Ed Miliband and the Labour Party

[Deleted member 18588]

Another distortion, from what i've read!

The deal also involved by Private Schools assisting State ones, something that has not happened sufficiently, at least not according to Labour's statements. If that's the case, Labour's approach is quite reasonable.

Labour is, of course, obsessed with killing off the Private (or is it 'Public'?!) School system and educating everyone equally (badly?).

Given your previous comments about Labour, I don't believe you are likely to b a convert anyway!

Are you letting facts get in the way of the story again?

 

[Foxholer]

Are you letting facts get in the way of the story again?

Oops! Sorry! I forgot that's not this thread works!

Saw it in both The Guardian and The Daily Mail, so it must be true! :rofl:

Actually it was a Beeb report last night that gave both sides! :thup:

 

[delc]

Massive difference between "defined" and "deferred".

My point was that the reasons for the demise of these schemes are many and varied, and far too boring to go into in depth. However, a previous post had suggested that it was all attributable to Gordon Brown; not true and another stated that they were completely unsustainable; again not true.

Other reasons include greater life expectancy, falling Gilt Yields, unrealistic actuarial assumptions, financial demands upon schemes arising from preservation of benefits, employers being allowed and, in some cases, obliged to take "contribution holidays" etc; etc;

Having re-read my original post I fail to see where I suggested I knew the secret behind the global financial crash, perhaps you could enlighten me.

I feel sorry for the folk on defined contribution or workplace pensions, because they will probably never be able to afford a comfortable retirement. As the tax regime now stands, they probably won't even get back in real terms what they paid in!

 

[Deleted member 18588]

I feel sorry for the folk on defined contribution or workplace pensions, because they will probably never be able to afford a comfortable retirement. As the tax regime now stands, they probably won't even get back in real terms what they paid in!

What they get back will be dependant upon what is paid in and the performance of the underlying investment link(s). Don't quite see what bearing the tax regime will have upon it.

Members' contributions continue to qualify for Income Tax relief and employers' contributions can be offset against Corporation Tax, or have I missed something?

 

[Foxholer]

What they get back will be dependant upon what is paid in and the performance of the underlying investment link(s). Don't quite see what bearing the tax regime will have upon it.

Members' contributions continue to qualify for Income Tax relief and employers' contributions can be offset against Corporation Tax, or have I missed something?

Yes... This! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nal-salary-schemes-suddenly-unaffordable.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...sion-tax-raid-and-others-since-Seventies.html

 

[Deleted member 18588]

Yes... This! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nal-salary-schemes-suddenly-unaffordable.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...sion-tax-raid-and-others-since-Seventies.html

I was well aware of that, it is old news.

Its ongoing effect upon Defined Contribution schemes in particular has been absorbed and dealt with by Fund Managers and certainly does not have a dramatic effect upon returns.

Money Purchase funds will have less dependence upon high yielding equities as they are not required to provide an investment link with effective guarantees as is the case with Defined Benefits schemes.

With Defined Contributions the individual's fund is converted in some form to provide the retirement income (pension) whilst a Defined Benefits scheme has a "global" investment for all members and that is needed to effectively provide both investment growth for those yet to retire and income for those that have.

Thus, the requirements of the two are slightly different.

My God I had forgotten how boring it all is!

 

[delc]

I don't blame them for the entire crash. The crash was basically due to dodgy banking practices. I blame the politicians for failing to provide adequate safeguards that individual bank failures or bad bets wouldn't have a contagious effect.

The market traders were gambling on the stock market with OUR money and making huge salaries and bonuses for themselves in the process. Eventually the stock market and property bubbles burst and the financial crash happened. Banking practices had been allowed to run out of control due to inadequate regulation and individual greed. A bank should be a safe place to keep money, not a casino! :angry:

 

[Deleted member 15344]

The latest spiffing idea from Red Ed and Co is to remove the tax breaks for private schools. These are allowed on the perfectly reasonable premise that children in such schools are not a drain on the State education budget. This may appeal to their core voters who live in council houses up North somewhere, but it doesn't to me. No current interests in private schools btw, but I was partly privately educated as a boy.

Now why does that not surprise me - the Tories must be gutted to lose you as a voter


And too right tax breaks should be removed for people to take little Timmy to private school ( same little Timmy whose mummy drives him to school in her X5 )

The people that go to private school are the people that can afford to live without tax breaks !

