Maybe in other countries ….
The weekend was a battle between the north west and the south east in politics and football and I’m pleased to report no battling in pensions.
Well done Bournemouth , well done my actuarial friend from Southbourne who put some cash on Bournemouth and Boscombe to win at 90 minutes (9-1 win with the last kick made it 3-2 to Boscombe.
Well done Manchester United for doing the same and winning 3-2 in north London’s Emirate Statement.
I suspect the football analogy for politics was that the Labour parliamentary party in London won 8-1 its fight against Andy Burnham who stays manager in Manchester . We await a home repeat where Manchester’s manager will get the footballing equivalent of management of the national team, but that will be some time off.
What can I say about pensions? Well my Manchester pension friends are split red and blue in football and I have friends supporting Arsenal and Bournemouth. My top pension politician is yet to declare her hand!
A downtrodden red , at last she can cheer on Man Utd. As the instigator of the Royal Mail CDC revival, she is something of a hero to me – though she’s out of pension politics. She’s the Social Democratic Party and she must have had a fun week with politics.
As you can see, we have a few things in common. I wish her well!
Indeed I wish the kind of football her side under a manager who looks at home in Old Trafford are playing – well. I have time for Arsenal and Liverpool who had a rubbish weekend and I ask you to pity me for getting some of the way to Woking to watch Yeovil Town have its match called off.
Has pensions got anything to worry about politics. I hope not. Hilary Salt’s Royal Mail CDC is not quite the CDC that’s emerging for multi-employer in an actuarial sense but in terms of what it does for ordinary people it is quite the same. CDC is an uplift in value for our pension money in terms of income in retirement.
We cannot hear a distant rumble against CDC pensions from Reform – though Reform thinks it can have a go at LGPS wastefulness. The Conservative party aren’t making much noise against the Pension Schemes Bill (except for fear of mandation in investment). The senior remaining pension politician in parliament is Ros Altmann and she is close enough to Bryn Davies , Sharon Bowles and Baroness Sherlock for me to say that there is no acrimony in pensions.
Whether there is any trouble in the Treasury for Reeves I doubt, there doesn’t seem to be any acrimony against our Torsten Bell in either DWP or Treasury (I hear nothing). Sensibly these politicians aren’t waving around football scarves (Starmer wears an Arsenal scarf and look at the problems that brings!).
Ros Altmann supports Tottenham but she represents a section of the population that I’m very fond of, (and who are better at most things than football).
So we kick off another good week. I am excited enough about pensions to be chairing another CDC session on Tuesday at 10.30 am. The link is below.
I am full of vigour having chatted over the weekend with my old friend Kim Gubler who’s Podcast with Nico and Darren can be accessed here. We are only a couple of weeks from Valentines and we have Ronnie and Claire to ring that in.
Ronnie and Claire
My hope is that we see the Pension Schemes Bill inch towards being a Pension Schemes Act and that we can look to 2027 for proper pensions instead of DC pension freedoms, for those who can’t bet their head around freedoms. I hope that we get the UMES CDC consultation completed and movement on the regulation of multi-employer whole of life CDC in time for launch at the end of July.
I hope that our Pension Minister is thinking about what he’ll be saying at Edinburgh’s Investment Conference (top of the Scottish football league and pensions league!).
