A Disaster waiting to happen .. im lucky i dont have a pension.. i invested in a lot properties over the years and now selling them off so that money will be re invested but no way near any pensions now.. i was thinking of lumping some in a pot for a pension. Not really sure how it works but will get advice form my Finance friends .. Not good reading this yesterday , i have no idea how their meeting went either..
Aren't I lucky my main pension is from Local Government. The only thing I ever understood about how pensions work in practice is I got paid less than I could have but the pension at the end wasn't bad. This includes my other pension from the RN. I am not a financial whiz so don't understand the minutiae of high finance or what a lot of this means. However, I have always been of the opinion that bigger is not always better. There is plenty of previous on Companies getting too large to manage and going south. For me, it is not for the Government to dictate on this as it isn't their money to play with. As I understand it the custodians are simply charged with doing the best they can with the money they have. It isn't broken for the recipients of the pensions so there is nothing to fix.
I believe this only applies to public sector pensions, over which the Government can take control. I can see it’s potentially more efficient to have one big scheme rather than many small ones. Also, the bigger the fund, the more homogeneous the membership and the easier to manage risk. What is very concerning is the implication that the Government can direct the trustees where to invest money. Firstly, funds are usually spread across different economies: US, European, Japan etc as well as the UK. This averages out risk and makes the investment safer. Secondly, it’s spread across different types of investment from low risk government bonds through ordinary stocks and shares to a small percentage in high risk start ups and hedge funds. This mix changes to match the age profile of the scheme members. My main pension for example comes from a fund that’s no longer open to new members. Therefore the fund is all in very low risk investments and indeed it’s progressively being moved into annuity type funds that guarantee the future benefits but which have no growth prospects at all. What’s worrying is that taking this together with other comments from Labour is that they want pension funds to invest more in the UK and less abroad. They also want them to invest in higher risk projects eg new energy and transport infrastructure. Both those things significantly increase the risk profile and would potentially substitute gambling with pension scheme members’ money for government spending. That’s not in the interests of working members or pensioners who are already in payment.
Immigration eh? 'We are dying every moment' - the Afghans risking their lives to reach UK https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l9gg4yd75o
I suppose I might be described as a passive environmentalist. I'm all in favour of saving the planet as long as I can keep my car. And buy a faster one if I win the lottery tonight. However, recently, something has happened that has made me sit up. The great French Mustard Famine. This is a staple of my diet and I would toss the best steak or roast beef aside in distain without it. Both Russia and Ukraine would normally be suppliers of French Mustard seeds (is that because Napoleon took it with him in 1812?). For obvious reasons, that supply is not what it was. France is of course a source, but they won't be sharing. Canada also grows it, with General Wolfe obviously failing to stamp the Gallic practice out entirely. Both France and Canada those have suffered adverse weather though and you can't get a jar for love of money. This is getting serious now. Somebody else should do something about it.
Compare and contrast 15 marks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-66316756 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4lg21zxr2o
Very soon, the Council Tax payers of Devon & Cornwall are going to paying the salaries of three Chief Constables as enquiries into alleged misconduct. It's so long ago that the first one was suspended that I can't remember what it was for and in any, event the issue arose before he even came to Devon & Cornwall and was serving in the Northern Ireland police. This latest one has been suspended for "inappropriate use of an official mobile phone". Pardon me, what? Gross misconduct? Really? https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/devon-cornwall-police-announce-new-9779459 I have an idea how we could save some money to pay for all this. Do away with the Police Commissioner and her office and all such offices across the nation. They add no value whatsoever and introduce a further level of political interference we could well do without.
