Have you seen Blunkets’ new wife? No? Well neither has he! (i’m here all week…)
Seriously though, and rather amazingly, I agree with an Express story here. Civil servant pensions are a disgrace and an absolute screw. I’m just amazed the Express thinks so as I’d assume a large amount of its readers are public sector types on early retirement in Spain, sucking the country dry while contributing fuck all back.
And I know I’ll likely get comments back about how teachers and other public sectors workers work incredibly hard under stressful conditions and low job security, yadda, yadda, ya. Bollocks. It’s a myth. And those few that are, so what? So does everyone else, and in many cases a lot worse in the private sector. It’s a screw and you all know it.
Steven – here’s your expected comment back. Public sector workers usually don’t have low job security – that’s one of the perks, along with a good pension, that makes up for their low pay. And contributing fuck all? I would suggest that what they do their whole working lives is contribute – that’s kind of the point of the public sector. But I’ve seen your comments on here before about this subject, so I have a feeling that no amount of comments are going to swat that bee in your bonnet, and I will leave it there.
That comment about the French guy was news a couple of weeks ago. He was talking about the fact that so many Asylum seekers are left in France because Britian won’t take them. This might suggest to some that the UK really is quite tough on Asylum (even when the UN says so nobody listens) but the Express doesn’t take this on board.
I’m not saying they do ‘fuck all’ professionally, I’m saying those who retire early abroad do fuck all at that point.
I agree job security is excellent, it’s just a previous poster a while ago tried to convince me it wasn’t. Pay is in no way poor, people make indirect comparisons and assume because a teacher earns less than a banker they deserve a huge pension and early retirement and less working hours, etc, etc.
The simple fact is the government is easier to blackmail on employment issues than private companies because there is little or no competition in the public sector with all areas being real or virtual monopolies, so staff can be as unproductive as they want and hold their paymasters to ransom with tedious regularity without being sacked on mass or having their organisation go bankrupt.
It’s got to the stage where its so widespread that people just assume that’s public sector workers are somehow the martyrs of the workforce because of the amount of concessions they have.
By competition I don’t mean for individual jobs but in their sectors. If the DWP performs terribly and the staff walk out, there’s no private company that’d put the workshy incompetents out of business and the government just capitulates as the union PR is so great that they’ve managed to cast hugely overcompensated people as under appreciated martyrs.
I don’t think anyone who’s retired is under any obligation to ‘contribute’. They’ve done their time, as it were, and can now do what they like, within the limits of what they can afford.
It’s hard not to make comparisons when people I know doing really valuable public sector jobs earn less than I do (which isn’t much!) when all I do is help make products that people don’t really need. I think if teachers earn less than bankers they should work less hours – makes sense surely? Particularly given the special power bankers have to screw up everyone else’s lives to line their pockets.
I do agree that it is hard to lose a civil service job, and that there are many incompetents that get shifted from department to department, but believe me, that is more dispiriting for the many, many good civil servants who have to work with them than it is for ‘outsiders’. I get annoyed that public sector workers are the ones most often picked on by crap tabloids as pen-pushers, when the journalists and their readers probably haven’t got a clue what they do or what things would be like without them.
The basic difference between the public sector and the private sector is that those in the public sector tend not to let their employers fuck them in the arse regarding pay, conditions, security and pensions.
Pay’s pretty poor though, I’ve been applying for loads of jobs both in the private and public and I’ve noticed Private generally are higher for much the same job.
But yes the security is something I would take into consideration with the Public sector jobs.
Dai – It goes both ways though, yes private sector employees get screwed by their employers, but also public sector employees screw their employers.
Of course you don’t have to contribute if you’ve retired, but when you’ve retired five years early on a huge taxpayer pension, then I think that’s out of order. Either reduce the pension or increase the working life, not both, or at the very least stop complaining. What I hate the most is how they still act like martyrs despite having a great thing going.
