pensions » 21stCenturyFix.org.uk

This #Tory #LibDem coalition was so blinded by it’s excitement at the prospect of dismantling the state they’ve wrecked the economy. #Resign

But a thought does come to me. Which came first – the Autumn Statement today or the #N30 Strike tomorrow? Did the unions plan with incredible foresight the date of their strike or does the establishment have something quite awful up its sleeve?

And, by positioning all this dreadful economic news right before a massively supported outpouring of public emotion in favour of public sector workers and their labour, will the aforesaid establishment now try and stoke these emotions to their ultimate benefit? For as another tweet quite wisely pointed out this evening:

It is perfectly fair that public sector wages don’t keep up with inflation whilst bankers pay themselves bonuses from taxpayers’ money.

With that backdrop of communal logic, I don’t which scares me more. That the establishment have lost control and they don’t realise it – or the establishment are in control and we don’t realise it.

It’s Andrija’s day. It’s my nameday. And it’s also an opportunity – for once – for us all to do what’s right. As it says on the tin. Support the strike on November 30th. And do so for all the following reasons.

http://youtu.be/HBl2vUdXgw0

On the one hand, this Coalition government argues that:

An improved offer on public sector pensions could be withdrawn if an agreement is not reached, unions have been warned by the government.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, in the Guardian, also urged union leaders to persuade their members to accept the “generous” offer tabled.

Generous offer tabled? Does £5,600 a year (who the hell could live on that!) sound generous to you? (Surely not as generous as Mr Maude’s £43,000?) Meanwhile, this call to “sense and sensibility” comes amidst the following situation:

[...] more than two million workers are set to strike on Wednesday over changes to public sector pensions.

They include teachers, border control staff and some health workers.

Unions say proposals which require their members to work longer before collecting their pension and contribute more are unfair.

And the government respond by saying:

The government says change is needed to keep down the cost to the taxpayer, because people are living longer.

So let them live longer – and more poorly. But not the ministers at the top.

Who trusts these ministers then? For example, they tell us that tax rates are frightening off the trickle-down managers – only for the trickle-down managers to tell us that it’s all right after all:

Fears that the 50p rate of tax would hinder recruitment of top executives have been allayed, according to a survey of 50 large companies that will relieve pressure on George Osborne to accelerate plans to abolish the controversial levy in next week’s autumn statement.

Only 13 per cent reported that the 50p rate for those earning more than £150,000 a year was proving a barrier to attracting senior managers to Britain, according to KPMG, the professional services group, in what it said was a “dramatic change of sentiment” since 2009 when over 80 per cent of companies expected the levy to hinder recruitment.

Bit like all those who predicted that the minimum wage was going to be the end of the world as we knew it – only for it then to provide the kind of social cohesion all decent economies need in order to properly function with confidence and predictability.

And yet, at the time, at least according to the newspapers which hold sway over us, the 50p tax rate and the minimum wage were on the point of irrevocably striking the whole blessed economy down.

But if it’s the real 99 percent we’re looking for, we need look no further than a recent Left Foot Forward piece on the results of a survey into whether people trusted government ministers on pensions:

A staggering 99% of voters don’t ‘fully trust’ ministers on pension affordability. In fact the government is one of the least trusted bodies to provide accurate information on the topic at all.

In stark contrast trade unions topped the opinion poll as the public’s most trusted source of accurate information at 33% – three and a half times more trusted than ministers (9%). Also behind unions in terms of trust on accuracy over pension affordability are think tanks (19%), newspapers and TV (13%) and business leaders (13%).

This suggests the government will struggle to convince the wider electorate of its central argument and justification of pension changes.

What’s more, trades unions have the following massive vote of confidence to be said in their favour – though you’d be hard put to realise it from most of the mainstream media coverage they tend to get:

That trade unions are so much trusted on this topic shouldn’t be an entire surprise to poll watchers. Ipsos Mori’s ‘Veracity Index’ (pdf) has seen unions consistently outpoll governments in trustworthiness since the survey began in 1983.

One more subject for the Leveson inquiry to investigate perhaps? How some newspapers not only hack into people’s phones and interfere with their privacy but also intentionally discombobulate their wider perception of reality?

Just as serious. Just as consequential. Just as disgraceful.

And just as likely to be ignored.

Reality, after all, is there to be fashioned. It’s only phones that have pin numbers to be hacked.

The Telegraph reports that “nearly a third of schools are not good enough”. The Mirror reports, meanwhile, that public sector pension-slashing minister Francis Maude may himself benefit, when he retires, from a £731,000 pension pot – the equivalent of £43,000 a year. Compare that with the average £6,500 a civil servant may end up in receipt of.

And so it is that Mil is led to wonder what percentage of government ministers are – to paraphrase Cameron’s own words – simply “coasting” their way to a moneyed dotage; a moneyed dotage they prefer to deny the rest of the country.

My appeal then? Can we please please please have an Ofsted for government ministers?

And do note my intention: I’m not looking to impose the unaffordable on an economy which is on its last legs. But if public servants at the bottom of the pile must suffer the consequences of actions distant from themselves, at the very least let us perceive that those others, who occupy grand positions of responsibility, are not feathering their nests at the expense of their hard-working subjects.

Outstanding; satisfactory; or not good enough?

How would you define Cameron’s Coalition government right now?

Surely, in order to reach an independent clarification, it is now more necessary than ever that such oversight not be in the hands of other politicians. Where else in our society have people who form part of the same professional body – in this case, that of parliamentary discourse – been able to effectively control their fellow wrongdoers?

Does Ofsted use a school’s own teachers to oversee the inspection of a school’s own performance? Would we value and trust it if it did?

So why then do we have a political system where all those who exert oversight are part of the same family – sometimes even part of the same party?

Especially when those doing the wrong are at the very top and in charge of the government itself.

With all the opportunities for a manipulating patronage that implies.

Only in politics would such a conflict of interests be allowed to continue – and in full view of a disarticulated public.

http://youtu.be/MOLCSCArDRE

Its heart is in the right place. There are some complaints about patriarchy in the YouTube comments stream. It’s cheerful enough, mind. A missed opportunity in the video itself, though. It does seem the dancing man who ties the narrative together might be a member of the banking fraternity – you know, one of those hard-working branch staff who earns less than the national average.

Not the unhealthily bonused sort – just the ordinary ones like you and me.

In the end, of course, he works elsewhere – though I shan’t reveal where exactly. And so the thesis becomes clear: this strike is entirely to do with the public sector.

The missed opportunity I mention? To reach out to the private sector too. The challenge in the encroaching battle with the elite who would divide us all is precisely in this area of interface: the interests of the public versus the interests of the private. If only we were able to weave together the two so that those who suffer in private industry feel properly identified with their similarly pained public sector colleagues.

For if we can’t convince ourselves we’re all in this together, what chance have we really got of convincing anybody?