Can a leopard change its spots?

[Acrylic-bob]

Originally Posted by Graham Jones

However those that have paid just the basic [and SERPS has been around since the early 70s & Barabara Castle] could be criticised for not putting anything away and saving and therefore why should they deserve anything at all? .

Well doesn't that say everything about New Labour's attitude to the pensions crisis.

It was recently estimated by an independent financial advisor, that to have a private pension which would pay me £20,000 per year (not as excessive as it sounds) when I retire at 65, in fifteen years time, I will need to have a pension fund of £400,000. When I stopped laughing, I told them where they could stick their impartial financial advice. How many of Graham's constitutents could hope to amass even a fraction of such a fund by working in Accrington?

I fail to see the point of paying over a third of my pension contributions in management fees and then to have to purchase an annuity which is then lost completely on my death. It strikes me as legalised robbery, and I will have none of it.

When I started work I was told that by making national insurance contributions I was ensuring that I would have a pension which would support me on my retirement. I was not told that because the government could not organise the proverbial brewery entertainment that I could not rely on the State Pension being anything more than a top-up or that if I wanted to enjoy a retirement above basic subsistence level I would have to begin contributing more than half my weekly wages to a private pension fund. None of us were!

And so for all the thirty five years of my working life, successive governments, have used my national insurance contributions to finance one hare-brained scheme of social engineering after another or to prop up an ailing and mismanaged economy instead of investing it as they should have done. We were sold the ideal of care from the cradle to the grave and we fell for it, little realising that when something sounds too good to be true it is usually because it is.

It strikes me that the Labour Party, as the originators of this fiction of security in old age, have either the responsibility of delivering it, or of returning our investment.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Governments could help a lot by ensuring that tax incentives went to the people who are saving for retirement.

[pendy]

Has anyone heard the latest? - probably not.

The Government have just passed the Inquiries Act 2005. This effectively means that if the Government does not like the direction a public enquiry is taking, they can sack the entire panel and bring the enquiry to a premature end. The Minister concerned has to give a reason, but he/she can simply say that the cost was becoming excessive. Obviously the Gov. don't feel that they can always rely on Tony's cronies, like Lord Hutton, to bring in a politically acceptable conclusion.

Also, why are we insisting on deporting the wife and two children (both born here) of a hospital consultant (a useful member of society) on rather spurious grounds, when we allow Abu Hamza, who has publicly vowed to bring terror to Britain, to remain here and live on benefits! - Then Blair says that Howard is "racist" to bring the immigration issue into the election.

Who is holding the keys of the asylum now?

[Margaret Pilkington]

What I can't understand is how our esteemed Pm can keep getting Asylum and Immigration mixed up.......doesn't he know that they are two different issues......?