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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Sentence first, verdict later. Rushing to judgement over BH
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Sentence first, verdict later. Rushing to judgement over BHS
Sir Philip Green potentially makes for a good pantomime villain. He has never gone out of his way to charm the public and he has contacts in elite political circles. His wealth is fabulous and flaunted. His tax management strategies have blazed across the front pages of the newspapers. And now his former flagship company BHS has gone bust, leaving a pension scheme that is half a billion pou…
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'@HurstLlama
"Take a family with 2 parents and two school age kids.
How much do they have to earn to pay enough tax to be a nett contributor?"
The figure for your example is around £35,00 - £ 37,000.gross salary.
'How much we give the state in tax – and how much we get back ...
www.telegraph.co.uk › Finance › Personal Finance › Tax
15 Feb 2014 - Benefits Britain: how much do you pay in, and how much do you get ... out of about 30 million income tax payers, paid 30pc of all income tax. ... who are net contributors to the state and who are the net beneficiaries. ..... And people with a household income of £10,300 draw out a net amount of £9,539, giving ...
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On a Brexit, everyone will be dead anyway so it won't matter.
The assumptions that DB schemes were built on are a house built on latterly discovered sand.
@iainjwatson: And @Nigel_Farage told me that Vote Leave's 'unelected apparatchiks' who want to get in no10 themselves are trying to 'darken his name'
The substantive questions for Sir Philip do not IMO relate anything done pre-2008. It's hard to argue with an actuarial surplus, and indeed the taxman sometimes claims that companies 'over-funding' their pension schemes are engaged in a form of tax-avoidance. That's why a lot of companies in the 1990s were forced to suspend pension contributions, which in retrospect was a disaster.
http://order-order.com/2016/05/12/well-played-paddy/
I guess he could have been a Tory for Corbyn, but I somehow doubt it.
I never claimed to be some superior life form. And never expected five years on to point this out.
It's hilarious.
Those who denigrate us are so out of touch.
This is just another case of us not being nearly as rich as we think we are. As Mr Meeks suggests, it is just the tip of the iceberg that HMS Great Britain is on collision course with. And George Osborne is at the wheel.
The "court of public opinion" to which Sir Philip is currently being subjected has become too OTT.
Sir Cliff is another person that's currently being subjected to trial by social media, judging by the comments that were popping up on my timeline's the other night.
A few remain in the private sector though nearly all (possibly all - anyone know?) will be closed to new entrants.
If the government really wanted to get to grips with the deficit, this would be a good place to act. The problem is that the political cost is all up front whereas the benefit, though substantial, only increments over decades.
The public sector pension bubble has to burst eventually, there are millions of people collecting £billions every year, both numbers are increasing. It is unsustainable.
@patrickwintour: Break up the Treasury, says Iain Duncan Smith https://t.co/p99i4Nfz3i
Get the idea?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3586462/Half-million-BBC-iPlayer-free-riders-pay-licence-fee-classic-shows-pay-view.html
If Green didn't want to be splatted in the press and parliament, he should have paid more attention to (1) his image and (2) his company.
Some members of the committee are grandstanding but to some extent that is part of their job - to hold the mighty to account on behalf of the public.
But the committee is itself held to account, in the press, in articles like Alastair's and by other politicians. The public has a sense of fair play about these things and if it looks like it's acting as a kangaroo court then it's the politicians on it who'll suffer.
And yes, it is looking at things in hindsight but when pension schemes have to last decades then that's fair enough: the system should be able to cope with once-in-50-year events.
It's a HUGE government department and seems to be used as spring board for voter repellent politicians (Brown, Osborne) to try and destroy their parties?
Surely in these times of "austerity" there should be no, no go areas in trying to save some money for the national purse?
If that claim is true, its rather alarming.
As a foot note, old(ish) but still relevant.
BBC forced to pay £740m into pension scheme as deficit soars to £2bn
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/15/bbc-pension-scheme-deficit-licence-fee
This sounds like the deficit the Chancellor inherited in 2010, his task being to reduce it as quickly as possible while still maintaining some growth in the economy. As we have seen in the past six years that is way more difficult in practice than in theory!
