Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Pension payments for all but the lowest paid in the public sector are going up (mostly doubling) and they’re going to have to work longer before they are entitled to the maximum pension. Surely it must only be right that the well paid public servants in secure jobs pay more for their gold plated pensions? Why should the rest of us pay for their pensions anyway?

The snag with public sector pensions is that the employer is the government so therefore, yes, the rest of us do have to pay for their pensions. Unless you’d rather that they get no pensions at all (in which case, I hope you don’t mind doing without schools, hospitals, etc.) then the government (ie taxpayers) must act as responsible employers and pay for those pensions. The other snag is that, unlike private sector pensions, the public sectors operate on a pay as you go system which means that the current workers pay for the pensions of the current pensioners or rather taxes do (that’s how the normal retirement pension operates too).

OK, so we should pay them a pension, but surely we shouldn’t be paying the well-paid public servants gold plated pensions? Actually, well-paid public servants are very much in the minority with a considerable number getting close to the minimum wage. Courtesy of a number of changes in recent years, that “gold-plating” is looking distinctly tarnished with three separate schemes being introduced over the last 10 years, the prior schemes being closed to new members and each new scheme being markedly poorer than the one before. The latest offering is a lurch towards an average salary rather than the current final salary scheme which will be a major, major drop in the pensions that people will be eligible for though, as usual with pensions, a magnitude of a drop that most people wouldn’t realise until it was far too late.

In some ways it could be a good thing. The net effect, for public servants who realise it, is that their lifetime earnings is being cut quite dramatically so it might encourage more to leave for the private sector. The only snag with that is that we need those public services that the people most likely to leave provide. On the whole, those most likely to leave would be the higher earners. Do you really want to have an exodus of teachers, nurses, etc.? What about the well-paid Whitehall people perhaps? Surely they can be done without? Certainly, if you’re happy to have poor advice given to the government on all kinds of matters, you could do without them.

Should you strike? Despite being what I’d say was one of the most right wing union representatives ever, I think, yes, this is a time to show that you support your union negotiators.

Should you support the strike as a taxpayer? I think yes too as it’s really going to impact on the quality of public servants and hence public services that you get over the years to come.

With starting the new job the week before Easter, this is my first week of work holidays in over eight years!

As we normally do, it was off to Portrush on Easter Monday. Usually, there’s a mass of traffic along the way, a traffic jam a mile or two long going into the town, pretty much nowhere to park, wall to wall crowds everywhere regardless of the weather and no money in the cash machines. This year the traffic seemed a bit light on the way up, there was no traffic jam at all, loads of parking spots even quite close into the town, hardly any crowds and money in the cash machines even in the late afternoon as we were leaving. We didn’t even have to queue in the café and there was next to no queuing in Barry’s either. Methinks that Portrush is going to have a tough time financially if they can’t fill up even on Easter Monday.

Ongoing throughout the holiday has been the assignment for SD329 a biology cum psychology course that runs through to October. Although it was very much a last minute thing, it was a much easier assignment than the chemistry one which I’ve been ruminating over for weeks. I wasn’t too keen on the breakdown of every section of every question into a specific word count but it did prompt me to write a little more on some questions than I otherwise would have done which, hopefully, will improve the marks. Anyway, it’s off so it’s just the final chemistry question to complete tomorrow.

I came across a neat site which converts any website into an Android application so I’ve put on four trial ones. They look fine on the ASUS tablet but I’ll need to rejig the style sheet a bit to tidy up their appearance on Android phones. I may need to get myself an Android phone to really try them out too. No downloads as yet but then they’ve only been on a couple of days.

The materials for the Infectious Disease course arrived yesterday. No big surprises there as I picked up a copy of the pre-course briefing last year. I’ll have to get going on reading it properly soon as I want to get that well underway before I need to start the chemistry revision and indeed the pre-course work for the chemistry summer school for that matter. Oh, and the two assignments that’ll fall due in the midst of that revision time too. It’s going to be a hectic time for me in May and June.

Mum’s journey into a nursing home was largely unplanned for and constantly suffering from delays on the part of social services but she’s been there for several months now. That’s created a much greater involvement with social services and social security than we’ve had up to now and it’s something of a nightmare on the whole.

First off, the financial assessment people want a whole bunch of information about her finances. That sounded like it would be simple when they demanded it (“ask” isn’t in their vocabulary) but in fact it isn’t. Even getting information from their colleagues in social security proved extremely difficult. In fact, that difficulty should really be obvious: you’re phoning up to ask about someone else’s financial situation. Naturally, the answer is along the lines “we can’t provide that information to you”.

