Nigel Farage in the bar.
For those of you who follow the Emmerdale Soap Box of the Value For Money Podcast, I have news. I have been allowed back into Darren’s good books, though I suspect IK am some way from the affection of Nico Aspinall. Let me be clear, this is not because I have written bad reviews of podcasts but because I haven’t bothering with a couple of the recent pods, (Oliver Morley and Daniela Silcock). they have been so dull that I didn’t want to bore further by pointing this out.
Now we have Kris Shergold formerly of SEI and now of a firm he has started to help big institutional pension schemes choose institutional funds.
So I will ask the VFM podcast to ask some more interesting questions, like why funds should be solving the problem of interconnection between power suppliers with power consumers. Shouldn’t this be done by the power companies and the pipe layers and shouldn’t pension firms putting up the capital?
As I’ve been learning from spending time at the £400bn LGPS and other large funds like People’s , Nest and USS, I discover that size enable schemes to ignore funds and in particular funds of funds to help solve the problems in the UK. So we really do not have to contract the problem of getting things sorted to the fund management industry.
I am rather disappointed to hear a discussion about value for money for those who think that fracking is or isn’t the way to solve high power discussions in the UK. But like the story of not meeting Nigel Farage in the Westminster Arms (Darren) , the debate on net zero really has taken over this podcast to a point where I don’t get excited. Reform are , by the way, having significant impact on the thinking of those in LGPS, because many funds are now governed by Reform Councillors. Perhaps we could have Richard Tice, MP for Boston and Skegness, who has a great interest in pensions and also has – in Lincolnshire- one of the biggest power production developments in the country
I suspect that Border and Coast who manage money for the Lincolnshire Fund in LGPS will also be interested in power for Lincolnshire LGPS ; and so will Reform.
I did meet Nigel Farage a few years ago (November 2nd 2016) in the same Westminster Pub, it was a long meeting when I still knocked back Whitstable beer and you can read about it here.
Ironically I met and drank with him after a Share Action event in Westminster itself. Share Action are not great friends of Reform or vice versa.
Here’s how Reform grabbed the agenda at the PLSA LGPS conference
Here’s what I heard from broadcaster Nick Watt and who I met among delegates.
I suspect that several Reform councillors are in this conference and indeed now govern this DB pension. The man within Reform who has his knife out for what Reform consider the wasteful spending of LGPS is Richard Tice.
His solution to the waste is to
- Close LGPS to new entrants
- Make those accruing get less in their pay packet for getting more pension
- Slash wasteful spending by LGPS on procurement
This is likely to be considered popular amongst people struggling to build up a pension from workplace pensions or those out of pensions altogether, the self-employed and those caring rather than earning. It strikes me that there is a new pensions class war building up and this was the first time I had heard it articulated in a PLSA event.
I suggest that people like Nigel Starmer and Rachel Reeves are rather more interested in, worried by and focussing on Reform than they are on Conservatives, let alone former Conservatives.
Britain is more interested in Reform (by numbers expressing interest in polls) , so I would be more than interested in a pod that takes about Reform’s vision on VFM!
