I hate the Daily Mail
Yesterday, I went to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel for an appointment with the consultant who is going to re-make my eyeball. He introduced me to another patient of his - a man with a similar eye injury, but who had suffered poor-quality surgery in his native Afghanistan.
After the appointment, my partner and I went to get a newspaper on the way to the bus stop, and I caught sight of the Daily Mail's front-page headline:
PUBLIC PENSION BILL ROCKETS
£30,000 a family: The cost of funding state workers' retirement
Reading said article online later, I found that apparently, yer ordinary tax-paying 'family' (the statistic actually refers to 'households', but 'family' is so much more heart-and-hearth-and-wholesome-goodness, isn't it?) is being fleeced by public-sector workers, because:
- There are too many public employees;
- They enjoy privileged pension provision;
- They are greedy bastards who get inflation-busting pay rises;
- They live too long.
Oi! That's the nurses and doctors who are treating me you are talking about! And the teachers at my kids' school. Oh, and me as well.
The 'business community' (a self-contradictory term that always seems to make my blood boil) is apparently very worried. Not that they will be tightening their belts, of course.
Oddly enough, the Mail does not mention the inconvenient facts that:
- Public sector workers are hard-working, tax-paying families (or individuals) as well;
- An MP's or judge's pension costs 'the taxpayer' a lot more than a postie's, nurse's or teacher's;
- We pay for our own pensions by deferring a portion of our wages and working hard to provide public services.
This rag is trying to divide public and private sector workers against each other: firstly, trying to get private-sector workers to resent their public-sector colleagues for any slight, perceived advantage; and secondly, by portraying public-sector workers as a drain on the system because we produce services rather than profits.
I very much doubt that the editor or owner of the Daily Mail have much to worry about when it comes to financial support in retirement.
Having glanced the Mail's headline, I tutted, bought a Sudoku puzzle book and groped my way to the bus stop.
Then I thought about what the Daily Mail would make of my fellow eye patient. Benefit-scrounging health tourist living the Life of Riley with his wife and baby while the long-suffering, Mail-reading, fine, upstanding, British citizen - I mean family - goes without, probably. They'd probably deport him before he could even see the steps of the plane.
I hate the Daily Mail.
The picture, by the way, is of the Daily Mail's Lord Rothermere meeting a man he admired - Adolf Hitler.
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I hate the Daily Mail too
I know exactly how you feel! Seeing the Daily Mail often makes me wish that I was either blind or iliterate, a pretty extreme emotion for someone like me who lives to read.
I think that you should read the Daily Mail with your non-working eye from now on, and give your working eye a treat by watching the new Star Wars DVD!
Get well soon.
Dan Nichols
Mail/facist rag
I believe The Mail was the only national daily paper to support Edward Mosely. I personally don't think it has changed much
Hurrah for the Blackshirts
... about which more in this excellent article.
And a quick Google trawl has revealed an Oswald Mosley website, a fascist site devoted to the memory and politics of the scumbag himself.
doh, wrong name!
Oswald Mosely was chap I was referring to, Thanks Janine
Hated by the Daily Mail
Right now I'm whereing a t-shirt reading "Hated by the Daily Mail".
I got it from the Green Leaf co-operative in Bristol which is sadly no longer with us :(
Len O'nist
My very first blog post, way
My very first blog post, way back in the day before that word was invented (about 5 years ago) was a rant about the Daily Mail. I particularly like to turn to Melanie Phillips (who handily reproduces articles on her website so I dont have to buy it or be seen reading it in the library, the shame) as an example of the right-wing lefty-bashing badly informed drivel they publish.
Interesting link
Readers who share my hatred of the Daily Mail may like to check out the MailWatch website.
For good measure, it hates the Daily Express too. As do I.
Mailwatch
I love this, especially the comment about the luxury camper van competition prize.."Wouldn’t it be great if some travellers/gypsies won the camper van?"
Public pensions
You are missing the point. People in private pensions schemes are having to work longer and save more because their investments pay their pension. Public sector staff make relatively low contributions to get a good pension funded by the taxpayer when they are 60.
Why should I have to pay more to save for my pension, and then have to pay more tax to pay a pension for people in the public sector?
Doesn't seem fair to me.
Answer
The answer is three-fold. You assume that workers in the public sector pay in less than workers in private industry. I am not sure that is true. Local Government workers pay in 6% of their salary to the superannuation scheme. Thier pension is based on 80ths. In other words if you paid in for 40 years you would get a pension equal to half of your final salary. In fact if someone paid in from when they were 20 until they were 65 they would have paid in 5 more years than was necessary to recieve the maximum salary.
