h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just a five minute time-out to wish friends a Happy Christmas.

That and to tell you (since he'd never do so himself) that we're celebrating AB's 80th birthday today (Christmas Eve).

Of the few who get that far, fewer still are in the shape (mental and physical) he's in. Fewest of all - effectively none from my generation - will match another mark he's reached today: 25 years retired.

Anyway, I'm going to have a drink with the annoying old git now. Have one yourselves, enjoy the holiday and see you in a day or two,

Pin

All the best Pin and see you soon.

Many happy returns to AB .

Waz....

Chin up Pinniped.
You say. " Effectively none from my generation - will match another mark he's reached today: 25 years retired. "

I planned to retire at 60, at a time when my career shift took me onto the monthly paid staff with compulsory enrollment to the company pension scheme. As I remember I was earning around £250/ANNUM at the time.
I got on the housing ladder at 27, earning around £650/annum with sights on a £1000 a year by the time I was 30.(inflation was just about to take off). Just a mortgage no credit card, benefits were unheard of. House cost roughly £3000, no central heating or fitted carpets, only two rooms and a kitchen partly furnished, two rooms empty. Radio in living room. TV(black and white)came for first christmas.
No garage, just a bike in the coal shed. First car came just before your second birthday. Home telephone came in my 30's.
When I was 53 if anyone had told me that I would 'pack up work' when I was 55 and live past 80 I would have sincerely doubted it. It came about thanks to Maggy, god bless her. though others may see it differently.
I stuck to my plan for 35 years, if I had seen it out to 40 years and retired at 60, we could have been finacially better off, but five years extra retirement was a chance too good to miss and at the time I saw it as the best bet.

Happy New Year
Ancient Brit
PS - There are 'workers' today who with any sense will be planning to retire at 60, there are others leaving now at 55 with a protected pension.

That supposed to cheer me up?

OK...well, it does sort of cheer me up, in your perverse kind of way.

(the PS was a bit savage, though)

Congratulations AB on both your birthday and long retirement.

I always planned to retire at 55 but didn't make it. Life and masive medical bills intervened. If it wasn't for losing my insurance benefits, I could retire at 60. As it is, paying the premiums myself would take way too much of my fun money. And I'm in that first age group that has to wait until 66 to get full benefits, although I can still get the government subsidized health plan at 65. My library pension will be three times as much if I hang in for those extra years. Plus it will let me pay off my mortgage. I'm doomed to work until I'm at least 65.

Sorry Pinniped - It was the statement that you made that started it.
I wasn't aware that you needed cheering up.
Today there is the wherewith-all to live longer and thereby to have a longer retirement. With earnings as they are today and life expectancy on the up and up, more and more people should be able to have a longer retirement. That is todays trend. The unfortunate bit is that kids are now staying at school longer at the expense of lost years in retirement assuming that they are expected to work the customary 50 years before reaching pensionable age. There are plans to change things a bit but history shows that successive generations enjoy a better standard of life than their predecessors. So here's looking forward to your 25+ years of retirement.
Ancient Brit

What was savage about the PS ?
Many public service and government employees will continue to leave work at 55 with adequate pensions and be on the first rung of the ladder to surviving 25 years of retirement. Some will take their pensions along with another job to satisfy their 'needs', others will fear giving up their job and stick to it as long as possible.

Thanks Hypatia,
I wrote my previous reply to Pinniped off line and posted it before reading yours.
Sorry you have to use the word 'doomed' to describe your work. I had the impression that you gained fulfilment from your work and current activities along with gardening. There are some people who put their work and other activities together to form a lifestyle they enjoy, I had put you down as one of those people and I still believe you are despite you boding. In any event you seem to be well in control.
All the best.
Ancient Brit

Wo AB (and Hyp too)

Yeah, I didn't need cheering up. It is, on the whole, pretty good.

The knife-twister in the PS, though, is just that thing about the public sector. If there was life in The Forum I'd have kicked that topic off there by now.

A nation is on the brink of an economic precipice when public sector workers threaten to strike in defence of pension terms that are no longer available to the wealth-creating workforce.

There's some merit in your views about Maggie (there, I said it) but at the end of the day she took on the soft target of the miners. Who's now got the bottle to do the same with the public sector unions?

