Huguenot

Welcome back Claudia. As even a retarded idiot knows, US freedom of expression laws make incrimination for inciting racial hatred a completely different issue in the US than in the UK. That's such a stupid tenuous excuse to sustain and promote such an aggressive racial prejudice that it doesn't even deserve this correction. You 'point out' nothing but reprehensible garbage. I hear John Tyndall calling...

And such are the fantasies about business and 'profits' that sustain the myths of 'easy money' to solve pensions. That Unilever 'profit' isn't free money - it's committed to reinvestment, growth, hedging against future markets, hedging against commodity prices and so on. Citing exceptional deals, as with the Ford example, will do nothing to solve any crisis in public sector pensions. This is a red herring.

As MM has pointed out, it didn't need to be a Ponzi scheme when it was first created. In 1910 the life expectancy in the UK was 50 for men and 55 for women. It has been politically untouchable to mess with the pension since, it guaranteed losing an election. As usual joe public (alongisde some of the guys on this thread) have refused to recognise that it has been increasingly unwieldy, but refuse to pay for it with more taxation. D_C persistently lays this down as a 'government' obligation to pay 'deserving' workers - a complete red herring. It comes from tax - either the tax goes up, other spending goes down, or the public sector pays for their own early retirement and inflated pensions. Those are the ONLY three options. What do you want it to be? D_C wants to transfer money from private workers to public workers, and has some completely bizarre idea that private sector workers can demand higher pensions and early retirement too!! With f**king WHAT money???

Both groups are interdependent, but it'll be the private workers paying for public sector early retirement... "We're all in this together, so long as you're paying" ;-) http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/mba/lowres/mban1707l.jpg

It's called 'lucid' dreaming, and many people can do it! :)

Many worthwhile left leaning public sector workers would agree that we have had a system in place such that economically and environmentally our society has asset stripped our own children, forcing them to pay the costs for our folly. It is highly ironic that these same people are now striking to force their children to guarantee amd pay for them to enjoy early retirement. Don't they feel the slightest guilt for this hypocrisy? There are currently 4 workers for every pensioner, in a few short years there will be only 2. If we don't provide for our own pensions who is going to pay for them? Striking public sector workers either haven't considered this, or have disregarded it.

It most certainly isn't a straw man. It's the only issue. It's rather abusive to describe ?36,000 directly from the pocket of the average worker as 'a straw man'. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you... It seems a rather illogical to address being broke by stopping work. It cannot possibly solve pay freezes, job cuts and job security. There is only one way for public sector workers to be paid - and it's from the tax bill of private sector workers. The question is exactly how much the public sector is willing to strip them of. At the moment the bill is ?36,000 per person over and above what Lord Hutton's independent enquiry described as a fair and equitable solution.

Tell me you're not being serious! :)

In today's money the pensions currently cost ?40 billion a year and the difference between payments and expenditure is ?4.5 billion a year. If the pension age was 66 instead of 60 with an average life expectancy of 80, the bill would be ?28 billion with no payment/expenditure differential. This means the cost to the taxpayer of NOT introducing the new pension arrangement is ?16.5 billion a year. There's around 25 million people in total in full time employment in the UK, with around 19 million in the private sector. That means that allowing public sector workers to retire 6 years early costs every private sector worker ?900 per year. I wonder how much their 'support' will be worth when people realise that a 60 year old retirement age for public sectors in going to cost each person ?36,000 across their working lives?? What would you do with ?36,000 SJ?

I'm sure they do get support from the private sector for many reasons. I think most people who do empathise with them do so for a variety of unrelated reasons: they think everyone should be able to retire earlier, they don't like 'cuts', they want to protest against the government in general, they hate bankers, they see it as class war and so on... People might think differently in 4 years time when the cost of pensions doubles, and people are paying for it through increased taxation or yet more cuts in services.

Sorry, my misunderstanding - if it's being used to describe your teaching performance then it seems very positive!

There was no trial. There was only some ridiculous posturing in a muslim country famous for its human rights abuses. As many of my tutors at University lay testament to, being a professor substantially increases the likelihood of someone being an idiot with extremist views.

