Here we go again.
As the flames begin to die down, the chancers and political opportunists are emerging from the woodwork.
Following the example of Ken Livingstone, Mad Hattie Harman was on the telly last nigh explaining why thousands of young hooligans - some barely out of nappies - forsook the ersatz violence of their GameBoys and PlayStations for the real world excitement of rioting and disorder.
According to Miss Harman, it was their way of articulating anger at the rise in University Tuition fees and the cancellation of the Educational Maintenance Allowance which has been used since 2004 to encourage (or bribe) some 16-18 yearolds to stay in school. Oh, and don't let us forget the wicked Tory cuts while we are at it.
Right, Hattie.
Most of those who took to the streets go to school only when they need to keep out of the rain or establish an alibi. The concept of anyone willingly subjecting themselves to an additional three to four years of academic toil, let alone being prepared to pay for the privilege, would be totally alien to them.
To be fair, that their lawlessness could have been prompted by the Wicked Tory Cuts, might filter into their consciousness - or be suggested by a sharp defence lawyer - when they are having to excuse their activities in front of a magistrate. I doubt suppose it figured much in their thinking at the precise moment that they were legging it down Tottenham High Road clutching a 42" plasma screen TV.
No doubt, there is need for a huge debate in the country about how we educate our children, what disciplinary powers we give teachers and what rights ordinary citizens have to step in when confronted by lawlessness.
But, all of this will be so much hot air until we confront the main elephant in the drawing room, Multiculturalism.
Over the last two decades, but particularly during the 13 years of Blair/Brown, this country, for reasons best known to a small but powerful elite, set out to recast itself as a multicultural society.
Not only did we allow people to flock here in their millions but, unlike other large centres of immigration such as The US or Australia, we also encouraged them to import and nurture their own traditions and customs, frequently at the expense of the indigenous version. To make them feel as comfortable as possible, we even gave up teaching anything about our own history or traditions in school.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than in England in general and the south of England in particlular. Large pockets of our capital city have now become ghettoised, with the encouragement and approval of the previous government. Ghetto is such an ugly and emotionally-charged word, of course, that we are encouraged not to use it. Instead, people have desperately cast around for other descriptions; the favourite being the much cosier and less-threatening, Community.
Populated for the most part by people linked by family or geographical ties, these communities are self-contained and self-sustaining. However, since they are defined by the majority ethnic grouping or religion, they also tend to be exclusive, and in some cases, reclusive. They do not welcome outsiders into their midst.
Thus, when threatened by the rioters, Sikhs in Southall, Muslims in Birmingham and Turkish shopkeepers in Tottenham were able to mobilise resistance very rapidly. Armed with sticks, swords and knives they made a very public show of being prepared to protect their neighbourhoods and their businesses against all comers. The media reaction to this display of togetherness was one of unreserved approval and admiration.
Christine Odone in the the Telegraph, for instance, has written admiringly of their fierce commitment to their neighbourhoods and questioned why there wasn't the same degree of defiance and organisation in white communities.
Perhaps, she should look no further than Enfield for the answer. Here, white people did decide to band together for the same purpose, to protect their streets, businesses and homes. But, the official response to this display of community spirit has been markedly different. Where there was what appeared to be tacit approval of the stand taken by the Turks, the Sikhs an Muslim groups -tellingly, there were no calls for them to lay down their weapons and trust the duly appointed authorities to defend them - the same is not true in Enfield.
The problem seems to be that the residents marshalling their forces in that particular borough are predominantly white and number amongst them several men sporting closely cropped hair and tattoos. There has been no implied or tacit approval of their self-defence initiative. On the contrary, the man currently dubbed Britain's most senior policeman, Acting Met Police Commissioner, Tim Godwin, appears to belive that they have added a "violent racial element" to an already fraught situation.
Adding a violent racial element? What on earth does he think has been going on in London these last few days? A peaceful, mulitcultural picnic?
When black youths are texting each other to target Turkish and Asian-owned businesses, forcing their owners to arm themselves and stand guard, he doesn't think that is violent or racially-inspired?
While the Sikhs and Turks have been treated as local heroes, their white British counterparts have been dubbed "vigilantes", another word carrying a lot of emotional baggage, conjuring up visions of lynch mobs exacting their own brand of summary justice.
Commissioner Godwin has warned the "vigilantes" that the Met Police will crack down on them as hard as it does on the actual looters and rioters, if they try to take the law into their own hands. The irony of this double-standard - let alone its implicit racism - has obviously failed to penetrate Godwin's thick, helmeted head.
What this situation has demonstrated is the need for colour-blind policing on our streets, where victims and crminals alike are dealt with according to the severity of the crime. That is why the statue of Justice topping the Old Bailey is blind-folded. Because Justice must always be impartial.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Monday, 8 August 2011
How to define deprivation
In case you hadn't noticed, large areas of North London went up in flames over the weekend. Scenes reminiscent of the blitz filled tv screens and pages of the national dailies.
Various police officers made a belated appearance to explain what had happened and why they had been unable to stop the mobs turning significant area of our capital city into a passable imitation of a Beirut or Basra.
If as many had turned up to deal with the violence, perhaps fewer buildings would have been razed and fewer people forced to cower like prisoners behind their own locked and bolted doors.
Of course, the usual suspects have already started using the riots for their own ends. Ken Livingstone, never one to let anything as trivial as a moral consideration block an opportunity to score a cheap political point, has already laid the blame for the riots at the door of the Coalition.
Deprivation was the driver according to our Ken, stopping just short of drawing parallels with the Hunger marches of the Thirties. It was the Tory Cuts was that forced otherwise blameless people into desperate measures like setting fire to shops. Never mind that ordinaryt people, equally affected by the cuts, lived in the flats above those shops and were forced to flee in night clothes and with whatever few possessions they were able to grab before they were consumed by the flames.
