{"id":1015,"date":"2008-12-09T21:09:20","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T20:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/2008\/12\/09\/1015\/"},"modified":"2008-12-09T21:09:20","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T20:09:20","slug":"pension-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/pension-apartheid\/","title":{"rendered":"Pension apartheid"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/bcveen\/84883401\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/41\/84883401_004da519c8_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;\"><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/bcveen\/84883401\/\">Pensioner<\/a><br \/>\nOriginally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/bcveen\/\">hoveringdog<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p>Mary Dejevsky has written an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/opinion\/commentators\/mary-dejevsky\/mary-dejevsky-im-a-pensions-apartheid-victim-and-there-is-no-excuse-for-it-1058039.html\">excellent article about pensions<\/a> in The Independent.<\/p>\n<p>She points out that private pensions are getting worse and worse: &#8220;With most private pension funds invested, one way or another, in the stock market, their value has collapsed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>I very much agree with her conclusion: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr Cameron is right that this &#8220;apartheid&#8221; 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a fine example how Britain&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pensioner Originally uploaded by hoveringdog Mary Dejevsky has written an excellent article about pensions in The Independent. She points out that private pensions are getting worse and worse: &#8220;With most private pension funds invested, one way or another, in the stock market, their value has collapsed.&#8221; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}