As a new teacher, you’re paid to train, get a huge one off payment to start, a great starting salary, loads of paid holidays (and I used to be in a relationship with a teacher, it’s a myth they have a huge amount of work to do in that time) that goes up constantly with early retirement and a big pension with almost no chance of being fired. Yet they still act like they work in a sweatshop, and a lot of other public sector jobs are comparable too.
Pay is better in the private sector basically because they are commercial concerns that turn profits – those that don’t can’t survive. Work for a charity or an NGO, a private concern that doesn’t turn a profit, and it’s about the same salary with none of the benefits, and they don’t kick off endlessly about it or pretend they’re working in a salt mine.
Isabelle – I admit that the majority of public sector workers do more important things than the majority of private sector workers in the grand scheme of things, but that should be irrelevant to the pay as (although I’d prefer such a society) we don’t live in a meritocracy and it’s about equality to me more than anything else.
To be honest I wouldn’t care too much about their employment remuneration if only they’d stop acting hard done by. That’s what really fucks me off. It’s shameless and an urban myth propagated out of greed. if they insist on opening a debate about how much they deserve, that’s when I’d argue they’re on too much, not too little.
Um, there’s a danger we’re being selective of stereotypes here.
Pension benefits are probably the biggest myth around public sector employees and – to state the blindingly obvious to readers of this site – it’s hardly helped by the level of distortion applied to tabloid headlines. True, the public sector does offer some insulation from the hard edge of commercial vagaries – no public service has anything even approaching a market dynamic, but remember that monoplies have a flipside that’s an obligation to all and all that entails – but the context for the average pension is not what we’re led to believe and Digby Jones isn’t quite the expert witness.
The real issue here is not the threadbare garbage of pension apartheid, more that we should start to look at a better standard of private sector provision. The starting point might be the obscenities of executive pay growth – you know, those stellar talents who’ve screwed the economy for the next decade.
Do you not think the inital payment to teachers and huge starting salary is a reponse to the fact that no-one wants to do it? The recruitment crisis in teaching would seem to me to suggest that a lot of recent graduates (m’good self included) have taken a look at what teaching entails and though “even with the short days and long holidays, fuck that for a game of soldiers”.
Adam – I considered teaching once, and yes the benefits were ace, and yes I also thought fuck that for a game of soldiers, but it wasn’t because I though the job would be too hard or stressful, but that I can’t think of anything I’d rather less do than work in a school.
Not that I’m anti-education, I’d jump at working in a college or university, it’s just secondary education is usually the worst phase in a lot of people’s lives – like going to prison and working in an office combined – and the thought of spending my professional life back somewhere I hated every minute was never an option for me, and I think that holds true for a lot of other people as well which is why nobody wants to join and those that do hate it.
I do have a degree and loved university and college, it’s just I honestly think I’d find McDonalds more rewarding than being a secondary school teacher.
Well then why are you moaning about the minor perks secondary school teachers get when you admit yourself its an awful job?!
This myth of private sector thriftiness is a sham. Surely the obscene sums of money the boss of Northern Rock was demanding despite triggering a run on the bank by his own glaring incompetance should indicate that its the private sector bleeding the company dry.
What I’m saying is that its a brilliant job, but one that many people due to having spent most their life in education until that point find tedious to the point of suicide to re-enter and almost a mark of failure, like climbing back into the womb.
That’s why it doesn’t get many applicants, when you’re in the job though its pretty much money for old rope.
Nope, but my girlfriend is a teacher as is her sister and mother and most of her friends, and a lot of people I work with in youth work (I’m not a youth worker, but a freelance media type who does arts work with them) who are ex-teachers and all of them told me so, which is where I formed my opinion from.
And they all say the worst part of the job is not the pupils or the benefits, but the huge amount of other incompetent, money grasping, whinging teachers who are utterly indifferent to their pupils that stink up the schools.
Steven I think that previous poster you mentioned was me.
I see you’re back at this one again.
If I recall rightly you like to flit about using teachers (clearly as far from typical a profession compared to most ‘Civil Servants – who are in large part no longer CS’s at all but contracted agency staff) and applying their terms as if they were typical.
