Robdixon that would ok to a point if firefighters, police, army and even teachers ;-). were paid a much much better wage rather than having been sold the career knowing the relatively poor pay was offset by a good pension provision.
The unions need to wake up and start telling some home truths - the good news is that we're living longer but unfortunately working for 30 years and paying relatively little towards your own retirement provision doesn't guarantee anyone the right to 40 to 50 years of free living. Like it or not, we all need to save more and work longer - the real focus should be on how we help people to do that - including putting in place much better provision to help employers and workers find solutions that enable more jobs to be done by the over 60s / 70s.
I'm paying £350 a month 13.2% of my monthly pay this is set to increase again. How much more should I pay? Take home pay is £1.5k how much more of this do I give up?
How much are you paying?
20 or 30 years ago the smartarses on here would have been boasting about the wisdom of sacificing take home pay for an excellent pension and earlier retirment age, not unlike how people in the motor trade do with their poor basic rate but bonuses and excellent company cars, and people in the bike trade do with trade discounts. Now people seem to be ridiculed for having the temerity to question it when their employer changes/reduces their orginal package of employment/renumeration/retirement. Hmmmph.
try plumbing 350 month into this
https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/tools/pension-calculator
**make sure you tick the 'Do you want your pension income to keep pace with inflation' box, if your current pension has a spouse allowance tick that box, ditto 25% tax free box
[i]I'm paying £350 a month 13.2% of my monthly pay this is set to increase again. How much more should I pay? Take home pay is £1.5k how much more of this do I give up?[/i]
The usual rule-of-thumb is that you (and your employer) need to put away 1/2 your age as a percentage to get 2/3 of you salary as a pension.
Which of course barely happens and for many now no whatever they save they are lucky if their employer even puts in 4% - and you are getting 26.5%. 😯
Is that figure correct, as it's all I could find?
What's all the "this government" does this, does that etc?
Governments around the world of all political persuasion are tackling the same issues. Look across the Channel at the mess and unsurprising compromise/botch introduced by a Socialist government in France recently. Look back at what happened in CEE. See what is happening with fire service pensions in the US......etc. This is a challenge faced by Tories, Liberals, Labour, Socialists (just in case they are not the same thing!), Republicans, Democrats, Social Democrats etc (althought the Europeans are hiding the data at the moment, Quelle Surprise!),
Its not politics - ok not entirely 😉 - its demographics, economics and fairness with a bit of politics thrown in.
Dont worry AA, as a teacher you can look that cheeky boy in the corner in the eye and think, you might be a smart ar$e now but don't forget that in the future you are going to have to pay for me to sit on my sofa sucking my werthers/playing a few holes of golf in a style that will never be available to anyone of your generation. And as a teacher that is what I call "fairness."
Governments value their employees so much, that they condemn their financial futures to something that is little more than a Ponzi scheme. In the private sector, this would be illegal...I wonder why?
its demographics
so why are we so short of primary school places?
According to the local authorities: (1) rising birth rates (now), (2) lack of affordability of private sector education and (3) higher levels of immigration.
Has anyone noticed the mps have slipped a 25% increase through?!
Screw everyone but were alright!
http://www.****/news/article-128712/MPs-pensions-25.html
Rising birth rates? I thought the problem was falling birth rates??
There has been a pick-up in birth rates that affect primary school places but not to the extent that they materially affect the overall demographic profile of the UK. The stats are all available on the LGA website.
No Daily MailI’m sorry but we don’t allow direct links to the Daily Mail on our website as we find it an abhorrent publication.
For an explanation of why this is we can’t think of a better illustration than Stephen Fry’s personal account of his dealings with this publication here. We would encourage you to read this before continuing on to the Daily Mail website.
If you still want to visit the Daily Mail website your can use this link:
> http://www.****/news/article-128712/MPs-pensions-25.html
/p>The above link has a nofollow attribute applied.
Chapeau, stw! 😆
A website that predicts the future? Wow can it tell me future sports results too?
Have you been on holiday Julian?
It's government statistics AA, you tell me?
That is brilliant.
Anyways.. As said above.. mps seem to be doing ok?
"Which of course barely happens and for many now no whatever they save they are lucky if their employer even puts in 4% - and you are getting 26.5%. "
This is the thin end of the wedge - some of the public sector defined benefit schemes receive [s]employer [/s]tax payer contributions equivalent to 60% of salary.
Factor in wages that are typically higher than private sector (on average), shorter working hours, more holiday, "flexi" time, more sickness absence (paramedics on 16 days sick a year at the last count), an absence of effective performance management so no-one ever gets fired for poor performance... and the cries of "[i]we're not valued[/i]" frankly ring a bit hollow when you compare this to fate of the many poor sods who are struggling though on low wages in the private sector, trying to bring up families on limited incomes and resigned to having to struggle through retirement in the knowledge that the biggest contribution to pension was the contribution they made as a tax payer to someone else of the same age who retired 15 years before them.
teamhurtmore - MemberHave you been on holiday Julian?