The Local Government Pension scheme is a funded scheme. Which means that the money paid in by the employee and employer goes into a fund as with private sector pension funds. The pension paid out is paid from this fund plus the capital gains and income recieved on the investments made by this fund. During the 1990's most Local SAuthorities like many private employers stopped paying into the pension scheme altogether or reduced their contributions to a very small amount because the bubble in the Stock Market inflated the size of the Pension fund way above what was necessary to cover pension payments - workers however had to continue paying in at the same rate. Far from the Local Government workers being subsidised by taxpayers during this period, therefore, it was Local Government workers who were subsididing taxpayers, because Council Tax Bills were lower than they otherwise would have been. Thirdly,
Secondly, taken over any long ytime period wages in the Public Sector are always lower than in the private sector. Partly, this is because workers in the Public Sector trae off current wages for future pensions, partly it is because wages in the private sector can be bid up by private firms who can pass on costs to customers in a way that Councils can't because Councillors are afraid of being kicked out, and largely it is due to the fact that many low status and therefore badly paid jobs are in the Public Sector (partly because it would not be profitable for private firmns to undertake them). Whatever, the fact is that Public SAector workers may, or may not get better pensions than workers in the private sector, but it is at the cost of lower wages now.
Thirdly, if workers in the private sector get a poor deal on pensions, (and I think workers in both the Public and private Secor get a poor deal) that is not the fault of Public Sector workers. How would attacking the pensions of Public Sector workers have any bearing on improving your private sector pension??? It wouldn't. In fact it would almost certainly have the opposite effect. If Public Sector employers got away with reducing pension rights for their workers, private sector employers would follow suit. It would like most aspects of competitie capitalism become a race to the bottom in terms of workers pay and conditions, in order to boost the profits of business.
The answer to the attacks on pensions in the private sector such as that announced today by Rentokil, or that being resisted by workers at British Gas, and those in the Public Sector, is for workers in both sectors to come together to demand decent pensions for all - first in terms of a decent state pension, and secondly that private companies and Government emplyers have to make considerably higher contributions than either make at the moment.
Finally, the pension funds accumulated as a result of workers contributions over the years whether in the private sector or Public sector amount to £trillions. These funds provide cheap financing for multinational corporations through their investment by big city investment firms. Those multinational corporations use those funds to make decisions which are often compeltely against the immediate interests of the workers that have paid into them, even if we just looked at environmental practices. If we look at the use of those funds by these corporations to invest in corrupt and tyrranical rgimes all around the world, in the use of child labour, or sweatshop labour their actions are even more against the interests of workers.
It is not a radical demand to suggest that we the workers that have paid into those pension funds should have control over them, and decide how they are used, but that right is denied to us. It is a right we should demand on.
Arthur Bough
Pensions
Surely it would be fair if the state just gave everyone a decent pension when they are 60 then we would be less likely to turn against each other in such an ungenerous fashion.
Oh, but what about the ageing population? What about the demographic timebomb? The state will just buckle under the weight of all those old age pensions!
Wrong!
The demographic timebomb argument is based around the fact that people are living longer therefore there are more old people who are, on average, more expensive to maintain. For example, they have greater health care costs. This problem is said to be compounded by the fact of lower birth rate which will lead to a relatively small number of working people having to support an increasing number of retired people. This relationship is called dependancy ratio and, according to domgraphic timebombists looks like this mathematically
children 0-15 + men 65+ and women 60+
-----------------------------------------
men 16 - 64 and women 16 - 59
This is an over simplification of dependancy ratio as it does not take into account full time students, people (usually women) engaged in caring/domestic work, unemployed, sick and non-working disabled. The equation looks like this;
children + unemployed + sick + non-employed + retired
------------------------------------------------------
working men and women
(Lavalette & Pratt, 2004)
Although even this version misses the point that income tax from wages/salaries is not the only source of tax revenue. VAT, for example, is paid by everyone (Lavalette & Pratt 2004). It is clear from this that the increase in pensions could be offset by reducing unemployment, improving health and creating more equality for women in paid employment. In short, the creation of 2million new jobs by 2030 will be adequate to balance the dependancy ratio (Guardian unlimited, 2005)
"Why should I have to pay more to save for my pension, and then have to pay more tax to pay a pension for people in the public sector?
Doesn't seem fair to me."