In fairness to Ken, the deprivation was hard to miss .
People arrived in Tottenham, summoned by urgent messages pleading for their support, carried by bare-footed youngsters whose ragged clothes flapped around their frail, under-nourished bodies as they ran through the dank, malodorous streets of North London..
Actually, I made that bit up.
For the most part, people were lured to Tottenham and other parts of North London, with messages like, " I gonna roll on Tottenham, get some loot" carried not by semi-naked waifs, but posted on Twitter and FaceBook to be viewed on Blackberries, I-Phones and other smart gadgets.
Some, the genuinely deprived, had to make do with mobiles with no smart capabilities at all. But, still they joined the movement, spreading the word via humble text messaging and, in some cases, basic voice communications. And, in response, others came to join them; the tired, the poor, the dispossessed.
It was probably this group, the most deprived of all, who led the brave raids on the Halls of Capitalism in Tottenham Hale. Some, the more audacious and adventurous, made it as far as Wood Green where they battered down the barricades of privilege and helped themselves and their brothers and sisters in want to vital supplies from Currys, JJB Sports and CarPhone Warehouse.
By daylight on Sunday, sated but not necessarily satisfied, they had calmed down sufficiently to form orderly queues outside the best shops, and as an expression of solidarity in need, sharing their loot and their opportunities with those even less fortunate than themselves.
It must have warmed the cockles of old Ken's heart to see such generosity of spirit triumph in the face of the deprivation caused by those wicked, wicked, Tories at County Hall and Westminster.
Various police officers made a belated appearance to explain what had happened and why they had been unable to stop the mobs turning significant area of our capital city into a passable imitation of a Beirut or Basra.
If as many had turned up to deal with the violence, perhaps fewer buildings would have been razed and fewer people forced to cower like prisoners behind their own locked and bolted doors.
Of course, the usual suspects have already started using the riots for their own ends. Ken Livingstone, never one to let anything as trivial as a moral consideration block an opportunity to score a cheap political point, has already laid the blame for the riots at the door of the Coalition.
Deprivation was the driver according to our Ken, stopping just short of drawing parallels with the Hunger marches of the Thirties. It was the Tory Cuts was that forced otherwise blameless people into desperate measures like setting fire to shops. Never mind that ordinaryt people, equally affected by the cuts, lived in the flats above those shops and were forced to flee in night clothes and with whatever few possessions they were able to grab before they were consumed by the flames.
In fairness to Ken, the deprivation was hard to miss .
People arrived in Tottenham, summoned by urgent messages pleading for their support, carried by bare-footed youngsters whose ragged clothes flapped around their frail, under-nourished bodies as they ran through the dank, malodorous streets of North London..
Actually, I made that bit up.
For the most part, people were lured to Tottenham and other parts of North London, with messages like, " I gonna roll on Tottenham, get some loot" carried not by semi-naked waifs, but posted on Twitter and FaceBook to be viewed on Blackberries, I-Phones and other smart gadgets.
Some, the genuinely deprived, had to make do with mobiles with no smart capabilities at all. But, still they joined the movement, spreading the word via humble text messaging and, in some cases, basic voice communications. And, in response, others came to join them; the tired, the poor, the dispossessed.
It was probably this group, the most deprived of all, who led the brave raids on the Halls of Capitalism in Tottenham Hale. Some, the more audacious and adventurous, made it as far as Wood Green where they battered down the barricades of privilege and helped themselves and their brothers and sisters in want to vital supplies from Currys, JJB Sports and CarPhone Warehouse.
By daylight on Sunday, sated but not necessarily satisfied, they had calmed down sufficiently to form orderly queues outside the best shops, and as an expression of solidarity in need, sharing their loot and their opportunities with those even less fortunate than themselves.
It must have warmed the cockles of old Ken's heart to see such generosity of spirit triumph in the face of the deprivation caused by those wicked, wicked, Tories at County Hall and Westminster.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
There is a service industry - but service is not a business
One of the less appealing legacies of the Thatcher era, magnified throughout the Blair/Brown continuum, is the contention that all Public services will perform more efficiently if they were run like businesses.
This wrong-headed philosophy has landed us with a Post Office which is no longer capable of making twice-daily deliveries and whose employees routinely lie to their customers; national and local transport systems which, despite their nominally private ownership, are as heavily subsidised as they were when all transport was publicly owned; water companies who, after twenty years of trying, still cannot plug the leaks in their networks let alone guarantee continuity of supply; energy companies who exist solely to enrich their foreign owners and crucial health and social services that cannot even provide clean, safe accommodation for their sick and elderly customer base.
Many from these sectors report to or liaise with local and national Government agencies who slavishly follow the dictates of assorted lobbies, pressure groups and the EU rather than the people who elect or appoint them.
What they share with each other is the mistaken belief that services and service businesses are synonymous. The fastest growing sector in the UK economy for the last two decades has been the Service sector. Ergo, all we have to do to achieve the same levels of productivity and efficiency in our public services is to mimic those successful private service industries.
Wrong. Wrong and wrong again.
Despite the Service tag , these businesses exist for one reason only; to make money. They do this by making a profit. If, to achieve this, they need to close facilities, sack people, reduce working hours, relocate staff, slash benefits and even selectively shed customers, that is what they will do.
Public services exist for a very different reason; to provide vital services. That means running buses in rural areas where demand is intermittent, delivering letters to out of the way locations, manning fire and police stations in sparsely populated areas, emptying bins when the local populace wants them emptied; making sure that hospital and care staff follow basic hygiene routines to prevent infections. And accepting that to achieve these aims it will sometimes be necessary to subsidise some aspects of the service.
