Captains and Kings

The Greek drama continues. Mr Tsipras may have hoped he'd get an easy ride when he came back to Brussels and presented the original proposals as 'his'. He hasn't had it. The Belgian PM went for him in no uncertain terms, and several of the other national leaders have made it clear he's really going to have to deliver this time round. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious and hurting so many people. As the Belgian PM pointed out, Greece has had a better deal than many others, in fact it has enjoyed benefits and bailouts no one else has got and it has failed to deliver anything so far.

He isn't getting an easy ride at home either. His own Party is split between those who want to bite the bullet, and the hardliners who still think they can get away with robbing the bank and not paying the penalty. And the populace are angry, with most demanding he find a solution that lets them stay in the EU and the €uro - there seems to be little liking now for the concept of returning to the Drachma and the freefalling economy not reforming anything promises. I think Mr Tsipras is learning at first hand Abraham Lincoln's dictum - you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

I suspect that a deal will be struck, but Mr Tsipras is going to have to accept some things he won't like, and Brussels/the ECB will make some small concessions to sweeten the pill, but there will be some big penalties if the reforms aren't delivered. And in the meantime the 'little people' - the voters - continue to suffer the consequences of successive regimes that thought they could give handouts endlessly in pursuit of popularity in the polls. For a government to balance its books, it needs to have a realistic income, and that can come only from tax. If you don't collect them, you can't expect to get everyone else to fund you.

As the Belgian PM pointed out rather forcefully, the Greek populace enjoy a generous set of benefits the Belgians and everyone else is paying for. Their 'Minimum Wage' is almost twice that of five other EU states, and they enjoy a pension age at least 17 years younger than anyone else. Time to reform, and more important, time to actually do what they have talked about for the last five years,

Schadenfreude

I have to thank Josephus for giving me the smile of the weekend, and I'll share it with you.

As is his wont, Josephus was ruminating on many other matters while performing an essential, but generally menial task. Contemplating a "Use by Date" on, of all things, a packet of frozen prawns, it occurred to him that the prawns 'expired' at around the same time that the current crop of 'millennial' young people will start to enter the workforce, albeit that these will be those who, having been forced to stay in school while having little or no desire to do so, will be exiting those fun factories with only a small amount of the knowledge they could have had, and almost no usable skills.

What employment prospects await them? Not much.

That led him to consider the next election, five years beyond this one. At that point the next tranche of 'millenial' young folk, this time with degrees and diplomas, will be leaving places of Higher Education and seeking work, and now the fun starts. They will enter a world of commerce and industry (and perhaps politics and the Public Services) in which they will find themselves perennially 'too young/inexperienced' for promotion. A world in which all the senior posts are held by the current crop of 'pre-millenial' types - the generation that turned my, and Josephus, age group from being 'too young/inexperienced' to 'dinosaur' and shoved us out to grass. And herein is the rub, because, having told my generation that we are the problem/undeserving recipients destroying the pensions system, they have changed the rules - and now cannot, themselves, retire as they forced us to do.

Because these now ageing 'dinosaurs' cannot retire at 60, not even at 65, but will plan to go on for another twenty years, thereby making real progress for most of the talented young guns very slow.

So the 'young guns' will plot, scheme, and undermine. Remember, that we are talking about the 'connected' generation. In collective ways, they will devise the means to overthrow the 'dinosaurs', just as they did to my and Josephus' generation. And this is where the current crop of power mongers, 'leaders' and 'thinkers' will come unstuck. They've destroyed the means for following a 'career path' in almost all services and industries, indeed they have done the same in commerce. They have 'poisoned the waters' against those with age and experience on their side, and now they will have an angry, frustrated, and above all creatively able generation snapping at their heels.

They will be discarded as we were, but with a big difference. Unlike people like myself and Josephus,  they will not be able to take any pension of any sort. They have made a trap for themselves, and soon it will slam shut behind them. They will be in their late fifties or early sixties with occupational pensions worth a fraction of their predecessors, because the erosion of those benefits in kind was one of their principle weapons, and their old age pensions are still many years in the future.