On the other side of the coin their colleagues in social services are concerned about protecting her finances. Well, protecting them for themselves really as their view is that all her assets were built up to pay for nursing home fees. However, there’s a conflict in their demands and those of the financial assessment people.

Then there’s the matter of transferring numerous direct debits built up over a period of time. Not quite so simple really although that at least appears to be doable for the most part with the exception, so far, of Sky who can’t get their head around needing to cancel Sky because the person using and paying for it has moved into a nursing home. I look forward to their demands for payment now that I’ve canceled the direct debit. Well, actually, I won’t get them as they insist on speaking to the bill payer, who ain’t here any more.

Anyway, I think I’m on the home run with moving the bills to appropriate places.

Nobody is openly calling it a depression but then it’s a difficult call to say whether you’re in a depression or not when you’re actually in the midst of one.

Aside from the obvious financial difficulties that a growing list of countries are finding themselves in, signs this time around are seemingly all around on the smaller scale too. The list of bankrupts seems to be growing although that’s not really a terribly reliable sign in these days of financial engineering.

What’s perhaps more obvious is the number of small shops gradually disappearing. The smaller shops are more dependent on the local economy than the large chain stores and they tend not to have a large financial cushion to help them ride through the bad times either. Indicative of this too is the rise in the number of charity shops which can operate through financial difficulties as they don’t pay their staff nor do they pay for their stock. Thus in difficult times, charity shops tend to replace small shops.

Slightly strangely in some ways is that the chip shops and home bakeries are closing up. Two different reasons are working here with the chip shops suffering as they’re popular as cheap food outlets and thus have a fall-off in trade when those at the bottom end of the income levels have to make cuts. To some extent that affects the home bakeries too but there’s also the element of their products being a bit of a treat and that “treat money” is in shorter supply these days.

Will we all look back on this period ten or fifteen years from now and call it a depression? Somehow I suspect that the answer to that will be yes and that there are even more difficult times lying ahead.

I still remember the day over 30 years back when I first went into the Bookshop at Queen’s with my Dad and we came out with a pile of books for my courses that we could barely carry between us.

Back in those days it was the only proper bookshop in Belfast and it carried books on every subject that you could imagine. Not just on the topics taught at Queen’s either as it had a range of normal books that was far wider than you’d have seen in any other bookshop around at the time. So, over the years I called in now and again despite the difficulties in parking nearby and I don’t think I ever left without purchasing something that I’d been looking for nor without buying something that I hadn’t been looking for but saw by chance.

It was always the kind of bookshop that browsing around meant that you came across something of interest. That’s something that you don’t get online as you tend to be shepherded into books similar to those you’ve already bought – with the Bookshop at Queen’s you could come across something totally different to anything you’d bought before yet totally fascinating despite that. Thus, for example, I have the brilliant little book Learning the Law which, despite it being a subject that I’ll probably never learn, is quite fascinating and there are many equally engrossing books in my bookcase just like that.

But today I made what will almost certainly be my last couple of purchases as the bookshop will be closing its doors permanently on Saturday. Sadly, they’d already packed up the masses of academic books and it was a couple of typically diverse purchases that I ended up choosing: The Celts and Collins Easy Learning Greek. Would I ever have bought them on Amazon? Well, no, because they’d a) not have turned up on any searches that I’d have been likely to use and b) as they’re outside my normal reading, they’d not have turned up on my suggestions either.

What finished it off seemed to be a combination of factors. That difficulty in parking is a lot worse now than it was 30 years ago for a start and with a major chain bookshop beside the city carparks I’d say that the casual browser largely relocated. Internet purchases are rife these days, of course, but thanks to the demise of the Net Book Agreement there’s also extensive discount which is probably more of an issue. Strangely, the prices of books or, rather, of academic books are much the same now as they were 30 years back which is in itself something of a problem as the mark-up percentage means that they’re less profitable than they used to be. The availability of lecture notes online is probably not a major factor as even 30 years back the lecturers handed out copies of notes for many courses for what was the relatively small fee of £5 or so. What could be a big issue is that students just don’t have as much free cash as they did 30 years ago: not only did we not have student fees back then but we received a grant of around £1000 or so each year (more if you lived in a flat) thus buying books means borrowing from the Bank of Mum & Dad.

It’s sad to see the bookshop go but I do hope that when times are better that it will be possible for it to rise again.