There is nothing remotely similar between balancing a budget to create value for shareholders, placate the bank manager and reward employees, and ensuring that bins are emptied, streets are cleaned, pot holes are filled, pensioners and other vulnerable people in the community are cared for and the police, fire and ambulance services are both local and respond rapidly when they are needed.
The problem is, of course, that "learning from business" has become the conventional wisdom. Councils, the Civil Service, the Police and Fire Brigades all routinely send their brightest and best to colleges where they rub shoulders with genuine business people. What they bring back from these courses - apart from an unhealthy addiction to management speak - is a mind set that makes no distinction between cost and value.
So, faced with a choice between maintaining a police station in a rural community or taking care of things from a central station twenty miles away, the new Police manager will opt for the latter. As long as he still ticks the right boxes, his decision Will be judged the correct one by his political masters. They, and he for that matter, are unlikely to live in the community thus affected.
The people on the ground might take a somewhat different view. Once the police are no longer in situ, they are no longer local. No glossy brochure can reassure like a blue light over a police station in the centre of town. No matter how artfully presented, all the statistics, pie charts, spreadsheets and matrices in the world will not convince the community that a mad twenty mile dash is as effective a deterrent as a large, uniformed bobby strolling down the High Street.
Does one provide better "value for money" than the other? It depends on your definition of value. If all of your assumptions are based on cost efficiency, then there can be no argument. (Unless, of course, the policies of our latest, mad Energy Minister drive fuel costs so high that a forty mile round-trip becomes as expensive as a month's rent and council tax.)
If, however, you evaluate the service on the basis of its value to the community, then the argument takes on a different complexion altogether. Only a business-man would choose the first option. Someone with the service of the public as his principal obsession would, unhesitatingly, opt for the latter.
Until and unless our political masters and their acolytes learn that lesson, our Public services will continue to decline to the point where, as is the case with the Post Office, it will be hard to make a sensible argument for their continued existence.
This wrong-headed philosophy has landed us with a Post Office which is no longer capable of making twice-daily deliveries and whose employees routinely lie to their customers; national and local transport systems which, despite their nominally private ownership, are as heavily subsidised as they were when all transport was publicly owned; water companies who, after twenty years of trying, still cannot plug the leaks in their networks let alone guarantee continuity of supply; energy companies who exist solely to enrich their foreign owners and crucial health and social services that cannot even provide clean, safe accommodation for their sick and elderly customer base.
Many from these sectors report to or liaise with local and national Government agencies who slavishly follow the dictates of assorted lobbies, pressure groups and the EU rather than the people who elect or appoint them.
What they share with each other is the mistaken belief that services and service businesses are synonymous. The fastest growing sector in the UK economy for the last two decades has been the Service sector. Ergo, all we have to do to achieve the same levels of productivity and efficiency in our public services is to mimic those successful private service industries.
Wrong. Wrong and wrong again.
Despite the Service tag , these businesses exist for one reason only; to make money. They do this by making a profit. If, to achieve this, they need to close facilities, sack people, reduce working hours, relocate staff, slash benefits and even selectively shed customers, that is what they will do.
Public services exist for a very different reason; to provide vital services. That means running buses in rural areas where demand is intermittent, delivering letters to out of the way locations, manning fire and police stations in sparsely populated areas, emptying bins when the local populace wants them emptied; making sure that hospital and care staff follow basic hygiene routines to prevent infections. And accepting that to achieve these aims it will sometimes be necessary to subsidise some aspects of the service.
There is nothing remotely similar between balancing a budget to create value for shareholders, placate the bank manager and reward employees, and ensuring that bins are emptied, streets are cleaned, pot holes are filled, pensioners and other vulnerable people in the community are cared for and the police, fire and ambulance services are both local and respond rapidly when they are needed.
The problem is, of course, that "learning from business" has become the conventional wisdom. Councils, the Civil Service, the Police and Fire Brigades all routinely send their brightest and best to colleges where they rub shoulders with genuine business people. What they bring back from these courses - apart from an unhealthy addiction to management speak - is a mind set that makes no distinction between cost and value.
So, faced with a choice between maintaining a police station in a rural community or taking care of things from a central station twenty miles away, the new Police manager will opt for the latter. As long as he still ticks the right boxes, his decision Will be judged the correct one by his political masters. They, and he for that matter, are unlikely to live in the community thus affected.
The people on the ground might take a somewhat different view. Once the police are no longer in situ, they are no longer local. No glossy brochure can reassure like a blue light over a police station in the centre of town. No matter how artfully presented, all the statistics, pie charts, spreadsheets and matrices in the world will not convince the community that a mad twenty mile dash is as effective a deterrent as a large, uniformed bobby strolling down the High Street.
Does one provide better "value for money" than the other? It depends on your definition of value. If all of your assumptions are based on cost efficiency, then there can be no argument. (Unless, of course, the policies of our latest, mad Energy Minister drive fuel costs so high that a forty mile round-trip becomes as expensive as a month's rent and council tax.)
If, however, you evaluate the service on the basis of its value to the community, then the argument takes on a different complexion altogether. Only a business-man would choose the first option. Someone with the service of the public as his principal obsession would, unhesitatingly, opt for the latter.
Until and unless our political masters and their acolytes learn that lesson, our Public services will continue to decline to the point where, as is the case with the Post Office, it will be hard to make a sensible argument for their continued existence.
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Bully boy Brown
Methinks the News of the Screws hacking row has now passed the point where there is anything new or useful left to say.
Granted, the NoW and News International mined a very large seam of filth with their hacking of Millie Dowler's Voicemail and the mobiles of the families of dead soldiers.