Will they be employable?  Their lifelong career will have been cut short by a revolution, so probably not. Except as 'Tescbury's' shelf stackers on the zero hours contracts they thought was such a great idea for everyone else working night shift. As another friend says - Karma is a b-1-tch!

Josephus was kinder. He wrote -

I do believe that the Germans have a word for what in English can only be rendered as "Nya-nya-na-nya-nya."

He's right, the German's do have a word for it, and it has found its way into the English Dictionary as well. The word is "Schadenfreude" - to take delight in a self-inflicted misfortune.

Sadly, those most likely to be worst affected by this bout of 'Schadenfreude' are likely to be the group caught between those who pushed Josephus and my generation aside, and the 'millenials' who will shove them out of the window. Karma is indeed a ....

Brain Drain

My thanks to Josephus for a couple of recent reports and articles on matters close to both our hearts. The first was an item on the finally published report on the tragic deaths of firefighters in Warwickshire in 2007. The report states, inter alia, that the Fire and Rescue Service training system had become limited in scope, and required significant review. It went on to say that the "Integrated Personal Development System" (IPDS) "competence based scheme" was not meeting the services' expectations as personnel were training to complete "portfolios" rather than focusing on "firemanship".

Funny that, this was exactly what both Josephus and I identified and argued when the scheme was first "rolled out" with great fanfare as the future of fire and rescue service training. The reality is that both of us were long enough in the tooth to have witnessed the failures of so-called "on station training" and "learning on the job" when not reinforced by formal progression training with examination and practical assessment. No amount of "ticks in boxes" can ever substitute for experience reinforced by knowledge, yet the champions of IPDS (all, one might add, rewarded with 'Honours' or very nice promotions and postings for their efforts) publicly declared that "knowledge of theory was unnecessary, you only had to know how to 'do' something".

Tragically, their wonderful scheme is now showing just how deeply flawed IPDS is. Deaths on duty have climbed steeply since its introduction and the scrapping of knowledge based examinations. There are other factors in play as well, however, one being played out right before our eyes at the present moment. While, on the surface, the battle over Fire Service Pensions appears to be simply about changing the retirement age, it is part of a much deeper ailment. It is now openly declared that a fire fighter should not expect to spend his/her entire career in the service. One young HR Director (in my day this post would have been filled by a crusty and battle scarred SDO or ACFO), blithely told me at a meeting that she discouraged people from thinking they could expect a 30 year career and a pension. In her view it was "healthy" for the Service to have a high staff turnover. Worryingly, at least in the meeting, the CFO of the FRS concerned, agreed with her!

Which brings me to the second article. It is rather long, and can be read here with the title "Inside the World of HR" . The author opens with the experience of Tesco, just a few years ago set to take over the world - or so it seemed - but now in deep trouble financially. The article identifies one of the major flaws that has entered business in the last 40 or so years - the haemorrhage of knowledge and experience due to high staff turnovers. The author cites several studies conducted by scientific bodies which identify that fact that any organisation actually 'owns' about 10% of its "knowledge" - the other 90% is in the heads of its employees. Now most employers will argue they "own" that as well, but the fact is they don't, and can't. Each individual has developed special and unique experience, it cannot be transmitted in any other way than the much maligned "sitting next to Nelly" system of sharing. Add to this now the most revealing findings of the studies cited in the article I've linked.

Most major organisations have a 15% per annum change of staff. The authors of the study from which that comes argue that this is a success; according to them, it makes business more flexible and less likely to be "locked into" the past. However, what they don't acknowledge is that it takes, on average, only 7 years for any organisation to undergo a complete change of staff at that rate. With that goes all knowledge of what worked and what didn't work in the past. Thus, as with Tesco, wheels get reinvented, mistakes get repeated and ultimately, a successful and healthy business ends up in trouble.