 

[delc]

Now why does that not surprise me - the Tories must be gutted to lose you as a voter


And too right tax breaks should be removed for people to take little Timmy to private school ( same little Timmy whose mummy drives him to school in her X5 )

The people that go to private school are the people that can afford to live without tax breaks !

The alternative for me was to attend a local state school with 65 pupils per class. Also people who temparily work abroad may wish to put their children into privatd boarding schools. Don't think there are many state ones!

 

[delc]

Yes... This! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nal-salary-schemes-suddenly-unaffordable.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...sion-tax-raid-and-others-since-Seventies.html

Abolishing Advanced Corporation Taxes was Gordon Brown's ultimate 'Stealth Tax", because he made it sound like he was removing a tax rather than adding a new one on pension funds! Of course the consequences of this change only became apparent several years later! :angry:

 

[Deleted member 18588]

Now why does that not surprise me - the Tories must be gutted to lose you as a voter


And too right tax breaks should be removed for people to take little Timmy to private school ( same little Timmy whose mummy drives him to school in her X5 )

The people that go to private school are the people that can afford to live without tax breaks !

Whilst I may appreciate some of those sentiments despite myself having had the "benefit" of a Public School education I would draw your attention to the lines of X5's, Q5's, Range Rovers etc; outside the two State schools in our village.

The school-run is certainly not the prerogative of the independent sector and has not been helped by successive Gov'ts promoting selection of schools by parents with no thought given to its side effects upon communities.

This policy has, however, enabled many politicians on the Left to salve their conscience by being able to claim that their children are being educated within the State sector whilst carefully avoiding the local "bog standard" comprehensive.

Yet another example of the hypocrisy we regularly witness from politicians on all sides.

 

[Foxholer]

I was well aware of that, it is old news.

Its ongoing effect upon Defined Contribution schemes in particular has been absorbed and dealt with by Fund Managers and certainly does not have a dramatic effect upon returns.

Money Purchase funds will have less dependence upon high yielding equities as they are not required to provide an investment link with effective guarantees as is the case with Defined Benefits schemes.

With Defined Contributions the individual's fund is converted in some form to provide the retirement income (pension) whilst a Defined Benefits scheme has a "global" investment for all members and that is needed to effectively provide both investment growth for those yet to retire and income for those that have.

Thus, the requirements of the two are slightly different.

My God I had forgotten how boring it all is!

H'mm! While I appreciate you were answering my question, there's a touch of the 'trust me, I'm a Doctor' approach that you objected to so strongly earlier. :mmm:

Can you explain how removing £10B per year, as reported, from the Pensions industry has not had an effect on the viability of pensions - 'gold-plated' or otherwise? Have the Pensions companies and or Fund Managers absorbed this 'loss'? Have the investment strategies changed from High Dividend to High Capital Growth? Or geared towards 'Quick Profits' rather than 'Investment for Growth'? Or have companies reduced their Dividend vs 'other use' strategies? Or was it simply the/another last straw! Please inform a willing student!

Or were those articles (from decidedly Right Wing oriented Newspapers) simply being misleadingly selective about the numbers and effects! The change was definitely one that was 'not announced' but was slipped in with other Budget changes, but did create uproar when actually 'discovered'!

The Money Purchase vs Defined Benefits issue had nothing to do with Broon's 'raid'. That's been a minefield that few were brave enough to address for years before! It was the combination of several events that finally triggered that change.

 

[Foxholer]

...
And too right tax breaks should be removed for people to take little Timmy to private school ( same little Timmy whose mummy drives him to school in her X5 )

The people that go to private school are the people that can afford to live without tax breaks !

I believe it's fair enough to provide some sort of payment for Private schools for the equivalent cost of a student's cost in a State school. If a Private School sets itself up (eg. Charitable Trust) in such a way that it benefits from tax exemptions, then that's also fine imo. That's actually just creating a level playing field as, I believe, State schools don't pay business rates either! :mmm:

And, if as negotiated, Private schools also provide assistance/benefits for State schools, there should also be some reward - that way, it's mutually beneficial!

How they fund it (tax breaks, direct payments etc) is irrelevant. Whether it's a 'good deal' is up to the negotiators, something governments are traditionally quite poor at! If, however, either side renegs/doesn't perform the deal, there's every reason for the other side to seek remedy!

As I posted before, Labour is obsessed with eliminating Private Schools, purely for doctrinal reasons, something that I strongly object to - whatever the target! The hypocrisy of many of its leaders is there for all to see! :rant:

Btw. It's Timothy...Timmy is so State School!