It seems to me that your outlook on life is reflected in this question and statement. Your idea of fairness seems to linked to the amount of income tax paid and the quantity of this which is reinbursed. This kind of thinking reflects the ideas of enterprise culture of the 80s and 90s that the rewards of productivity should go to those who generated them. This means that inequalities, which increased dramatically during this period, should continue into retirement. If this is the political philosophy applied to pension provision there will be problems sustaining those who suffered long periods of unemployment or who struggled by on low and irregular earnings (Lavalette & Pratt, 2004) Many people suffered such conditions, through no fault of their own but as a consequence of economic restructuring in the 80s and 90s. It hardly seems fair to me that old age pensioners should be impoverished merely because of dogmatic adherance to a very ungenerous political philosophy, particularly in light of the fact that the economic justification is entirely bogus.
Bibliography
Guardian Unlimited (2005) Defusing the timebomb, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,859729,00.html, 20/12/2005
Lavalette & Prat (2004) Social Policy, a conceptual and theoretical introduction,London, Sage Publications
Taxation is Not The Issue
Sean I agree with most of what you say. What I disagree with is seeing this in terms of taxation as such. As I have said elsewhere looking at this in terms of either taking money in in taxation, or people saving more money fort heir retirement, or money being put into some pension fund via the issuing of shares by companies out of profits clouds the issue.
All of these scenarios focus on "money". But the problem is not "money". If all that was required was more "money" the answer would be simple - print more money. But this way of looking at things is what economists call "money illusion". It is what happens when workers get a big money pay increase but are conned into thinking they are better off when in fact they have become worse off due to even bigger increases in prices.
The problem is not to have more money (which would just puch up prices), but to be able to produce more of the things that people buy with that money. As I have pointed out elsewhere imagine two people on a desert island both working. In order that one of them can stop working without either of them suffering a reduction in their standard of living calculated on the basis of what they consume, what would nede to happen? Basically it is that the productivity of labour would need to rise sufficiently that the worker who continues working can produce as much as both of them previously did.
That is the situation now. In order that more people can be retired and no longer produce, but continue to consume without a fall in the standard of living ofr all workers the productivity of the remaining workforce needs to rise. But in fact if you look at the productivity of labour now compared to what it was even fifty years ago, it is clear that each workers produces the equivalent of what many workers did back then. So even allowing for the fact that we now consume more products, and more of each product than we did then, it is clear that society has more than sufficient capacity to meet the needs of ordinary retired workers without reducing the standard of living of workers in general.
The problem is not people living longer or the ratio of non workers to workers, but as Martin has pointed out elsewhere the fact that Capital necessarily consumes a bigger and bigger proportion of everything produced. Vast amounts of resources go to producing the things that go to the very rich, vast resources go to produce things which are not needed, vast resources go into things such as advertising in order to persuade people to buy things they do not need (the documentary "the Corporation" on More 4 the other night was very good in showing how that happens), and vast amounts of resources are wasted just because of he way in which capiytalism works as an unplanned market - in 2000 the fibre optic cable producers such as Nortel, together with the digital switching companies such as Cisco overproduced on a vast scale. Thousands of miles of fibre optic cable remains dark around the world to this day, and vast quantities of routers and other digital equipment was unsold, and the resources that went into its production have been wasted because the technology is now out of date.
The answer to that is not for people to save more, nor for more money to be taken in by capitalist governments in taxes (which they would almost certainly waste anyway)but for workers to take control of their pension funds, and begin to use that to control the very industries in which they work, to begin amongst themselves to base their actions as workers i.e. the people who produce what we all consume, not on the inefficient, compettive basis of capitalism, buit on the basis of co-operation which will form the basis of the future socialist society.
There is another point here. The main reason for the attacks on pensions at the moment is the same as the reason for the attacks on wages and conditions, and the drive for "labour market flexibility". It is that western capitalism cannot compete in wide sections of the market with low cost producers such as China and India. Western firms have located in these countries to boost their profits, but their operations in the West are geting hammered, which is why the US and UK have massive trade deficits, why they have huge debts both public and private, and why the biggest companies like Ford and GM are about to go bankrupt. They are suffering from a falling rate of profit, and the only way they can reverse that is to cut wages (of which pensions are a part.) That is one reason I was glad the French voted No in the referendum. It was at least some resistance to the neo-liberal agenda for labour market flexibility.
The answer is to raise the standard of living of workers in China, India and other developing countries and the solidaity with those workers that will be needed from western workers is the basis of the kind of co-operation that will be needed to replace capitalism. In the meantime we should welcome workers who come to Britian and do jobs that otherwise would not be done, because their work helps to produce the things all of us need to consume. That is why we should get rid of all Immigration controls, so that workers can come here legally and openly, and can then be employed by legitimate employers who have to comply with the Minimum wage and other emplymnet laws (inadequate as they may be), and so that such workers can be part of trade unions and the Labour Movement in general.
