Dancing on the graves of decent pensions: Double Bubble for the Few, Misery for the Many

There was a really rubbish and ignorant article here in the Evening Standard recently about a so called "black hole" in London Local Government Pension schemes.

This story is completely nuts. Most Local Government Pension Schemes are in better shape now than there have been for decades. Many are close to being fully funded. I note that the Standard did not bother to check its facts or get an alternative view.

The lies and untruths told by some of the financial services industry about defined benefit pensions is simply shocking. The totally unnecessary destruction of defined benefit pensions in the private sector will go down as one of the greatest financial scandals there has ever been. Countless millions of Brits and their families have been deprived of any chance of a decent pension by this scandal and will have to retire and die in poverty or work until they drop.  While their dependents and kids are left destitute if they die or become ill.

While Government, regulators and employers deserve their share of the blame, many financial advisers have made pots of money by closing schemes and then opening expensive new inferior Defined contributions schemes. Double bubble for few: misery for the many.

Check out the statement below from Cllr Forhad Hussain about the facts.

"The recent Evening Standard article https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/council-pensions-black-hole-grows-to-17-billion-soaring-20-in-a-year-a3791756.html made a misleading and inaccurate link between an international accounting standard number and the pension contributions made (and by inference the level of services provided) by Councils.

Council pension contributions are determined by a valuation process which takes place every three years and certified by a professional actuary in accordance with Government regulation. The last of these took place in 2016 and in fact showed a £10bn reduction in the deficit across England and Wales when compared to 2013.

With regard to the Newham Fund having the highest ‘deficit’ in the 2016 valuation, it actually showed an improvement in funding levels to 85%, a £97m reduction in the deficit to £201m from the last valuation in 2013. Since then funding levels at Newham have continued to improve and are currently estimated to be in the region of 94%. The reduction in pension deficit enabled the Council to make £4m savings per year in its budget strategy enabling resources to be reallocated to help maintain vital services. The Government Actuary has also checked the actuary’s valuation and concluded that that the Council is “paying enough” into the pension fund. 

The accounting number quoted in the article is NOT used to determine council contribution rates (nor anything else with regard to the council pension scheme) and therefore has no impact whatsoever on the resources available to services.

Please also be aware that the Local Government Association also support the above and our position on this matter.

 

Interested readers can find more information on the 2016 valuation of council pension funds in England and Wales on the authoritative Scheme Advisory Board website http://lgpsboard.org/index.php/2016-valuations-summary.

If you have any queries on the above please do not hesitate to contact me.

Cllr Forhad Hussain

Chair of Investment and Accounts Committee

London Borough of Newham

Newham Town Hall, East Ham, London E6 2RP

A historical perspective on Trump, Lies and Truth

Love it

Daily Mail caught out lying again & turning into your Dad

When I was growing up my father banned newspapers from our house. He said that they were all biased and we should get our news from the BBC TV at 9pm. He knew that the BBC (bless it) was not perfect but he was satisfied that they meant well and usually got their reporting right most of the time.

I disagreed and use to love reading newspapers. As a teenager I worked in a Newsagents and in the school holidays would try and read every paper in stock. I found it fascinating how different papers would report the same story. Over the years I have become more and more disenchanted with newspapers and have now pretty much stopped buying them.

The latest example of lies and smears published in the Daily Mail last week about Gordon Brown MP just beggars belief (see rare retraction above). You would have thought with the current phone hacking criminal trial and unease about the proposed press regulation charter they would have been just a little big careful about what they publish?

The broadsheets are better but not that much better.  Leaving aside the Sunday Times which I don't believe anything it says anymore. They all seem to be aimed at wealthy middle class elites who obsess over super expensive cars, Waitrose cooking ingredients and exotic holidays in the Seychelles. I exaggerate slightly to make my point and I do on occasions read something interesting and well written but I usually get bored reading them and end up throwing most of it away unread.

Provocative and opinionated stuff you can nowadays get very easily on the Internet. 

I will still read the local press and specialist weeklies but I find myself in yet another way, turning into a slightly updated version of my old Dad. I have decided not to buy daily or Sunday papers and rely on the BBC for my main news.  Now of course largely via their website and PC, tablet, laptop and smartphone.

Miserablist's moaning that no one listerns to them

Do young people really, really like this music? Or have I turned into my Dad?

Apologies to those who haven't a clue what this post is really on about :)

More damned lies ...The Torygraph & Hate on Sunday

Why on earth do we buy such rubbish “newspapers”? Recently I castigated the Sunday Times for fiddling stats over public sector pay. Yesterday the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH - I declare an interest that I am a member) pointed out that the Sunday Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday had deliberately told their readers porkies about an important health & safety story.

They had wrongly suggested that IOSH advised firms not to grit pavements outside the workplace because they could be sued. This was not IOSH advice but that of well known private legal and employment law advisors “Croner” who like nearly all “legal experts” know a possible cost of everything but the value of nothing.

In fact IOSH even told the Torygraph that their advice was that companies should grit outside of property boundaries.

However the chance to slag off ‘elf and safety” was too strong so they decided to publish deliberate untruths about this pretty important and topical subject.

Don’t they realise that people will probably have been hurt and injured because they have frightened companies out of doing the decent thing? They have the gall to claim there is a broken society!

(Photo is the new brand image for the Sunday Torygraph and Hate On Sunday)

Rule or Ruin 3: The Scream

As previously posted here and here The North East Shop Stewards’ Network (NESSN) has beaten off so far an attempt by paid officials of the Evils Ones (aka SWP and SPEW) to take over or destroy the network. The new acting Treasurer of NESSN has issued this statement:-

“Dear Comrades
please find attached the NESSN Finance Report from March 2009 until present. The NESSN Committee meeting held at Darlington on 2 Dec decided networkers should be made aware of the mismanagement of NESSN finances over last nine months.
yours
Paul Baker”

The attached report makes very (repeat very) serious allegations of impropriety against a certain named individual which would be wrong for me to publish. This is not the usual ding dong of union politics.

Hat-tip thingy Tynesider

Mind you it’s a shame that the Ultra Left feels free to attack and make personally vile allegations against anyone about anything.

Hypocrites methinks. Especially the very dishonourable member for Sussex East. Who is a blatant evergreen student union entryist who revels in unfounded attacks and porkies about his own Union and Party that he is supposed to support. In doing so of course he acts in the true interests of his class and its natural home - 30 Millbank SW1P. IMO.

We Love the NHS

The understandable fuss over the lies and smears made against our NHS by senor Tory MEP Daniel Hannan reminds me of the UNISON “We Love the NHS” march and rally in 2007. See here.

People need to face up to fact that the Tories will destroy, repeat, destroy the NHS if they are elected next year. The privatisation of the NHS is unfinished business to them. See the massive support that Hannan gets from grass roots Tories.

Things are not as you would always hope with Labour but at least they are not ideologically opposed to the principal of a NHS free at the point of use funded by progressive taxation. Which, lets face it, most Tories are.

We have to rally around the Labour Party to save the NHS - the choice is really quite stark.