Pensions Crisis or Taxation Grabbing?

I am fairly young - just - on the cusp - as it were!!

I put away money in a pension every month like a large number of people do. But the political agenda that appears to be emerging at the moment is around the punishment of those who took the sensible approach of saving all their lives.

Pensions have been hit massively by the changes Gordon Brown brought in; raiding pension funds by £5bn. As if to make matters worse they also then means test so that those who have saved and paid taxes in their working lives get hit again in their retirement lives. Is there anything more demeaning to a proud elderly person than having their affairs raked over through means testing?

Then look at what the Lib Dems did last week. Not only charge higher amounts to those with savings but also means test to check what they claim they have as income.

But what is at the root of all these claims is taxation. The simple fact is that Gordon Brown would not have needed to raid pensions if he had been honest on taxation and told us that all his extra spending would need taxation through income tax. So he charges pensioners for his spending.

The Lib Dems in Kingston would not need to create a new tax through charging if they were not spending on other things such as their local comic - Livin' Kingston. All the while the Lib Dems go on about a Local Income Tax. But a discusson on local income tax would not have begun if taxes were lower and Council tax had not been fraudulently abused by this Government. By arguing Local Income Tax you hide the penalising level of taxation we are having to pay generally. But then the Lib Dems are a party of high taxation and high spending, as we have seen in Kingston.

Do not get me wrong, I believe there is a strong argument for the ability to pay to be taken into account in Council Tax, but a Local Income Tax is not the answer. I have given my position on this before which you can follow through this link. I also gather that the Lib Dems want to give pensioners over 75 an extra £25 a week. This is not properly costed, rushed out a soon as they heard the Secretary of State for Pensions was resigning and amounts to an electoral bribe that they know they will never have to deliver. Most of all it does not end the pain of means testing for all pensioners.

Whatever else the link between inflation and pensions needs to be re established and a long hard look needs to be made at what encouragement can be given to help people save. I know there has been some discussion about schemes where the Government puts in a pound for every pound you put in. Maybe that is the way forward, but whatever scheme it is what we all want is certainty in retirement. As yet I am not sure we have that; young or old.