I thought it was just worth reiterating the reasons why we'll be out.
- We are being asked to work longer, pay more and get less. I won't be able to retire until I reach 68, I will have to pay at least an extra £100 out of my pension every month, and I'll receive a minimum of £168,000 less when I do retire.
- There is no crisis in the pension fund. It is self-sustaining and there is no shortfall.
- The proposed move from a final salary to average salary will hurt many teachers but particularly women - if you take time off to have children, your pension will suffer as a result.
- Our pension money is being used for the purposes of deficit reduction. Workers are being asked to pay for this crisis. I feel like a stuck record at this point, but this crisis was not of our making. This deficit was not of our making. This was a crisis created entirely by the capitalist class and this is an attempt to make the rest of us pay. To borrow a slogan that tells us more than the ConDems are comfortable with, We Won't Pay for Their Crisis.
- As a corollary to that, do not forget: this is class war. The tories are using the deficit as cover to hit our communities and hit them hard. This is a concerted bid to destroy the public sphere in whatever ways they can. The attacks on the NHS, the academies acceleration and the universities show us this. Do not be deceived: they are attacking us and if we do not resist now, our ability to withstand attacks in future will be weakened too. This is capitalism: continual class war, waged by the haves against the have nots and the have lesses. Only a fight back can halt their advances. Only socialism can end the war.
1 comment:
It's amazing how easy it has been for the tories to blame everyone else except those that caused the deficit. But then that seems to be due to all other parties being to scared to go against the 'Daily Mail' viewpoint. If I hear 'bloated public sector' one more time... (I'm not a public sector worker btw)
I don't know the details, but it's ridiculous to just change the terms of pensions based on a lie. How they have created this myth of everyone paying billions for 'gold plated' public sector pensions with no-one pointing out the facts is disgraceful.
It is a class war, absolutely, and all of us (middle and working class) are undoubtedly losing. The sooner the majority of the country can wake up to that the better, but I think there is a chance it may be too late by the time they do. Class wars always require some scapegoats at first.
The other thing that I really get annoyed hearing is the idea that capitalism increases consumer choice and means that companies work harder and produce better products. It is said with complete conviction and again is left as an unquestioned statement of fact. It is just bullshit of the highest order.
All that level of competition causes is; the few people that can afford to will get a decent product and everyone else gets whatever is the cheapest crap that they can get away with and make the biggest profit margins on. That is the point of big multi-national corporate capitalism. It's of no benefit to the majority of consumers and no benefit to the majority of suppliers. It's one of the reasons half the country can't afford to feed their families a proper diet.
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