BRAVE GEORGE OSBORNE, WITH A MOUNTAIN IN HIS WAY, CRUSHES A MOLEHILL
REVEALED: unfunded Civil Service pension debts 15 times per head bigger than those for ordinary State pensioners
It seems clear that a ruthless programme of history eradication is going on in relation to the scandal of 600,000 Sir Humphreys and their nice little (but illegal) self-awarded pension increases. But more scandalous facts are coming to light about all civil servant pensions, the conditions they enjoy, and the outrageous cost of the schemes to the British taxpayer in terms of Sovereign debt.
I’ve lost count of how many ‘important meetings’ have taken place behind closed doors between the Waspi Executive (representing Britain’s estimated 2.3 million cheated 1950s born Pensioner women) and various groupings of civil servants, MPs, and junior-end DWP/Treasury minions over the last two years. Having been back over some of the data relating to the background on State pensions over the last few weeks, I am left wondering how those on the other side of the table from Waspi representatives can look their adversaries in the eye.
And be under no illusion: the people across the table are not your colleagues or your comrades, and they most certainly are not your servants. They are your enemies, because only by robbing from the rest of us can they can continue to inhabit their liberally feathered nests.
Even a review of my own published works, shows how they are busy – like the ethics-free Stalinists they are – air-brushing out history. Go back to an early post on the subject of unfunded State Civil Service pensions, and you will find that all the links I left to hard data have been erased from public view. The link to ‘as I reported earlier this year’goes to this familiar sight:
Similarly, the link ‘an estimated 600,000 adults’ goes here:
There are some 2.3 trillion reasons why the illegally awarded top Whitehall pension increases from fiscal 2004/05 have been covered up, and they all begin with £ signs.
But I have a confession to make: I now accept that there are some institutions in British society that no one individual is ever going to beat. I applaud what Nick Wilson is doing to bring HSBC to ground, and he stands a reasonable chance of success because these people are bankers suffering from pyschopathy and acute frontal lobe syndrome: that is, like most close-to-the-wind spivs, they’re stupid.
But top end Civil Service pensions involve the wellbeing of a lot of people whose job is to confuse, to hide, to change history as they feel fit, and to defend the privileged élite they laughingly call ‘the State’. These crooks are far more discreet, and infinitely more dangerous.
They include the intelligence community and the ISPs working with them, top military officers and NATO officials, and Whitehall department heads who control (aong with major banks and multinationals) the mediocre contents of the House of Commons, and turn a blind eye to the nefarious lobbying activities of those ‘elevated’ to the House of Lords.
They can make people disappear, or commit suicide, or resign as Prime Minister, or lie to Parliament, subvert the Rule of Law, assassinate foreign leaders or – in more minor cases – simply threaten and smear the families of innocent citizens and journos who get wise to one of their myriad schemes For the Public Good.
I have tried to persuade thirteen journalists over the last five years to take up this case. They won’t. The Mirror and the Guardian won’t, because the TUC would spike it. The Times, the Mail and the Telegraph won’t, because they’re still bruised after Chilcot, and their proprietors would spike it. The other tabloids aren’t interested, because their readers wouldn’t understand why no love-rats, sickos, soap stars or 3-in-bed romps were involved.
But the wider perspective of outrageous pension provision – all of it unfunded – is still worth examining, because it puts the vile hypocrisy of DWP/Treasury and Ministerial heads into a focus so sharp, it must surely prick even the most insensitive conscience.
Let’s start by looking at the figures involved. The declared State pension in the UK for a single woman these days is £119.30 per week. That’s £5,726.40 per annum. And from here on – if the Crabb/Osborne “plan” goes ahead – she’ll be 66 years old when she gets it. The average civil servant will retire at 55….with, as we shall see, a considerably bigger pot of spondoolicks?
But the key words here are State Pension….here’s why: although successive governments have tried to position them as occupational pensions, they are not. They are all unfunded, and thus exactly the same as the Citizen’s State pension.
Civil servants and their trade unions have fought tooth and nail for over forty years to resist each and every attempt to move pension funding for senior public sector, town hall and Whitehall shufflers into the private sector – and make the pinstripes pay a contribution like everyone else does.
Each government in turn has given up in due course, because every government is frightened of the information power held by senior civil servants: as I wrote above, we are not talking here about teachers, junior clerks, minor tax collectors, the lower police ranks and so forth: this is about people with the power to bully and get their way through blackmail.
So those people smiling benignly across the table at you, Waspi ladies, are State Pensioners just like you. All pensioners are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Don’t take my word for it. Six years ago, respected Telegraph business journalist Liam Halligan wrote of
“….the spiralling cost of the UK’s unfunded public sector pensions….This vital issue is bubbling close to the top of the political agenda and there it should stay, until a solution is found. The taxpayer liability involved is the same size, or even bigger, than the UK’s official national debt….It is disgraceful that, in one of the world’s most sophisticated countries, arguably the centre of the global asset management industry, years of Whitehall buck-passing and obfuscation have resulted in us running a public sector pension scheme that is almost entirely unfunded. As long as the civil servants involved clung on to their public sector pension entitlements, why should they care? The same goes for successive governments. Politicians have repeatedly ducked this issue – at least those from the main parties…”
Well, fully six years after Squeaky Osborne took over as Chancellor, it’s still bubbling away. Because this gutless Government – the same rubber-spined zealots who caved in to the bankers, to Murdoch, to the US and now to Brussels – would rather tread on a molehill (and pretend it’s a mountain) than tackle genuine privilege during a time of self-declared austerity.