Twice since the Stephen fry article, on my luxuriant public sector worker wages. 😛 (in fact i recently discovered that my union owns and runs its own holiday resort in Croyde. With a hefty discount for members. Perhaps we should have gone there.)
Happily i managed not to use the internet during both times, so missed the dail mail ban.
Lower wages on average is a massive misuse of the stats is it not? Most of those people working for min eage at tesco dont pay very much tax.
...and of course many/most low end jobs in public sector institutions (by this I mean catering, claeners, estates and porters) have long since been farmed out to private enterprise.
Local example being our 5000 employee district general hospital which farmed out (most of but not 100% of) porters, and all cleaners and catering to ISS 14 or 15 years ago so the average wage of that particular hospital trust leapt up correspondingly even though no one got paid a penny more.
Where it is possible to find like-for-like jobs in private healthcare (private CPN, ICU or A&E nurse? almost unheard of but you will find equiatble posts in other non-medical-emergency inpatient services like rehab, mental health etc) they are competitive with those in the NHS and usually feature non-slary benefits as sweeteners. You will find that IT and HR are the exception though, they get way more in the private sector, in fact I am suprised any of ours bother staying!
so why are we so short of primary school places?
We're breeding tax payers slower than pensioners. Old people don't have the common decency to die at 67 anymore.
It's easily fixed. Peg retirement age at average age of death + 2 years. Then the ponzi scheme works again. Free booze and fags for the over 50s would work too.
Some good arguments why firefighters shouldn't work until 60 here in this British Heart Foundation video about their research into firefighters
[url=
Heart Foundation Firefighter research video[/url]
Can some of the STW FFs clear one thing up. As I said in my first post, I think both sides in this debate are deliberately choosing to muddy the waters here. There is no doubt that there is some skulduggery going on with the employers. However, as an outsider I am also interested in the argument that has been used a lot in the media about - how would Joe Public like it if a 60 year old was sent to fight a fire. So excuse me, but as an outsider this appears to be scaremongering BS but I am happy to be proved wrong here.
Can you explain the fitness test - how does this work now? How will this change?
If you fail the fitness tests now, are you kicked out, transferred to other duties etc?
Are the government really proposing that FF in their late 50s and early 60s will be at the front line in terms of fighting fires?
In most profession, the nature of our roles changes with age and experience. Why is firefighting, police, the military not the same thing (please these are all genuine questions). Clearly in the armed services, the nature of the roles change over time. Why not in the FF profession?
The police and other public sector workers complain that too much time is spent on paperwork and beauracracy and they have my sympathies. But isn't this part of the obvious solution? There are many roles involving education, planning, community liaison, budgeting, etc that could use the experience of the "more mature" professionals leaving the younger ones to focus on the front line, more physically demanding roles. I know this is only one (small) part of the issue, but I would appreciate some clarity on this line being pushed hard by the union.
Teamhurtmore - you've hit on one of the major gripes the FBU have. There currently is, and never has been, a standard fitness test across the UK fire service. I may be slightly out with the exact figures but I'm sure some one who has them will correct me, but what I recall as being proposed is that all existing firefighters must maintain a VO2 max of 42 until they retire or face being dismissed due to incapability meaning their pension rights will be deferred until they are age 65 (more if the normal retirement age increases). They are also proposing that any new entrants must maintain a VO2 max of 47 throughout their career.
The governments own study showed the overwhelming majority of the population (men) would be unable to achieve the lower of these figure into their late 50s and no women at all would be able to do so. You are looking at only elite athletes who continue training being able to maintain these levels of fitness. Now, you may argue that firefighters should be elite athletes, however when I joined 20 years ago there was no quantifieable fitness test as such, and while I can achieve the standard being mooted, many firefighters who are less active will not be able to do so. It would be near impossible for anyone in their late 40s or mid 50s to now achieve those levels of fitness if they're not already close to them now.
To have no standard fitness test and then impose one retrospectively, especially one that is unachievable by the vast majority of people (again I'm not sure of the exact figure but I believe it's over 90%) doesn't seem realistic and actually seems designed to get rid of a large part of the workforce and their pension burden, thereby making the fire service a far more appealing propsect for privatisation.
I can only partially answer some of your last questions as each county will have its own way of dealing with it.
Also I hope a brigade pti is available to answer the vo2 max levels as I don't fully understand that witchcraft.
In my county we are constantly assessed in all areas of our work including knowledge, skills and fitness.
The fitness level currently for a 33 year old who bikes fairly regularly and has no nagging injuries apart from a duff knee is quite achievable. This fitness assessment which is I believe sterner than any other 999 service apart from i imagine specialist groups (bleep test or treadmill or Chester step) is the same level up to my retirement age and irrespective of my role (community safety, technical safety or frontline firefighter)..
