I’d like my 150 quid back, please
Saturday 15th November 2008, 9:30AM GMT.
NOT so many years ago, the chief question about retirement was how early an individual intended stopping work. Now, that same question is how long someone has to struggle on in order to fund a realistic pension.
During that same period, the other aspect of retirement – thanks in part to Gordon Brown’s ill-judged tax raid as Chancellor on pension funds – is how to pay for an adequate pension pot.
All this is coming home to islanders as the Social Security Department has issued a consultation document that, among other possibilities, suggests that everyone might have to work until 70 to help balance the books.
That’s bad enough. But the ‘pay more, work longer’ scenario comes on top of government here wanting to take additional amounts off islanders because it refuses to spend less itself and it if chooses to be profligate in a recession, well, people will just have to dig a little deeper.
However, this cynical approach to taxpayers will actually get worse.
On top of everything else, the States wants to take an extra £7m. off you to top up the already generous scheme for public sector staff. That package, of course, is based on final salary and effectively no longer exists anywhere else other than in government.
The reason is that no business can afford them and it is only when the privileged recipients can extract huge sums from largely uncomplaining taxpayers that such schemes can continue to exist.
So what the 2009 Budget proposes is actually a double whammy for islanders: any pretense at restraining States’ expenditure has gone and yet more – about £150 per taxpayer – has to be taken from them to keep the gold-plating on a public sector pension that ordinary folk simply cannot afford.
There is a manifest unfairness in this that voters should draw to the attention of their deputies.
Fortunately, there is a slowly growing realisation within the Policy Council that ministers got it wrong in retaining the current scheme and that it is unsustainable.
So make sure you tell your deputy that you want your 150 quid back.
Campaigns
Voice For Victims
Voice for Victims is a campaign aimed at promoting the rights of those affected by child sexual abuse.
This is Guernsey
Guernsey Press
Or is it because businesses want to make more profit for shareholders and directors so they cut back on anything they can get away with?
What is the average salary of the public sector? How much is deducted from their monthly pay?
Has the Guernsey Press suddenly become a mouthpiece for certain politicians who have always been against this scheme, and the wider right wing attack on anything ‘statist’?
I would suggest that the implementation of zero ten and the oncoming necessity to introduce further taxes to make up the tax take shortfall, all driven by right wing dogma that has blighted the global economy, is a far greater burden financially, not less the increasing public perception that our politicians are only in it to further the wealth of the few at the top, to gain preferences at ‘dinners’ and make sure that they have a cosy time when they decide that ‘politics’ is no longer in their blood.
Stop kicking the public sector and start attacking the Business led political profile that puts the average Guernsey person at the bottom of the pile.
The sector may be too big and wasteful, but that shows a lack of good management, nothing else. Who’s fault is that? The States.
Report abuse
Yes, Fast Robert.
Report abuse