The reason is quite simple. It takes at least a year (in the FRS it is regarded as 2 years for a recruit firefighter and, in the past, a further 4 years as a firefighter before you could be considered for promotion) for a newcomer to an organisation to learn the ropes and become fully productive. Now comes another devastating statistic - in all the studies cited the maximum length of time most spend in an organisation is 5 years. So, as an employer and, if I'm lucky, my new recruit today, will have just reached his/her most useful range of knowledge and experience when they depart, taking 90% of the knowledge and experience I could use, with them. As the author of the article shows by example after example, this haemorrhage of knowledge and experience is steadily destroying organisations.

There are a number of factors at work here, among them the prominence and power of accountants who see everything in the short term and in terms of "cost". Pensions "cost" so the solution, for an accountant, is make sure you have only the minimum numbers qualifying for one. Experienced and long serving employees "cost" in terms of higher salaries, benefits and "on costs" such as pension contributions - so reduce the number you have on the books as much as possible. Then there is the whole question of "management" as a "profession" (and I'll confess that I have a number of "Management" qualifications). The academic belief that there is such a profession is, in my view, serious wrong. "Management" is a function, not a "profession", and, if one cares to look at the most successful managers in the world they are all people who have a very wide understanding and deep experience of the things they manage. If you want examples of poor management practice, look no further than an organisation which has "generalist" managers parachuting into senior roles with little or no understanding of what they are managing.

I was amused to see that the author of the article I have linked, cites the UK Civil Service as just such an example.

How does one fix this situation? I'm inclined to think it will require a major shift in thinking, and a return to the idea that a career is for life and not just a short term step on the ladder to the next "job". It will require a total rethink in what is being taught in MBA and various other "Management" courses, and it will require a complete change of direction in "Human Resources" so that the value of retaining staff, and the knowledge and experience they hold will be seen. It is perhaps too much to hope for that the "short-termism" of our western business culture can also be eroded and the longer vision held by other cultures adopted.

Answers on a post card please ...

Human Resources or Human Beings: The difference between 'things' and 'people'

Among my reading lately was an article on LinkedIn (which is why I cannot post a working link here) on the subject of getting “your” Human Resources Department to work properly. Obviously the article is aimed at managers and possibly at Human Resources staff, but it made interesting reading. The main thrust of the article was that many HR Departments are not functioning well or efficiently. The author flagged up several areas of concern, among them a ‘disconnect’ between the people they are supposed to be sourcing, developing or disciplining. In part this is because there are differences between what ‘Corporate Management’ think the department does, and what the HR Manager thinks it does, but there may also be a lack of certain skills within HR, or even a lack of communication between ‘cells’ within it. 

Many years ago now, I held the “HR” management function for my then employer, a Fire and Emergency Service. It was a very interesting task, and something of a major challenge, but I enjoyed it in the main. The foregoing will tell readers that I'm old enough to remember when "HR" was called "Personnel" and frankly, the change of title is part of the problem. Suddenly 'people' became a 'resource' and thus 'objects' or 'goods'. The very word ‘resource’ suggests some sort of warehouse from which ‘workers’ can be drawn at will, and which, when worn out or no longer required, can be discarded. Treat people as objects and soon their motivation to do anything more than the absolute minimum goes straight out the window. They also become very reluctant to discuss anything at all with anyone from ‘HR’ lest it be used against them, or used to impose new responsibilities or workloads on them. 

One of the points the article raised is that a properly functioning HR Department is also about ‘developing’ skills for an employer. For many corporate employers this is an ideal situation, but all too many don’t make proper use of the possibilities it offers. Coming from a uniformed service background, it is a function that is often separated from HR under the label of “Training and Development”. For a service such as mine it was and is a key function, and it can quite easily fit within a HR remit. However, I would also caution that it must be managed by someone who understands the difference between managing the kitchens of a hotel and being able to manage a fire station with multiple functions. While some skills of management are common and therefore transferable, some of the technical skills and knowledge required to make a good Station Manager/Commander/Officer in a fire service are unique and cannot be gained through an generalised management course. Once again, my experience of trying to explain some of this to HR managers leads me to think there may be a reluctance to accept that a NVQ for managing a shop or office is not a suitable qualification for managing a crew or station in an emergency service.