I'm delighted that the oft criticised French have found the chutzpah too appoint veteran movie director, producer and actor Mel Brooks as their new Prime Minister. Bayrou Brooks please log in to view this image
PS If anyone is wondering what I'm going on about, they're obviously not Private Eye readers. Here's a much better example please log in to view this image If you look carefully, you'll find people closer to home. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/lookalikes/big/?C=D;O=A
I’m shocked that the government has had the balls (or is it just a lack of cash) to pay compensation to the WASPI women in respect of the equalisation on pensionable ages for women with men. It’s not often any “women’s issue” gets a negative response no matter how absurd. This claim is entirely bogus. The change was announced years before it happened and if anyone wasn’t aware, then they just weren’t paying attention. There wasn’t any genuine loss anyway as women were perfectly able to go on working until 65 as men had to do for generations despite a shorter life expectancy. Indeed, the type of work men have done over those generations is a significant contributor to that shorter life expectancy. It’s pretty rich then that in the same month that there’s furore about pensions. yet another council has conceded equal pay compensation for woman by comparing the tough, dirty and cold outdoor jobs traditionally done by men before H&S was what it is now with dissimilar and less harmful jobs typically done by women. The miners’ strike wasn’t until 1984: you didn’t get many women down the mines back then did you? That was within the working lives of these women and is an exemplar of the conditions men worked in. And the steel works…. And bin men lifting the rubbish into the cart by hand…. And so on. If anyone should get compensation, it’s men for that much more genuine claim for that much larger pension and health discrimination. More serious though is the contaminated blood scandal. The government should get on an pay compensation there while there are still some victims alive.
It’s not all bad news all the time. I read in the paper that the cost per calculation carried out by computers is falling by 99% every 4 years. Some of the things that’s achieving include: Identification of major new drugs traditionally takes between 6 & 10 years. In 2023, AI identified a promising treatment for liver cancer in 30 days. This year, 32 million materials were assessed for potential to reduce the amount of lithium in batteries. This would have taken 20 years by traditional methods. AI identified 18 prime candidates in 80 hours. In 2019, Google claimed its Sycamore quantum processor could carry out a task that the fastest conventional supercomputer at the time would need 10,000 years to do in just 200 seconds. The latest Sycamore chip is 240 million times faster than the 2019 model.
PS also an interesting piece on how the Polish economy is booming: GDP per head will soon overtake the UK. It’s partly attributed to special government development zones: partly to skills brought back to Poland after working abroad in places like…. Errrm the UK and partly to…. errrm joining the EU.
As a nation we still expect to be sitting at the top table....even though our military capabilities are down to the bare bones. We have two state of the art Aircraft Carriers....but we are having difficulties keeping both at sea.....with the possibilty of one being docked and then taking six months to get operational again in an emergency. Even If possible there is another problem....we are having difficulties in crewing our Navy because of a shortage of manpower. Many of our fleet our well beyond there expiring dates. Our Army has been reduced over the years by our government and would be severally stretched if called to defend ourselves against an enemy such as Russia. After the cold war ended the "clock" moved further away from midnight....but I would suggest the minute hand is far nearer midnight than it has been for years. Cutting expenditure on our military capability is so short sighted and downgrades' our influence to defend ourselves.
I agree - and of course it’s good for skilled engineering jobs. However, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are showing that warfare is changing. We must make sure we spend on the right technologies, including drones, submarines , air defence missiles, electronic surveillance, hypersonic missiles and so on. I believe the first laser weapons are to be tested on board Navy ships soon. I read that in the Gulf, £1m missiles have been used to shoot down £5k drones. The laser costs less than £1 to recharge. The day of the tank, the jet fighter and the surface ship may be over.
There is no greater responsibility on a government than the defence of the Realm. Can they afford not to with Trump in the White House? There are some savings to be had though. Drones are cheaper than manned fighters (or indeed as the Ukrainians have shown in the Black sea, cheaper and more usable than surface ships, which seem quite vulnerable). Israel has managed to decapitate enemy groups by a combination of surveillance and targeted strikes. Some of it is expensive: an Astute class submarine is about 50% more expensive than a Type 45 destroyer but it can't be taken out by a Chinese hypersonic missile. The American Virginia class submarines have vertical launch tubes for non-nuclear weapons as well as conventional torpedo tubes. It can launch cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles. I presume something like that will be the outcome of the AUKUS project between the Australians, the UK and the US to jointly develop the next generation of nuclear submarines as well as other technologies. The thing is though that we're at a watershed. It's mustn't be just about more of what we've done before.
Just a couple more examples for f the cost of putting pilots in planes . An ejector seat costs about £0.25m. It weighs quite a bit too which the plane has to carry around. So, believe it, does the pilots helmet cost £0.25m. The least of what it does is to stop the pilot bumping his head. And then there’s the fact that if the plane’s shot down, you may have a widow and orphans. Or a hostage in the hands of terrorists.
