Banjofred, there was an interesting article in the FT yesterday from Tim Leunig from a Liberal (ie left wing) think tank (Centreforum) talking about how pensioners should be treated just like normal workers and pay NI contributons and lose 25% tax free lump sums out of pension pots etc. I checked him out here

http://centreforumblog.w...ax-equality-tim-leunig/

my point is that your comment about true blue Osborne might be wide of the mark. Voting labour might push us down this route even faster!

Im 60 retire 2016 Im gutted by this goverment with serps I had a forcast in 2010.
I would have recieved 224 pound per week never been out of work .
its my money not there,s how would osbourne like it if I raped his pension and give it away.
to some drunk who never bothered to get a job.

The following letter from the Pensions Minister appeared in Monday's Daily Telegraph:


SIR – I’m pleased to reassure people that the Chancellor was very clear in the

Budget when he said that entitlements built up under the existing system would be recognised when the single-tier state pension system comes in (report, March 23).

Under a single-tier system the additional state pension scheme would close. This would mean that people could not make any more contributions to the additional state pension scheme from the date that a single-tier state pension was introduced.

The new system will be set above the level of the basic means test, will be fairer for women and the low paid, and will help ensure that millions can save for their retirement in confidence. We will publish more details in our White Paper this spring.

Steve Webb MP (Lib Dem)
Minister for Pensions
London SW1

This may (or may not) reassure contributors.

to: PAUL 51

I think you will find that you still get £224 when you retire. They will simply reduce the new basic pension proportionately, although nothing is cast in stone yet.

Nice to know that so far and I mean so far us sixty year olds just might keep our serps.
why do I think that somthing is nasty just around the corner,we get shafted by brownie.
Doing a maxwell on the public and private pensions, knicking billions from them.
Oh tell them its becouse they are living longer, that confuse them, stole that money.
To pay for the bloated public jobs creation , now that been drained, the cons, now want to.
use it as there own bank account,making us all pay more into there pensions.
so they can go upper class on the tranatlantic, eating there non vat caviar.
and in oct we will have to belong to a company pension scheme, whoppy wow.
Here we go after a year or too the company will change its pension company.
change to another one, so left with a choice of suspending it or loose loads money from it.
Putting into a new pension company, why o why can I not choose my own pension company.
you take your bank account to a company when you start a job, why not a pension.
somebody on the make, not me tho.
Been a hard working Electrical Engineer all my life, I greave at the loss of real jobs we lost .
over the years, a lost generation of kids, good kids, when in 5 years time, when I retire.
I will leave the country or become a MP show them the real world which begins in England.
Had me rant find a mp to argue against that.

Paul51