As I said earlier, I am a retired senior fire officer, and one of the things one learns in 'command' is to know your people, know them, trust them, and know what makes them tick. Far to many of the HR 'professionals' I have encountered in my latter years of employment didn't understand this and could frequently undo years of trust and respect by imposing some new system or policy without consultation. This is often compounded by a refusal to discuss anything of concern to individuals with the person. Many HR Managers I have encountered in recent years insist the person must take their concerns to “their Union” so it can be aired at a “Union Consultation”. In my view, this is not the right way to handle something, the “Union” often has a wider agenda, and the individual’s ‘issue’ may not fit it. As someone who was, at best, a reluctant member of a Trade Union (I disagree strongly with their direct involvement in political ideology and links to specific political Parties), I resented being made to join one (and continuously have to explain why I refused to make a ‘donation’ to an affiliated political party) just so I could get certain concerns about the manner in which contracts were being ‘adjusted’ without consultation or appeal.

I lost count of the number of times I have been told by HR managers that the department was there to 'provide support and services to 'the management' and not to 'staff'. An employee encountering that is likely to immediately clam up and avoid disclosing anything beyond what is demanded of them. I have also found that many of those I encountered didn't know the Employment Laws as well as they should. They often made something worse when they did take a wrong turn, by trying to blame the employee, or by creating a situation which brought about a conflict with the Unions. For me the worst moment came when I was told by an HR 'Director' (who had replaced a uniformed senior officer with many years experience and success at keeping the staff happy and onside) that “no one in the fire service should expect to have a career in it” and that the “average length of ‘career’ should not exceed 12 years”. The individual concerned did not understand the fact that the fire service relies heavily on experience as well as qualification. In fact, quite clearly, there was absolutely no interest at all in even being informed of it. Remove the experience element and you have a recipe for disaster, which, unfortunately, has been borne out in reality since that discussion.

In fairness, senior management can often put the HR personnel into an unenviable position of having to implement policies which they may know will cause hardship. The management is abusing their HR Department in this case, and using them as a buffer between themselves and the difficulties their policy may cause. A typical example is the ‘policy’ that imposes some operational requirement which those who will be affected by it know is going to cause them to come into conflict with the public. Having been there, I can tell you it is useless trying to raise those concerns, so you are faced with either disobeying the policy and hoping to get away with it - or letting the proverbial wheels fall off. Either way you know you, and you alone, as the “resource” involved will be blamed, and will be punished for it having gone wrong. No wonder “HR” are frequently seen as the enemy.

It is my experience that all to often, HR managers adopt an 'adverserial' approach to legitimate staff concerns and generally ramp up the conflict. Sometimes this is down to 'management' decisions requiring the shedding of staff, but more often than not it is down to sheer bad  communications skills and sometimes to clumsy efforts to change employment contracts by stealth. For many the concept of 'consultation' is to send round a letter stating something is to be ‘changed', and when the staff object, tell them to 'like it or leave it'. As you may gather, my experience of modern 'HR' is not a happy one. There is, I feel, too much emphasis on the ‘resource’ and not enough on the people. Too much generalisation instead of addressing some of the real problems and difficulties - like bullying, or constant playing of the ‘minority’ card to cover poor skills or knowledge gaps, and not enough attention to addressing identified problems rather than, as was common in my last employer, blaming everyone for the problems created by one or two individuals instead of dealing with the individuals concerned. I still remember with enormous anger having notices plastered everywhere setting out “our core values” (the same one’s I, and every other uniformed employee had worked to our entire careers) and threatening disciplinary action if we failed to adhere to them. I should mention that the very same people who put these up everywhere, were the worst offenders in breaking them …  

The author of the article that set me off on this listed ten suggestions for improving Human Resources functions. Four of the listed items would, in my view help. They included breaking down the tendency toward isolating skills within the department, adopting a more consultative approach, getting to know peoples’ needs and development ambitions and being less remote. I think that the first step is to have an HR manager who actually understands the 'operations' the 'Human Resources' he manages are engaged in, what stresses and strains those impose on individuals and then to find ways not to compound them. All too frequently, the HR Manager is someone from outside the organisation who has little, if any, knowledge of what the resources they are managing actually do. While it would be impossible to know in detail what each and every post does and how it does it, it would help to actually talk to the individual before attempting to change it. Consulting the Union doesn’t cut it, since the Union representative probably doesn’t know either. 