Arthur Bough
Shorter reply
Shouldn't you direct your resentment to those fat cats (mostly private sector, but some public) who draw huge salaries while they are "working", then whopping pensions when they retire?!
They fleece workers in both the public and private sectors, and we should unite to reclaim our wealth from them instead of scrapping amongst ourselves.
Addition to my Comments Above
I noticed on the news last night that the workers at Rentokil whose final salary pension scheme is being closed by the employer receive two-thirds of their final salary as pension whereas public sector workers only get half of their final salary as the maximum pension they can claim )most get much less than that because of having less than the necessary 40 years contributoins). If we were to use your argument then Public Sector workers could rightly complain that they were subsidising the higher pensions of private sector workers through paying higher prices than they otherwise would.
But of course, as I have said, they would be wrong to do so, just as you are wrong in criticising Public Sector workers. The reduction in pensions for Rentokil employees will not be used to reduce the prices rentokil charges, but will go to increasee its profits and payoputs to its rich shareholders. Public Sector workers should join with workers at Rentokil and elsewhere and demand that the attacks on their pensions are stopped, and that all workers are guaranteed a decent pension. It may take a General Strike of workers both in trhe Public and private sector to achieve that in the end, but the alternative is that workers will increasingly find that they are doomed to either work till they drop, or to face a future of poverty.
Arthur Bough
Public sector pensions
You claim public sector workers can only get up to half of their final salary as their maximum pension. i think you should advise the civil service pension website of this detail as according to them workers get one sixtieth of their final salary for every year of service, up to a maximum of 40 years, ie a maximum of two thirds...
http://www.civilservice-pensions.gov.uk/scheme_information/premium/your_pension_benefits/index.asp
As for your claim that civil servants working for much less than 40 years of contributions I would like to see a source for this information. Is this because they are allowed to retire early and hence start receiving their pension at an earlier age (and therefore get paid for longer) or because they have spent part of their career working in the private sector and therefore have a private sector pension as well?
Public Sector pensions
The calculation of Civil Service pensions based on 60ths was introduced as part of the recent reduction in Civil Service pension entitlements. It was previously based on 80ths. The police pension has always been based on 60ths, however.
But the majority of Public Sector workers work in Local Government the Health Service etc. Those pensions are based on 80ths. and the the maximum number of years of contributions that can be counted towards a pension is 40 i.e. to give a pension equal to half final salary.
Many workers in the public sector do have less than 40 years of contributions. Some of those may have worked in private industry and might have a private pension. Many may not. The majority of workers in the Public Sector are women. A common reason not to have the full number of years contributions is because they were at home bringing up children. One of the reasons that wages in the Public Sector are lower than in private industry is also because the majority of workers in the Public Sector are women (because as we know women workers still receive only around 70% of the wages of comparable male workers). That is also why the average pension in Local Government despite all the furore is only around £70 per week.
Arthur Bough
are you suggesting that in th
are you suggesting that in the public sector of all places women are paid less than men for exactly the same roles?
Rather than public sector workers being lower than the private sector because there are a lot of women in the public sector perhaps the reason why women receive less pay than men is because there are more women in the public sector which pays less than the private sector.
Both Are True
Women in both the private and public sector are paid less than men doing comparable work. The latest statistics from the Equal Opportunities Commission say that they are paid around 30% less.
But it is also true that pay in the Public Sector is lower than in the private sector. Partly this is due to the above efect because of the high proprtion of women workers, but it is also due to other factors. Public sector workers have tended to accept lower pay in return for their pension (which is one reason why having paid in to that pension for decades and accepted a lower wage for all that time it is wrong to now try to reduce that pension because had workers known that was going to happen they would have demanded higher wages instead), and for other reasons. For one thing workers in the Public Sector often take the job because they have a sense of responsibility. It is hard to udnerstand why for example someone would take a very stressful job (and believe me they are very, very stressful) working in a Children's home, when they could work in a much less stressful job such as on a till in a supermarkt for around the same kind of wage. Wages in the Public sector tend to be low paid because they are often low status jobs such as bin men, or roadsweepers, or sewerage engineers.
This latter is also another reason why Public Sector workers do not get to pay in the full number of years towards their pension. The jobs are often very heavy and unhealthy so that workers tend to suffer with considerable health problems. In fact UNISON did a study which showed that the average life expactancy of manual workers in the Public Sector was much lower than the average life expectancy. Indeed, so bad that many do not even live long enough to get the pension they have paid into.
Arthur Bough