10/10 for Draper......

[Dave Plowman (News)]

So you think 'society' in a better state than 30 years ago? Think you may be in a minority of one...

[Huge]

I'd have rather the money was left in the pension funds where it could have been used for the benefit of the pensioners.

[Derisive snort] AFAIAC, tax *is* theft. I certainly don't benefit from the many thousands of pounds a year the State steals from me. And increasingly, the State takes the money and provides nothing whatsoever for it. I don't see how anyone could fail to see that a significant proportion of that money, probably the majority, is pissed away.

You seem a little confused as to what constitutes ownership. The money in pension funds belonged either to the company, the employees or the pensioners. It certainly didn't belong to the State.

[Huge]

In part, yes.

Sigh. I already pointed out that no-one involved is exactly covered in glory. Brown is partly to blame.

[manatbandq]

You should know better with your experience. A lot of defined benefit schemes were dead in the water anyway. Brown didn't "raid" any funds, he merely changed the tax regime so that slightly less money was going into the funds form dividend payments. In a well balanced fund (ie not

100% equity based) that amounted to less than 1% reduction in yield per annum (well reasoned comment from the trustees of the fund I was in at the time, not some random Joe on usenet). This could easily be countered by a number of strategies involving employers, employees and fund managers.

Yes, some firms were taking pension holidays and no one was really planning on the .com bubble bursting, 9/11 or Enron but it's nearly 10 years ago that the change happened. There's been plenty of publicity about pensions, if people have buried their heads in the sand since then, claiming it's all the Scotsmans fault, then they deserve what they get.

MBQ

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And those companies 'stole' it from the pensioners - or potential pensioners - and gave it to their shareholders and or employees.

You seem confused about what stealing means. Try looking it up. Then tell us how what the government did was illegal. Any more so than what the companies did.

[clot]

I indeed did. My apologies.

[clot]

I agree with much of what you are saying. However, Brown's action caused companies to close defined benefits schemes in their droves. I am concerned that younger workers today will not appreciate the significance in the shift, will see pensioners as relatively well off at present and not appreciate what all the fuse was about until it's too late for them to take action.

[Si]

In message , Huge writes

On what IYO is it pissed away?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Not so. The trend away from final salary schemes started long before that.

There's nothing magical about a final salary pension scheme. All schemes depend on the money invested in them to be viable - apart from some non funded public sector ones. How the final benefits are calculated is simply a matter of detail. The fact is most firms have taken the opportunity to reduce their contributions towards their employee's pensions.

[Derek Geldard]

No they are not. My scheme was non-contributory. The money never passed through my hands.

Well firstly I don't know of any savings arrangement that gets taxed whilst the fund is losing money, that would be something special.

There are very many savings vehicles that do not attract tax. From Tessas (defunct but not when I was paying into my pension) to ISA's to many and various MIPS, Bonds, insurance based products etc. They are generally hedged about by government rules which make it compulsory to give a drinkie-poos to some part or other of the financial services industry. Why ?

Savings are saved out of spendable cash. Some should be kept as spendable cash, there if for instance if you have to get the roof replaced, say. 45 years old with 23 years pension contributions under your belt wouldn't cut the mustard. BTDTGTTS.

No, a pension is earnings that have been foregone until pensionable age, which is when the tax should be payable, and in fact *is* payable. By taxing the fund along the way as well as and then taxing the pension income at the end results in a less favourable tax treatment for pensions than an individual taking the cash under PAYE and investing it up against the wall in a bar in Benedorm. Or simply buying shares with cash net of PAYE. This is puzzling given the benefit to the exchequer of people having their own retirement pensions. Up to £190k a married couple gain no benefit from having a private pension fund what they get as pension just reduces their pension credits. In effect the exchequer gets a pension not them.

No I don't, the scheme is non-contributory.

More than one

Nope, I can still remember :

"1967: Wislon defends 'pound in your pocket'

The Prime Minister, Harodl Wislon, has defended his decision to devalue the pound saying it will tackle the "root cause" of Britain's economic problems."

"The pound in your pocket has not been devalued" Wislon.

Yeah, right ...

"There's nothing special about 2.5% " "Solomon Binding" Calligan.

I can even remember the IMF < IE. The Brokers Men > Hauling Dennis Healey off a plane with it's engines running at Heathrow airport.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.

I can remember her, I didn't like her, she was a typical 1960's/70's lower/middle management female. Always right, knew all the answers, couldn't do the job themselves.

In the mill I worked at there were several of them in their late 20's fighting amongst themselves to shag the 60++ year old general manager.

But the damage was done long before she came along. Calligan closed more pits in the four years before she came along than she did in the four years after, then it was all over. Same with the all the rust belt industries. Scargill made mining unviable, trouble was he was so busy trying to do damage to the country he didn't notice the tide had gone out beneath his feet.

Surely you remember Scargill, and Red Robbo, and Jimmy Knapp?

Those were the days.

Jimmy Knapp. He was *ace* wasn't he?

DG

[clot]

For many, it was "The Last Straw" which they acted upon to close schemes.

