False Tory outrage at fat-cat pubic sector benefits is a crude sleight of hand to divert voters' attention from the real wealth gap

Indignation at "gold-plated" public sector pensions is the latest wave in the Conservative campaign to create a groundswell of support for spending cuts and shrinking the size of the state. Rightwing thinktanks, encouraged by David Cameron and even by the sainted Vince Cable in the Mail on Sunday, have just produced a series of reports attacking public-sector pensions. It is a deft diversion from the real fat-cat pensions of Fred Goodwin (now reduced to £342,500 a year) and his ilk on to the rather more modest pensions of nurses, teachers and care workers: the average public employee pension is £7,000.

It's a well-timed assault, as private-sector employees still lucky enough to have an occupational pension open their statements and reel at seeing how very much less than expected they will get, with anything from a third to a half knocked off by the crash. Who should they blame? The bankers who bust the economy? Boardrooms who help themselves to vast pay, bonuses and pensions while closing company schemes for everyone else? No, the Tory hue and cry is turning them against public sector workers. If ever there were a deliberate creation of the politics of envy, this is it.

Rightwing thinktank reports have produced shock-horror numbers. Best was the British-North American Committee, which hit last week's news with this: "UK public sector pension liabilities now 85% of GDP." Good grief! Does that leave the rest of us just 15% to live on while the fat-cat retired dinner ladies, ward clerks and binmen live the life of Riley? It is, of course, a nonsense number, a statistical prestidigitation done by adding all public sector pension liabilities for those now retired to a life-time obligation to every existing state employee. Roll up all the money and describe it as a debt owed in one year and you get silly numbers. It's like taking all your mortgage and all the interest you will pay over its course, and comparing that total debt with one year's income. It will look wildly unaffordable.

The true figure is quite high, but rather less alarming. Public pensions cost 1.4% of GDP; and that will rise to 2% in 2027 and fall back below 2% thereafter. There is no inexorable upward trajectory. It may need adjustment, such as raising the pension age. As Adair Turner suggested this week, this needs to be done faster for everyone: we need to work longer. But dragging down public sector pensions won't do anything to help those who have no private pension, or a much reduced one. Cutting public sector pensions would not save the state much either: many are low earners so what they lost on pension they would claim through pension credit.

The real problem is the devastation of private pensions. Company pensions have faced rising costs as people have lived longer: each year of life costs pension funds 3% more. Share values have not risen as fast as expected, while funding requirements were tightened by the Conservatives after the Robert Maxwell scandal. In the 1960s, 8 million private employees had occupational pensions; now it's only 2 million.

What contributed to their mass closure was a culture change in the City as companies chased share price values to the exclusion of all else. A decent scheme used to be the norm for any respectable firm: many managers had not realised they could be ditched. But after the Big Bang, to have a good pension scheme was seen by City analysts as a sign of weak management, risking predatory takeover. So it happened that a country growing 30% richer every decade suddenly decided it could not or would not afford company pensions any longer. Last week's Telegraph leader repeated the refrain that the "primary reason" for the closure of private pensions was Gordon Brown's "raid" on pension dividends, but compared with the above factors and the stockmarket's collapse, that £5bn a year was a bit-player.

The Turner commission has led to a new compulsory scheme where all employers will have to contribute 3% of pay into a pension while employees pay 4%. It's a good start, but needs ratcheting up. In remaining private schemes employers pay an average of 10%, while public sector employers contribute 20% for better pensions.

Is that 20% too much, or is the private sector paying too little? A handful of headline-grabbing fat-cat public pensions for MPs, judges and a few others could be trimmed: as Michael Martin's £1.4m pension hit the news, MPs wisely voted to freeze their own pensions last week. But the great majority of the cost of public pensions goes to the modestly paid, more of them women, which is why the average is just £7,000 a year. Any meaningful cut would push many back into pensioner poverty. Yet a cut is what David Cameron rashly proposed last year. "We've got to end the apartheid in pensions," he told businessmen. The next day Conservative headquarters panicked and backtracked, fearing for public sector votes. But public employees have been warned.

The real pensions apartheid is not between public and private, but between the wealthy and the rest. Every taxpayer contributes heftily to the pensions of the rich, and half of tax relief goes to the top 10% of earners. A quarter goes to the less than 1% who earn more than £150,000. At last, along with the 50% tax band, incomes of more than £150,000 will from next year only get tax relief at 20%, not 40%. It was greeted with vociferous rage and the usual threats to leave the country, along with protests by the the very same wealthy people at the cost of modest public sector pensions. Tax relief still needs rebalancing to make sure most state encouragement to save goes to those with least.

Labour has a goodish pensions record – though you might not know it, as yet another report this week from the OECD put the UK bottom when comparing basic state pensions. Our basic was worth 26% of average earnings in 1979, but when the Conservatives decoupled it from earnings, it fell to 16%. But that's misleading: nearly half of pensioners are eligible for Labour's pension credit. Add in winter fuel allowance, housing and council tax benefit and free buses, and UK pensioners shoot up the league.