Along with this test there is static medical tests including lung function, blood pressure and bmi.
If you fail these tests or any of the other assessments you are subject to a process known as 'capability', basically an improvement program but also a way of drawing a line in the sand.
So as you can see if the reason you're failing tests is out of your control there is a process already established for you to be dismissed, as age leads to deterioration of the body (lung function, blood pressure etc etc) there are some things that aren't 'fixable'
It's also worth having a watch of the British heart foundations study video linked above.
To answer your question about redeployment, quite simply there aren't enough posts, technical fire safety and community education are small departments and in our case the community safety is a proactive method that is not part of the fire services remit, if the budgets continue to be cut we will return to our core buisness and stop or shrink community education.
If you are a firefighter there is nowhere to hide, you are frontline till you retire. You will be doing all the tasks the young bucks do as that's how we work, everyone does everything.
Thank you both, that's interesting. So to continue the cynical/skulduggery theme - the gov introduces a policy that on the face of it has a sensible objective (fitness levels) but in reality is set at a level to deliver a hidden objective (reduce numbers). There are a limited number of alternative jobs within the service so alternatives have to be found which is not easy at that age or in the current climate. Ok, I get that bit I think. So the other side, how does any of this mean thatthe public will be put at risk as Matt Wrack seems to be claiming? He seems to be deliberately painting an image of an unfit, old person attempting to save people from a fire which seems to be quite a stretch of the imagination.?
Factor in wages that are typically higher than private sector (on average), shorter working hours, more holiday, "flexi" time, more sickness absence (paramedics on 16 days sick a year at the last count), an absence of effective performance management so no-one ever gets fired for poor performance... and the cries of "we're not valued" frankly ring a bit hollow when you compare this to fate of the many poor sods who are struggling though on low wages in the private sector, trying to bring up families on limited incomes and resigned to having to struggle through retirement in the knowledge that the biggest contribution to pension was the contribution they made as a tax payer to someone else of the same age who retired 15 years before them.
Someones been selling the lie effectively. Don't believe everything you read about the public sector/private sector perceived divide.
In a word -PRIVATISATION. The fire service is unappealing as a money making venture due to the large pension burden. If you get rid of, or significantly reduce that pension burden then you have a more attractive service for privatisation. For the public a privatised fire service would IMO mean a worse service with reduced levels of fire cover. Everyone's insurance premiums would increase accordingly and if you are unlucky enough not to be able to afford insurance then you face a hefty bill from G4FS or similar. It may even take the fire service full circle to the days of insurance fire brigades where you had to prove that you were insured before they'd put your fire out.
It may even take the fire service full circle to the days of insurance fire brigades where you had to prove that you were insured before they'd put your fire out.
Increased business for Tattoo parlours as people make sure their policies are not in the burning house!!
More than that OTR, the current pension structure would be illegal for a private company!
robdixon - Membermore sickness absence (paramedics on 16 days sick a year at the last count)
Be pretty astonishing if it wasn't high, wouldn't it? Stressful, physical job that puts you in contact with ill people all the time, where illness will have a high impact on your ability to do the job- ticks all the boxes for elevated levels of sickness.
i do the fitness testing for our watch, so can explain the fitness level calculator for our brigade a bit better. we use the chester step method, and as has been correctly pointed out, the VO pass level is 42. it all seems a bit hit and miss. im 48 and can pass it easily as i keep myself fit. yet there have been lads in their twenties, who also exercise regularly that sail a little close to the wind, and would have no hope later in their lives.
what also needs pointing out is that even if you maintain your current level of fitness, the calculator is such that it penalises you with each passing year. the software takes into account your age and the higher it is, the worse it makes your score. so in effect, you have to [i]increase[/i] your fitness levels each year to 'stand still'.
i take on board about the matt wrack comments that who wants an unfit 60 year old trying to pull you out of a building. yes, as has been pointed out, that wouldnt happen, as that unfit 60 year old would have been sacked on capability grounds and not lasted long enough to still be in that position. so yeah, mebbes bit of rhetoric there. altho it doesnt seem fair that if you cant [i]improve[/i] your fitness levels each year then youre sacked.
and no, there arent any 'office jobs' left any more for moves within the service. firefighters will have nowhere to go to carry on working within the service. i would imagine at that age they may be pleased to have the option! 😀
Thanks for the details guys - always an eye opener what you can learn here (STW) especially as the main news sites seem to struggle on this issue.
Have just read most of this, seems like some bitter people on here! If the firemen have been promised a contract shouldn't that be adhered to? If they haven't been promised then I guess the government would be within it's rights to amend it.