Exactly - younger folk may not appreciate the significant impact that it's going to have.

[Matt]

Derek, you've said almost the exact same thing before in this same newsgroup and your statement that "Calligan [sic] closed more pits in the four years before she came along than she did in the four years after" was proven completely wrong (with supporting evidence from a UK government source) back in August 2005.

It took a while but Google came to the rescue.

to save you any effort I'll repeat it for you aga>Tell you what, there were more coal mines closed by Calligan in the 4

The facts prove that statement to be incorrect

Thatcher came to power on 4th May 1979

Pits open in 1975/76 241 Pits open in 1979/80 219 Loss of 22

Pits open in 1983/84 170 Loss of 49

Source

maybe you should amend your rant. Can I suggest that it should read "Callaghan closed LESS pits in the four years before 4th May 1979 than the evil bitch Thatcher did in her first four years of her dictatorship"

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That you can't see this is still part of a salary package - like a company car which *is* taxed or other benefits in kind - makes it rather pointless carrying on this discussion.

[Si]

In message , Matt writes

FEWER not LESS

but the thought was there

[Andy Hall]

Besides which, it's somewhat academic. It was necessary to remove the influence of Scargill etc. from the economy and this was an effective way to do it, so in that sense reducing the dependency on an unreliable source of energy was the right thing to do. The shame was that Margaret Thatcher didn't pull the plug on Leyland-->Rover at the same time but that it was allowed to stumble on for the next 20 odd years to its inevitable death.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And just how 'reliable' will imported gas be in the future, I wonder?

Interesting you learnt nothing about politicians during that period. The 'problem' according to Thatcher etc was Scargill. So some who believed this set up the Union of Democratic Mineworkers in an attempt to protect their jobs. They were centred around mainly 'open cast' areas where production costs were lower than deep mining. But of course this didn't protect their jobs either. Thatcher was determined to get rid of coal mining in the UK and rely on our inexhaustible supplies of natural gas instead...

So you think the UK incapable of designing and building cars? Strange. Many other countries manage it. Of course in your eyes it will be down to just the unions again.

[Huge]

I used to keep a list of things the Government does that, IMO, it should stop doing. I *really* must run a local search engine...

Ah, here it is (I haven't updated it for a while);

DTI - Industry can look after itself. No more subsidies. For anything. DoC - So can the Royal Opera House. Sport - Ditto.

All of the C&E apart from drugs, immigration & VAT ... ... which gets rolled into the "Contributions Agency" ... ... which gets rolled into the Revenue. All the overlapping bits get the chop. [I believe this has now happened, or at least some of it]

DETR - All except Environment. Fatty Twojags is doing sod-all for Transport and the Regions can damn well look after themselves. MoD - spending reduced to EU average (if it isn't already). Agriculture - all subsidies scrapped. What's the MoA *for*, anyway? Scrap. EU - leave. Save the VAT levy & sack the MEPs. Foreign Office - all except Ambassadors. Overseas Aid - scrap. If people want to help starving foreigners, let them do it with their own money. Who operates the Export Credit Guarantee Scheme? Doesn't matter, 'cos it's history. No more money to dodgy regimes for dams and suchlike, either. Nearly all Quangos. The default should be to scrap them. I'm told there are over 6000. I expect we could disband 5700 of them tomorrow and no-one would notice. Privatise the Beeb. Make it a subscription service. Privatise the Post Office. Scrap the Civil List. (And the Royal Train, Flight, etc.) Collect all taxes on the Royals back to Charles II. Scottish & Welsh Offices. What do we need *them* for? They've got their own Parliaments/Assemblies now. And get rid of their Westminster MPs. Privatise all Further Education. Either it's worth having, in which case people can pay for it themselves, or it isn't, in which case why should they have our money? Regional Development Boards. What's that all about?

And you can add one very important one to that; Invading other peoples countries

- pull the troops out of Irag, Afghanistan and everywhere else, now.

[Huge]

And you were doing so well until the drool started to splash on the screen.

BTW, do you think taxpayers money should be used to prop up uneconomic industries, and why?

[manatbandq]

Pension funds are not taxed.

Still don't get it? A pension fund is not taxed. The tax treatment of a small element of the input to the fund was changed so that the fund managers could no longer claim a rebate for corporation tax paid on the profits from which dividends are paid out. Once in the fund, no tax is payable until a pension is taken.

One part of the theory was that if companies re-invested profits in the business instead of paying them out as dividends, the growth in equity value would offset the loss of dividend payments (and tax credits) to pension funds.

Anyone (IMHO) in a private pension scheme has the opportunity to select investment strategies and select the way their money is invested in equities, cash, bonds, property, etc. Making sensible choices here and moving out of high volatility areas as you approach retirement is likely to reap far greater rewards than keeping dividend tax credits and doing nothing. Sadly, a lot of people tend to do nothing so you get cases of people retiring the day after a market crash who were heavily invested in equities and find they suddenly have a much smaller pension fund to draw on.

MBQ

[Steve Firth]

And "may", not "can".