 

[Deleted member 18588]

H'mm! While I appreciate you were answering my question, there's a touch of the 'trust me, I'm a Doctor' approach that you objected to so strongly earlier. :mmm:

Can you explain how removing £10B per year, as reported, from the Pensions industry has not had an effect on the viability of pensions - 'gold-plated' or otherwise? Have the Pensions companies and or Fund Managers absorbed this 'loss'? Have the investment strategies changed from High Dividend to High Capital Growth? Or geared towards 'Quick Profits' rather than 'Investment for Growth'? Or have companies reduced their Dividend vs 'other use' strategies? Or was it simply the/another last straw! Please inform a willing student!

Or were those articles (from decidedly Right Wing oriented Newspapers) simply being misleadingly selective about the numbers and effects! The change was definitely one that was 'not announced' but was slipped in with other Budget changes, but did create uproar when actually 'discovered'!

The Money Purchase vs Defined Benefits issue had nothing to do with Broon's 'raid'. That's been a minefield that few were brave enough to address for years before! It was the combination of several events that finally triggered that change.

Sorry, hadn't meant to be obtuse, I just did not think many people would be interested.

However, to answer your point; yes the reason for the ACT changes having much more effect upon Defined Benefit Schemes is largely due to different investment strategies.

The objective of such schemes is to be able to provide their members with a promised (not guaranteed) benefit at vesting. As this benefit will primarily be in the form of an income (pension) the Scheme's investment strategy will always have a high dependence upon those sectors that a have a relatively high yield such as gilts and "income" rather than "growth" equities.

Therefore, Mr Brown's changes had a dramatic effect since they reduced the yield on those equities and at a time when gilt yields were also falling.

The Defined Contribution Scheme objective is to provide the member with the largest possible fund which can then be used to generate income. There are not the same promises involved nor are the requirements for leavers' benefits so arduous and the investment strategy can thus be targeted far more to growth and have much less reliance upon dividends.

As you rightly say Mr Brown's raid did not in itself create the Money Purchase v. Final Salary debate. That goes back much further to the '80s. However, it certainly brought the differences more into the public's eye.

 

[delc]

The other really unfair stealth tax by Gordon Brown was a massive increase in Stamp Duty. OK it's a Duty not a tax, but if you buy property above a certain value you have to pay it. Stamp Duty was originally a fairly nominal fee to cover the costs of the Land Registry, but has increasingly been used as source of income for the Treasury. It impacts particularly on people in London and the South-East, where even a fairly modest flat can be expensive enough to attract Stamp Duty, while it has less effect in Labour heartlands up north where property is much cheaper. The poor inhabitants of London are subject to a double whammy of expensive property and then several thousand pounds on top of this in Stamp Duty!

 

[Deleted member 15344]

But the poor old inhabitants of London and South East also get paid a great deal more than people further up north

It all balances itself out throughout the country

 

[Deleted member 18588]

The other really unfair stealth tax by Gordon Brown was a massive increase in Stamp Duty. OK it's a Duty not a tax, but if you buy property above a certain value you have to pay it. Stamp Duty was originally a fairly nominal fee to cover the costs of the Land Registry, but has increasingly been used as source of income for the Treasury. It impacts particularly on people in London and the South-East, where even a fairly modest flat can be expensive enough to attract Stamp Duty, while it has less effect in Labour heartlands up north where property is much cheaper. The poor inhabitants of London are subject to a double whammy of expensive property and then several thousand pounds on top of this in Stamp Duty!

And taxes on fuel have a disproportionate effect upon people in rural areas as they often have to travel greater distances and are unlikely to have access to much in the way of public transport.

If you are, as you seem, unhappy about all taxes can you please explain how the State is to be funded?

 

[delc]

But the poor old inhabitants of London and South East also get paid a great deal more than people further up north

It all balances itself out throughout the country

In my experience most ordinary people living in the South-East have less disposable income than those living up North, due to the high cost of living down here. I will exclude City bankers from this! :mmm:

 

[delc]

And taxes on fuel have a disproportionate effect upon people in rural areas as they often have to travel greater distances and are unlikely to have access to much in the way of public transport.

If you are, as you seem, unhappy about all taxes can you please explain how the State is to be funded?

The State could waste far less money!

 

[Deleted member 15344]

In my experience most ordinary people living in the South-East have less disposable income than those living up North, due to the high cost of living down here. I will exclude City bankers from this! :mmm:

Really ?