The strikers are the real heros of the moment fighting for justice against the neoliberal onslaught. The Labour Party continues to be supporters of neoliberalism and totally fails the strikers. Keep up the good work Sunny.

I really appreciate these strikes, not only are they helping to get the deficit under control the effect on the traffic is great.

It would be even better if the next round of strikes could be on a Friday because the roads tend to get really choked up on the way home.

Gordon Brown wrecked private sector pensions with his raid on private pensions. Where were the unions then?

Oh, I remember….gloating about all the extra cash they had for their own pay and pensions.

And you wonder why the majority of the working public have little sympathy for public servants who have much better pension settlements than we do ourselves, yet we pay for them first.

not only are they helping to get the deficit under contro

To get that under control you’d need growth in the economy, which is happening thanks to Osborne.

To get that under control you’d need growth in the economy, which is happening thanks to Osborne.

A rare example of Sunny being correct on economics. Cut out and keep.

Doh! That was of course a typo. Anyone who thinks there has been economic growth under Osborne is living in cuckoo land.

anyway – this thread is about today’s march itself. Please go troll at some other site today and stop trying to derail it

6 – But it’s past 3.30, so teachers are surely technically no longer on strike?

@1: “The strikers are the real heros of the moment fighting for justice against the neoliberal onslaught. The Labour Party continues to be supporters of neoliberalism and totally fails the strikers.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Unison quietly achieves a commitment to deal with local government pensions (which like some other public sector pension schemes are contributory) separately, because these schemes are more soundly funded.

@2: Droll!

@3: “Gordon Brown wrecked private sector pensions with his raid on private pensions.” Indeed he did! In 1997, the UK’s overall pension position was one of the best in the developed world. Labour destroyed it with a misconceived tax!

“you wonder why the majority of the working public have little sympathy for public servants who have much better pension settlements than we do ourselves, yet we pay for them first.”

And I wonder at the egalitarians who populate this site tolerating such gross inequality between public sector (hurrah!) and private sector (boo!) pensions. Why should some relatively poor private sector workers subsidise generous pensions for some well-paid public sector professionals? Why should any public sector pension be non-contributory? (Why, more broadly, should the public sector remain absolutely untouched when the private sector and Government revenues shrink?)

@6: “Please go troll at some other site today and stop trying to derail it”. But that is to define ‘troll’ as ‘someone who disagrees with me (Sunny)’. Either you accept open and reasonable debate, Sunny, or you moderate your comments ruthlessly – like that totalitarian idiot, Richard Murphy (whom you consider to be a “tax genius”) – so that Liberal Conspiracy is an echo chamber in which your opinions alone are reinforced. And there’s nothing liberal about the latter…

I have had loads of fun by joining in with the teachers who were shouting “scab” at kids who went to infant school today.

“And I wonder at the egalitarians who populate this site tolerating such gross inequality between public sector (hurrah!) and private sector (boo!) pensions. Why should some relatively poor private sector workers subsidise generous pensions for some well-paid public sector professionals? Why should any public sector pension be non-contributory? (Why, more broadly, should the public sector remain absolutely untouched when the private sector and Government revenues shrink?)”

Public pensions are contributory. Poor private sector pensions (I don’t include the rich here) do not justify poor public sector pensions. The rich caused the crisis, they should pay for it. Neoliberalism is the real world. Wake up.

@10: “Public pensions are contributory”

Some are; others, like the police one, are not! (Do keep up!) And even the contributory ones require contributions well below what is required in most private sector schemes.

“Poor private sector pensions…do not justify poor public sector pensions.”

Agreed. But the last – Labour – government quite wilfully created a private sector pensions crisis by an ill-judged tax..

“The rich caused the crisis, they should pay for it.”

Simplistic drivel. Bankers caused the credit crunch. Labour’s financial incontinence caused the deficit. The two together made the effects of an inevitable – “we have abolished boom and bust”, as one G Brown hubristically declared – recession far worse.

“Neoliberalism is the real world. Wake up.”

Please define neoliberalism. Sounds to me as if you are using it as a catch-all term of abuse.

@ 11. paul ilc

It was not a tax, it was getting rid of a distortionary subsidy.

Plenty of criticisms can be made against Mr Brown when he was chancellor but the talking point about pensions is not one of them. Abolishing the pension fund tax credit on dividends in 1997 was the right thing to do. The pension funds used to get a tax credit of 20% on dividends received from UK companies. The idea of the credit was to offset corporation tax already paid by companies on their profits. Dividends were assumed to be net of income tax but pension funds were exempt so received money back as a tax credit. However, the credit distorted investment decisions by funds encouraging firms to pay higher dividends rather than reinvest profits. Norman Lamont made that point when he cut the credit from 25% to 20% in 1993, noting that the credit “…both penalises successful British-owned international companies and distorts investment decisions.”

At the same time as the credit was abolished corporation tax was cut. Many of the firms now whining about pension deficits are the same firms who used to take pension holidays in order to boost profits. If their actuaries had been doing their job anticipating low interest rates and increased life expectancy they would not have been taking pension holidays. Moreover, after the dividend tax credit was abolished shares rose 50% over the next two years so no reason why getting rid of the credit should have harmed a well invested fund. Unless of course they were not well invested. The reason why so many of them ended up with pension deficits is because they bought in at the top of the tech bubble and sold at the bottom losing quarter of a trillion pounds. Nothing to do with Mr Brown and everything to do with fund manager incompetence.

“The reason why so many of them ended up with pension deficits is because they bought in at the top of the tech bubble and sold at the bottom losing quarter of a trillion pounds. Nothing to do with Mr Brown and everything to do with fund manager incompetence.”

Yes, that was certainly what fucked my private pension.

Thanks Richard W for that forensic demolition of the classic myth put out by the financial sector (and the knaves who propagandise for it, and the fools who fall for that propaganda – which are you paul ilc?).

The private pension sector was a unbelievable fucking rip-off during the boom, and then it lost over three-quarters of a trillion in the latest crash, and is now a complete basket case. Private pensions have utterly utterly failed.

Yet has anybody in the casino branch of the pensions industry had the basic human decency to chuck themselves out of their office windows? No, they have gone on the attack. The sector knows that its only chance of survival is to destroy the very concept of a public pension.

That is what all on the left should work harder to do – to get the message across that this is about levelling everybody up to the standard of a decent, secure old age, not a poverty-stricken, insecure old age the neoliberals want to level everyone (other than them) down to.

@ 6 Sunny

Tappying my bloomberg terminal, but however hard I do it still says growth is positive.

What of course you really mean is growth isn’t as high as you’d like it to be, which would mean that your precious socialsit state wouldn’t need pruning.

Of course you have no proof or evidence that incontinent spending would be doing the trick either. Certianly isn’t in the US.

But you really mean that you wish Labour was in power, but that would also mean Ed Balls would be pissing moeny away again.

So we’re basically back to square one.

Ed Miliband disagrees with you: http://youtu.be/PZtVm8wtyFI “These strikes are wrong because negotiations are still going on”

@11. paul ilc “Please define neoliberalism. Sounds to me as if you are using it as a catch-all term of abuse.”

“Neoliberalism describes a market-driven[1] approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that stresses the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state.”

Neoliberal policies have increased the gap between the wealthiest 1% and the bottom 90% in the USA, have impoverished millions in the third world and is doing the same here. http://tinyurl.com/6xvhmgl Or check out Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.