Sounds like a bad time to be investing in retirement homes, "Matron, can you make sure that Mr Wilkinson gets his medication before 7am tomorrow please, he's got to be on the 7.30 bus to B&Q in the morning, he's on earlies".

"And pack him up some more pads, you know how sitting at those tills goes straight to his bladder".

When I got made redundant at the back end of 2007 I had to take a £5k paycut to get a new position. A far bigger impact however was the loss of the final salary pension that I had been in. My current employer, a sub - division of a large multi-national, pays the grand sum of £25/month towards my pension (I earn £30k). If you opt not to join the company scheme you do not even get this meagre contribution added to your pay. Due to the aforementioned cut in pay I can't afford to pay in as much to my pension myself as I would like. I am glad that I have got 12 years in final salary pension schemes as the likelihood of me finding an employer with a decent pension is diminishing by the minute so I am overjoyed that the government will be making my employer contribute more to my pension (it's just a petty that the current muppets in charge of the country have delayed its introduction to smaller companies).

I know the likes of Dally will blame Gordon Brown for taxing pension funds, but the real problems arose under the Tories when many funds were in surplus and companies took payment holidays. When it became time to start coughing up again as the funds went into deficit due to poor returns, taxation and pensioners living longer the employers viewed it as an extra expense that came off their profits and share holders dividends, rather than an expense that they had traditionally paid for, and scrapped final salary schemes and in some case company pensions alltogether.

Both my brothers work in the public sector and have far better pension schemes than myself. Yes, I am jealous, but I don't begrudge them getting such a good pension. The real scandal in this country isn't how good public sector pensions are, but how poor the private sector pension provision has become.