How do we fix the disconnect between what management think HR does, what HR think they do, and what the staff think HR is there for? It will certainly go a very long way if "HR" stops treating people as 'assets' in the manner of 'goods' to be pigeon-holed, costed and measured all the time.

The Pensions Debacle ...

I used to have a quote on my office 'action board'. I can't recall who said it originally, but it summed up the constant state of financial difficulties over a wide range of issues. It said simply: Don't expect me to drop everything to deal with some crisis caused by your lack of planning.

As I follow the dispute between the serving fire fighters, the government, and the employers over their current pension age and pension provisions, I am constantly struck by how the pensions crisis is now the fault of the fire fighters, pensioners and everyone else. It is a crisis created by the abysmal planning and practices of the politicians and civil servants (who have looked after themselves very nicely - thank you), and it could have been foreseen - in fact some did - more than sixty years ago. The Fire Fighters Pension Fund should have been revised in 1974 when the service underwent a massive re-organisation and expansion, but then, as now, all the politicians and civil servants involved saw, was a nice source of 'revenue' from all those extra contributions.

The root of the problem actually goes back, in the UK, to 1908, when a Parliament dominated by middle class and aristocrats with a paternalistic mindset, voted to create a State Pension to be paid to all working class men reaching the age of 70. It seemed safe enough at the time perhaps, as the average age at death of 'working men' then was a mere 45 years of age. Note the pension was only for men at the time, but post WW1, it was expanded to include women and the retirement age was lowered - but what everyone failed to notice was that the introduction of the first generation antibiotics, better working conditions, healthier food and access to better medical care also increased the life expectancy of the people it covered. Suddenly many more people were qualifying for a pension - and drawing it for longer. Did Parliament, the civil service or anyone else make any change to the way they were funding it? No. They continued to collect the small contribution each worker paid into it, and treated it as 'revenue' to be spent on any and every pet project and expansion of the State.

This is a particularly sore point for the fire and rescue service personnel. There were, and still are, very good reasons why they retired at 50 or 55. Only officers above the rank of Senior Divisional Officer could continue to 60, and it all has to do with your reflexes, your bodies ability to recover from heat and cold stress, injury and general health and fitness. The vast majority of people cannot achieve the levels of fitness now being demanded of fire fighters at age 50, let alone 55 and as for at age 59 - forget it. Worse is that the Minister concerned and his civil servants are being decidedly 'economical with the truth' when they say that only a small number of fire fighters will be affected. Their own report states that as many as 90% of fire fighters could fail to maintain the fitness level at age 55. They are also failing to be honest about how much the fire fighters are contributing to their pensions. Where the majority of Pension Funds have taken between 4 and 9% of salary from their members, the Fire Fighters are contributing 14 -17% of income.

It doesn't take a genius to realise that our local and national politicians have squandered the money (we won't mention Gordon Brown's raid of 8 billion on private pensions that destroyed the majority), treating the contributions as a nice way to subsidise the local and national tax pot. Of course, it would all have been fine and dandy as long as the workforce continued to grow. As long as more people were 'in work' and paying into the pot, everything is hunky-dory and we can get away with this sort of economic sleight of hand. Unfortunately, the 1930-40s dream of 'full employment' and state run industrial and commercial activity fell apart - and the politicians and civil servants can't bring themselves to admit that it was not only never achievable, but is a direct cause of their present crisis.

Not one penny of the money they have collected for the last 106 years was ever invested to cover the promises they made year after year, election after election. As for the Treasury's 'economists' - I wouldn't trust them to invest the small amount of money I once had in an ISA! Frankly, if anyone ran a business the way they run the national economy, the Serious Fraud Squad would be considering a major prosecution. The fire fighters have a right to be up in arms, and their current Chief Fire Officers are as much to blame as the politicians they serve. The various Local Authorities have taken the contributions from the men and women in their service for years and used it to subsidise the Rates and now the Community Charge.

