its hard to spend your wages in Iraq and Afghan so he used to come home with loads in his bank account….what has this bloke been doing with his money?!

Counselling sessions for the PTSD?

It’s not good enough money to attract me. You might have already been through the mill, I don’t know.

Mudshark there are many, many things OUR taxes are spent on that should be cut before pensions. Within pensions there are many low or non-contributory pensions for civil servants, MP’s etc that should be cut before our Armed forces and emergency services. I don’t dispute that things need to change to be sustainable but the way it is being done is very wrong.

takisawa2 – Member

Let’s make the Private Sector as good as the Public Sector…

Let’s have a comparison with private sector soldier pay and conditions.

Let’s have a comparison with private sector soldier pay and conditions.

Is your point that there is no comparison possible because there is no such thing as a private sector soldier or that private sector soldiers are better/worse paid than public sector ones?

My point was that people in totally different private sector roles should consider the big picture of why soldiers have such different pay and conditions from them.

There’s a much bigger issue here than pensions. I believe that the government realise that pension disparity is a source of much angst and bad feeling towards public sector workers. This allows them to forge ahead with public sector cuts because they know they have created enough bad feelings amongst the ‘Plebs’ that there is very little sympathy for those on public sector pensions.

The debate should focus on continued foreign aid to countries such as Russia and China, two of the richest countries in earth. There should be debate over Osbourne’s policies that have strangled growth, or how the banks delayed bonuses by a few days to avoid an estimated £100 Million in tax following the budget. What about the job market? Those who would like to retire on a decent pension are now being forced to either postpone retirement or find other jobs to bolster their funds. Doesn’t this then affect the youth employment? With no manufacturing growth there are few opportunities for employment, the oldies are clinging onto there jobs meaning more youth are relying on handouts from the state.

Pensions are just one minor aspect but one that causes a lot of hard feelings. This bloke deserves the pension he signed up for. He’ll have worked bloody hard for it and to lose out for a matter of hours is morally reprehensible for those responsible.

Well said Mildred.

Soldier sacked 72hrs before he was eligible for his pension

Says he was made redundant, very different things.

Not a great way for the government to be treating soldiers.

Did “The Government” actually choose him though or did they specify budget cuts and then his superiors selected who would go through some sort of selection system – would probably be someone in the army, not the government who ultimately decided he would go.

Not that it helps him. How much redundancy do they get? Does it make up the shortfall. I know that in the private sector some people are asked to take early retirement (with some financial benefit) rather than redundancy.

Did “The Government” actually choose him though or did they specify budget cuts and then his superiors selected who would go through some sort of selection system – would probably be someone in the army, not the government who ultimately decided he would go.

I personally think his selection, and a great many like his, would have been made because at 17 odd years service with the rank of sergeant he would’ve been a fairly expensive resource. His name etc. wouldn’t have been a consideration but his annual wage bill would’ve. Knowledge, experience, commitment would’ve meant nothing to those making the decision, and much like regulation A19 in the Police service, they are merely numbers & pound signs. However, irrespective of which board or individual has made the decision, ultimately as the people making the £4.1 billion cuts to MOD budgets, the current Government are to blame.

All arms of the MOD, the Police, NHS Nursing staff, teachers, Fire & Rescue service are non profit making services. Market forces & competition don’t have an effect here; they cannot bolster their income or make less profit for their shareholders. The Government knew this when they made such severe and sudden cuts to budgets. The Government also knew that the most expensive resource in these services re their staff, so it doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to know that the 1st cost savings are going to be people.

These are truly massive organisations that have to answer to the public; they have to preserve best practice whilst at the same time leeching the very experience that can provide this. To those who say “be more efficient” to save the money – new initiatives take time & resources to develop and implement (the bigger the organisation, the timelier & costlier this becomes): the cuts have been so big and so fast, across all of these services, that developing new, better, more cost efficient ways of working just cannot be done.

I for one can see the cracks appearing in my own service, and if you haven’t noticed it yet, I think you will soon.

Is your point that there is no comparison possible because there is no such thing as a private sector soldier or that private sector soldiers are better/worse paid than public sector ones?