It will be interesting to look at the effect on the share price and dividend levels of blue chip companies forced to account for future liabilities, lots of their shares being owned by private pension funds.
Of course, public-sector pensions remain fantastically generous compared with what those of us who have to fund our own pensions can expect.
Edit:
In fact isn't a pension scheme in actuarial surplus (If the actuarial assumptions are correct being less generous than a DC scheme ?)
So you mean one standard for the Remainers and a lower standard for the Leavers.
No, there are three standards.
1. For normal PB-ers
2. For regular thread writers, editors, @rcs1000, OGH - people should be held to a higher standard because of the role that they play in the community
3. For @malcolmg
The whole point of the star is to be an incentive. Be/do better and you might get a star. Not be a shrinking violet who needs a boost and you might get a star.
My prep school teachers would not have put up with such guff.
The witch hunt trial by media system we have at the moment must stop at some point. I wonder what might precipitate it....
(The last one was awfully bad-tempered. Another 6 weeks of this is too much. I will probably take a break from PB and hope everyone calms down a bit. It won't be Armageddon, whatever the result of the EU referendum. And the Chilcott report - vapid bilge as it may be - should be fun.
One good thing about Klopp is that he's clearly prioritised winning a trophy over a couple of league positions.
Who is going to remember that Arsenal qualified and got knocked out of the Champ's league for the 100th time in 2147 ?
Upgraded stadium, Klopp's stellar quality, hopefully champions league football and FSG supporting Klopp in the transfer market, I can feel it in my waters.
In August if you had told me that Liverpool's defence at the end of the season would have been Lovren and Toure, I would have cried.
Another former colleague went back to the Treasury for exactly the same reason, ie to do less work.
I'd far rather be at a racecourse somewhere on a day like this than stuck in an office working out whether some nitwit is trying to bypass trading controls. Again.
In that respect the civil service is like big graduate recruiters like magic circle law firms or big four accountants/consultancy firms, with a very significant staff turnover and a pyramid with a wide base as a result.
Laters.
Wouldn't it be brilliant if winning the Paint Pot Trophy got you promotion to the Championship?
BHS was initially a stepping stone, but fundamentally was a cash cow - there was no longer a niche in the market for it (pace Woolies) - it was squeezed between the discounters and the slightly more upmarket likes of Zara Home and M&S.
It is true.
Great move for Howe, no idea if it will happen
1. It's long-term. People are not encouraged to think of the future. Everything is "now, now, now".
2. Politicians will insist on meddling and changing the rules all the time. Most unfair. Punishes the sensible. Encourages cynicism and disincentivises long-term behaviour.
3. People hugely underestimate how much they should be saving at every stage of their lives, even where they have money to save.
No idea how to change this. The whole economy sometimes seems to be based around people spending money on tat rather than saving sensibly and only buying stuff they need and good stuff at that. Never mind the government: a period of sober austerity by people would be welcome IMO. They could spend a bit more money properly looking after their homes (a walk round many London streets will show the most awful neglect outside with some big F*** Off telly inside) and less on buying rags from Primark.
And since I'm in a Victor Meldrew-ish mood, people really should take a bit of care over their front gardens. Greening and tidying them up a bit would do wonders for the environment and the rest of us wouldn't have to stare at eyesores.
When I am Dictatoresse people will be expected to dress nicely in public ..... and not do their toilette on the tube, either.
But I'm not sure what the point of the thread is - I just want the Government to leave my pension alone.
Obviously.
http://www.paddypower.com/football/football-specials/manager-specials?ev_oc_grp_ids=1233867
To give my earlier post about Turnout-to-SNP vote a bit of context
Of the top 10 Constituencies by Turnout
3 SNP Wins
7 SNP Losses
Turnout ranges from 68.3% to 61.3%, National Turnout was 55.1%
There is a good case that employers more easily bear the risk premium here.
(I chipped in with some watering...occasionally
Now, for Generalissima Cyclefree's second week...