I'm increasingly persuaded by the idea of a third way for the public sector. If we give them the same terms (let alone better ones) than the private sector, then we can't afford to employ enough of them to get the jobs done. If we pay them worse, how will we ever improve the already unacceptably low standards in vital functions like state school teaching?

So why not just make it so, as of now, everyone has a right to ten years' paid employment by the state and no more?

Is that a right, or a sentence?

Ten years isn't a lot of pay-back for the training invested in many cases - much of it being specialised and some of it provided only within the public sector.

Switching between both sectors has a lot going for it though. Wonder how many public sector people would want to go back once out. It can be horribly restrictive - rules, regs, politics, ridiculously outdated hierarchies - and you don't see it till you're out of it.

As people start to work longer I think we need a whole different idea of worklife structure. The old up, up, up, promotion, promotion, promotion, get fired for incompetence/drop off your twig/retire one won't do.

Problem solved

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AGvMcp3MMNs

Waz said
< As people start to work longer I think we need a whole different idea of worklife structure. The old up, up, up, promotion, promotion, promotion, get fired for incompetence/drop off your twig/retire one won't do. >

I agree with the sentiment but do you honestly believe that people are starting to work longer. Pinniped says that few people in his generation will spend 25 years in retirement. How many will leave work at 55 having served 40 years with the same company? There is no reward for loyalty in this day and age.
The secret is not to work longer but to work more effectively and give a fair days work for a fair days pay. Things like flexitime need to be taken on board as seriously as the 5day/36hr week was taken on board in earlier years. Some jobs need to be carried on round the clock. The 9 to 5 mentality needs a shake up. Staggered hours and 24/7 coverage on essential(expensive) equipment/services is vital.
On Pinniped's point re public 'liabilites'. The United Steel Co. was in and out of public ownership throughout my working career, despite these changes in ownership the basic character and requirements of the company never changed. The operational requirements of equipment and the workforce in the public and private sectors are the same, and it is vital that this is recognised. There are some basic industries that are essential public services and should be operated as such. Some aspects of these industries would be better handled by the private sector. Because of this, conditions of work, pay and pensions need a common base throughout. Equal reward for equal effort, male or female, colour or creed, north or south, publc or private sector is a necessary requirement for national stability.

I think so AB, yes. I sense a growing feeling of working on to 65 and beyond. Automatic retirement at the old 'normal' retirement ages of 55, 60 and 65 is going. I'm aware of rumblings around the implications of staff having no date to work to, or plan to. Of them working on, eventually to the point where capability becomes an issue, leading to more instances of disciplinary and capability proceedings. Which are difficult, time consuming, disruptive and unpopular.

By coincidence, they were discussing the proposal to start the national retirement pension at age 68 on the local radio this evening. Again, callers seemed to accept they'd be working to that age - they'd have to to pay mortgages and bills.

Many people I work around do not want to finish work entirely. There's a vocational thing going on, it's part of who they are, a lifestyle almost.

My dentist is a good example. Under the weird and wonderful NHs scheme rules, he retired for a month to qualify for pension benefits. And then returned (thank goodness, he's a star, this dentist) part time. He's very happy, he'll carry on like this till he's 8o I think! He takes no part in his Practice's politics/business issues, just does the dentisting which he loves. He's thriving, he was always cheerful, now he's relaxed and cheerful. He's found an alternative career model.

Hey both.

(Happy New Year Waz. Did I wish you that already?)

It's a serious suggestion, the 10-year thing. I don't personally think training is an issue. What's your example, Waz? Doctors? There are isolated ones like that, but doesn't medicine work OK on a private sector subcontract basis anyway?

Medicine might work that way but at present the public sector largely stumps up the cost of training. Ditto dentists, nurses, the whole array of therapists.

Then there's the police services. How many years before a rookie police officer really starts pulling his weight. Fire services? I suspect the technical stuff is short enough but a decent amount of practical experience must be needed. Expertise is necessary and I put at least five years' experience for that. Then social workers and planners - they're, oddly, not trained within the sector but how many people will do a three year course for just ten years employment? There's not much private sector application there.

I read the entry you wrote on this, so I thought you were serious and I've tried to work out why I don't like it as a blanket proposal and whether it's because of my public sector background. It may be that, but my instincts say you need variety. You need some long-termers for stability, depth of understanding and to pass on knowledge, maybe even, lets be idealistic, principles. And you need new blood and fresh ideas.

