cut public sector pensions and perks!

With the change of government in the UK, Allegra is pleased that there is going to be a massive drive to cut public spending in order to deal with a national debt requiring interest payments far in excess of several department budgets, but she is not pleased that the first step was to set up a new Office of Budget Responsibility to review the situation, no doubt hiring more bureaucrats who will no doubt take much longer than the five months proposed for it to review the situation and who will add to the existing public pension fiasco.

"Public sector pensions are one of the biggest drains on the public purse and they need to be overhauled," says Allegra. "A fund needs to be built-up like we have in the private sector, it is wrong that bureaucrats receive special pensions paid from the public purse – they should provide for themselves like we do.”

"The government can follow the example of private companies and change the generous final salary schemes into defined benefit schemes," explains Allegra. "We taxpayers just cannot afford to keep on paying over-inflated pensions to bureaucrats in the current ponzi scheme where your grandchildren and mine will be paying for them.”

"I also think Mr. Cameron and his parliamentary colleagues should start with themselves," adds Allegra. "Millionaire parliamentarians should not be able to claim off the public purse money paid for home maintenance and 2nd home mortgage interest payments - and a host of other travel, lunch, mail and entertainment perks and allowances. This sort of thing is a gross abrogation of power and privilege. Most of them, being millionaires, do not need a public pension - it should be means tested."

"Also, there should be an immediate stop to public sector worker pay increases," says Allegra, "and their pay should be in line with that of private workers. It is unfair that private sector workers are subjected to minimum wage laws, but public sector workers are not - especially when their jobs are secure for life, but ours aren't."

"You know, Canada put in place a successful deficit-reduction plan in the early 1990s that included increasing service charges and handing some services over to the private sector," says Allegra. "If all pen-pushing public sector jobs were eliminated and a private company was hired to do this work, then that would offload all of their pension pots to the private company, not the taxpayer!"

"And, if Mr. Cameron wanted to be really radical," laughs Allegra, "he could include the Queen and the whole royal retinue to this review, because the monarchy just adds another level of government to a system that is already bloated with parasites."


Read more by Allegra:

Cameron should cut upper crust welfare!

Cameron cuts welfare benefits?

cut military spending, the real terror is here, no...

cut foreign aid, charity begins at home

privatizing government job selection

Daellea is single, 32, and wants a more permanent job than the one she has now but her efforts to gain a government job have left her cold. She queries the ethics of the increasing trend to privatize public sector job selection.

“I’m all for private enterprise,” says Daellea, “but I don’t think the selection of government jobs should be farmed out to private agencies. It figures that businesses out to make a fast buck are not going to be as scrupulous as government employees in the etiquette of selecting new recruits, and after three bad experiences I’m only going to apply for government jobs that recruit directly from now on.”

“I put the first two bad experiences down to bad luck,” laughs Daellea, “but when the third agency turned out to be worse than the other two I got smart about what was going on.”

“What really annoys me is that a government department places the advertisement but when you telephone for an information package you’re directed to a private recruiting agency which invites you to an information session at which information packages are given to interested applicants. It’s all about money! The more people who attend the information sessions the more money the agency gets.”

“I don’t waste my time applying for unsuitable jobs so the information packages are really vital,” says Daellea. “I resent having to give up a whole evening, sometimes traveling out of my way, in order to obtain something that can mailed to me.”

“And when the information package presented by these private agencies is not up to the usual standard of government information packages - and none of the three I’ve received have been - my resentment is exacerbated.”

“Despite all this, I actually applied for the third job - it was something very unusual, requiring unique talents that I possessed and the money was good, too,” says Daellea, “but I should have listened to my gut feeling and given it a miss.”

"I really don't think it is proper or ethical for the government to privatize public sector job selection."

Read more by Daellea on this issue:

government job selection ethics
Interviewed for government job by foreign consultant
Psychometric tests and medicals?