260909

Nice drive back home from Dorset. Listened to Radio 4 for some time and we were both horrified to hear of the interest charges the pensions funds are charging. It appears that if you pay in £1000 a year for forty years you would, if you did not incur charges, end up with a fund worth approx a quarter of a million pounds. The fact that you have to pay these crooks the interest they demand means that you actually end up with a pot worth a measly £60,000. I heard a correspondent on the show describe the pension companys offerings as “products” – utter garbage! – What and when have they ever produced? Like the banks they insist on describing their methods of snatching cash from their targets as “products”. These wanton thieves are masquerading as something indispensable. They are not. It was only twenty-four years ago that I stopped receiving my pay in cash, until then I never needed nor had a bank account. On the one hand these people do now provide a service which most of us have to use as we have no alternative, but on the other hand they have an increasingly caustic and destructive effect on society. Their greed and avarice have caused more misery and destruction than all the terrorist outrages of this century. Politicians have the power to fix this mess and they haven't - why? - because recent revelations have shown that they are at it as well. I wonder if Her Majesty could possibly see her way to dissolving parliament and taking over - please Ma'am?