All involved should already have been hauled before a beak. That includes assorted Murdochs, the unlovely Rebekah ( where did she get that spelling?) Wade/Brooks, Andy Coulson and any and all of the police officers who took money for information. No new legislation is needed to make this happen. Everything is covered by laws already in existence, ranging from those governing illegal interception of telephonic communications to the 2006 Companies Act which makes it clear that a company is considerd an individual when it comes to criminal activity - and the officers of that company are responsible for its actions,jointly and severally.
Given this fact, it is sickening to see an assortment of chancers, self-seeking publicity hounds and creeps baying on the BBC and in Parliament for heads to roll, enquiries to be launched, the Press to be neutered and, generally demanding that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, when they all know that the remedies already exist.
Yesterday, it was Gordon Brown's turn to try to snatch the moral low ground away from the likes of Blair, Peter Mandelson, David Mellor, Hugh Grant, David Cameron and Alastair Cambell.
There he was in the Commons, making his first appearance since before the flood, one huge bundle of resentment and thwarted ambition.
Sullen with anger, and seeking sympathy for the way that Rebeka and her friends had stalked the Brown family at the time of a terrible tragedy, he failed to mention the times subsequent to this terrible harassment when he and Sarah had the fragrant Rebeka, Mrs Murdoch Junior and Elizabeth Murdoch to stay and play with them at Chequers. Or that the Browns, en famille, had been guests of the same Rebeka when she married the old-Etonian, Charlie Brooks and became a close neighbour and chum of David Cameron.
No. any outrage our Gordie felt in those times was carefully disguised as affection and respect for all things Murdoch and News International.
It's only now, when the Murdoch connection is getting a right old kicking, that big, brave Gordon decides it's safe to put his own boot in.
So very typical of the man. A terrible bully and coward in office and a cowardly bully out of it.
Granted, the NoW and News International mined a very large seam of filth with their hacking of Millie Dowler's Voicemail and the mobiles of the families of dead soldiers.
All involved should already have been hauled before a beak. That includes assorted Murdochs, the unlovely Rebekah ( where did she get that spelling?) Wade/Brooks, Andy Coulson and any and all of the police officers who took money for information. No new legislation is needed to make this happen. Everything is covered by laws already in existence, ranging from those governing illegal interception of telephonic communications to the 2006 Companies Act which makes it clear that a company is considerd an individual when it comes to criminal activity - and the officers of that company are responsible for its actions,jointly and severally.
Given this fact, it is sickening to see an assortment of chancers, self-seeking publicity hounds and creeps baying on the BBC and in Parliament for heads to roll, enquiries to be launched, the Press to be neutered and, generally demanding that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, when they all know that the remedies already exist.
Yesterday, it was Gordon Brown's turn to try to snatch the moral low ground away from the likes of Blair, Peter Mandelson, David Mellor, Hugh Grant, David Cameron and Alastair Cambell.
There he was in the Commons, making his first appearance since before the flood, one huge bundle of resentment and thwarted ambition.
Sullen with anger, and seeking sympathy for the way that Rebeka and her friends had stalked the Brown family at the time of a terrible tragedy, he failed to mention the times subsequent to this terrible harassment when he and Sarah had the fragrant Rebeka, Mrs Murdoch Junior and Elizabeth Murdoch to stay and play with them at Chequers. Or that the Browns, en famille, had been guests of the same Rebeka when she married the old-Etonian, Charlie Brooks and became a close neighbour and chum of David Cameron.
No. any outrage our Gordie felt in those times was carefully disguised as affection and respect for all things Murdoch and News International.
It's only now, when the Murdoch connection is getting a right old kicking, that big, brave Gordon decides it's safe to put his own boot in.
So very typical of the man. A terrible bully and coward in office and a cowardly bully out of it.
Friday, 1 July 2011
Pension potty
Retirement. There's an emotive word for you. So emotive, multitudes of teachers, filing clerks and other assorted Civil Servants have thrown off their cardigans and taken to the streets of London to protest against plans to make them work until at least 65 like the great mass of the population.
In the old days, Civil Servants used to justify their generous retirement packages by comparing their salaries with what they would earn in the Private Sector. N.B. For Private Sector read The City of London; none of them ever really considered bashing metal or flipping burgers for a living. Not for them the continuous lusting after wealth and privilege. What drove them was nobility of purpose and an unselfish desire to burn themselves out in the service of the Nation (even if the salaries on offer were pitiful.) All they asked in return was the right to retire at 60 - or even earlier - on an index-linked, final salary pension.
Even though they now, with the odd exceptions, make 7% more on average than their equivalents in the private sector they are still playing the same old song. While the rest of us are having to accept the need to work until 67, or 68 or whatever figure the next right wing Think Tank arrives at, they demand the right to call it a day at 60.
Now, I remember when I first returned to the UK having lived in the US for a number of years, the newspapers were full of stories about how much the EU - or at least various of its member states - wanted to get their claws into British private pensions; rightly regarded at the time as the gold standard. A significant proportion of the workforce was the beneficiary of final salary pensions. Encouraged by government, not a few of them fattened their pots with AVCs (additional voluntary contributions). The future looked, if not rosy, at least predictable and relatively safe.
Then Gordon Brown, encouraged by that beacon of economic literacy, Ed Balls, ended the tax relief private pension schemes had traditionally enjoyed. This garnered him lots of extra dosh to lavish on his favoured client groups. What it also did was explode a grenade under the whole edifice of private pensions and, at a stroke, destroyed the retirement plans of millions who, up to that point, were quietly confident that they had everything covered.
