I was up in Manchester yesterday – shaken by the new bold vibe. Hilary is one of the best bosses I ever had and I can’t not publish her talking about pensions.

Hilary Salt’s take on the rumoured “death of the triple lock ” start at 22.52 of the conversation below. Hilary is frustrated by the State Pension is still very slow and the quality of debate on who gets the pension and if they should get more as time goes by.

Hilary’s estimation is that the new Triple Lock doesn’t give up on earning increases but smoothes them. There’s room for more from Labour on private pensions and she asks for more from what she’s do if she ran the  Pension Commission. There may be space for her on the third one!

I strongly recommend the second half of this 40 minute conversation. It brings me back to happy days when she was bringing CDC to life and pensions for more than 120,000 postal work.

Manchester and Salford and Trafford  are much changed since the days that I used to go up to Direct Sales for First Actuarial. They’ve been changed for the better including its leadership (the Mayor). Both First Actuarial’s officers that I went to have been knocked down but the consultancy still looks over Manchester United’s ground.

I went to USDAW as well as First Actuarial. It turns out they are in spanking new offices on the Quay that was a basin for the Manchester and Liverpool Canal. Gone has the old office there, where First Actuarial started out and now they have more than 100 consultants and administrators working up the road.

USDAW look in as good a shape as their new office and I’m hoping that like all the other unions that I’ve been talking with, they push forward CDC pensions – whether run by the private sector or now the Government (read my blogs on Unison and the Carers).

I’m pleased to announce that Pensions Mutual has grown with the recruitment of a star salesman from Altringham and he was with me yesterday. His name cannot be revealed yet but he will be at the Pensions UK conference in another guise and he’ll be standing in for me.

It won’t be in Manchester where it was last year. Instead their conference will be in the other power house of the North West. I’m told that First Actuarial will be there and I hope that the spirit of a lot of unions will be in the audience. What with Andy Burnham – an Evertonian – heading Government, it is north western vibe I’m getting to start my week!