I have swum in a pool where mournful pensioners refill the water level with their tears.

Bless Steve Hunt and all the others in that swimming pool. Open the article for page after page of indignation at the treasury’s designs on you unspent pension pot and weep yourself. Tom McPhail is having a go on Twitter, promoting a mass weep in the Times.

How can a 64% wealth tax charge be considered in any way a reasonable amount for the state to deduct from our pension savings? This is beginning to feel like a Mafia shakedown…https://t.co/nEt1dO1xD3

— Tom McPhail (@PensionsMonkey) August 19, 2026

The Times and Tom and Steve Hunt have all converted the new “pension tax” into a general tax calamity. The pool will flood the hotel with our tears

The moan goes on, the anguish of the tormented swimmers in the pool , can be heard though out the island and the moan goes on for so long that I give up in despair. One more moan before I move from reverse into forward gear and leave the swimming pool behind.

Here are the lucky wealthy souls whose torment is reduced by HMRC

But they don’t include those with the unspent pension pot!

A suggestion

I think we have an alternative to having out pension pot taxed by a mean Government. The alternative to buy a pension with the money in the pot. You can buy it today with an annuity and in years to come using a CDC pension. You can do what the Government intended you did when they gave us the pension tax breaks all those years ago.

You may feel they are taking those tax-breaks back from you and you’d be quite right. The tax they take from you will not be a punishment but a recognition that you did not want a pension after all. The Government opened the window and you jumped right through. You are now finding yourself in the pool of tears that was outside.