As for people saying this country is broke - load of crap, it's just poorly distributed - although Vodaphone are redistributing £54 billion (sorry not sure how many 0's that is) shame it's only to shareholders. No tax being paid on that deal either although that is normal for Vodaphone. And there are many other large companies avoiding paying the taxes that would enable this country to get back on track financially, they just sem to pay government ministers or high ranking civil servants.
Unfortunately with our current political system this won't change until Joe Public cannot take any more inequality and either there is a massive political reform or we have a revolution.
nacho - those "shareholders" are mostly the pension funds that hold the investments from people who are typically getting 3% employer contribution in the private sector. And you've missed the fact that returns to pension schemes started to be taxed under gordon brown - it's the reason so many final salary schemes closed. Any any income paid out when pensions vest is subject to income tax. So that means Vodafone's £54Bn will be taxed at least twice, possibly 3 times when you take into account that many pension funds declare operating profits which are taxed via corporation tax.
Robdixon - OK potentially a bad example but are you are telling me that you think big businesses pay their fair share of taxes?
I'm not saying there is an easy solution, especially when you look at it on an international scale but goverments (all of them) have better solutions available to them than breaking promises to FF's (and others)
Sorry I do seem to be moving away from the OP's original post, FWIW with my limited knowledge I support them IF the gov't are reneging on previous promises made. The FF's also have their own house to sort out, I have family in the force and know of the old "buddy" system where managers were promoted shortly before retirement purely to increase their pensions although I believe this has now been stopped.
Unfortunately with our current political system this won't change until Joe Public cannot take any more inequality and either there is a massive political reform or we have a revolution.
Joe Public are so apathetic they can't be arsed to stop shopping at Vodafone, Amazon, Starbucks et al, so I can't see a revolution ever happening.
Robdixon - OK potentially a bad example but are you are telling me that you think big businesses pay their fair share of taxes?
Companies don't pay taxes. People pay taxes. If 'companies' paid more taxes what would really happen would be shareholders (pension funds for example) would get lower returns, prices for goods would go up and employees would be paid less.
Have just read most of this, seems like some bitter people on here! If the firemen have been promised a contract shouldn't that be adhered to?
But every other occupation that has had their pension age and contributions increased has also had a contract changed. Apart from the armed forces is every occupation not going to have a pension age of at least 60 after the current reforms. More like 68 for many. Parliament can pass laws to do anything it wants. Well anything that isn't blocked by European law, but that's another argument.
I sympathise with the firefighters but I don't see them beating the govt on this one.
Factor in wages that are typically higher than private sector (on average), shorter working hours, more holiday, "flexi" time, more sickness absence (paramedics on 16 days sick a year at the last count), an absence of effective performance management so no-one ever gets fired for poor performance... and the cries of "we're not valued" frankly ring a bit hollow when you compare this to fate of the many poor sods who are struggling though on low wages in the private sector, trying to bring up families on limited incomes and resigned to having to struggle through retirement in the knowledge that the biggest contribution to pension was the contribution they made as a tax payer to someone else of the same age who retired 15 years before them.
Really higher average wages? How much would a skilled manager get for looking after a department, 15 staff and the customers?
Really not sacked for poor performance? Well I can recall staff being sacked for poor performance and others for poor sickness.
the biggest contribution to pension was the contribution they made as a tax payer to someone else of the same age who retired 15 years before them.[
Well that just proves you made it up.
I might be being thick, but how does a high VO2 Max help when you're carrying someone out of a building wearing restrictive breathing apparatus?
It seems like an irrelevant measure regardless of anything else, like performance measuring nuclear research scientists on how quickly they finish this week's Puzzler.
Yes you are. BA isn't in any way 'restrictive'
VO2 is a measure of your ability to work aerobically. Lifting, moving, that sort of thing. It also benefits certain performance athletes 😉
Drac
and bear in mind all the lowly paid private sector jobs have sweet fa pension
gusamc, from your link:
What point were you trying to make with that link?The compositions of the public and private sectors are different. Consequently differences in gross weekly earnings do not reveal differences in rates of pay for comparable jobs. For example, many of the lowest paid occupations, such as bar and restaurant staff, hairdressers, elementary sales occupations and cashiers, exist primarily in the private sector, while there are a larger proportion of graduate-level and professional occupations in the public sector.
In fact I gave an example of this back on page 4. (NHS hospitals subbing out portering, cleaning and catering jobs to ISS et al and in a stroke increasing the average wage of their employees without actually paying them a penny more).
The VO2max test is perhaps the stupidest way of engineering people needlessly out of their jobs that I've ever known.
VO2max is largely influenced by genetic factors and takes significant training to achieve even marginal increases in some people. Why not redefine the test to be along the lines of "carry this dummy down a flight of stairs" and have a simple pass fail.
New admiration for those in the fire service, had no idea your fitness test was so punitive.
