The Conservative Party

BeerIsTheBest said:
Zen
I always found it a complicated subject and some of my understanding may be off as I retired a few years back.

Maybe and hopefully helpful is the following

The state pension is covered as long as long as enough folk continue to work and fund the lavish lifestyle of us oldies via NI contributions. The lower the overall sum of NI contributions the bigger the pressure on the gvmt finances. It’s why changes have been enforced on statutory retirement ages. Even putting payment commitments off by a year can have a big impact and help gvmts. Conversely the triple lock hammers the gvmt finances which is why the gvmt would love to do away with it. Ideal for the Tories would be a lot more pensioners dying, higher retirement ages to defer state pension payments and people working and paying NI for longer.

With regards public sector final salary type pensions many are 'unfunded' schemes in that there is no central fund, and they are paid for only by taxpayers year by year. Pensions of teachers, firefighters, NHS workers, the police and the armed forces are the best examples.

Of course MPs belong to a gold plated arrangement and
can choose to contribute at 1/40th, 1/50th or 1/60th In a final salary arrangement. It is a contributory pension with the contribution rates set at 11.9%, 7.9% and 5.9% of salary respectively. I think I understand that it’s about the best pension scheme still going. And why not coz they all work so hard for us commoners?

With regards most workers arrangements.
If you are in a defined contribution scheme like most folk your pension pot is safe and belongs to you and is invested in stocks and shares etc by whoever administers it. Of course, as the sales blurb goes the value of your pot can go up or down

If you are in (very luckily) a final salary scheme or have invested into a scheme that is now frozen or you’ve left it behind when working in a previous job it’s quite likely that a decent slug of the overall pot in the fund is invested in Gilts.
The last figure I saw was that overall in the UK Gilts account for some 20% of assets in these funds.

As the unit value of a gilt declines the organisation has to find a way to fill the shortfall to keep the fund topped up to assure that the liabilities can be met - where there’s a shortfall this is often done via a repayment plan.

This is what the reported worry is about. Where will companies find additional funds to top funds up as the value of Gilts falls….when often Boards of directors want to put shareholders dividends ahead of these payments or where the company is basically on its arse and has no spare cash or it wants to invest in technology or infrastructure or whatever to secure its future?

If any of these final company pension funds fail the default is the Pension Protection Fund. This security fund underpins the final salary schemes and takes on the liability and pays out a high percentage of peoples due pensions- some 90% I think.



Hope this helps
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Many thanks for posting this. It does make things clearer.

With Truss and Kwarteng, unlike others, I don’t think that either of them are stupid, even though I am amused by the nicknames both have acquired.

Rather I think that they are ideologues who are both in thrall to a whacked-out species of capitalism. This makes them very dangerous, as they seem impervious to criticism and disinclined to displays of epistemic humility.

Ideologues are also notorious for wanting to impose their deranged belief systems on others, regardless of the consequences. And of course they inhabit both extremes of the political spectrum (Lenin and Mao were no different in this respect, and Putin and Thatcher are two more examples).

Truss may actually be the worst of the two because of her Lib Dem past, as converts are often more zealous than those who have been brought up in a faith.

Have quoted this once before on here but it is probably worth doing so once again because it captures the mindset of ideologues so succinctly. This is Megan Phelps-Roper reflecting on the time she spent in the Westboro Baptist Church:

‘Doubt causes us to hold a strong position a bit more loosely, such that an acknowledgement of ignorance or error doesn’t crush our sense of self or leave us totally unmoored if our position proves untenable. Certainty is the opposite: it hampers enquiry and hinders growth. It teaches us to ignore evidence that contradicts our ideas, and encourages us to defend our position at all costs, even as it reveals itself as indefensible. Certainty sees compromise as weak, hypocritical, evil, suppressing empathy and allowing us to justify inflicting horrible pain on others.’

Too much certainty and a serious lack of empathy are what arguably define our present PM and Chancellor.
 
west didsblue said:
Why wouldn’t we? Oxford University already had the basis for that vaccine and naturally they pursued its development for this virus. As for the rollout, we were six weeks ahead of comparable countries in the EU and they had caught up before Delta hit in the summer so it made absolutely no difference. Whether we would have been ahead had there been a different PM is impossible to know but I suspect PPE, Care homes and test & trace would have been managed much better with far less waste and preventable deaths.

The evidence was clearly sufficient to demonstrate Starmer’s beer and curry were not illegal in spite of the ludicrous Daily Mail campaign.
Click to expand...

Its funny the Fail ran it on the front page for 10 straight days DEMANDING it be reinvestigated based mostly on some photo's taken by the son of someone who is involved with Breitbart (?) - when Durham Police came back with a no charges verdict they were not happy - oddly enough since this came out it never gets a mention


www.bbc.co.uk

Durham Police: Sir Keir Starmer Beergate probe cost £101k

The inquiry cleared Sir Keir Starmer and his team of breaking rules when they drank and ate a curry.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
west didsblue said:
Why wouldn’t we? Oxford University already had the basis for that vaccine and naturally they pursued its development for this virus. As for the rollout, we were six weeks ahead of comparable countries in the EU and they had caught up before Delta hit in the summer so it made absolutely no difference. Whether we would have been ahead had there been a different PM is impossible to know but I suspect PPE, Care homes and test & trace would have been managed much better with far less waste and preventable deaths.

The evidence was clearly sufficient to demonstrate Starmer’s beer and curry were not illegal in spite of the ludicrous Daily Mail campaign.
Click to expand...
Six weeks is a significant lead when dealing with a highly contagious disease, for which the population had no natural immunity.

And it’s all very easy to judge now that the epidemic has been brought back under control. At the time the country was desperate for a vaccine to be provided, and the speed of the delivery mattered for both physical and psychological reasons, not least for the more vulnerable people who had been shielding for months.
 
Brewster's millions said:
Nothing to do with whataboutery, which I must say is a rather lazy thing to throw into a debate. Johnson was rightly fined, Cummings should have been fined and disciplined if not fired by Johnson, and the same standards should apply to others who had beer and curry evenings during a lockdown.

In particular I still wonder why it took the Labour Party, and indeed Rayner herself, so long to recollect that she was in fact also at the Durham booze-up if there was never a problem with what they did that night.
Click to expand...


You're right I'm lazy.

I should have expanded by saying your posts, on this subject are deflections.

Can't defend Johnsons behaviour,or Cummings so you are reduced to deflecting in an attempt to prove" they are all the same"
 
nmc said:
I recall Mick Lynch eating him alive on Newsnight…. Philp isn’t only a ****…. He’s thick one too….
Click to expand...

when I first saw him in Johnsons cabinet I thought he looked more like the guy in charge of the stationary cupboard rather than a Minister of the Crown. When he spoke I realised that I wouldn't even have put him in charge of my stationary cupboard - this is him the other night being tackled on a swiftly deleted tweet - thick as mince

 
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