Very fair indeed ... but not quite as dramatic as you might think, given Cameron's moves to shift electoral-roll registration outside the responsibility of local government.
In the future, when self-disenfranchisement thereby becomes very widespread, the dislocation of the masses from the political system will be be even more clear.
I see in the polls that women are expressing great dissatisfaction with him, they'd better watch out or he might be tempted to repeal universal suffrage.
But never mind, he's already appointed lots of new peers to take up the slack.

I'm suggesting that in fact the saving of money into a pension pot is not as simple as you think, I contributed between £300 and £500 a month for several years (until recently) into a NatWest pension only to find that in three out of the last seven years they have lost money from my pension pot and they have now finally thrown their hands in the air and declared that they don't want to do pensions any more, selling the whole business to Aviva.

My pension pot currently stands (only just) as a very sick looking individual and I certainly cannot now afford to "invest" that sort of money any more as I now earn what is regarded to be a national average sort of wage, my children who are just starting in the workplace now currently have money to waste from their wages and could feasibly start a pension scheme and we are trying to get them to do so but with little faith in what they might be "investing" in - however they are also of child bearing age and (hopefully) might be thinking of setting up homes of their own soon (jesus I hope they are anyway), and so in the next phase of their lives the question of the sort of substantial sums that would be required in a private scheme would be out of the question.

The idea that a 20 year old can put a fiver a week into a pension plan that will pay them a liveable pension at 65 is what governments have always tried to sell in order to relieve themselves of the responsibility - it doesn't work, and sooner or later a government will admit that and make some reasonable provision out of public funding.

To take up your other point I agree with your grandma, I won't need a huge amount to live on in ten (more likely fifteen) years, at todays prices I'm looking at a monthly amount of around £900, which, if my mortgage is paid off is do-able, its not at decadence level by any means but two of us could live on that.

Haven't a clue what this refers to, so will skip it.



What proportion of a wage under, say, £20,000 would you say should be put away (and frittered by fund managers) to provide a decent liveable pension?
Then step down a bit, what proportion of a minimum wage should be invested to provide a decent liveable pension?

I would contend that the £6bn that Vodafrone didn't pay in tax would help out greatly in this area.

That whole post is a pisstake. Come back with something more sensible and we'll talk.

Organised labour has a part to play in ensuring reasonable working terms/conditions - the problem comes when they try and operate outside of the core remit e.g. Scargill/Jack Jones/Dean/Reid and their ego overtakes them. Its is no surprise that we no longer have any mining/shipbuilding/newspaper typesetting/car manufacture outside of the Japanese - all had one thing in common!! The demise of mining in this country was down to one person and one person only Arthur.

Someone better tell the Clyde shipbuilders, Land Rover, Range Rover, Jaguar and BMW Mini...

And on the opposition benches too!! On PMQ's this lunch time one lady MP, in the middle of her question stated Cameron is turning women off in more ways than one! Made me giggle anyway

Translation: I am unable to answer any of your points, so I'll try to make out that it's you that's stupid.

How many people are employed building ships on the Clyde? anyone who flies into Belfast City Airport can see how well Howland Wolf are doing!!

Of car production in the UK what % is Japanese? The Honda factory in the NE is claimed to be the most efficient in Europe, just shows what happens when management and employees work together without the interference of the TGWU!!.

Translation - I made some huge generalisations and now I'm back-peddling.



The workers are the same, the bosses however have had a huge upgrade.