the problem part way.
Lagging the loft does not help with fuels such as petrol and diesel which we all still need but are all swindled every time we buy it. Many of us would still not be able to work without travelling by car and I cannot get public transport to the places I have to work.
Lagging a loft does, I agree, help save expensive fuel but the situation would be better all round if we were saving on fairly priced fuel.
From: Alan Chapman, Gawthorpe, Beck Lane, Bingley.
THIS newspaper has reported illuminating articles regarding the important and sensitive subject of energy. We are told prices have to go up because of required investment.
Why do customers have to pay for the investment? Energy is no longer a nationalised industry, but privatised, therefore it should be the shareholders who pay to invest in their company, not the customer.
Would a tenant pay for the enlargement of rented property and then pay the landlord a higher rent? This is what the energy companies are demanding the public should so do.
It would be easy to be sympathetic to calls for re-nationalisation in the present price rise rip-off world. The downside of taking energy back into public ownership is that the trade unions would replace the greedy "energy barons". Allowing the emergence of the next Arthur Scargill and we all know what that means.
Conversely, the upside would be the country's requirement for the next Margaret Thatcher to sort out the mess. Happy days ahead?
From: Terry Palmer,
South Lea Avenue,
Hoyland, Barnsley.
OH dear. Harriet Harman dares to mention the difference in class between the have's and have-not's and all hell is let loose from Tory leader "Posh" Dave Cameron and others in the "we-were-born to rule" blue rinse class by complaining that they thought the class door had been shut.
I have news for these people, the class door will never be shut while people that are prepared to live off ordinary people's back still breath air.
He, along with George Osborne and William Hague, would do more good if either of them had the guts to disobey their real leaders, the fat cats of industry, in condemning the 538 per cent energy price rises the lower classes, in their eyes, have had to endure over the past five years.
Yet not even a mention of this fact, only a deafening silence of what their policy is on the matter as, incidentally, is now becoming expected from the slick salesmen that we are beginning to discover on the opposition benches.
From: Charlie Heywood, Wetherby.
SO, Mr Brown won't charge the energy companies for their excess profits. He says they will pay to insulate our lofts.
What is the point of insulation in a cold house?
They will not pay a "windfall tax" as they need the money for research. Should I pay tax as I need to research how to keep warm this winter?
This is just a mockery.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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