Next general election (2024)

I would add that as a fairly senior ranking and highly qualified civil service IT professional, there was never any danger of me ever reaching the LTA, even when set at its lowest level.  Not even close.

In certain spheres, workers seem to be in danger of losing touch with reality.  It has always struck me that anyone over-running their LTA hasn't done too badly out of life.   

Medical students like other students pay tuition fees, indeed for longer than most due to length of course, and forgo income due to long length of studies (airline pilots get to start earning it back much more quickly). 

Always amazes me that people only ever suggest that doctors are trained at taxpayers expense, whereas so is every other student. Sure, doctors' training costs more, but the taxpayer gets it back in multiples with the unpaid work medical students do plus the woefully underpaid overtime doctors put in for many years - and UK doctors spend a lot more time in junior "training" (read cheap service) posts than most other countries. I worked for several years being paid ONE THIRD of my hourly rate for all hours over 40 per week. No surprise I was asked to do a higher number of overtime hours (the AVERAGE working week was 83-96 hours - but some weeks I did 136 hours, 96 of which were at one third of my normal rate).

Doing well or badly in life isn't the point - if you set up huge financial disincentives to keep working, don't be surprised if people don't keep working. Telling them how well they've done in life is meaningless. In fact, tell me - I did well, eventually, and I stopped NHS work earlier than I would otherwise have done largely because of the disincentives. I did my bit for over 30 years in the NHS, but now someone needs to work out how to fill the NHS work I left behind - good luck.  
   

nothing is guaranteed, but a decent final salary pension (50% of salary after 40 years) was part of the package, at a cost of 6% of salary. Essentially over time the cost went up 2.5 fold (to 15%) and the benefits were reduced by new pension taxes (took nearly 20% off my pension), revised scheme (moving to career average instead of final salary) and below inflation salary increases (28% since 2008). My point is that pensions were and are deferred salary, were part of the package, and not some additional extra.  In any case the benefits have reduced over time but there hasn't been a compensatory increase in salary (the opposite!) so I guess that was a successful reduction in costs for the government.  

That's against RPI for propaganda purposes, normal ONS calculations are against CPI.

That Guardian earnings graph shows that the public sector are consistently paid better than the private sector by approx £70-£80 per week.  They also of course get enrolled in a far superior pension scheme.  Doesn't exactly sound disastrous to me.

And don't forget far better job security. When was the last time a public sector employee lost their job because their employer went bust?