Mercenaries otherwise known as Private Military Contractors earn a **** fortune that can often dwarf that of a soldier, a big fortune as a mate of mines dad does it. An ex squaddie with a mansion, go figure.

It’s precisely because of this the British army has been losing many of it’s best men.

Whilst we’re talking about a drain on the economy has anyone taken note of the new revelations as to how the private energy companies are screwing us?

I for one can see the cracks appearing in my own service, and if you haven’t noticed it yet, I think you will soon.

For sure, everyone needs ambulances. I doubt many city bankers have access to their own private ambulance service – it’s now being **** over by the cuts – for example ambulances for Peterborough come from Skegness.

The rich are getting richer, we are seeing no trickle down benefit. The middle classes and below are getting poorer and poorer because of corporate greed whose profits are funnelled into the few. Gone are the days of more philanthropic companies such as the Cadburys of yore. The whole systems a mess and those at the top don’t realize it’s slowly coming to bite them, when have we ever had a Tory government become so unpopular so quickly? It hasn’t even been the cuts that have done it but the perceived gross incompetence in the running of day to day government, elitism/cronyism and the total lack of economic growth.

Mercenaries otherwise known as Private Military Contractors earn a **** fortune that can often dwarf that of a soldier, a big fortune as a mate of mines dad does it. An ex squaddie with a mansion, go figure.

Only for high quality soldiers; paras, commandos and SF types (the SAS paid a loyalty bonus of £50k to many of their blokes as retention was so poor). For the garden variety infantryman, the Mondays pretty dire considering the risk. This is because there was a massive call for them and they started taking anyone they could get their hands on; TA even security guards who gave up their jobs and it dragged the market down. A great number of my friends have been doing it for years and many are now on the ships doing the anti piracy security now as that’s where the money is. I very nearly did it myself and would be mortgage free now if I did. Well either that or dead……

I am no expert on the overall package that mercenaries receive in the even of serious injury or death and what their families receive in the event of such circumstances.

Very little I would imagine, hence the significantly higher wages than those doing similar jobs but in the pay of HM Forces.

This bloke deserves the pension he signed up for.

And he did.He got exactly the pension and lump sum that he qualified for based on his length of service.
£7,525 redundancy payment would be the statutory amount…

No he didn’t. He was made redundant 72hrs prior to qualifying for the pension that he had spent his military career working towards.

No he didn’t. He was made redundant 72hrs prior to qualifying for the pension that he had spent his military career working towards.

He didn’t, as I mentioned before, they reduced the qualifying period for an immediate pension from 22 years to 18 in order to allow more of those being made redundant to get an immediate pension and not find themselves going at 21 years etc. and missing out, there’s always going to be some that are just short of any cut-off but he would have normally only expected to get the immediate pension at 22 years service.

He was just short of the new cut-off, if they hadn’t reduced it, he would have been well short of it.
I take it he still gets a pension at 65 but just doesn’t get the immediate one?

It must be crap for him but I can’t really see how the MOD could have done much more.

Mercenaries otherwise known as Private Military Contractors earn a **** fortune that can often dwarf that of a soldier, a big fortune as a mate of mines dad does it. An ex squaddie with a mansion, go figure.

It’s precisely because of this the British army has been losing many of it’s best men.
PMC and mercenary are not euphemisms.

There was only a brief window when any old sod (ex-RUC part timers that were stood down to desectarianise PSNI for example) could show up with a reasonable chance of being hired to do work in Iraq or Afghanistan. The skilled positions are professionalized and fewer, the semiskilled stuff is done more by people from cheaper markets than before, the contracts that the big US and UK firms had have often been lost to smaller, “more flexible” providers.

The work of PMCs is not just close protection or other work that squaddies can do. Neither is the work of PMCs ir mercenaries the only appropriate analog of soldiers – security guards, paramedics, logisticians, intelligence analysts, construction workers, engineers etc all exist in the private sector too. It depends on the role.

PMCs operate in the ultraflexible global labour market – there are few (formal) employees because everyone is on contracts and there are few effective labour rights. Injury and death payments are either zero (if cowboys) or as paid for by private insurance policy (a employee or employer’s cost).

So he did then.

Sorry – I don’t mean euphemisms in my first line, I mean synonyms.