It would rather target those without jobs, the disabled and struggling female pensioners than take on the fat cuckoos in the nest. Brits have been told that austerity is vital because “we” are living beyond our means. But it is the bureaucrats who are doing that, not the People. We have a National Debt risibly calculated at £1.5 trillion. But this is a deliberate by those on the take to hide the real volume of calumny involved.
Philip Aldrick of the Telegraph continues the story (my emphases)
‘The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has calculated that the national debt is £4.8 trillion once state and public sector pension liabilities are included, or £78,000 for every person in the UK….finances data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the total debt, excluding bank bail-outs, is £816bn. However, the figures strip out the state’s pension liabilities in a contravention of standard accounting practices.
Mark Littlewood, the IEA’s director-general, said: “The official national debt figure is seriously misleading. Looming in the background are pension liabilities. These should be moved to the forefront. The ONS should include these liabilities in their calculations. It is shocking enough to see official figures revealing a jump in national debt, but the grave reality is that our real national debt stands at 333pc of GDP.”
The £1.2 trillion public sector pension liability and £2.7 trillion state pension liability, should be published either monthly or annually alongside the net debt data for reasons of transparency.’
The last emphasis above is the telling statistic. There were, according the Guardian, just 408,000 ‘full-time’ civil servants in the Spring of 2015. However, the institutions, teaching profession, hospital doctors, policemen and nurses are not classed in that group – although their pensions are also funded out of cashflow. As the Sir Humphreys’ own booklet confirms, ‘The Civil Service therefore excludes those who are employed by Parliament and those employed by other public bodies.’
But all up – and there are some fuzzy, grey areas here – probably some 1.4 million UK citizens enjoy unfunded pension liabilities. These came to £1.2 trillion in 2010, and stand at around £1.35 trillion today. The Citizen State Pension liability was estimated in November 2015 to be just under £3 trillion.
Do the maths:
1.4 million Civil Servant State unfunded pension liabilities come to £1.35 trillion
47.2 million Citizen State unfunded pension liabilities come to £3 trillion
Thus, the liabilities cost per head for civil servants is £964,286 per head.
The liabilities cost for ordinary citizens is just £63,559
That’s an obscene 15 times less. But these are the people Osborne has targeted…because he is too much of a coward to take on the Civil Service.
And these are just averages….but averages mislead. Ask any exhausted copper, teacher, doctor, nurse or probation service offer if he or she might be happy with their pensions. They too are being screwed by the fatties at the top.
The figures I was fed in the summer of 2010 showed that over four fifths of the unfunded civil service emoluments were to be shared among just 290,000 senior graders.
But those numbers have become Unnumbers. They have ceased to be.
What conclusion do I draw from all the above disgraceful realities?
I would assume that the Waspi Executive – and Jewels Altmann – are aware of these data too. If not, I’d like to know why not. But these are the obvious points to extrapolate:
- Not only have pols broken a promise to Waspis – and failed to provide for adequate pensions by funding from the markets – they are attacking a problem which, if I may put it this way – is a Wasp sting on the buttocks of debt compared to the outrageous cost of keeping Whitehall in clover.
- The smiling bureaucrats facing Waspi leaders across the table have lied consistently about “adequate information” from 1995 onwards, while knowing all the while that they are the problem, not 3.2 million destitute women…and that their incompetence – plus weak-kneed pols trying to get elected – led to the information being contradictory and so low profile as to be virtually homaeopathic.
- The Waspi Executive can surely see how hypocritical – almost depraved – this attack on their members is; but their polite attitude remains unmoved. Theirs is a dismal failure: all hands are needed on deck, but the membership needs better officers on the bridge.
Crabb, Osborne, Altmann and Patel will also be aware of these facts. For Osborne in particular, attacking a small and vulnerable group he can pummel to death is his default position anyway: after six years of austerity, the National Debt is up by 50% and the Trade deficit remains worryingly high. He pulls this kind of tough-guy crap because the markets like it, and this it keeps his cost of borowing down; but they are nothing to do with the problem, and he knows it.
Crabb is just an overpromoted networker – a sort of downmarket Jeremy Shunt – with all the sensitivity of a flying brick. He’s been in the job for three months now: has he deigned to meet the Waspis? He has not.
During the last two budgets and this referendum campaign, the issue of State pensions for women did not figure at all. Those were three golden, but yet again lost, opportunities.
The stirring and decisive debate in the Commons that asked the Government to reconsider by a margin of 185-0 was an organisational triumph for the incomparable Mhairi Black. The DWP and Treasury didn’t even turn up. The Cabinet ignored the outcome.
How many times do I have to write this? Stop negotiating and start using your imagination about the muscles you can flex. Just a few thousand Waspis deserting the Remain campaign was enough to get Cameron on Marr trying to woffle his way through a pensions scare story, saying “we can’t guarantee your pensions outside the EU”. You can’t guarantee the bloody things inside it either, you cretin.
1950s born women have been chosen as a target because they’re vulnerable. Senior civil servants have been left alone because they are useless at everything except blackmail and survival. This Government supports the strong against the weak: in the law, in the media, in globalism, and in welfare provision.
This is not a beetle drive. Without tougher and more radical leadership, you are going to lose an open and shut case of ‘Not Guilty’.
That would be a tragedy made all the more disappointing by having been completely avoidable.
The Slog 