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The Premiership of Mary Elizabeth Truss.Sept 2022 - Oct 2022

For those thinking there'll be a general election this year you can get odds of up to 20/1 currently.

Truss could blow up the building by calling an election, as long as the King assents, but I can't see she'd do that as she'd also be blowing up her post-politics employment prospects.
 
notaclue said:
When Truss goes (looks likely within days), the government will fall. November general election.
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When/if Truss goes, the Government/Conservative MPs will heave a huge sigh of collective relief, put Sunak or Mordaunt in charge, and hope that something turns up, eg a major Labour scandal, in the next two years. (Unless they just think 'ah, sod it, let's get it over with' and start looking for other jobs). There are no constitutional grounds for a General Election.
 
kensalriser said:
For those thinking there'll be a general election this year you can get odds of up to 20/1 currently.

Truss could blow up the building by calling an election, as long as the King assents, but I can't see she'd do that as she'd also be blowing up her post-politics employment prospects.
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I can’t help thinking that Truss might be looking around the Tory party and realising that she’s not got any friends, might decide that if she’s going then the ship goes with her. I’m not a gambling man but 20/1 looks like good value to me.
 
Joe Hutch said:
When/if Truss goes, the Government/Conservative MPs will heave a huge sigh of collective relief, put Sunak or Mordaunt in charge, and hope that something turns up, eg a major Labour scandal, in the next two years. (Unless they just think 'ah, sod it, let's get it over with' and start looking for other jobs). There are no constitutional grounds for a General Election.
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Yep. 2 years is a very long time in politics (and world events). Certainly plenty of time for labour to knife each other to pieces.
 
Seanm said:
BoE statements as well as reporting identified the problem as defined benefit pensions, but it looks like the pension funds were never seriously at risk and were not the real beneficiaries of the bailout: that would be the banks.
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Yes! And, not to blow my own trumpet, I pointed this out and linked the same Francis Coppola article about a fortnight ago as there was quite a lot of chat on Twitter about this aspect of it when it first kicked off.

The important thing to remember about DB vs DC is not so much how they work or how much you might get in retirement, but that they are a transfer of risk from the employer to the employee. i.e. from large companies and the government to individuals. This wholesale movement of risk was as a huge part of the collapse of the post-war consensus and the post-70s enshitenment of society and doesn't get talked about nearly enough.

It's also of course been weaponised by the usual suspects so that now people who still have a DB scheme (particularly teachers, civil servants, NHS people) are painted as being undeserving and living off the hard work of others simply for having something most working people used to have. And then that sentiment got used to slowly dismantle the pension rights of those still in such schemes; a sentiment I might add that has raised its ugly head on PFM many times over the years.
 
matthewr said:
It's also of course been weaponised by the usual suspects so that now people who still have a DB scheme (particularly teachers, civil servants, NHS people) are painted as being undeserving and living off the hard work of others simply for having something most working people used to have. And then that sentiment got used to slowly dismantle the pension rights of those still in such schemes; a sentiment I might add that has raised its ugly head on PFM many times over the years.
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There's a little bit more to the critique of the DB regime than vindictiveness that your post neglects to mention. Exploitation of final salary technicalities by both employers/employees and gross actuarial miscalculations being just two that come to mind.
 
molee said:
There's a little bit more to the critique of the DB regime than vindictiveness that your post neglects to mention. Exploitation of final salary technicalities by both employers/employees and gross actuarial miscalculations being just two that come to mind.
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What exploitations are you referring to?
 
ks.234 said:
What exploitations are you referring to?
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Most notably as far as I am aware but there are apparently others in what was and is a very specialized field. Personnel, laterly, HR depts in both public and private sectors would promote into positions, that were soon to be defunct, those who were nearing retirement in any case. The employer gained in not having to pay out redundancy or get embroiled with TUs, the employee gained as they received a final salary boost, apparently a significant one in some cases. What this served to do was to further divorce pension contributions from pension benefit. Whether this contributed to a shift to career average pension calculations is moot. By the very nature of the beast there is more anecdotal account of the phenomenon and I wouldn't claim a major cause of pension black holes. That one still goes to the actuaries.
 
molee said:
Most notably as far as I am aware but there are apparently others in what was and is a very specialized field. Personnel, laterly, HR depts in both public and private sectors would promote into positions, that were soon to be defunct, those who were nearing retirement in any case. The employer gained in not having to pay out redundancy or get embroiled with TUs, the employee gained as they received a final salary boost, apparently a significant one in some cases. What this served to do was to further divorce pension contributions from pension benefit. Whether this contributed to a shift to career average pension calculations is moot. By the very nature of the beast there is more anecdotal account of the phenomenon and I wouldn't claim a major cause of pension black holes. That one still goes to the actuaries.
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Speaking as an ex-teacher and Trade Union caseworker sorting out, amongst other things, member pensions and redundancies, this is a long way from my experience.

Not sure how actuaries exploit pensions as the accrual rate is clearly stipulated
 
ks.234 said:
Speaking as an ex-teacher and a Trade Union caseworker sorting out, amongst other things, member pensions and redundancies, this is a long way from my experience.

Not sure how actuaries exploit pensions as the accrual rate is clearly stipulated
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I wasn't accusing actuaries of exploiting pensions, they just grossly miscalculated risk and returns, compound interest did and will do the rest.

Regarding your experience as a TU rep of this stuff- well you wouldn't as you were circumvented as per my post.
 
molee said:
I wasn't accusing actuaries of exploiting pensions, they just grossly miscalculated risk and returns, compound interest did and will do the rest.

Regarding your experience as a TU rep of this stuff- well you wouldn't as you were circumvented as per my post.
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Any evidence of workers being promoted into defunct positions to exploit the system? If there were vacancies in the soon to be defunct position, how would that save redundancy payments? If the person was in danger of redundancy before being promoted, how did promoting the person at risk save on redundancy payments? Part of any redundancy process is to find other positions to avoid redundancy, so finding another position is just part of the process, not exploitation.
 
Apparently 100 tory mps have sent letters of no confidence in truss to the 1922 committee, I knew there was a reason why she was effectively removed on Friday night.

Seemingly the only thing they've not agreed on so far and why she's not already resigned/been sacked, is who the replacement is going to be, it's looking likely that it will be Wallace.

There's no way this mob will get away with replacing two sitting PMs and not having to call a GE.

I'm going with November too.
 
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