Government Greed and Hypocrisy

I see that the press are soundly condemning the BMA for sanctioning a strike by doctors, the first for almost 40 years, over proposed government reforms to their pensions.
As with other Public Sector workers these ‘reforms’ amount to the doctors paying higher pension contributions, and working longer, up to age 68, before they can retire.

As an ex-Local Authority officer I don’t claim to be impartial, just the opposite, I’m firmly on the side of all those resisting these government-imposed ‘reforms’.

Lets be clear as why this ‘pension crisis’ occurred in the first place.

The UK, prior to 1997, had what is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest pension schemes in the world, until the government got greedy and abolished tax relief on income from share dividends, a key source of cash for pension funds and which effectively robbed those funds of nearly £12,000,000,000 leaving huge shortfalls and forcing hundreds of firms to wind up their final salary schemes.

Since then the government’s cack-handed handling of the economy has resulted in the present depression and accompanying financial crisis, with falling investment income, derisory interest returns on savings and industrial stagnation.

The government’s response is to force those still in final-salary pension schemes to pay more, get less and work longer for it and to throw the rest of the working population onto the tender mercies of the financial markets and providers, you know, those bankers and financiers that the government thinks are little better than loan-sharks.

If there really is a ‘pension crisis’ and pension schemes have become ‘unsustainable’ – whose fault is it?
It’s not the pension funds themselves, still less is it their working members – IT’S THE GOVERNMENT’S FAULT!

If the government got it’s sticky little fingers out of working peoples pension funds, and got to grips with it’s reckless over-spending, there would be no ‘crisis’ and people who’ve worked all their lives, paid their taxes and been good little boys and girls could look forward to retiring at a sensible age with a decent pension instead of having to work until they drop into some God-awful care home when the government can seize anything they have left to pay for their so-called ‘care’.

What a set of hypocrites they all are.