From The Telegraph*
Retired civil servants drawing gold-plated taxpayer funded pensions now outnumber those employed in the civil service for the first time.
Official figures show there are now 17,000 more people drawing civil service pensions than are currently employed as civil servants.
The civil service pension bill has risen 30 per cent in just four years, and now costs the taxpayer £7.4 billion – a situation described by pensions experts as "unsustainable".
The escalating costs derive from substantial final salary pensions, retired people living longer, and the number of civil servants taking the option of early retirement.
Retired teachers could outnumber those in the classroom within the next three years, according to analysis of official accounts.
* Spotter's Badge: MBK.
Stormlight
1 hour ago
9 comments:
I think I may have informed you, recently, that you include the armed services in those statistics, after 27 years before the mast my (copper bottomed) (index linked) (made in heaven) (to die for) (gold plated) pension is yet to hit the £6000 per annum (before tax).
Fuckin' whoopee, bring out the champagne.
BTW - The CEO of Hampshire County Council gets (I'll not use the term earns), in one year, all the money I EARNED in my 27 years service.
Let's get a bit of perspective in these rants of yours.
Anon, it's not my 'rant', I am merely passing on what the newspaper said. I have never said that soldiers were overpaid, it appears to me that the rank and file are horribly underpaid, as it happens. The excesses are further up the ranks.
"The escalating costs derive from substantial final salary pensions, retired people living longer, and the number of civil servants taking the option of early retirement."
Typical journalistic conflation: the bulk of the "civil servants taking the option of early retirement" are unlikely to be the ones drawing "substantial final salary pensions" as the pensions are based on length of service. Also, typically, the Torygraph fails to mention that civil service pay is supposed to be (and probably still is, except for the upper echelons) reduced to allow for the "non-contributary" pension.
Also Mark, you missed a chance to have a short rant about the gov't dishonestly omitting to acknowledge these civil service pensions as a liability.
Anon. To back up MW, probably the only state employed group that deserves good apy and pensions is the military. Isn't that the 'military covenannt?. Essentially if the state is primarliy about defence and law and order then those are the only two groups that need to be on the state payroll.
I s'pose in days gone by we, the Brits, were renowned for having a large a large navy (slavery and protecting trade routes for the use of) and a small standing army. The standing army formed the central trained leadership cadre for the needful raising of a citizen army in times of national survival.
Only fools see the diminution of our military capability as a good thing. "Talk softly and carry a big stick" as my old dad used to say.
B, it's trickier than that. The teacher's pension for example gives a 1/60 final salary accrual for each year worked, so for a teacher there is a trade off -
a) Take half your annual salary after 30 years and live for another 30 years, you'll earn half as much again during retirement as you did while working.
b) Take a hundred per cent of your salary after 60 years and drop dead a few months later, you'll earn a tiny fracton in retirement of what you did while working.
Put the two together and this encourages early retirement.
L, 'armed neutrality' is my watch word. Our current government talks very loud and then squanders our military on mad cap adventures like Afgh or Libya.
The fact that there's a large latent liability appears to have been drilled into popular consciousness by now.
MW - Agreed. Armed Neutrality. trouble we keep letting ourselves get drawn into the 'Great Game' so beloved of politicians. Mind you a few helicopter equipped frigates and an aircraft carrier would help enforce the law of the sea off Somalia. Protecting trade routes is not offensive military action. My proposal is an extension of 'send a gunboat', but I am not using one to enforce the opium trade.
L, yes of course.
As we can estimate the costs and benefits of 'protection from pirates', we can fund this part of the Navy by asking ships using those waterways who want protection from Royal Navy to register their ships in the UK and pay up accordingly for the right to fly a British flag.
If this helps reduce the ship owner's insurance premiums by more than the cost of flying the flag*, then it's win-win for all concerned. If not, then it's not worth doing.
* A sort of sea-borne LVT, if you will.
I have a contemporary (early 1800's) print of a flotilla of East India Company ships at St Helena, escorted by a RN frigate, presumably to scare off pirates in the Indian Ocean (plus ca change). Mind you, the merchant vessels are all armed, too, with around 24 guns each, a custom that could usefully be resumed. I wonder if the East India Co had to reimburse HM Gov't for the cost of the frigate, or whether this was "all part of the service"
B, I don't think we'll ever find out. The EIC was part-state, part-private; the Royal Navy was to some extent state-sponsored piracy (the only rule was 'don't attack British ships') and the dividing line between 'state' and 'private' wasn't so big then.
But I do know that the police charge football clubs for attendance at matches, if that's any help.
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