Pension apartheid
Mary Dejevsky has written an excellent article about pensions in The Independent.
She points out that private pensions are getting worse and worse: “With most private pension funds invested, one way or another, in the stock market, their value has collapsed.”
On the other hand, people in the public sector can expect great pensions on top of salaries that are now often better than those in the private sector.
I very much agree with her conclusion:
Mr Cameron is right that this “apartheid” must end. Where he is wrong is in accepting that the system will have to be levelled down. Britain, for all the sobering vicissitudes of the past year, is a rich country. It is absurd that its private-sector middle class should face penury in retirement.
This is a fine example how Britain’s two major parties are failing the country. On the one hand, Labour has become the party of public-sector employment, improving salaries and pensions in the public sector while destroying conditions in the private sector; on the other hand, the Conservatives only want to spread the misery, bringing the public sector down to the private level.
People so much need a British Obama, somebody who can give people back hope and strive for something better, in this case with a plan for a pension reform that will ensure everybody gets a decent pension.