Now that the revenue is shrinking as they cut down the service side (while expanding the paper shufflers and 'non-operational' side), they want to cut their losses by blaming the fire fighters. There are claims that a fire fighter that is fired at 51 because he can't maintain the fitness level or has been injured, can be 'redeployed', but this is false. Until ten years ago, he or she could have been, but since Labour' modernised the service, all the posts they could have been redeployed to have been stuffed with 'non-operational' and non-fire fighting staff. It was claimed then that this was 'cheaper' - so the fact that these folk are now, on average, earning the same as or more than the fire fighters they replaced is possibly another small problem the politicians are being 'economical with the truth' about. The truth is - and the reality - is that someone being 'let go' for health or fitness reasons at 51 is highly unlikely to find employment at anything like the income he or she enjoyed at that point. Nor will they be able to claim their full pension, or any pension until they reach 60 and then the new threshold of 67 for the State Pension.

Tough one, and I'm sure all the lovely and caring politicians and civil servants will pat him or her kindly on the back, and tell them the usual platitude that it's a tough deal, but you could have made provision for this contingency yourself ... Then they'll take their gold plated tax payer funded pensions and their knighthoods and laugh all the way to the bank and the bistro.

I have used the fire fighters as an example here, but the truth is that all pension funds are in the same state, and all pensioners and contributors to pension funds are being put under similar pressure. Suddenly it is their fault that the Treasury, the politicians and the civil servants have, down the years, squandered the money they have taken from us. If an insurance company did the same with its policy holders premiums the courts would deal with it very quickly indeed. Perhaps that is what we should now be doing, bringing prosecutions for fraud against the various public bodies that have taken our money on false pretences and now want to change the rules to shift the blame.

Now there's a thought for those of a legal mind and ability ...

Rearranging Deckchairs ...

I have been watching with some amusement, the latest efforts by the Home Office to 'do something' about the 'flood' of immigrants they expect to get from Romania and Bulgaria. The Home Secretary has been making noises about 'capping' the number of immigrants from within the EU, which, as the Deputy PM has pointed out is illegal and discriminatory. It seems to have escaped the notice of the British Press however, that the Danish Interior Ministry, and the Danish EU Commissioner free movement of workers within the EU has nailed the flaw in Mrs May's arguments.

The problem is that Britain has become a magnet for those looking for handouts because it has the most generous 'benefit' system in Europe, the easiest to gain access to, and the easiest to defraud. As the Danish lady said - stop trying to restrict the numbers, and fix the system that draws them in!

That, unfortunately, isn't going to happen. I know there is a huge uproar at the moment about cuts to a wide range of benefits, but the reality is that, in real terms, it is the old pea under the cup trick. While some, often the most in need of help, are losing out, the money is simply being 'rearranged' and the cheats, the idle and the manipulative aren't losing out. The 'rights' lawyers are having a ball, and raking in cash left right and centre 'fighting' for the handouts to migrants from non-EU countries and 'vulnerable minorities' while the pensioners, disabled, and chronically sick who don't have the connections, bear the brunt of it.

Parliament can, in the meantime, award itself a pay rise, bigger pension benefits and expenses claims, but is afraid to tackle the root cause of much of the UK's financial woe - the out of control 'benefit' system. To pay for this the last government raided Pension Funds, destroying some, reducing others to near bankruptcy and accusing all pensioners of 'being a drain on the economy'. A bit rich from a bunch of professional parasites sitting on gold-plated pensions themselves, especially as 'Pensions' are not a 'Benefit'. Everyone in receipt of one has contributed toward it through their employer, through their tax and through direct contributions. In my own case an average throughout my working life of 5% of salary in direct contribution, an amount matched for most of that time by my employer. So called National Insurance is supposed to pay for 'Unemployment Benefit', pensions and, some think, the National Health Service. It currently runs at 11% of earnings, plus an employer's contribution, but most of it simply vanishes into the Whitehall Black Hole. It is not, and never has been, an 'insurance' in the same sense as a policy taken out with an insurance company, nor has a single penny of it been invested for the future.

