MPs Pensions NOT Under Threat

Money is the Cause of Poverty

Both Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs had, before the 2010 UK General Election, emphasised their belief that MPs pensions were too generous and should be reformed. What has actually happened since the election?

They raised the retirement age for women and men to 66. As a result 4.5 million people will have to wait longer than expected before they can pick up their state pension. Some women will receive their state pension almost two years later than they had expected.

What about the reforms to MPs pensions?

They continue to reward themselves with up to one fortieth of their final salary for every year’s service if they contribute 11.9 per cent of their salary. This reduces to one fiftieth if they pay in 7.9 per cent and one sixtieth if they pay in 5.9 per cent. An MP could work for just 15 years and build up a £24,000 pension, based on his salary of £65,738. A worker in the private sector would have to build up a pension pot of £700,000 over a lifetime to get the same income at age 65. MPs’ spouses also receive generous benefits when their husband or wife dies – including a lump-sum worth four times their annual salary and an income of five eights of their pension. In 2008 the state contribute three times more to MPs pensions than its members did themselves.

More than a third of UK Pensioners Live Below the Poverty Line

MPs are still discussing recommendations made by the Senior Salaries Review Board last summer. This recommended moving from a final salary pension to a less generous one based on career average, and increasing MPs’ pension age from 65 to 68. It also said their pension should be built up more slowly. By dilly-dallying over reforming their own pensions while taking swift and punitive measure over everyone else’s (including replacing the RPI link with CPI) MPs have revealed once again that whatever their political colours their prime cause is feathering their own nest. The hypocrisy of our MPs would appear to know no bounds.

Come into the Garden Maude

(And Don't Make Yourself at Home!)

Consider the obnoxious, mendacious and utterly duplicitous Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, the MP for Horsham in West Sussex, who has claimed £35,000 in mortgage interest payments on a London flat complete with 24-hour concierge and gym . This is close to a house he already owned. He also boasts a house in the country and one in France. Maudes' personal net wealth is estimated at £3m. Despite this, during a discussion on Newsnight on 22 October 2010 he argued that a 5% cut to his £65,738 salary was equal to the 'pain' suffered by Britain's poor. He previously worked in banking as Managing Director at Morgan Stanley from 1993 to 1997. He was also appointed a non-executive director of ASDA Group Plc in July 1992, and served as a director of Salomon Brothers from 1992 to 1993.  This Capitalist freak is being paid by you and me.

Big Society - Big Con

Maude was tasked by the Prime Minister David Cameron to lead the publicity drive on the Conservative leaders' pet policy fetish which he calls the Big Society.  This ridiculous notion involves the idea that people should start rolling up their sleeves and helping out in their communities to the benefit of all concerned.  Obviously, this is all about restoring profitability to UK Capitalism PLC as vital local services are slashed so that Cameron and his friends can continue to screw the rest of us. 

Never minding that a vast number of working class people have for many years volunteered their time and energies as school governors, youth group leaders and active citizens in many respects.  As this agenda is rolled out, Ghost of a ne'er do Well feels less inclinded than ever to do any voluntary work whatsoever, which I have done alot of in the past.  I have no compunction to serve as a school governor, youth leader or private eye for the reactionary state.  Cameron's Big Society is dead in the water.  Because it is a Top-Down AUTHORITARIAN agenda, predicated upon the rich taking idle advantage of the poor.  Not only that, Cameron's world-view extends barely beyond his pathetic little Oxford constituency and his Central London Power Base.  I'd love to meet the prick on the streets of Tipton.  He'd barely last two minutes - before his fluffers would put him back into his car.

Meanwhile, Maude was given a slot on the BBC PM programme to push this Big Society idea.  When asked by interviewer Eddie Mair what he had ever done in a voluntary capacity to serve his community he was completely stumped.  He eventually, and quite pathetically, stated that he is 'involved with his local church'.

The Ruling Elite - Out of Gas!

It is time to bundle the know-nothing likes of Maude, Cameron, the Millibands, Clegg, Cable and all the other mendacious Millionaire Capitalist lackeys and their bastard offspring together and do away with them for good, ideally democratically using Parliament and the voting system. 

They know their system of wage slavery for us and personal profiteering for them is over and their days are numbered.  These duplicitous, vacuous hypocrites and their profit system supporting counterparts across the globe could be swept away in short order leaving an opportunity for a thorough going refreshment of world democracy.  Then the field will be clear for a new and genuine World in Common to emerge, in a truly human society.

Want can be replaced by plenty, war, hunger and worry can be supplanted to the past as a rational, stateless, moneyless, co-operative world society becomes the true expression of our common will.  A form of society which has hitherto never existed.  And the earth will belong to us all.  It's our choice.  Come on - Lets Go!