He's back... Mr "do as I say, not as I do" Blunkett is back!

I see that with the return Mr Blunkett we see a return of his favourite method of public consultation…

i.e. Make an announcement, issue a consultation document and then if the response is not favourable ignore it and do what you originally announced anyway…

I am of course referring to his recent announcement that “Compulsory saving for private pensions is one way to address the huge pensions shortfall…”

From this statement I am guessing that it is now definite that before too long we will all be putting away yet more money in to ‘stakeholder’ schemes to save for our future. This is despite Mr Blare saying that this would not be the case just before the election…

Can we all say “Hypocrite”…

What I find incredibly galling however, is the fact that this recommendation came out of a report into the problem by former CBI head Adair Turner.

Now lets get this straight here, Mr Turner is the former head of an organisation that does not represent you and me, but rather big business. Big business being the same people who took “payment holidays” when funds had a surplus in them, presumably failing to realise that with less money going in, the fund will dry up eventually. People who, having taken a payment holiday until the fund was dry, were heard whinging a whining about having to start make payments into the fund as if it was all someone else’s fault there was no money in there. People who for years dibbed into pension funds when cash flow was tight, profits were down or debts started to mount up. In short the exact same people who created the mess we now find ourselves in in the first place!

But all the blame does not lie solely with big business. Oh no, more than a little of the blame also falls at the feet of the government (both the current regime and its predecessors). They have allowed this to go on for so long, turning a blind eye when it suits them. The have also helped out by dibbing into the funds themselves when there was an excess there for the taking.

And who do they expect to sort the mess out? You and me! Those of us who have seen our futures raided time and time again by businesses and the government are being expected to pick up the bits once more.

Many moons ago I worked for a large multinational company called Lucas Industries. When I joined Lucas, the pension fund had a surplus in it and as a result the company was in the middle of a payment holiday! Then things started to g a bit Pete Tong for the Lucas Empire so they dibbed into the fund to a tune of about £10 million. Their justification for this raid was that if the fund members didn’t let them have the money the government would take it as tax anyway! Strangely enough the last I heard the fund had a shortfall… I wonder what the situation would be like if the fund hadn’t been raided.

And when these ‘Stake Holder' funds run dry, what then?…