Big Bad Wolf Willy. A previous user with an anger management problem and a penchant for obnoxious and offensive behaviour that I despreately hope was a personality disorder rather than for real.

If they say it all the time, have you tried asking them?

You may have misunderstood democracy LadyD. You seem to have confused it with 'getting your way'. In a democracy of 60 million people, 29.9 million people can disagree with something and it'll still be working brilliantly. As for not feeling they're being listened to, wtf do they expect? There's 59.9 million other people who also get to have a say! By definition their opinion is omly worth one 60 millionth of everyone else's. Even if we reverted to small anarchic agricultural communities your voice would only be worth one 3 hundredth of everybody else's and you'd still be complaining about not getting you way ;-)

How did you know you were a labrador?

Cheese... Only kidding! CHEEEEESE!!! CHEEEEEEEEEESE

Can you get me a cup of tea?

If you're living in a third world country you're probably very lucky to have any water at all you wallies! :)) Talk about living in ivory towers...

Ha ha, that's the best yet UDT - you're actually going to cut off your nose to spite your face out of snobbery!! You're looking down on people who shop at Waitrose, so you're going to stop going there regardless of the quality of the product. How ridiculous is that. I should add that St. Thomas More hall is closing because nobody went there and it lost loads of money, not because of Supermarkets. See threads passim.

Of course I read your posts - I wasn't necessarily saying it to you, but to put some figures against it for the other 1,000+ who read this thread, no offence intended. Just to clarify your above point, for anyone in their 50s - nothing changes under the current offer. For everyone else, apart from the staged retirement age extension nothing changes in retrospect - ie. everything they've created in the past under the previous system stays the same. I should say, I've had a hearty guffaw today about quotes from public service personnel who are said to be leaving the system before the retirement age change. Hah ha! Where the feck do they think they're going, the private sector!! :)) Welcome to 70!!

The guy in the factory isn't screwed because he gave up on the union, he's screwed because when retirement at 60 was envisioned, most people died before they were 70. Now the average current age is over 80 years, a large number live into their 90s, and by the time our generation pops its clogs it would be surprising to see most people live into their 90s. Despite your insistence that it is, this is not an issue about the bottom or the top, and the teachers vs. the bankers. Unwittingly your link demonstrates the foolishness of trying to make this a bottom vs. top issue. Ford employs around 300,000 globally, so if you took alll the money away from the (65 year old) CEO, each worker would get an extra $1.60 per week. Guess what? It won't solve the pension problem!!! I should also add that the CEO in question is credited with bringing Ford back from bankruptcy in the last 5 years, to make it the No.4 motor manfacturer in the world. He took Ford from $1 per share in 2008 to $15 today - and in the process made $35 billion for its shareholders - who include the companies workers. His reward is small in contrast. If you ask those 300,000 people whether they think the $1.60 per week is worth it to actually have a job, I think they'd say it was.

As for 'Jealous' - hardly. If you retire at 60 these days, it's perfectly likely that you will live longer 'retired' than you ever worked. Who the hell is going to pay for this? No REALLY, who the hell is going to pay for this? Your kids? Someone else's kids?

I'm not getting righteous - I'm sure that teachers don't want to work until they're 68, but to be brutal neither does some poor fecker working in a car indicator light factory. And I don't think the fecker in a car indicator light factory should have to work until they're 68 just because a teacher doesn't fancy it. I'm not supporting the banker Sean, I'm supporting the guy in the factory. As usual you're trying to turn this into a 'banker' issue.

Well as other people have said Alan Medic, it's possible they're just commenting on her not wearing a bra. I suspect that you're reading too much nastiness into my observation. You're seeing 'cutting down to size' as an aggresive external exercise. I'm talking about using the phrase as a verbalisation of an internal 'check', a damage limitation exercise. Have you ever been with people who suddenly go 'la la la' for no reason? Typically it's because they're verbalising an internal process - they're putting a 'full stop' at the end of a train of thought they'd like to terminate. Making a noise enables them to clear their thoughts. That's what 'You're very natural' is - it's an external verbalisation of an internal process. It's clearly happening persistently to womanofdulwich, and frankly there's no other plausible explanation. If you don't get that, it's entirely up to you.