Obviously they are not.
You also make comments implying that CSs (or staff employed under contract by the various agencies) do contribute to their pensions.
They do.
You also want to imply that all Css leave with huge pensions.
They do not.
Slam the DWP if you like (jeez talk about picking on easy targets) but I know people who currently work there and it is far from the life of Reilly you appear to want to describe it as.
From daily abuse to actual violence to staff it is an appalling place to work – and very far from the ‘music hall gag’ some love to depict.
I can also point to the experience of my own mother who returned late in life to the Dept of Ed.
She retired on a very meagre pittance – after being forced to retire at 60.
(but don’t worry she didn’t live too long on that and stopped costing anybody anything)
Obviously the line “You also make comments implying that CSs (or staff employed under contract by the various agencies) do contribute to their pensions”.
Ought to have read -
‘You also make comments implying that CSs (or staff employed under contract by the various agencies) do *not* contribute to their pensions’.
Everybody I have ever known who works in the public sector have been overpaid and underworked. My ex’s Mum got made redundant from her teaching role on Friday with a next big cheque for £30k+ and on Monday started a new teaching role on 65k a year.
My friend who’s an electrician for the council gets paid a full days wage for being sat at home on call, and then extra if he gets called out!
If you work in the private sector and your ill you would usually have to stand the first three days before getting SSP, whilst in the public sector they will pay you full wage for up to six months.
They still get final salary pensions which no private sector employer can afford to offer.
They get mire holidays work less hours, all in all working in the public sector id pretty cushy. The only down side would be that very few private sector employers would offer an ex public sector worker a job, I know I wouldn’t
I agree…..all those expats on the costa del essex have got a lot to answer for.
What’s David Blunkett doing in dead blonde corner?
Looks like I’m not being costed £4,700…after all I’m not a “family”
The French minister is foreign, so his opinion is worthless anyway (in DE-land)
What Blunket sees in her I just do not know.
Have you seen Blunkets’ new wife? No? Well neither has he! (i’m here all week…)
Seriously though, and rather amazingly, I agree with an Express story here. Civil servant pensions are a disgrace and an absolute screw. I’m just amazed the Express thinks so as I’d assume a large amount of its readers are public sector types on early retirement in Spain, sucking the country dry while contributing fuck all back.
And I know I’ll likely get comments back about how teachers and other public sectors workers work incredibly hard under stressful conditions and low job security, yadda, yadda, ya. Bollocks. It’s a myth. And those few that are, so what? So does everyone else, and in many cases a lot worse in the private sector. It’s a screw and you all know it.
Steven – here’s your expected comment back. Public sector workers usually don’t have low job security – that’s one of the perks, along with a good pension, that makes up for their low pay. And contributing fuck all? I would suggest that what they do their whole working lives is contribute – that’s kind of the point of the public sector. But I’ve seen your comments on here before about this subject, so I have a feeling that no amount of comments are going to swat that bee in your bonnet, and I will leave it there.
Yeah, damn those lazy, overpaid nurses!
That comment about the French guy was news a couple of weeks ago. He was talking about the fact that so many Asylum seekers are left in France because Britian won’t take them. This might suggest to some that the UK really is quite tough on Asylum (even when the UN says so nobody listens) but the Express doesn’t take this on board.
I’m not saying they do ‘fuck all’ professionally, I’m saying those who retire early abroad do fuck all at that point.
I agree job security is excellent, it’s just a previous poster a while ago tried to convince me it wasn’t. Pay is in no way poor, people make indirect comparisons and assume because a teacher earns less than a banker they deserve a huge pension and early retirement and less working hours, etc, etc.
The simple fact is the government is easier to blackmail on employment issues than private companies because there is little or no competition in the public sector with all areas being real or virtual monopolies, so staff can be as unproductive as they want and hold their paymasters to ransom with tedious regularity without being sacked on mass or having their organisation go bankrupt.
It’s got to the stage where its so widespread that people just assume that’s public sector workers are somehow the martyrs of the workforce because of the amount of concessions they have.
