The public sector is an inefficient multi-billion pound Blob – PM must get tough and axe at least 90,000 jobs
IT’S election season and the blame game is on fire.
Labour is flaying the Tories over schools made out of Aero bars while Tories hammer spendaholic Lefties for bankrupting Birmingham.
And this vicious war of words is just the start.
However, the two catastrophes were not “black swan” events, crashing down from a clear blue sky.
Politicians of all parties knew they were a threat and simply averted their eyes, hoping the fallout would land on someone else’s head.
It is us, the poor bloody taxpayers, who will always pick up the monstrous multi-billion pound tab for the blunders of here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians.
Hang around for the next catastrophe — the £2.6trillion in unfunded pensions, more than the entire UK economy — to come screaming out of the black hole known as the public sector.
Gold-plated, inflation-proof pensions for six million state workers — but barred to everybody else — are a national scandal waiting to burst upon those who will pay the eye-bleeding bill.
This giant state-sponsored Ponzi scheme is a racket paid for out of taxpayers’ pockets, with nothing set aside by the Treasury to fund it.
And it is growing like a nuclear mushroom cloud.
Eventually, as surely as night follows day, it will blow up in our faces, clobbering tomorrow’s children and grand-children who have no hope of a similar pension of their own.
These feather-bedded retirement schemes are a recipe for riots and revolution.
According to data-gathering agency Statista, public servants can retire after 40 years’ on half pay plus a tax-free lump sum of 1.5 times annual pay.
They also retire three years earlier than everyone else.
The bill for public sector pensions rose by a shocking £116.7billion in 2021 alone — more than the combined budgets for education and defence.
True, civil servants pay contributions out of their salaries — but nowhere near enough to match the benefits.
Depending on annuity rates, private sector employees would need a huge £1million pot to qualify for a £50,000 pension — beyond the wildest dreams of most workers.
Yet in the NHS alone, 20,000 staff have retired on that level of income without raising more than a fraction of it out of their own pockets.
And to rub salt in the wound, more than two million state pension recipients last month pocketed a ten per cent rise in line with inflation — almost double the pay deal for striking nurses.
Index-linked pensions, plus enviable job security, were dished out in the 1960s when civil servants earned less than other workers.
Giant Ponzi scheme
Today they are paid well above the average, are notoriously inefficient if not downright incompetent and often “work” from home — or foreign beaches — leaving Whitehall offices empty, especially at the Treasury.
Many government workers earn their crust, but some are on permanent go-slow.
Others, especially in the Home Office Borders and Immigration unit, blatantly defy orders from democratically elected ministers.
And they are virtually unsackable.
Former Bank of England economist Neil Record warns Britain faces a slow-motion car crash, “a debt which is now so colossal, at about £2.6trillion, that it is larger than the national debt.”
He added: “It is embarrassing to see how little senior politicians have known or cared, and how its well-heeled civil servants have allowed a catastrophic burden to land on future taxpayers, most of whom will never enjoy a good pension themselves.”
It is possible for governments to forestall the looming crash.
Indeed it is their duty.
The only way to head off this economic tsunami is by axing inflation-proof, salary-linked pension schemes for ALL new state employees — immediately.
Trade union power
The schemes should be replaced by contributory “money purchase” plans, just like everybody else’s.
This Prime Minister, or the next, should relaunch pre-Covid plans to axe at least 90,000 civil service jobs and freeze recruitment.
And to prove it means business, the government — Tory or Labour — should dismiss unproductive workers and invite them to reapply if they want their jobs back.
It won’t happen. The public sector, remember, is The Blob.
It is the last, unassailable bastion of trade union power and its members have the capacity to go even slower than they do today.
The only time a political leader of any complexion will take appropriate action is when the Ponzi bubble bursts . . . and by then it will be too late.