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The Government and Pensions

5 replies

JoolsToo · 15/03/2006 12:40

"In a report published today, the Ombudsman concludes that official information about the security of final salary occupational pension schemes provided over many years by the Department for Work and Pensions, the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority and other government bodies was 'inaccurate, incomplete, unclear and inconsistent'."

The Government, guess what does not agree with the report.

Funny isn't it that it agreed with all the reports about the Iraq war - "look, we've had four investigations now and they all put us in the clear" or words to that effect.

OP posts:
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ruty · 15/03/2006 14:15

the government do not care about pensions one bit. they just want to save money so they can spend more killing people in Iraq. We're all supposed to save 375 quid per person per month to save for an adequate pension. Sorry, but who has that kind of money to save?

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expatinscotland · 15/03/2006 14:16

375 quid per person/month?! That's the fuuniest thing I've read all day.

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ruty · 15/03/2006 14:43

yep.

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expatinscotland · 15/03/2006 14:52

LOL. That's comical.

Personally, I know damn well there'll be no 'retirement' for most peeps of my generation. And let's face it, the idea of spending 30 years of your life not working is a very modern construct of, say, the last 60 years or so.

A construct that's going to be way, way too expensive for any society to afford by the time I hit 60 or so.

I'm planning on re-training for a career I can do until I get close enough to dropping.

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fsmail · 17/03/2006 23:36

This Government has messed with pensions so much including reducing the tax rebate, introducing stakeholder, the new tax rules in April, many of which are still not clear and could be changed in next week's budget. On top of this the Turner Review could change pensions again. I used to work exclusively in the pensions field but I have to say my love for the subject, yes really has been washed away by the tamperings of a Labour Government who cannot agree on the best approach. Tony had a dream that all of his pensions would be on one statement and he wanted to achieve this. Gordon Brown is looking at costs and nothing else. People complain about the conservatives but as far as I am concerned there is only one politician who truly understands about pensions and that is David Willets, the most intelligent man never to have been in Government. Sorry but I have seen the meanderings over the last few years in pensions and people have failed to capitalise on the equity growth over the last three years simply because there has been too many changes and tamperings. The sad thing is that there are more to come. The Turner Report is a classic, Blair wants to put it in practice asap and Brown has tried to undermine it.

I do belive strongly that pensions, private pensions are still a good investment discipline for younger people who would cash in ISAs and sell properties but with a pension you are forced to save for the longer term.

With final salary schemes it is all dependent upon the Company are the sponsor of you scheme now and when you retire. If you work for the Government or the local councils you will be doing very nicely. If you work for a small manufacturing company you may not have a pension to go to. I worked for an actuarial firm for four years and we had one company that went into liquidation leaving a pension fund but once the actuaries, lawyers and insolvency practitioners had had their cut, there was nothing left for the members not even enough to pay back the state pension that they had automatically contracted out of. They would have been much better off with a defined contribution scheme that the company paid a small percentage into and staying in the Government scheme. However, if an adviser had suggested coming out of that scheme 10 years ago they would have been hung, drawn and quartered by the FSA , proverbially of course!

The moral always make sure you know what you are getting into.

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