By competition I don’t mean for individual jobs but in their sectors. If the DWP performs terribly and the staff walk out, there’s no private company that’d put the workshy incompetents out of business and the government just capitulates as the union PR is so great that they’ve managed to cast hugely overcompensated people as under appreciated martyrs.
…and thus the public kick off forcing the government’s hand (forgot to add that)
I don’t think anyone who’s retired is under any obligation to ‘contribute’. They’ve done their time, as it were, and can now do what they like, within the limits of what they can afford.
It’s hard not to make comparisons when people I know doing really valuable public sector jobs earn less than I do (which isn’t much!) when all I do is help make products that people don’t really need. I think if teachers earn less than bankers they should work less hours – makes sense surely? Particularly given the special power bankers have to screw up everyone else’s lives to line their pockets.
I do agree that it is hard to lose a civil service job, and that there are many incompetents that get shifted from department to department, but believe me, that is more dispiriting for the many, many good civil servants who have to work with them than it is for ‘outsiders’. I get annoyed that public sector workers are the ones most often picked on by crap tabloids as pen-pushers, when the journalists and their readers probably haven’t got a clue what they do or what things would be like without them.
The basic difference between the public sector and the private sector is that those in the public sector tend not to let their employers fuck them in the arse regarding pay, conditions, security and pensions.
Pay’s pretty poor though, I’ve been applying for loads of jobs both in the private and public and I’ve noticed Private generally are higher for much the same job.
But yes the security is something I would take into consideration with the Public sector jobs.
Dai – It goes both ways though, yes private sector employees get screwed by their employers, but also public sector employees screw their employers.
Of course you don’t have to contribute if you’ve retired, but when you’ve retired five years early on a huge taxpayer pension, then I think that’s out of order. Either reduce the pension or increase the working life, not both, or at the very least stop complaining. What I hate the most is how they still act like martyrs despite having a great thing going.
As a new teacher, you’re paid to train, get a huge one off payment to start, a great starting salary, loads of paid holidays (and I used to be in a relationship with a teacher, it’s a myth they have a huge amount of work to do in that time) that goes up constantly with early retirement and a big pension with almost no chance of being fired. Yet they still act like they work in a sweatshop, and a lot of other public sector jobs are comparable too.
Pay is better in the private sector basically because they are commercial concerns that turn profits – those that don’t can’t survive. Work for a charity or an NGO, a private concern that doesn’t turn a profit, and it’s about the same salary with none of the benefits, and they don’t kick off endlessly about it or pretend they’re working in a salt mine.
Isabelle – I admit that the majority of public sector workers do more important things than the majority of private sector workers in the grand scheme of things, but that should be irrelevant to the pay as (although I’d prefer such a society) we don’t live in a meritocracy and it’s about equality to me more than anything else.
To be honest I wouldn’t care too much about their employment remuneration if only they’d stop acting hard done by. That’s what really fucks me off. It’s shameless and an urban myth propagated out of greed. if they insist on opening a debate about how much they deserve, that’s when I’d argue they’re on too much, not too little.
Um, there’s a danger we’re being selective of stereotypes here.
Pension benefits are probably the biggest myth around public sector employees and – to state the blindingly obvious to readers of this site – it’s hardly helped by the level of distortion applied to tabloid headlines. True, the public sector does offer some insulation from the hard edge of commercial vagaries – no public service has anything even approaching a market dynamic, but remember that monoplies have a flipside that’s an obligation to all and all that entails – but the context for the average pension is not what we’re led to believe and Digby Jones isn’t quite the expert witness.
The real issue here is not the threadbare garbage of pension apartheid, more that we should start to look at a better standard of private sector provision. The starting point might be the obscenities of executive pay growth – you know, those stellar talents who’ve screwed the economy for the next decade.
Do you not think the inital payment to teachers and huge starting salary is a reponse to the fact that no-one wants to do it? The recruitment crisis in teaching would seem to me to suggest that a lot of recent graduates (m’good self included) have taken a look at what teaching entails and though “even with the short days and long holidays, fuck that for a game of soldiers”.
