The much trumpeted agreement between Blair and Brown to link the Old Age Pension to wages in 2012 is not all it seems........

Isn't it always the case that the much heralded announcements by our marvellous Government never include the small print

From today's Sunday Telegraph

Quote

The intervention by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) comes amid claims that a trumpeted "deal" on pensions between Mr Blair and Gordon Brown has begun to unravel.

Nick Pearce
Nick Pearce: 'The public is deeply sceptical'

Under the agreement, to be set out formally in a White Paper next week, the link between pensions and earnings would be restored no earlier than 2012, and the retirement age would be raised from 65 to 66 by the mid-2020s, and to 68 by 2050.

However, the Chancellor appears to have secured a key concession, with the insertion of a clause pledging to restore the earnings link "subject to affordability and the fiscal position". This would effectively allow him - if he is prime minister in 2012 - to scrap the plan on cost grounds.

Unquote

Is there one, just one, person of principle in Westminster just now?............



Story Here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/14/npens14.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/05/14/ixuknews.html)

To make any cast iron promise for something 6 years in the future would appear to be "imprudent" to me - I would be like my company guaranteeing a wage rise 6 years hence without knowing whether or not they could afford it.

Interesting that the date 2012 has been chosen - is it just a co-incidence that the first of the "baby boomers" will be reaching 65 about then.

To make any cast iron promise for something 6 years in the future would appear to be "imprudent" to me - I would be like my company guaranteeing a wage rise 6 years hence without knowing whether or not they could afford it.

Interesting that the date 2012 has been chosen - is it just a co-incidence that the first of the "baby boomers" will be reaching 65 about then.
Carrot on a stick !!!:rant:

As a female with the big five-oh not too many horizons away, it is galling that in a few years, my future has gone from "final salary type pension at age 60" to "average salary based pension at age 65.... or later".

Why can't they be honest and say the goalposts will keep being moved until we are certain to die in service, just like our Victorian forebears?