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At a family party last week, my "perfect" cousin -(not the song) has just retired from the police service after completing 30 years....

Point one: He sat and passed his sergeant exam last December, this gave him a pay increase of around ?5,000 per year. He has now after reaching 30 years service took the final salary pension. He decided he didn't need a lump sum so this keeps his pay the same.

Point 2: His final salary pension is based on his final months pay, hence he increased his pension by nearly ?5,000 a year in less than 6 months !

Point 3: He applied and has been accepted to join the Perth Police service in Australia, so he and his wife and two children + final salary pension are leaving the Uk in October to start a new life. He hopes to serve there for around 5 - 8 years... but NEVER come back to the UK

Point 4: He admits its been a great time/laugh over the years, he policed the miners strike " made a bloody fortune" and had the time of his life, had loads of time off for stress/bad backs "nearly 9 months in 30 years", lost paperwork, played "games" whilst on duty (mainly after the young WPC's... he could write a book !

He said he never worked as hard as he did revising for the exam but it was worth it !

!wink!

....and you're as jealous as can be that he had the foresight to plan a career where there has always been the option of an early final salary pension and promotion depends on passing exams.

The only thing I can criticise is his involvement in the miners' strike - but then the whole country let them down.

Considering the legal scams that bankers get away with, the massive amounts economists are paid for perpetually getting forecasts wrong and finding ways of blaming anyone but themselves and their cronies, a copper's pension is a reasonable reward for having to deal with the scum on Britain's streets.

PS I have not, nor never had had any employment with the police and have a great deal of annoyance at the way that over the years they have targetted soft options such as motorists, sex shops and working girls

To be honest, the whole public sector final salary pensions business is now unaffordable. Final salary pensions have all but disappeared from the private sector, and public sector workers now do not earn less than private sector workers. You can't have 80% of workers paying tax so that 20% can retire on benefits the others can only dream about.

It's bad enough that the NuLabor crime family recruited half a million diversity coordinators, change facilitation champions and real nappy advisers in the good times, but now we taxpayers will have to pay for them for the next 40 years. It just can't go on.

...or look at it the other way around. The scumbag corporate sector have cheated millions of workers by insisting they joined company pension schemes and have now pulled the plug - many not just on new entrants but on existing and retired employees.

One company I worked for has changed its pension scheme into an insurance scheme to "ensure" the pensions are paid. They then tell me exactly how I have to take the money, which is mine, which they have had a slice of interest from over decades and tell me they have worked hard "in my interest". From now on there is no index linking and I trust them as far as I could throw them - in fact a lot less.

At least my time in local government has given me a small, guaranteed, index linked pension.

Mysteryman wrote:

> ...or look at it the other way around. The scumbag corporate
> sector have cheated millions of workers by insisting they
> joined company pension schemes and have now pulled the plug -
> many not just on new entrants but on existing and retired
> employees.

They have done that because Gordon Cunt Brown fucked pension schemes in the arse in 1997. He imposed a ?5 billion a year tax on them, and lo and behold 96% have closed. Why's that I wonder?


> At least my time in local government has given me a small,
> guaranteed, index linked pension.

Yes, they can fund it because they just charge the poor bastards who pay council tax, many of whom are pensioners who get nothing like the money local government workers will retire on. The whole system stinks to fuck.

The rot actually started in the 80s with the Thatcher bitch who buggered up everyone'spensions with everything else. Brown and NewLlabour (watered down Tories) just made it worse.

As for local government pensions, get your facts right. Up until the last few years (and still in many cases) pensions weren't a burden on the rates/poll tax/council tax as, over the years, local cvouncils made good and shrewd investments - and, BTW, local authority workers pay council tax too - as you seem to have forgotten.

Anyone who is a pensioner today has had the same chance over the last 70 odd years to put away for their pension in various ways.

Your last comment stinks of the Daily Wail/Depress/Torygraph type of journalism which attacks public service talking of the drain on "taxpayers" - as if public servants don't pay tax.

I've worked in both the public and private sector - including running my own business. Whilst companies have put money into pension schemes, most have also made money from them in various ways. There hasn't been a pension scheme invented since 1911 that has taken account of the possibility of an ageing population having bto be supported by a dwindling workforce - adding in four recessions in the last 30 years has just totally buggered the system, the latest situation being the final nail for many.

Just to add.... the money local government uses to pay for EVERYTHING from road sweeping to social services (inc pensions) is made up from council tax and a government subvention. This subvention forms the bulk of the monies local authorities receive. The fund comes from the business rate which is not paid to local authorities but is passed to central government which then allocates the fund back according to need based on population. Extra funding is added from general taxation.

In terms of pensions, this link makes interesting reading http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?met ... l&id=79613

As far as pensioners are concerned, according to government figures, 45% of eligible pensioners failed to claim their entitlement to council tax relief, losing out on ?701 per annum - averaged across the UK, so don't go bellyaching onn about poor pensioners funding a fat cat life style for local government pensioners.

Mysteryman wrote:

> The rot actually started in the 80s with the Thatcher bitch who
> buggered up everyone's pensions with everything else. Brown
> and NewLlabour (watered down Tories) just made it worse.

Quite right, that's why in 1997 the UK had more invested in pension funds than the rest of Europe put together. The Thatcher bitch sure has a lot to answer for.

> Your last comment stinks of the Daily Wail/Depress/Torygraph
> type of journalism which attacks public service talking of the
> drain on "taxpayers" - as if public servants don't pay tax.

Net/net "public servants don't pay tax, they are paid out of tax, that's where their salaries come from. The fact that they pay tax on the salaries is just book keeping. If everyone worked for the civil service, where do you think the money would come from to pay them?

How would YOU pay public servants? Or perhaps you think that a country can run itself without administrators.

Reagan, Thatcher, Major and Bush all tried to "minimise" government to cut the public sector pay bill and taxes (or rather popularise their regimes) and all they managed to do was decimate public service (or in the case of the USA prevent necessary expansion of health care and other social services), put more money in the hands of banks, international companies and other entities (all of which employ legions of lawyers and accountants to ensure they either avoid, or at worst pay the minimum, tax) and look at where those institutions and companies have led us.

Good luck to him- but I hope most of the Thin Blue Line has a
stronger civic ethic.