Now -read the book!

Here is a link to my memoirs which, if you are a glutton for punishment, you can purchase online at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history.
Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name. (William Morris - A Dream of John Ball)

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Sign up against the great pensions robbery

Older readers may remember that Robert Maxwell was a crook who stole from his employees' pension funds - but he had nothing on George Osborne who, within weeks of becoming Chancellor had raided the future pensions of millions of workers, in the public and private sectors, of billions of pounds we were counting on to see us through our old age. He did this by changing the future basis of uprating our pension benefits from the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).



This dramatic move had been in the manifesto of neither party to the Coalition of millionaires - indeed it directly contradicted promises made by all three main parties before last year's General Election.



This was simply a massive transfer of future income away from future pensioners to the benefit of Government and employers (or class war to give it it's technical name...)



Estimates of the cumulative loss for those of us not yet retired range upwards from 15% (or almost one pound in every six which we had been promised for the rest of our lives).



This is one element of the Government's attack upon pensions which not only applies across the whole public sector but also unites public and private sector workers. It is a move they show no sign of even considering stepping back from.


This is an opportunity to try to use the e-petition site in the interests of working people rather than for reactionary knee jerk populism - the petition is at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1535.



All trade unionists, and indeed everyone who believes promises should be kept, should sign!

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi - don't know if you're aware or not but my e-petition on the RPI-CPI switch to our pensions is to finally be debated in Parliament on Thursday 1 March 2012. John McDonnell MP presented my petition to the Backbench Business Committee last Tuesday and the following day they announced that the debate would go ahead. If nothing else, hopefully the debate will help raise the awareness of this unfair change which is already affecting thousands of people.

Jim Singer

Anonymous said...

Hi - don't know if you're aware or not but my e-petition on the RPI-CPI switch to our pensions is to finally be debated in Parliament on Thursday 1 March 2012. John McDonnell MP presented my petition to the Backbench Business Committee last Tuesday and the following day they announced that the debate would go ahead. If nothing else, hopefully the debate will help raise the awareness of this unfair change which is already affecting thousands of people.

Jim Singer