14 years later, apart from the CEOs and CFOs of large corporations for whom a feater-bedded pension is an essential element in any contract negotitations, few in the private sector will enjoy the type of index-linked final salary pension scheme that was common prior to 1997. The only people guaranteed an index-linked pension when they eventually hit retirement are those in the public sector
Here, I have to put my hand up and say that I am one of the fortunate few. I will receive a private pension based on my final salary built up over the 14 years I have worked for my current employer. In fact, don't tell anybody but it was the principal reason I stayed with them for so long. In itself not particularly munificent, it is still considerably better than other pension schemes I have subscribed to at various times in my working life.
Now approaching retirement, I have started to review my options and, quite frankly, they are not that uplifting. Having paid income taxes and National Insurance contributions for 48 years I will recieve a State pension of around £5000 p.a. Munificent!
Of course, I have my work pension but 14 years is not that long when it comes to building a pension pot.
What of the other years, you ask. Were you in prison, hospitalised or simply bone idle?None of the above.
I was self-employed. In fact, I ran a small business and thus also provided a number of other people with gainful employement. During these years, encouraged and incentivised by various governments, I paid fairly large sums into a private pension plan. At the time, interest rates in the UK were in the high teens and the returns the pension company were promising conjured up visions of a retirement spent travelling between a house on the South Coast and a villa in the South of France in a stretch limo.
Once I moved to the States , I no longer paidUK tax and had to leave my pension scheme.
When I returned I tried without success to resurrect the scheme. It was disallowed because one of the perks of my new job was a generous pension provision . So, my private pension went back into a state of suspended animation. As I am rapidly approaching retirement, I have been showing more interest in its health in recent years.
The scheme grew rapidly in the early stages, fuelled by interest rates of 12% and more per annum. At that time, anyone could grow money simply by sticking it in a Post Office savings account. However, when the markets tightened and then the recession bit, the people managing the funds had to work reallyhard and intellligently to keep the pot bubbling. This they signally failed to do . In fact, so comprehensive was their failure that not a single farthing has been added to my pot for the last seven years.
Villas and stretch limousines are now out of the question. What my cherished scheme will provide is so reduced that it will struggle to pay the fuel bill for a small house and car.
At least that sheme did show some growth. Another occupational pension that I had almost forgotten about I subscribed to in my twenties, forty years ago, When I left the company I also left the scheme. Nonetheless, after forty years I thought it might be worth enquiring about. After all, forty years on, inflation should have grown the admittedly pitiful sum I invested quite considerably. The pension company was very helpful. They had my policy and confirmed that they would be paying a pension. Then they sent me a lavish pack, full of images of sailing boats on sun-dappled lakes and hearty elderly people cycling, mountaineering and gorging themselves on nouvelle cuisine and detailed instructions on how to apply for my rightful share of this cornucopia.
Excitedly, I turned to the last page of the pack, to the illustration of benefits. £478. I looked again. £478 a month would come in useful, no doubt.
One drawback. The £478 wasn't a monthly amount. It was an annual payment. Since the company I had worked for had not set the plan up on a With-Profits basis, the funds had not grown at all. . The pension company might just as well have put the money under a mattress for all the good they had done in the intervening forty-odd years.
So, there you have it. I followed government advice, made what I thought would be adeqaute provison for my old age and a combination of ideological economic chicanery, financial ineptitude and sheer highway robbery has blown all my plans apart.
Anyone who joined the Civil Service at the same time as I started work, has probably already been retired for the last four years. Unlike me, they are enjoying an index-linked pension dependent not on the vagaries of the money markets or the whims of inefficient fund managers but guaranteed by the British Government and paid for out of the taxes taken from me for nearly half a century.
In the old days, Civil Servants used to justify their generous retirement packages by comparing their salaries with what they would earn in the Private Sector. N.B. For Private Sector read The City of London; none of them ever really considered bashing metal or flipping burgers for a living. Not for them the continuous lusting after wealth and privilege. What drove them was nobility of purpose and an unselfish desire to burn themselves out in the service of the Nation (even if the salaries on offer were pitiful.) All they asked in return was the right to retire at 60 - or even earlier - on an index-linked, final salary pension.
Even though they now, with the odd exceptions, make 7% more on average than their equivalents in the private sector they are still playing the same old song. While the rest of us are having to accept the need to work until 67, or 68 or whatever figure the next right wing Think Tank arrives at, they demand the right to call it a day at 60.
Now, I remember when I first returned to the UK having lived in the US for a number of years, the newspapers were full of stories about how much the EU - or at least various of its member states - wanted to get their claws into British private pensions; rightly regarded at the time as the gold standard. A significant proportion of the workforce was the beneficiary of final salary pensions. Encouraged by government, not a few of them fattened their pots with AVCs (additional voluntary contributions). The future looked, if not rosy, at least predictable and relatively safe.
Then Gordon Brown, encouraged by that beacon of economic literacy, Ed Balls, ended the tax relief private pension schemes had traditionally enjoyed. This garnered him lots of extra dosh to lavish on his favoured client groups. What it also did was explode a grenade under the whole edifice of private pensions and, at a stroke, destroyed the retirement plans of millions who, up to that point, were quietly confident that they had everything covered.
14 years later, apart from the CEOs and CFOs of large corporations for whom a feater-bedded pension is an essential element in any contract negotitations, few in the private sector will enjoy the type of index-linked final salary pension scheme that was common prior to 1997. The only people guaranteed an index-linked pension when they eventually hit retirement are those in the public sector
Here, I have to put my hand up and say that I am one of the fortunate few. I will receive a private pension based on my final salary built up over the 14 years I have worked for my current employer. In fact, don't tell anybody but it was the principal reason I stayed with them for so long. In itself not particularly munificent, it is still considerably better than other pension schemes I have subscribed to at various times in my working life.
Now approaching retirement, I have started to review my options and, quite frankly, they are not that uplifting. Having paid income taxes and National Insurance contributions for 48 years I will recieve a State pension of around £5000 p.a. Munificent!
