We had it in 1978. SERPS.

Absolutely, especially when the new rules on the release of “surplus” rely totally on trustees looking after the interests of all parties.

Agreed. We don’t seem to have the political will. But the nearest thing we have currently to achieving that objective is the triple lock. Let’s hope the Pensions’ Commission comes up with something better.

The political graveyard is full of those who waited for when “the time is right”, and missed the only real opportunity they ever had. You have to stake your claim, or people just move on.

The month or the tree?

Magnolia Brixton (next door neighbours)

Apologies for not being able to be there to correct the most egregious examples. I hope to be there on Monday for the third and final day of the Lords’ report stage. With prorogation looming, there must be a real question as to whether the more contentious measures will survive “wash-up”.

The article fails to mention the importance of SERPS/S2P. It’s important not only because it provided higher state pensions for the majority not in DB schemes, it also led to a significant improvement in private-sector DB schemes.

However, you have to build the tramlines as well as buying the sausages.

You’re the Mayor?

Good to see the name of my old colleague, Frances Morrell, is not forgotten. I am left wondering, however, what spurred the reference and what in her work is being disagreed with.

But the Bakerloo Line was not built by a municipality. It was built by private capital and, hence, built on the cheap. That’s why it is so small, for a railway.

… and anyway squirrels are lousy at investing. They gather lots of nuts, bury them and then forget where they are.

yes!

You mean when you could shop at Debenhams?

It doesn’t even apply to the whole state pension.

What is bad is that the piece in the FT failed to mention the Pensions Commission. Suggests it was not a serious contribution.

There’s even a Pensions Commission that going to have to report on that exact issue. Let’s wait and see what they say.

It doesn’t publish estimates of the current value of liabilities for all sorts of expenditure. For good reason. It’s as meaningless to calculate the current liability for future state pensions as it is to calculate the current liabilities for future expenditure on education or defence.

3 out of 8

Feeling aggrieved at having to wait five minutes for a train at Brixton tube station.

I’m receiving lots of posts on my timeline about both Traitors and Greenland. It’s difficult, initially at least, to know which is which.

Little England beyond Wales, that is.

Another inaccuracy. The article also says of Mandelson, referring to his membership of Lambeth Council, that “He later resigned in disillusionment at the council's left-wing leadership.” This is untrue. He didn’t resign. He just didn’t stand again at the 1982 election.

Given that the article states that the 2006 Lambeth Council election was “foundational” in McSweeney’s development, it’s a shame it gets the story wrong. By that time “The Left” was long purged from Lambeth Labour politics.

The problem with a seasonal epidemic is that it's way too easy to write a sexy "flu numbers twice as bad as last year" headline, which is true but misleading, when you ought to be writing a "flu arrives a little earlier than last year" headline.

Collective Defined Contribution Pensions Forum Read about the RSA's CDC Pensions Forum which supports the policy implementation and regulation of CDC pension schemes.

Good news for the supporters of CDC pensions with the nomination of David Pitt-Watson to the House of Lords. David has been one of the most active proponents of CDC and chair of the www.thersa.org/projects/col...

Pay my company lots of money says L&G boss.

I was there, in the room, and I know that, in effect, every scheme held out the prospect of discretionary increases. The true test now, particularly when schemes have a surplus, is not the arbitary test of what was in the rules; it's what members paid for and they might now reasonably expect.

Pre-97 some schemes funded guaranteed increases up to a cap. Others promised to use "best endeavours" to pay similar increases and they provided for this in their funding basis. In both cases members had "reasonable expectations" of pension increases. To distinguish between them now is unfair.