Pensions

Jeff Randall has an excellent piece in the Telegraph taking apart the Governments's disgaceful treatment of failed pensions, and the judgement emanating from this week's court case (which this shabby bunch of crooks are still trying to find ways of wriggling out of).

He finishes with a lovely sequence of volleys:

When future historians come to judge the Blair project, the slaughter in Iraq and the loss of more than 100 British soldiers - for what? - will be at the top of the debit column: an eternal liability that will crush Blair's reputation.

Further down will be the annihilation of a once coherent and fully funded corporate pensions system. Its destruction began in 1997, when Mr Brown ended tax relief on pension fund dividends, costing private schemes about £100 billion over 10 years. It was not the only contributing factor to the unravelling of our occupational pensions, but it was the biggest.

Today, about two thirds of all British companies have closed their final-salary schemes to new members, and replaced them with much less generous alternatives. Even state-owned Royal Mail threw in the towel this month.

By stark contrast, thanks to a shabby deal done by Alan Johnson when he was at the DWP, most of Britain's 5.9 million public-sector workers continue to enjoy the benefit of index-linked, final-salary schemes and a retirement age of 60. In effect, he created a system of pensions apartheid: the haves; the have-nots.

As for ministers, they have voted themselves gold-plated, diamond-encrusted, fur-lined, leather-upholstered, deluxe retirement schemes, all paid for by taxpayers who have no such benefits and face the prospect of working to 67 in order to make ends meet.

Makes you wonder why we voted for them... oh yes, that's right, most of us didn't.