Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The British Government is responsible for the UK Pension Poverty

British pensioners in Spain are having to return to the UK placing a strain on the system there as they cannot live on the devalued pound which has fallen by a third against the euro. They could at least pay the heating allowance to pensioner living in Europe for in the Granada area of Spain the temperature does fall below zero as it does in other areas of Europe.

1. The British Government was responsible for the management of the country and were negligent in the supervision of the banking industry via the FSA.

2. They should have entered the euro and the excuse of a devalued pound helps exports does not hold water. There are no buyers even with a lower pound in a world wide recession. They are living in a dream world

3. Many pensioners probably placed part or if not all of their saving in British Bank shares. On BBC´s Panorama one investor had put 52,000 pounds into RBS shares. What are they worth now? Ex employees of RBS bought shares in their bank to supplement their pension, but it is worthless now whilst Sir Fred Goodwin is allowed to draw a near 700,000 a year pension from an entitiy which was technically bankrupt. He should only be allowed to draw 27,000. But the most unpopular man in England/Scotland just laughs at us. He has been named as the "World´s Worst Banker"
Mr Brown and Mr Darling why is there not a class action against Goodwin as there is in America. He put his name to the 12,000,000 pound rights issue misleading investors. Prime Mister appease those wronged mislead investors and appoint a UK legal firm to form a Class Action for the shareholders. Of course it may not be in the Government´s interest as the Bank is already 70 owned by the Government?

SORRY IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FROM THE BANKERS AND THE FSA.

The UK pays the worst basic pension at just 17% of the national averge wage. Pensioners in Greece. Spain and Italy receive over five times the UK´s basic pension with Portugal and France four times, Sweden and Poland three times.
In an earlier article on this blog we said that there should be a common EU pension and if the British Government wishes to stay outside the Euro then they should make sure that they hedge sterling so that pension hold their value in line with other EU members.