Of course, I have my work pension but 14 years is not that long when it comes to building a pension pot.
What of the other years, you ask. Were you in prison, hospitalised or simply bone idle?None of the above.
I was self-employed. In fact, I ran a small business and thus also provided a number of other people with gainful employement. During these years, encouraged and incentivised by various governments, I paid fairly large sums into a private pension plan. At the time, interest rates in the UK were in the high teens and the returns the pension company were promising conjured up visions of a retirement spent travelling between a house on the South Coast and a villa in the South of France in a stretch limo.
Once I moved to the States , I no longer paidUK tax and had to leave my pension scheme.
When I returned I tried without success to resurrect the scheme. It was disallowed because one of the perks of my new job was a generous pension provision . So, my private pension went back into a state of suspended animation. As I am rapidly approaching retirement, I have been showing more interest in its health in recent years.
The scheme grew rapidly in the early stages, fuelled by interest rates of 12% and more per annum. At that time, anyone could grow money simply by sticking it in a Post Office savings account. However, when the markets tightened and then the recession bit, the people managing the funds had to work reallyhard and intellligently to keep the pot bubbling. This they signally failed to do . In fact, so comprehensive was their failure that not a single farthing has been added to my pot for the last seven years.
Villas and stretch limousines are now out of the question. What my cherished scheme will provide is so reduced that it will struggle to pay the fuel bill for a small house and car.
At least that sheme did show some growth. Another occupational pension that I had almost forgotten about I subscribed to in my twenties, forty years ago, When I left the company I also left the scheme. Nonetheless, after forty years I thought it might be worth enquiring about. After all, forty years on, inflation should have grown the admittedly pitiful sum I invested quite considerably. The pension company was very helpful. They had my policy and confirmed that they would be paying a pension. Then they sent me a lavish pack, full of images of sailing boats on sun-dappled lakes and hearty elderly people cycling, mountaineering and gorging themselves on nouvelle cuisine and detailed instructions on how to apply for my rightful share of this cornucopia.
Excitedly, I turned to the last page of the pack, to the illustration of benefits. £478. I looked again. £478 a month would come in useful, no doubt.
One drawback. The £478 wasn't a monthly amount. It was an annual payment. Since the company I had worked for had not set the plan up on a With-Profits basis, the funds had not grown at all. . The pension company might just as well have put the money under a mattress for all the good they had done in the intervening forty-odd years.
So, there you have it. I followed government advice, made what I thought would be adeqaute provison for my old age and a combination of ideological economic chicanery, financial ineptitude and sheer highway robbery has blown all my plans apart.
Anyone who joined the Civil Service at the same time as I started work, has probably already been retired for the last four years. Unlike me, they are enjoying an index-linked pension dependent not on the vagaries of the money markets or the whims of inefficient fund managers but guaranteed by the British Government and paid for out of the taxes taken from me for nearly half a century.
Friday, 11 February 2011
What is a democracy?
How interesting it is to watch self-professed Liberals tie themselves in knots.
Faced, on the one hand, with the prospect of President Mubarak's demise and democratic rule for Egypt, they can scarcely contain their glee. On the other, the decision of the elected House of Commons to overrule the (unelected) European Court of Human Rights on the subject of voting rights for prisoners has them twisting their hankies in outrage and anger.
Patently, for them, Democracy is a multi-faceted philosophy.
In a Middle Eastern country deemed to have been in thrall to the US for twenty odd years, it means one thing. While, in the country that virtually invented the idea of Universal Suffrage in the first place, it means something completely different.
As far as regime change in Egypt is concerned, nothing could be more exciting or invigorating to our liberal elites.
If they are to be believed, once Mubarak is consigned to the dustbin of history, the crowds thronging Tahir Square will form orderly queues, head for the ballot boxes and vote into office a new, suitably soft-Left government, with no special dispensations for the Moslem Brotherhood, American presidents or other pressure groups. It will enthusiastically embrace equal rights for women, atheists, Coptic Christians, Jews and Zoroastroans and adopt a stance of compete neutrality towards other Arab states.
And squadrons of pink porkers will fly the length of the Nile in celebration, just as they have when other nations have thrown off the shackles of colonial rule. Think Iran, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen.......
The reality of Parliamentary Democracy in action, on the other hand, has the opposite effect on our gilded liberals.
When our elected rParliament overrules the subjective musings of 16 totally unelected judges from countries with very little in the way of democratic tradition, they regard democracy as deeply flawed.
Obviously, therefore, Democracy a little like the Curate's Egg to our Liberal elite - Good in parts. But only if it makes the right decisions.
Faced, on the one hand, with the prospect of President Mubarak's demise and democratic rule for Egypt, they can scarcely contain their glee. On the other, the decision of the elected House of Commons to overrule the (unelected) European Court of Human Rights on the subject of voting rights for prisoners has them twisting their hankies in outrage and anger.
Patently, for them, Democracy is a multi-faceted philosophy.
In a Middle Eastern country deemed to have been in thrall to the US for twenty odd years, it means one thing. While, in the country that virtually invented the idea of Universal Suffrage in the first place, it means something completely different.
As far as regime change in Egypt is concerned, nothing could be more exciting or invigorating to our liberal elites.
If they are to be believed, once Mubarak is consigned to the dustbin of history, the crowds thronging Tahir Square will form orderly queues, head for the ballot boxes and vote into office a new, suitably soft-Left government, with no special dispensations for the Moslem Brotherhood, American presidents or other pressure groups. It will enthusiastically embrace equal rights for women, atheists, Coptic Christians, Jews and Zoroastroans and adopt a stance of compete neutrality towards other Arab states.
And squadrons of pink porkers will fly the length of the Nile in celebration, just as they have when other nations have thrown off the shackles of colonial rule. Think Iran, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen.......