So now we have the spectacle of politicians having set up systems to 'redistribute' wealth from some, to those they and their civil servant chums consider 'deserving' and blaming those who have paid toward pensions and security for their families, being blamed for it being unaffordable. So now they resort to fraud and deceit to find solutions. One is the move to change the Fire and Rescue Service Pension age to 60. There were, and still are, very sound medical grounds for the present maximum retirement age being 55. The Minister is being misinformed, or possibly disingenuous when he says that any fire fighter forced to leave the service before age 60 will still get a full pension. The fact is that they won't. In fact many may have to leave the service at 50 - and will lose 10 years value from it. This is in the 'Report' the relevant department cooked up - it actually admits that potentially 91% of fire fighters won't be able to meet the fitness standards at age 50 or lower!

The fire fighters are an easy target, they're high profile, and their pension scheme appears very generous, so it is easy to spread the lie it 'isn't earned'. I note the politicians aren't admitting that the fire fighters pay 11% of income into it over their 30 year careers - money that is not - again - invested, but spent by the Local Authority concerned to 'redistribute' wealth on pet projects. I was particularly angered to note on a forum I frequent, that a non-Fire fighting "Area Manager" (Old money equivalent of a Senior Divisional Officer/DO I) 'managing' that other great shibboleth "Human Resources" was arguing that fire fighters should accept that the service isn't a 'lifetime career' any longer, and the pension benefits were too generous. Rich, considering that she has parachuted into the service at the same pay as the fire fighter who used to manage that function, and is now likely to draw the pension she and others like her are trying to deny the 'resources' they are supposed to take care of.

As I said, the fire fighters, police, soldiers, ambulance workers and other 'service' personnel are easy targets. They are relatively small in numbers, so the politicians can afford to sacrifice their possible votes. Likewise the ill, the aged and the disabled. What they will NOT tackle is the massive handout culture they have created since 1909 when the 'universal pension' was first introduced. Since then we have seen 'benefit' after 'benefit' added to the list, and alongside of that we have seen the growth of industries to preserve them. So we have the 'human rights' lawyers, the Union Lobby, the Student lobby, the minorities lobby and so on - all of whom defend their particular interests with threats of disruption or mayhem if there is any attempt to address some of the imbalances that have arisen.

Pensioners are still painted as 'abusing' the system even though they have, in the main, paid for what they get. So do many of the younger folk now facing retiring (if they can) at 67, 69, 70 or later. The Danish Minister is right, Britain needs to tackle the culture of 'benefits' that are creating the unrealistic expectation of being able to live comfortably on these handouts for life without ever having to work. Only then will the 'migrancy' problem go away.

Unfortunately, that is the least likely course of action the present or any future government will take.

Tipping Point for our economies?

A few weeks ago the Monk wrote about the way our 'economists' always assume that population growth, means growing economies and growing productivity and pointed out that this isn't necessarily true. Today I have watched a video on the MoneyWeek website. It is shocking, but, sadly, it is frighteningly accurate.

I commend to everyone reading this blog, take time out to watch and listen to this. The truth, as I've long suspected, is that the politicians and civil servants haven't the faintest idea of how to deal with this problem. They are trapped in a cage of their own making. They've set up a system of handouts and promises which are unfunded and based on only the desire to buy votes by promising more and more. They're all guilty of it - even the 'austerity coalition'.

It isn't only the costs of pensions, welfare benefit and the NHS, the biggest burden is the cost of the huge bureaucracy they've created alongside their "welfare" promises. If this video is right, things can only get a whole lot worse. Whitehall has no reserves, they've never invested a penny to pay for anything they've promised, and the MPs and Civil Servants are the only people who have made sure their positions, incomes and pensions are protected.

Do take the time to listen to this - then I suggest think about how you can protect yourself.