Never Retire

The pensions crisis has dragged on for years now. The hole is £200bn deep, and recent stock market rises have not helped to fill it, because bond yields fell at the same time. In fact some households are now missing 5 years worth of living expenses.

Listening to the experts, there is no plan for getting individuals out of this mess. Meanwhile corporations are busy minimising their exposure as best they can, and the UK courts have (grudgingly) upheld the law allowing employers to require us to 'retire' at 65.

Tempted as I am to campaign to raise the 'retirement age', I think we should forget it. It's only there for our employers' benefit, and they may not last long enough for it to matter anyway. For us, there is no retirement, only age. We have no pension 'entitlements'. The welfare state is dead. Investing for the future is like trying to beat the casino.

Like it or not we're in charge of our own welfare, and we need to take control. Some are calling this process "rewirement", which is nice. 'Work' is not a chore that can ever be dispensed with, simple as that. And we can't rely on a single employer. We need multiple revenue streams in case any one of them dries up. We have to remain alert to opportunities, and be flexible enough to take each one. And so on. Until we drop.

Low Cost Government

Well, here we are in '09, the last of the Noughties: a fitting epithet for a decade of both reckless abandon and total collapse on the fiscal and financial front.

There's a lot of soul-searching going on, as well as a search for inspiration and leadership. While the US President-elect seems to have risen to the challenge, in the UK the search continues.

Bereft of vision, we look to the past, and it's a sign of the times that I was given Speeches That Changed the World for Christmas. Of course it includes Franklin D Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, heralding the "New Deal", which has often been referred to in the news lately. It can also be read here.

While FDR's speech and the New Deal must be seen in the context of a more parlous economic situation than today's, and many of FDR's tactics are being deployed today, I was struck by one that's yet to be honoured in the UK:

"... insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced."

I mention it not just because UK civil servants were promised a 2% pay increase in a time of rising unemployment (public sector teachers will get 2.3% extra this year and next, while the Daily Mail shrieks that private schools are closing). I also raise it because New Labour might just mistake the need for fiscal stimulus as a wheeze for saddling us with more civil servants in the long term, who'll generate further cost in terms of random policy initiatives and bureaucracy to justify their existence. See the Taxpayers' Alliance "non-jobs" for examples.

Of course, hiring more public sector workers flies in the face of last September's promise to cut jobs, as reported in the Guardian:

"Separate ONS figures on public sector employment showed the number of people employed by the government fell 44,000 in the second quarter to 5.8 million, the lowest total since the second quarter of 2004. The government has pledged to cut 84,000 jobs by next April as a result of a review conducted by Sir Peter Gershon in 2005."

But as Chancellor, Gordon Brown approved a 13% increase in the public sector workforce from 5.1 in 1997 to 5.8m in 2006, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. So, Sir Peter's 2005 review was merely borne on the rising tide.

The IFS also says that public sector pay has caught up with private sector pay, yet about 76% of public sector workers have final salary schemes, versus 17% in the private sector. And public sector pensions are worth 25% of salary versus 20% in the private sector. With pay the same, there's no reason for that gap - if there ever really was one.

But take heart! Perhaps it's a sign the trend is about to reverse that certain people in the public sector are bizarrely receiving their Honours now - it's to reward them before they can be accused of selling out their colleagues.

On that basis, we really should have welcomed the news that, for overseeing massive public sector expansion and bail outs at the taxpayer's expense, the Permanent Secretary of HM Treasury gets a knighthood, while the captains of private sector finance get hunted out of office for their part in Brown's Boom and Bust.

The last of the Naughties?

Let's hope so.

Enjoy the year as best you can!

Employers: Underreact to Staff Social Network Case

Laurie Kaye reports on a recent case, Hays v Ions, where an ex-employee has had to reveal the data from his LinkedIn account to his former employer. The reason?

"Hays had encouraged Mr Ions to use the LinkedIn services for the purposes of his employment. However, the Court decided this did not constitute authorisation to use the information gathered and stored on his LinkedIn account after he had left Hays."

So Mr Ions was ordered to disclose:

- the business contacts on his LinkedIn page which had been requested by Hays;
- all emails sent to or received by his LinkedIn account from Hays' computer network;
- all documents that indicated his use of the LinkedIn contacts and any business obtained from them."

While employers need to be clear with employees about what is confidential and what is not, let's not rush to amend staff handbooks to deal specifically with social network services in this respect. That would infringe the 'principle' (adage) that a "hard case makes bad law".

This decision does not extend the ordinary obligation on any employee to respect his or her employer's confidentiality. It is clear from the decision that the employee was found to have agreed to use LinkedIn in the course of his employment; in the course of doing so he sent, received and stored confidential information; and then accessed or otherwise used that information outside the employment relationship. That LinkedIn was involved is irrelevant. The result would have been the same (though less topical) if the employee had used a third party email account for the same purpose.

Your own personal economy

The red wine was flowing last night, thanks to Simon, Bill and the other fine folk at CVL, and some of the chat turned to how much of the goods and services that we buy and sell will be person-to-person in 5 or 10 years.

While I doubt that I was terribly informative last night, I'm now able to recall that, personally and professionally, I'm aware that people are already connecting economically speaking in education, complementary healthcare, event organising, lending (as a proxy for investing or saving) and borrowing, music, financing music production, stuff, accommodation, jobs and more stuff, legal services and home improvement. There must be loads more, but I'd have to start actively searching and my emails are piling up...

Could you get through the day, week, month, year only dealing with individuals?