Con’s gravatar (see below)
Welcome to 2017 , I’m in a bad mood!
I have been struck down with tummy problems and did not join in last night’s festivities. I open my inbox this morning – this is what I find!
The time for seasonal wishes for the year ahead is upon us again.
I have just one wish: I want my money back.
As a taxpayer. I want back from fund managers and investment consultants all of that money diverted by their rent-collections from the tax-advantaged assets of pension funds.
As a DB scheme member, I want back from the Pension Protection Fund all of that surplus they have managed to accumulate at my expense. Better yet, I would like to privatise the PPF, and receive my share of those proceeds.
As a shareholder, I want back those massively excessive executive “compensation” packages.
Merry Christmas, and a perhaps less prosperous New Year.
Con Keating
Well there’s nothing like a truculent Con Keating to get you going , Con has asked that all posts from him are accompanied by his new gravatar , it appears at the top of the page.
Attempts to appease Con fail
I had tried to tease con by passing on the excellent news that our friend and my mentor Andy Young has been awarded an OBE.
should have had a “C” in it
came back Con’s reply. I hadn’t supposed Con was a great fan of our honours system
‘C’BE or “C” for Croney? – that is my question.
I didn’t mention Steve Webb’s knight hood – maybe that should have had a baronetcy in it? Baronet Baronet Webb of Yate goes to the ball with Baroness Altmann of Tottenham?
Perhaps that would have appealed to Con.
Put off my stride
I had wanted to write another rant about NEST’s extravagance and culpable lack of accountability for its six hundred million pound debt to the tax-payer isn’t going to get written.
That endeavour has also been sabotaged.
I am being killed by kindness from the very reverend Paul “Budgie” Budgen. Paul is too damned nice for my good.
He’s always creeping into “thoughtshot”, making my observations about market distortion and disengagement by employers seem churlish.
Paul – stop being so fucking nice.
Reverend Budgie
I want to be bolshy, but Keating’s trumped me and Budgen’s smothering me with love. I am quite out of my stride.
People’s Pension – an evergreen source of annoyance!
My one consolation is that I don’t have to sit with People’s Pension when Yeovil play Crawley Town on January 2nd. They have conveniently forgotten their invitation to me and my son made earlier in the year.
I would undoubtedly have disgraced myself had I made it into their stand by shouting for Yeovil and reminding People’s that Crawley is historically the worst governed football club in the entire football league. I would have further disgraced myself by drawing parallels between Crawley Town and People’s Pension that go beyond the signage
Seeking solace in religion
So , like the curmudgeonly pensioner that I now am, I will slope off this morning to Church and try and breathe in some sunshine when I’m there.
Being thankful for what we’ve got
My last two days have been in quarantine, however I have been tucked up warm in my flat. Meanwhile, those who I met at Crisis will now be back on the streets, homeless and friendless. They are a reproach to my bolshiness (more even than the saintly Budgen and the irascible Keating). I awoke this morning to hear the harrowing told by a crew member of a migrant rescue ship. She told it in September when the Mediterranean was benign.
We live in a saucy world where human dignity and even human life are considered relative. The life of a migrant , the life of a homeless person, the life of a pension expert are as important or unimportant as each other.
A few days and nights in a hostel give you a decent perspective on the relativity of your issues! Cheer up Tapper!
So there now, I have given myself a very good reason to shut up , smile and wish you well! Ahhh! – the therapeutic power of blogging!
SEASON’S GREETINGS
We mean this most sincerely
- From the ape Con Keating and from the bolshy pension plowman – a happy new year!
- Happiness predicated on the following;
- NEST will come up with a recovery plan that eliminates it’s £600m minus (DW) pension deficit.
- People’s will get a proper governance structure in place which will stop me moaning.
- The PPF will stop trying to be an insurance company and behave like an occupational pension scheme
- The DB Green Paper will result in the work commenced on CDC in 2015 being completed by the end of the decade.
- The FCA will put a fiduciary obligation on those who have pretensions to manage our money and put the investment consultants on the naughtiest of naughty steps.
- The lesson of the FAB index is learned and we return to a world where DB pensions are regarded as a benefit not a threat.
- Those executives who suck cash out of our enterprise as “compensation” will be held to account for every penny.Final words go to Andy Young on whose twitter feed I found this gem
Remember these words from Tsar Nicholas II’s diary: “The year 1916 was cursed; 1917 will surely be better!” 😀 Happy New Year!
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) January 1, 2017
Henry
You should not forget that I am Irish and our constitution prohibits the State from awarding honours (of nobility). It also requires any citizen to have approval from the State before foreign honours can be accepted. It happens that because I was born before the declaration of the Republic in 1948, I have dual nationality and so could accept. There’s a subtle difference – for those after 48 the title really is honorary. So Tony O’Reilly – real one — Bob Geldof – not quite.
It happens that my family and I are staunchly nationalist – My uncle Dan was patron of Republican Sinn Fein at the time of his death at the grand old age of 105, and he refused to ever take one penny of his pension or the €2500 that the President gives to centennarians.
I have been offered honorary titles on a number of occasions – academic ones and one from an educational charity that I helped to set up -my attitude is simple – such things are merely devaluing the positions and titles of others who worked hard for them – so no thanks.
By the way,my daughter by the way tells me I am closer to a Kropotkin anarchist than Bolshevik.
As for the C in CBE…. British Empire… really… but never mind. In my book, C stands for Cur and pronounced as in Philip Green. I really do think that Andy’s award was more than merited….says me tugging my forelock.
Good! I am a quarter Irish (my cousin was offered an Irish rugby cap). Mr Andrew Young is a pict not a celt but he is deffo bolshy. As for you, you are a law unto yourself! Happy new year!
I’m sure Con would be very happy with the PPF if he was ever a member of a failing or failed DB scheme…