The reality of Parliamentary Democracy in action, on the other hand, has the opposite effect on our gilded liberals.
When our elected rParliament overrules the subjective musings of 16 totally unelected judges from countries with very little in the way of democratic tradition, they regard democracy as deeply flawed.
Obviously, therefore, Democracy a little like the Curate's Egg to our Liberal elite - Good in parts. But only if it makes the right decisions.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Scrapping - it's the new saving
Despite this apparently being the start of a new era of austerity, there have been very few clear signals from our leaders on what measures we should be taking to help us cope.
Things were a lot different during the War. Posters exhorted the population to Dig for Victory. Roadside verges were ploughed up to grow vegetables. There were clear signs everywhere that things were tough and everyone would have to be even tougher to survive.
In the absence of anything approaching even a suggestion of a coping strategy from numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, those of us anxious to do our bit can only do as our leaders do.
That is why I am adopting one of the strategies formulated during last year's Strategic Defence Review; one, its proponents claim, that should save the country millions of pounds over the coming years.
Of course, mine is a much scaled-down version but I believe it follows essentially the same principles as those used by the MOD.
Step i: I decide to build a new house, commission the best architects and settle on the most expensive building contractors in the Yellow Pages. My agreed budget for the build is £500,000.
Step 2: With design changes, upgrades to incorporate new technology as it becomes available and the cost-overruns common to large projects, the cost spirals to around £2 million. More pertinently, build-time goes out from the original estimate of 12 months to around five years.
Step 3: Seven years after signing the contract, the new house is declared ready for occupation.
Step 4: Snagging all the faults and arguments about who is responsible for the cost, delays my moving into the house by a further 12 months.
Step 5: At last the house is ready for occupation, having cost around five times the original estimate.
Step 6: The economy has taken a turn for the worst. I estimate it will cost £20,000 per annum to maintain and decorate the house. In order to save this money, I decide to demolish the house without ever using it, writing off the £2.5 million it finally cost to build .
Step 7: My wife has me committed on the very reasonable grounds that I have completely lost my marbles.
If this scenario is unfamiliar, simply substitute Nimrod for house and multiply all of the costs by the largest number your mind can cope with.
Now, how do we go about getting George Osborne committed?
Things were a lot different during the War. Posters exhorted the population to Dig for Victory. Roadside verges were ploughed up to grow vegetables. There were clear signs everywhere that things were tough and everyone would have to be even tougher to survive.
In the absence of anything approaching even a suggestion of a coping strategy from numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street, those of us anxious to do our bit can only do as our leaders do.
That is why I am adopting one of the strategies formulated during last year's Strategic Defence Review; one, its proponents claim, that should save the country millions of pounds over the coming years.
Of course, mine is a much scaled-down version but I believe it follows essentially the same principles as those used by the MOD.
Step i: I decide to build a new house, commission the best architects and settle on the most expensive building contractors in the Yellow Pages. My agreed budget for the build is £500,000.
Step 2: With design changes, upgrades to incorporate new technology as it becomes available and the cost-overruns common to large projects, the cost spirals to around £2 million. More pertinently, build-time goes out from the original estimate of 12 months to around five years.
Step 3: Seven years after signing the contract, the new house is declared ready for occupation.
Step 4: Snagging all the faults and arguments about who is responsible for the cost, delays my moving into the house by a further 12 months.
Step 5: At last the house is ready for occupation, having cost around five times the original estimate.
Step 6: The economy has taken a turn for the worst. I estimate it will cost £20,000 per annum to maintain and decorate the house. In order to save this money, I decide to demolish the house without ever using it, writing off the £2.5 million it finally cost to build .
Step 7: My wife has me committed on the very reasonable grounds that I have completely lost my marbles.
If this scenario is unfamiliar, simply substitute Nimrod for house and multiply all of the costs by the largest number your mind can cope with.
Now, how do we go about getting George Osborne committed?
Monday, 24 January 2011
Unable to value the woods for the trees
At some time over the last decade a million pounds turned into chickenfeed in the money mill we call our public finances.
Where once the thought of a publically-financed project going millions of pounds over budget would have elicited a collective, horrified intake of breath from the UK population, these days it would only merit a sigh of relief that the amount involved was so small.
How did this happen? What were we all doing that so important that we didn't notice someone changing the m for a b at the beginning of the word?
When did we become so blase about the cost of running our country that politicians could talk, quite cheerfully, about projects costing "only" a couple of billion, without eliciting howls of outrage from the people from whose pockets these enormous sums are extracted in direct and indirect taxes?
After all, a billion is a BIG number. Even allowing for the fact that we are dealing, as so often in modern life, with the American version of a billion, it is still one million multiplied by a thousand. That's 1 followed by nine noughts. According to Google, 1 million US dollars laid ened to end would be almost one hundred miles long, so 1 billion would stretch almost 100,000 miles. None of which is relevant except to emphasise the fact that a billion is a very BIG number.
Is it the sheer scale of the number that shocks us into silence, in the same way that an enormous sky or impossibly high mountain can reduce us to a state of numbed awe.
As a country, we are in debt to the tune of £952 billion. Actually, that isn't quite correct because that figure doesn't include the Private Finance Initiatives that Gordon and Ed(Balls) cooked up as a way of keeping almost £300 billion more of public spending off the official scorecard. ( all of which is another story in itself now that Balls has become the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.) So, we actually owe somewhere close to 1.3 trillion. A trillion is a million multiplied by another million, which anyone over the age of 50 will recognise as an old-fashioned British billion, so perhaps we should thank our lucky stars that we are now dealing with US billions rather than the real thing! So, 1.3 trillion is, actually, 1300 billion. That not only makes your eyes water, it's enough to make you want to cross your legs, too.
