Leader: Bitter pill for doctors to swallow, but only fair
Sorry doc, but everybody is ailing and the treatment is the same all round – and you have to take the medicine just like everybody else.
Sorry doc, but everybody is ailing and the treatment is the same all round – and you have to take the medicine just like everybody else.
While we sympathise with anybody whose pension plans have been squeezed, changed, revised, and downgraded over the last few years, this is something that those in the private sector have been enduring since before the credit crunch was even heard of.
Final salary schemes in the private sector are now a real luxury.
The Government has only acted in the public sector when faced with no other option. To continue the taxpayer-funded privileges to a body of workers while those forking out the bulk of the taxes were increasingly under the cosh would be monstrously unfair.
While tomorrow’s action will cause widespread disruption and inconvenience across Shropshire and will probably cause knock-on problems in days to come because of the backlog of cancelled appointments, it is heartening to know that doctors will continue to provide emergency care, and we understand the point that they are trying to make.
But, if as David Cameron and Co have been keen to say – maybe a little less keen after the revelation of his embarrassing chummy texts with Rebekah Brooks – we are all in it together, then either it means something or it is just a silly vacuous political catchphrase.
For it to be a creed and mantra with any credibility, the words must be supported by deeds, and everybody must be seen to be feeling the pain equally, from the road cleaners and factory workers to the council pen-pushers and, particularly, those who enjoy higher salaries than the rest of us.
For the doctors, this is a bitter pill. But there can be no special cases.
Comments for: "Leader: Bitter pill for doctors to swallow, but only fair"
Doubter
"but everybody is ailing and the treatment is the same all round – and you have to take the medicine just like everybody else"
Unless of course you are one of the Mega Rich handed a tax cut at the budget of 5% earn a £1million and you have another £80k in your pocket, or be a banker spend/waste everyone's else's money and expect £million+ salaries and a healthy Bonus every year as well as a big pay off when you retire, You saved no lives, cured no one, or performed open heart/brain surgery.
Yep all in this together.
Rob, Telford
"But there can be no special cases"
- oh please - you're not serious are you. The revelations in yesterday's Times about the tax avoidance activities of the so-called comedian Jimmy Carr are just latest proof that we're definitely not all in it together.
James
'just a silly vacuous political catchphrase.'
It ('all in it together') is worse than that. It is, and always has been, a slyly propagandist catchphrase aimed at making the real victims of this crisis turn on each other rather on the real culprits, ie the corrupt bankers, the tax avoiders/evaders, and the likes of Cameron and Osborne themselves.
Here's what The Times - a bastion of socialism if ever there was one - had to say :
"The British tax system is unfair. It charges the vast majority of people the basic rate of income tax, and expects them to pay. It asks a minority to pay higher rates of tax, and then invites them to avoid it."
But the Star still doesn't get it. It thinks doctors should 'take their medicine' (please tell me that line wasn't meant as a pun). I despair, I really do.
adam
The whole point is that it is not fair....
(1) The NHS scheme was renegotiated in 2008, delivers a £2billion surplus to the treasury each year, is predicted to be in surplus every year for the next 20 years AND it is agreed the costs of any deficit will be borne by the pension scheme members - so there is no need for a rise in contributoions to fund the scheme
(2) THe NHS scheme members contributions are approximately double the level of other emergency services, treble those of the civil service and fourfold (or more) the level of MPs for an equivalent pension - soi it isn't fair at all.
So, the scheme is in surplus, it needs no more funds, as was agreed only four years ago - any increase incontributions is simply a selective tax on healthcare staff - and particulary on doctors who already pay a higher share of income as the scheme is tiered to subsidise low earners
If the scheme needed the funds, or our contrubitions were being brought in line with other public sector workers we would have no complaint
Matt
I find it unbelievable that allegedly intellegent people do not understand the workings of their own pension scheme.
The surplus you talk of is a cash surplus comparing annual payments in (the majority from the tax payer) and pension payments out. It does not cover future liabilities, as a normal final salary funding position would, and does not represent the true position of the fund. A little research tells us that the NHS scheme is unfunded, and so the there are currently no assets backing the accrued liabilities of the scheme as we would have for a normal employer arrangement. According to the govenment, in 2011 these liabilities totalled around £260bn. We can argue about the basis for these liabilities, but they will be in the region of £150-350bn depending on your assumptions.
The unfunded nature of this scheme means this figure need paying in the future to fund your pension payments. This will come from either yourselves, future tax payers or future doctors. Are you so selfish to leave this to your predecesors or to our children?
Before telling us how poor you all are and asking for our sympathy, you should do what GPs usually do and search the internet for the diagnosis!
Kath
"everybody must be seen to be feeling the pain equally"
I despair too. When the chronically or terminally sick are pronounced fit to work and have their benefits withdrawn, when tens of thousands of people **in work** lose help with childcare costs, housing costs and tax credits, ending up struggling like mad to make ends meet - the above sentence is unbelievably fatuous.
When Bob Diamond at Barclays gets a £17 MILLION pay package we are light years away from everyone 'feeling the pain equally'.
I do tend to feel GPs are very well paid and their pensions very generous, but the NHS pension scheme is in credit, pays back the surplus to the taxpayer every year, and if doctors have to pay more it will just hand over more cash. Doctors won't see any of the increased contributions in their pensions, this is just a back-door tax.
The government is just tearing up a fairly negotiated agreement and I'm not surprised health workers resent it.
If everyone is to 'feel the pain equally' (is the writer some kind of masochist?) let's at least start with those who are ludicrously overpaid, often for poor performance, and slither out of paying the taxes that ordinary, honest people have to.
Jimmy
The Star still haven't noticed that the 'treatment' prescribed by the coalition has done nothing but badly exacerbate the problem.
Unless you're a director of a FTSE company or a big cheese in the financial world - in which case you're coining it in as if nothing ever happened.
'We're all in it together' is a vacuous, hypocritical and self serving catchprase.
Austerity isn't working.
Rupert Barrington-Black
A few years back GP's got a 45% pay rise and reduced hours, no Saturday working. Unless they did shropdoc or equivalent for which they are very well paid.
They coin it in, run tax payer funded businesses and expect to be a special case.
They are the true embodiment of the fat cat public sector.
If everyone has to take cuts and pain why should they be different.
Average sallery over £100,000. Average pension £48,0000. For most of us to get that pension would require contributions of £1,000,000.
kath
"If everyone has to take cuts and pain"
I worry about all these people so eager to 'take the pain'.
I worry more about the enthusiasm for anyone one on a few quid more to get punished even harder.
It's glaringly obvious we are not 'all in this together'
There's no reason whatsoever for most people to take any pain at all.
It's not our fault. People on benefit (even the minority cheating the system) didn't cause the crisis. Nor did doctors. Or office workers in local authorities.
Why is everyone so scared to put the blame squarely where it belongs?
Katherine de Gama
Doctors' pensions are good but if they fail to fight it will be a 'precedent' for many of us,