The state pension is due to be relinked to earnings in 2012 – though if the Conservatives are in power, will they do it? Labour's new compulsory pensions for all employers will be a long-lasting legacy, and not appreciated for years. The Conservatives seem to be heading in the opposite direction.

• Public services policy
• Pensions
• Conservatives
• David Cameron
• Labour

Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Tech

REPORT: NHTSA to mandate lane departure warning and auto-brake systems? originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Filed under: Time Warp, Safety, Videos, Celebrities

Continue reading VIDEO: Tragic Irony - Vintage James Dean driving safety video

VIDEO: Tragic Irony - Vintage James Dean driving safety video originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

IE7Pro is a must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. It includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

Comme promis, le Nokia N97 vient de recevoir sa dernière mise à jour de firmware 11.0.021, juste à temps pour ce week-end, et elle sera disponible dans la plupart des régions, et pour les personnes qui ne peuvent avoir le Over The Air (OTA), il y a toujours le Nokia Software Updater pour vous aider à rester à jour. Il y a une liste assez longue de changements et de fixes, avec la dernière mise à jour de firmware, et vous pouvez voir la liste ci-après (en anglais).

• Fix de l'erreur de détection USB
• Le PC ne détecte pas le N97 ou la connexion de chargement USB n'est pas détectée
• Widget
• Fix du crash du widget de l'écran d'accueil online/offline
• Fix pour “les entrées alphabétique et numérique qui sont mélangées dans Facebook jusqu'à ce que la touche end soit appuyée
• Amélioration de l'interface utilisateur Widget - Fixes du nouveau widget Facebook
• Fixes du navigateur pour améliorer la stabilité des widgets.
• Fixes relatifs MfE

Permalink: Mise A Jour Du Firmware 11.0.021 Pour Le Nokia N97 d'Ubergizmo FR. Aussi en Anglais

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A new torrent has been uploaded to U2Torrents.com.

Torrent: 4809
Title: 2005-06-14 Manchester (D8 DAT AIWA MIC) A Light 1st Night
Size: 778.00 MB
Category: Vertigo
Uploaded by: Akhenaten

Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Light First Night In Manchester

Name: A Light First Night In Manchester
Tour: Vertigo Tour
Leg: Leg 2 - Europe
Date: 14.06.2005
Country: England
Town: Manchester
Place: City Of Manchester Stadium
Type: Audio
Support: CD-R
Equipment:Sony D8 dat recorder with a AIWA stereo condenser microphone
Performance: Live
Source: Audience
Integral: Complete


Setlist :

Disc 1
1. Introduction
2. Vertigo
3. I Will Follow
4. Electric Co.
5. Elevation
6. New Year's Day
7. Beautiful Day
8. City Of Blinding Lights
9. Miracle Drug
10. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
11. Love And Peace Or Else
12. Sunday Bloody Sunday
13. Bullet The Blue Sky
14. Running To Stand Still
15. Human Rights Declaration
16. Pride (in The Name Of Love)

Disc 2
1. Where The Streets Have No Name
2. One
3. Crowd
4. Zoo Station
5. The Fly
6. Mysterious Ways
7. With Or Without You
8. Crowd
9. All Because Of You
10. Yahweh
11. Vertigo

This was my first ever live U2 show, and what a show it was. I got this the day after the concert from here I think (searched for it but it's not listed anymore, so perhaps i got it from Dime or traders den).

Anyhoo, this is a pretty good audience recording. The first 12 tracks are a bit distant and the crowd noise is a bit intrusive, but enjoyable non the less. From RTSS the story is a lot better. I suspect the taper moved positions or perhaps the amps went up to 11 because from here on it's a much better experience. The band are a lot louder and the crowd a bit less intrusive (just the right mix if you ask me).

Just listening back to it, it's a shame the taper wasn't in the latter position throughout the whole show, but it still IMO it feels like whole thing is building to a climax. Some great crowd interaction towards the end and some quality Joy Division snippets on WOWY.

Overall a decent recording. Starts off tinny and distant, but improves greatly 12 tracks in. For me a great record of a great gig and my introduction to U2 live.

I have lost the original info file, and compiled the data from www.achtungbootlegs.com

Front cover artwork is included.

Sadly i lost several hundred gigs worth or boots & artwork etc with a HDD crash, so I am unable to include the full artwork and the proper credits for the taper, but all credit go's to the taper and those who
shared it in the first place, RESPECT!.

I've searched through the active and dead torrents so I dont think this qualifies as a reseed because i couldn't find it, nor is it on the banned list. Although like death & taxes, I expect to be corrected in short order if I've overlooked anything.

thanks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can use the URL below to download the torrent (you may have to login).

http://u2torrents.com/torrents-details.php?id=4809&hit=1

Take care!

U2Torrents.com

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