The point of all of this, long and meandering though it might have been, is to bring us to a discussion of the merit or otherwise of the Forestry Commission and DEFRA between them taking it upon themselves - at the Government's behest - to sell off our forests and woodlands to private investors. Actually, when I say OUR, that only applies to anyone reading this who considers themselves English rather than British. As is frequently the way in our heavily devolved Island, the woods that will be offered for sale are all in England; the Welsh and the Scots having, very wisely, decided to keep ownership of theirs in the public domain.
As justification for the sale, various estimates have been made for how much it will raise. The highest, so far, is around £300 million.
£300 million? Not even a third of a billion ( US Style) Not even 300th of a Trillion (US) or billion (old style UK)?
In modern money terms we are talking proverbial peanuts. This is the sort of money a Government department might possibly scrape together simply by digging down the back of a few couches. Yet, the very same politicians who cheerfully bandy billions around when discussing their pet projects want us to leap with joy at the prospect of raising a paltry £300 million.
£300 million won't even cover the cost of the yet-to-be-finished Olympics stadium in Stratford let alone Spurs demolishing it, building a new stadium and renovating the old Crystal palace running track for UK Athletics. I
It is less than 1/10th the amount that is being saved by scapping the Nimrod fleet. 300 lower-order Golman Sachs investment bankers could buy the whole lot simply by pooling their annual bonuses.
£300 million is sufficient to pay no more than two or three days' interest on the UK National Debt.
In other words, it is chickenfeed.
And it is for this handful of small change that the Government is prepared to sell off woodlands that belong to the whole country; without discussion, without a by your leave and, apparently, without a toss for what the rest of us think.
They have placed a monetary value on the land itself without a thought for its amenity value - which in the crowded place that England has become, is almost priceless.
It does not augur well for the Big Society of Cameron's PR man's dreams.
More to the point, as I have said before, when the sell-off process begins and our interests are being represented by politicians the corporate boys will take them to the same old cleaners and we, the great English Public, will find ourselves short-changed once again.
Where once the thought of a publically-financed project going millions of pounds over budget would have elicited a collective, horrified intake of breath from the UK population, these days it would only merit a sigh of relief that the amount involved was so small.
How did this happen? What were we all doing that so important that we didn't notice someone changing the m for a b at the beginning of the word?
When did we become so blase about the cost of running our country that politicians could talk, quite cheerfully, about projects costing "only" a couple of billion, without eliciting howls of outrage from the people from whose pockets these enormous sums are extracted in direct and indirect taxes?
After all, a billion is a BIG number. Even allowing for the fact that we are dealing, as so often in modern life, with the American version of a billion, it is still one million multiplied by a thousand. That's 1 followed by nine noughts. According to Google, 1 million US dollars laid ened to end would be almost one hundred miles long, so 1 billion would stretch almost 100,000 miles. None of which is relevant except to emphasise the fact that a billion is a very BIG number.
Is it the sheer scale of the number that shocks us into silence, in the same way that an enormous sky or impossibly high mountain can reduce us to a state of numbed awe.
As a country, we are in debt to the tune of £952 billion. Actually, that isn't quite correct because that figure doesn't include the Private Finance Initiatives that Gordon and Ed(Balls) cooked up as a way of keeping almost £300 billion more of public spending off the official scorecard. ( all of which is another story in itself now that Balls has become the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.) So, we actually owe somewhere close to 1.3 trillion. A trillion is a million multiplied by another million, which anyone over the age of 50 will recognise as an old-fashioned British billion, so perhaps we should thank our lucky stars that we are now dealing with US billions rather than the real thing! So, 1.3 trillion is, actually, 1300 billion. That not only makes your eyes water, it's enough to make you want to cross your legs, too.
The point of all of this, long and meandering though it might have been, is to bring us to a discussion of the merit or otherwise of the Forestry Commission and DEFRA between them taking it upon themselves - at the Government's behest - to sell off our forests and woodlands to private investors. Actually, when I say OUR, that only applies to anyone reading this who considers themselves English rather than British. As is frequently the way in our heavily devolved Island, the woods that will be offered for sale are all in England; the Welsh and the Scots having, very wisely, decided to keep ownership of theirs in the public domain.
As justification for the sale, various estimates have been made for how much it will raise. The highest, so far, is around £300 million.
£300 million? Not even a third of a billion ( US Style) Not even 300th of a Trillion (US) or billion (old style UK)?
In modern money terms we are talking proverbial peanuts. This is the sort of money a Government department might possibly scrape together simply by digging down the back of a few couches. Yet, the very same politicians who cheerfully bandy billions around when discussing their pet projects want us to leap with joy at the prospect of raising a paltry £300 million.
£300 million won't even cover the cost of the yet-to-be-finished Olympics stadium in Stratford let alone Spurs demolishing it, building a new stadium and renovating the old Crystal palace running track for UK Athletics. I
It is less than 1/10th the amount that is being saved by scapping the Nimrod fleet. 300 lower-order Golman Sachs investment bankers could buy the whole lot simply by pooling their annual bonuses.
£300 million is sufficient to pay no more than two or three days' interest on the UK National Debt.
In other words, it is chickenfeed.
And it is for this handful of small change that the Government is prepared to sell off woodlands that belong to the whole country; without discussion, without a by your leave and, apparently, without a toss for what the rest of us think.
They have placed a monetary value on the land itself without a thought for its amenity value - which in the crowded place that England has become, is almost priceless.
It does not augur well for the Big Society of Cameron's PR man's dreams.
More to the point, as I have said before, when the sell-off process begins and our interests are being represented by politicians the corporate boys will take them to the same old cleaners and we, the great English Public, will find ourselves short-changed once again.
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