Doctor's strikes

Striking should stay, where it belongs, in the history books.

There is never a situation nowadays when striking will solve anything - you have only to look at the industries we lost in this country through constant strikes and over-strong, over-demanding unions. It is only now that some industry is very tentatively returning and needs all the help and cooperation it can get.

Plus, of course, if you are going to be an upholder of the right to strike, you cannot pick and choose who should and should not be allowed.

There was a time when striking was the only way for workers to achieve anything like reasonable and decent conditions and wages. The big employers in a town could form a cartel and anyone who was blacklisted by one company would find it impossible to get work with any other.
The working conditions enjoyed by most workers today were hard won by our parents - the rich and powerful did not suddenly become philanthropic and decide to pay decent wages at the expense of their own profits.

Striking may be less necessary today, but the principle of withdrawal of labour as a last resort still needs to be upheld. I think the doctors are misguided as they will lose public support if patient care is affected and there is unlikely to be great sympathy for those earning so much more than the average income.

And don't they charge? They also don't send addressed envelopes, stamped or I stamped! I think my accountants are the meanest people I know!!!!!!!!!!

Not to be discussed at dinner - politics, religion and who pays what taxes - always causes bad feeling so best avoided. Lucky and fortunate enough to have enough to pay does it for me.

As I've said before on other threads I don't believe in strikes. They always seem to affect the wrong people. The people they're aimed at are protected by those who suffer as a consequence it seems to me, ie Jo/sephine Public ends up as piggy in the middle!

Greatnan, I notice that twice now (to my knowledge) you have referred to my use of 'informed' on another thread. I did try to explain to JessM that I did not mean it as it came across - perhaps you could drop the sarcasm aimed at me now?

Perhaps some of us would feel less inclined to justifiable go on about the unfairness of pensions if those who set these rules ...members of parliament ...did something about the monies they received!! The back handers they get when they lose their seat; their pension levels; the subsidise they get for travel/housing etc; cheap booze in the House of Commons bars ...need I go on!!

After all ...my MP never seems to be in the 'house' or attending committees!! I'm lucky if I get an e-mail each month telling me what 'questions' he has raised ...and some of those are written ...so not actually in attendence

I finally found the page I was looking for on the site for UK government service pensions. Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Cyprus have special arrangements whereby exemptions can be claimed for UK govt. service pensions. For all other countries, these pensions remain taxable at source in the UK.
So it looks as if our govt. service pensions will continue to be uprated annually, as they are classed as occupational pensions, our UK state retirement pensions will be frozen, but all of them will be taxed in NZ - I am not sure whether that will be beneficial or not so I will have to research tax rates and personal allowances for NZ!
I have benefited in France because I have been given the personal allowances for both countries!

I have telephoned the International Pensions Office and Teachers' Pensions and at least I have been able to find out that UK government service pensions are not frozen, only our State Retirement Pensions (I agree, not bl**dy fair, when we have paid all our contributions). Teachers' Pensions told me they would continue to tax my pension at source until the UK tax office told them differently.
I have found the terms of the double taxation agreement between UK and NZ and I am working my way through the pages and pages of it!
At least as such an agreement exists, we won't be taxed at both ends!
I will continue my searches, and if you have any information I would be grateful if you would pm me with it!

Greatnan I shall get proper advice from my accountant but I think I have to pay tax in the UK on income (above the personal tax allowance) generated in the UK. I'm not quarrelling with that (although I still don't understand why, then, I had to pay tax in the UK on income generated in New Zealand instead of in NZ), but if I'm paying tax, I think it is hugely unfair to freeze my state pension. (I reckon that's unfair anyway, but this seems like a double whammy.)

Absent, at the risk of being accused of being 'informed', may I just say that your state retirement pension will not be taxable in the UK once you are non-resident, but it will be frozen. If you have a UK government pension, i.e. in respect of government service, such as teaching or civil service, that pension will remain taxable in the UK if you move within Europe, but I will check my facts about what happens re taxation if you move outside (I will be in the same boat as you in a few years). Unfortunately, I very honestly returned all my taxation guides to the Inland Revenue when I retired! Watch this space!

The government wants its and eats it too.

Oh Mamie Don't get me started on that one. I think you live in the EU so your state pension is increased yearly in the same way as it would be if you still lived in the UK. When I emigrate to New Zealand, probably early next year, my state pension will be frozen at the 2013 rate. However, I shall still be expected to pay taxes in the UK because of money generated in the UK.

Indeed and when they move abroad they still have to pay tax in the UK on their pension even though they don't live there! (Like me and a few others on here.)

Public sector workers are also taxpayers.

Well not to put to fine a point on it, some of the money could come from profits made in the private sector, from the outrageous salaries and bonuses paid to bankers and captains of industry, from getting to grips with tax evasion etc etc
Can we also be clear that by no means all public service pensions are subsidised; mine certainly wasn't, it was and is funded by contributions alone. I understand that the doctors' pension scheme has a large surplus
I think people sometimes forget that public sector workers also fund the private sector by buying goods and services.

Where is the money to come from? Maybe the people who are having to pay it feel it is unfair.

"If this is the case for the private sector is there any reason why the public sector should not be treated the same?"

Yes. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I defend their right to withdraw their labour. But they don't necessarily have a right to our sympathy. I don't understand why GPs have publicly backed pensions either. University lecturers do not. They have their own pot which is invested in things like shopping centres.
But the fact that future taxpayers will have to foot the bill is concerning. Todays young doctors can expect to be drawing their pensions well into their eighties and beyond. The argument for raising the age at which they will retire is a very strong one.

What gets me is that people may have non urgent operations cancelled. Does anyone now anyone who has theirs cancelled as a result?

Mamie - what a very lucid and interesting post - thank you.
There seems to be a great deal of envy/hostility towards public service employees in some sections of the press.

I do get fed up with this argument about private versus public sector and I think you have to be very careful about comparing like with like.
I worked in public sector and DH in private. We both had good salaries for which we worked long hours and spent lengthy amounts of time away from home. He got bonuses, share options and good expenses, but he didn't have a union to protect the terms and conditions of his work. We both have good pensions, for which we planned and made hefty contributions all our working lives.
I think it probably true that the poorest paid workers with least in the way of pensions are in the private sector, but do we really want a race to the bottom? Shouldn't we start by redistributing wealth from the people who avoid paying tax, in an effort to try and ensure that everyone gets a decent wage and a pension at the end of it?

They've been after the civil service as long as I can remember!

nanaej I think I share the view that public sector workers are better off than others because everything I have read or heard says that they do.

Many years ago those in the public sector earned a little less than in the private but did have genereous pensions to compensate. I understand that now their salaries are higher than comparable salaries in the private sector and they also have protected, final salary pensions although I think some have now settled for career average. I think the difference is abou 33% but I'm not sure about that and it probably depends which statistics one reads.

I don't believe anyone strikes just for money. Doctors (and everyone else who works in the public sector) have been subject for years to vilification at the hands of politicians of every hue. Their professional commitment to their jobs has been called into question and they have been subjected to ever-increasing monitoring of every action in a simple-minded check-the-boxes fashion that ignores any aspect of the job that can't be quantified. Doctors ended up with a good deal partly (mainly?) because the policy makers really had no idea what NHS staff actually did. The same thing happened with teachers a few years before. In an attempt to control their activities, new contracts were introduced which resulted in many extra-curricular, mainly voluntary activities coming to an end. It's all about central government control. They're going after the civil service now.