taper

can i suggest gang? So it's a health and safety brigade, anti european gang, and perhaps neocon cabal. The liberal lefties, hampstead/white wine liberal handwringers, right wing nutters and revanchist proto lysenkoists can fit around this basic taxonomy.

Are they a gang or a brigade? If you cant't answer that, I'm not sure I can trust your analysis.

But not enough credit. He's up there with the best of them imv. I missed him last time round, so very excited about September.

David Bowie. Hank Williams. Tony Iommi. Mark Arm. Rat Scabies. Dick Gaughan. Nigel Blackwell

I have a feeling Froch will win this one, against the odds. Pretty sure he'll take it the distance at least. Nottingham's best since Bendigo.

An all American family walks into the office of a talent agent.

Heh, frig off this thread with your comparitive tax irrelevance. This is about public sector pensions and your spite war is extending a tedious thread unnecessarily.

"as you would no doubt argue.." Sigh "In Newcastle, Liverpool, Glasgow, Cornwall, and other similar areas they can afford a mock Georgian mansion in the Barnard Castle/the Wirral/Rock, probably run two high performance cars with fog lamps, have a Caribbean holiday every year with free booze and fags and treat their children like the spoilt little princes they undoubtedly are at Christmas. The same couple, on the same income, living in Guildford, London, St Albans, Oxford or Cambridge will live in a traveller encampment on the Essex Marches, walk ten miles each day in worn out sneakers, take a camping holiday every other year surrounded by poor private sector workers from the North and sell their children to a charity shop at Christmas. " Fixed.

Unions believe in collective bargaining. Yes they do.

They do exactly the same work and the local housing Market shouldn't be a factor in their remuneration? Stick to recruitment and retention: that's where the argument is.

Chippy's referring to tax exemptions for private pensions. 37bn according to this. http://www.financeforthefuture.com/MakingPensionsWork.pdf

'serious doubts about GDP forecasts'? That's a misreading. Is this the section to which you're referring? Some of the assumptions underlying the projections have not been tested. The Treasury carried out sensitivity analysis on one key assumption, the age to which pensioners are expected to live, but did not do so for other assumptions.[4] Important areas of uncertainty are: the validity of assumptions that the public sector workforce will remain static over time and that long-term GDP growth will average 2.2% a year to 2050' It lists areas of uncertainty, one of which is GDP (and of course it's uncertain). This is a technical point about sensitivity testing with a range of Assumptions rather than one.

It's clearly affordable and sustainable at a stable 2% of public expenditure. The question is whether or not public sector pensions are sufficient a priority to be sustained at those levels. That is a political question. The main conclusion here is that Government needs to be clear about the level of expenditure it considers appropriate. Seems fair enough to me. That way we begin to cut through the hyperbole and humbug that runs through this debate.

Ah, got it. Thanks.

I thought Murray was stopped in the 11th?

You are wilfully misunderstanding what I'm saying!? I am talking about the realities of the negotiation. It is a bizarrely romantic notion that public sector unions will accept a heavily denuded pension settlement because of the force (or otherwise) of arguments from affordability or certainly from relativity. Why the hell would they! Unions exist to protect the interests of their members. What they will do though is end up accepting a solution that is cheaper and less generous to members than current arrangements. The strike was a bargaining chip to show Government that the current deal on the table isn't good enough.

Hugs You have made a straw man of my argument to accuse me of making a straw man out of yours! Good show. I said; 'some arguments on here appear to boil down to a requirement that because private pensions have gone down the toilet ( the real scandal here) public sector workers should roll over, full of guilt and self loathing, and let the government do what it wants.' That is precisely what sits behind many of the arguments here. What right have you to strike when your pension deal is superior to everyone else's.

'I haven't seen a single person claim that public sector pensions should be reduced because private sector ones aren't very good. That's a straw man.' Read your first posts on this thread. 'Private sector workers are worried about their job security and their future, and their pension isn't even on the horizon. Most of them think they're going to work until they die. And public sector workers are striking over the size of their perks?' And then 'The strike is because public sector workers think they have a right to bigger salaries, bigger pensions, more perks and stop working earlier than the desperate private sector workers who pay them. ' I reckon the linkage between the quality of private pensions and the inappropriateness of public sector workers wanting to protect theirs is at the heart of your argument.

'you jumped up prig' was part of your well polished argument was it ? Anyway, since when was a bit of hook, bait, reel and cheap shot not allowed on the interweb. I make no apology. And nor should you. Look, some arguments on here appear to boil down to a requirement that because private pensions have gone down the toilet ( the real scandal here) public sector workers should roll over, full of guilt and self loathing, and let the government do what it wants. Life isn't like that. It's about balance and negotiation. And that's what will happen here: a settlement following the strike that will represent less of a call on the public purse (which is relatively small anyway) but which quite properly protects a decent level of pension for people working in the public service. We'll all shake on it, as we have did a year ago on redundancy payments. And yet this poxy issue inspires such ludicrously disprortionate levels of bile, bluster and blowhardery on all sides. I ask you. My life already. Sheesh. And so on.

You misunderstand: i am dumbstruck at your ability to generate such sympathy for uk tax payers given that you aren't one and the people fleecing them are.

of course! Do you pay UK taxes?

War on the working man! shark well and truly jumped. But i admire your Stakhanovite tendencies Huguenot. 80 plus hours work and 60 plus posts on EDF this week. Show me a public sector slacker who can live with that.

At times like this, I can think of no better advice than that offered by Half Man Half Biscuit. In Breaking News they advise: 'A woman who described herself as ?A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex And The City? and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it?s a good name. Don?t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill?s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot.'

An idiot indeed, but not a left wing one. You though are a genius. I'd never thought of this as an option. What would it save the Exchequer?

"The most obvious way to do that is to scrap all Public Sector pensions" Perfect. The race to the bottom is afoot.