Instinct also says 10 years is short and committment's going to be lacking. As year seven ends your attention is inevitably going to be on what next, not your current employer. So the public sector gets only five or six good years out of you.

Perhaps no senior management role in the public sector should be filled by anyone without a 10 year stint in the private sector on their CV. If top management valued private sector experience maybe there'd be enough crossing between the two without legislating over choice of employment.

Btw, did you mean that everyone should do a 10 year stint, or that no-one should do more than 10 years.

(Happy new year to you too, Pin.)

Changes will come to the working life cycle without the necessity to set a time scale. As work and play become more entwined people look for more and more time to 'enjoy' themselves. Just as the ways in which people play is continuously changing it needs to be recognised that the ways in which people work have to change accordingly. Life evolves and the way of life must evolve with it.
How can people be made to realise that the world does not owe them a living. Certainly not by continuously bleating about human rights and certainly not by sitting back and saying I'm alright Jack, or Mohamed as it may well be in the future.
If there is anything at all in breaking life down into 10 year chunks it is the possibility that it may lead people into a way of thinking that encouraged short and long term planning, not just living for today. We pretty much have a periodic sytem now, with the first 5 years a free ride, the next 5 in some form of education , the next 10 trying to catch up, the next 10 in the thick of it. Then life begins at 40 and from here on a big question mark.
We have a world at the moment where almost everything has to be paid for. That needs money and thereby comes he problem. Money has to be valued and earned not just given away willy nilly.

<>

Wrong Waz, and an extraordinarily naive observation for someone as bright as you. The public sector doesn't stump up the cost of amything. The money it spends is someone elses, because the public sector doesn't earn any.

I meant up to 10. That would be everyone's maximum allowance. It's only a starting suggestion; I agree it might need exceptions and the emergency and armed services are my own biggest concerns.

My best justification for it is our system of education, where the job is so fundamental to economic well-being and individual life prospects that anything less than unstinting vocational commitment is completely unacceptable. I find the idea of teaching unions threatening to strike much more objectionable than the equivalent notion for policemen. Teaching standards in the public sector lag far short of those of the private sector, and it's to do with vocational commitment more than resources. The idea of equality in education, as we're enacting it, is a disaster that's holding Britain back. We aren't good enough to tolerate comprehensive education. Labour's policies are morally right, but before they're economically sustainable we have to remove ten thousand unsuitable teachers. A ten-year residual career for them, I reckon, is a very fair offer...



I think I'd better save the (supposedly privatised) railways for another day...

We are halfway there in the public sector Pinniped. Waz's dentist friend has taken his public sector pension entitlement and is now reemployed doing the same job. If he pays his 'stamp' for 40 years he will become eligible for a state pension at 65 or whatever. Whether or not he chooses to 'retire' at that time is his business. My early retirement came about the same way. The difference between him and me is that I saw it more beneficial not to work.
The system could be applied accross the board. All that it is necessary to do is put workers/employees on a 10 year contract that gives them access to to their then acquired pension at the end of that term. Those who were good at and enjoyed their jobs could be reemployed with renegotiated terms. Others go back for retraining as necessary for reemployment. The choice/decision to retire or not would come every 10 years.

Put it this way then, the current mechanism for training is that it comes from the public purse. The purse isn't filled by the public sector (who get like a housekeeping allowance from the pooled accounts of the bread winners' as brokered by the Govt...), but you'd still have to change that current process before the 10 year thing would work.

I could argue that the public sector earns their funding in the sense that the general public consent to give it - I don't buy that it's taken, but who really pays isn't really the point is it?

The point is an awareness of the reality of needing to earn your living. As AB said. And needing an awareness of how the whole economy works.

Legislating people's employment choices doesn't sit comfortably, nor hard and fast, regardless of vocation, time limits. But it would be a great benefit for most people to have working experience in all sectors. The public sector is far too inward looking. And never mind the sector concerned, I think it's a rare individual who can spend their whole working life in a school, hospital, town hall, police station, whatever, and not become blinkered.

How about all senior management positions in the public sector requiring at least 10 years' previous experience in the private sector?

(What I meant by 'did you mean that everyone should do a 10 year stint, or that no-one should do more than 10 years?' was whether you'd have all private sector workers required to do a 10 year public sector stint.)

(Railways, you did mention them, - where's the public choice?! I like the Virgin rail service from Crewe. The Govt's removing it!)