Adam – I considered teaching once, and yes the benefits were ace, and yes I also thought fuck that for a game of soldiers, but it wasn’t because I though the job would be too hard or stressful, but that I can’t think of anything I’d rather less do than work in a school.
Not that I’m anti-education, I’d jump at working in a college or university, it’s just secondary education is usually the worst phase in a lot of people’s lives – like going to prison and working in an office combined – and the thought of spending my professional life back somewhere I hated every minute was never an option for me, and I think that holds true for a lot of other people as well which is why nobody wants to join and those that do hate it.
I do have a degree and loved university and college, it’s just I honestly think I’d find McDonalds more rewarding than being a secondary school teacher.
Well then why are you moaning about the minor perks secondary school teachers get when you admit yourself its an awful job?!
This myth of private sector thriftiness is a sham. Surely the obscene sums of money the boss of Northern Rock was demanding despite triggering a run on the bank by his own glaring incompetance should indicate that its the private sector bleeding the company dry.
What I’m saying is that its a brilliant job, but one that many people due to having spent most their life in education until that point find tedious to the point of suicide to re-enter and almost a mark of failure, like climbing back into the womb.
That’s why it doesn’t get many applicants, when you’re in the job though its pretty much money for old rope.
Steven says:
“when you’re in the job [teaching] though its pretty much money for old rope”
You’re absolutely right, Steven, YOU HAVE NEVER DONE THE JOB – so you wouldn’t know what it’s like.
Nope, but my girlfriend is a teacher as is her sister and mother and most of her friends, and a lot of people I work with in youth work (I’m not a youth worker, but a freelance media type who does arts work with them) who are ex-teachers and all of them told me so, which is where I formed my opinion from.
And they all say the worst part of the job is not the pupils or the benefits, but the huge amount of other incompetent, money grasping, whinging teachers who are utterly indifferent to their pupils that stink up the schools.
Steven I think that previous poster you mentioned was me.
I see you’re back at this one again.
If I recall rightly you like to flit about using teachers (clearly as far from typical a profession compared to most ‘Civil Servants – who are in large part no longer CS’s at all but contracted agency staff) and applying their terms as if they were typical.
Obviously they are not.
You also make comments implying that CSs (or staff employed under contract by the various agencies) do contribute to their pensions.
They do.
You also want to imply that all Css leave with huge pensions.
They do not.
Slam the DWP if you like (jeez talk about picking on easy targets) but I know people who currently work there and it is far from the life of Reilly you appear to want to describe it as.
From daily abuse to actual violence to staff it is an appalling place to work – and very far from the ‘music hall gag’ some love to depict.
I can also point to the experience of my own mother who returned late in life to the Dept of Ed.
She retired on a very meagre pittance – after being forced to retire at 60.
(but don’t worry she didn’t live too long on that and stopped costing anybody anything)
Ooops.
Obviously the line “You also make comments implying that CSs (or staff employed under contract by the various agencies) do contribute to their pensions”.
Ought to have read -
‘You also make comments implying that CSs (or staff employed under contract by the various agencies) do *not* contribute to their pensions’.
Everybody I have ever known who works in the public sector have been overpaid and underworked. My ex’s Mum got made redundant from her teaching role on Friday with a next big cheque for £30k+ and on Monday started a new teaching role on 65k a year.
My friend who’s an electrician for the council gets paid a full days wage for being sat at home on call, and then extra if he gets called out!
If you work in the private sector and your ill you would usually have to stand the first three days before getting SSP, whilst in the public sector they will pay you full wage for up to six months.
They still get final salary pensions which no private sector employer can afford to offer.
They get mire holidays work less hours, all in all working in the public sector id pretty cushy. The only down side would be that very few private sector employers would offer an ex public sector worker a job, I know I wouldn’t
Jason.
Anecdote is no proof of anything.
Nor are the kind of sweeping statements you’re making.