How?

Several reasons:

You took the wrong job; You didn't have the same 'opportunities the plus 400 have; They worked harder then you did; They worked less hard than you but they were more sneaky; They have no morals and shagged their way to where they are now; They have no morals and stabbed their best friend in the back to be where they are now; You're a victim and are hard done by because in your day victims were shat on from a great height; They're all victims and under the rule new of 'everyone's equal' they got given things handed to them on a plate;

Oh, and work certainly did pay, otherwise you wouldn't have the 114.10 you currently get to live on.

Life seems unfair but in the end, you still get put in the ground or go up in smoke just like everyone else.

You may be pissed off with the fact that somebody appears to have more materially then you, however, I doubt in the end they're any more happier than you and maybe probably all the more sad and insecure than you because they know they have such a great height to fall from when they get knocked off their perch from the next bright young thing.

I am very, very impressed with that answer, You are so right. The only thing that I am certain is that they never worked harder than me!

I guess some people could sell their sisters into prostitution if it suited them. I never could - Ill live off 114.10 and sleep well at nights.

Hopefully remembering that it is 40% of their bonus that is paying your pension :-)

In the current world, brains are rated much higher than brawn. Add to that the advantages of a priveleged upbringing, which many of these people will have had, and that answers your question.

This could change, once all the East Europeans cease arriving here doing the very necessary jobs that Brits don't want to do, and those that work with their hands could become rich... of course, this will put up the cost of all the services that we oldies increasingly need, so there is no way out.

Tiddy Ogg.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, my 44+ years of full National Insurance stamps pays for my pension. It is owed to me by contractual terms and is not a privilege bestowed upon me by government. That attitude of I am paying for your pension because I am working is as wrong as I paid for you when your parents were getting child benefit, FTC and other benefits when you were a child and I was working my nuts off.

wrong, wrong, wrong :-) There never was a pot that has your money paid into it that you later draw out. The very first pensioners never paid a penny in and got out what was paid in by earning people then. Pensions today are paid out of taxation today.

P.S. Do you feel as strongly about the outrageously high salaries paid to 'pop' stars and footballers as to city kids ?

P.P.S. My biggest bonus ever was 5k, should I feel hard done by or privileged ? (I have never worked in the city).

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I know that I could be earning far more than I do now if I worked in the city, but I sleep pretty well at nights doing what I'm doing. Maybe those folks with the 7-figure bonuses do too for all I know, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't if I were in that kind of job. You can't put a price on that.

Adam

I think I'm on your side - it always makes me cringe when people say, 'bloody immigrants, taking our jobs and our money', but in the majority of cases, they are not 'taking' our jobs, they are doing them. There seems to be a vast undercurrent of people in the indigenous (and I use that term loosely) UK population that don't want to work for less than the average wage. In the meantime, the country is crying out for people to do the jobs the eastern Europeans will gladly do, often at our behest. Before the Eastern Europeans, it was the Asians and before then it was the Afro-Caribbean's, who were in the main invited to the UK in the 1950s to do the jobs that the British felt were beneath them, especially after the second world war when a lot of returning soldiers thought they deserved something better than what they came home to. Yes, it seems that the UK is the dumping ground of the world with all nationalities turning up on our doorstep, however, it is our fault they are here, because as a nation, we've become to proud to get our hands dirty anymore.

LOL! A million pounds buys an awful lot of comfortable nights.

Can't argue with that! But will they still respect themselves in the morning?

You can also buy an awful lot of self respect for a million pounds. :-)

archierob writes

They probably managed to join a company pension scheme, and spend time contracted into SERPS, I did, and that saved me from your situation.

Right attitude, good luck.

correction - 4000 plus (and they don't all vote Conservative).

It's unlikely that someone who comes up with a subject line of "How?" is worth being paid very much.