Reform UK or Steve Webb – who’s truth would you believe on pensions?

Posted on April 23, 2026 by henry tapper

Steve Webb

Steve Webb is commenting here on news that I include below but you can read from this link.

Here is the naughtiness of Reform exposed by a decent man who did a good job of managing this country’s pensions from 2010 to 2015.

Here are the plans of  Reform UK as reported in its news feed

Reform UK plans to scrap ‘gold-plated’ public sector pensions for new workers

Story by Joe Sledge

Reform UK has unveiled plans to abolish so-called “gold-plated” pension arrangements for new public sector workers from 2030.

The proposals would see defined benefit schemes, which guarantee retirement income, replaced with defined contribution arrangements dependent on investment performance.

Under the plans, individuals entering public sector employment after 2030 would no longer have access to guaranteed pension payouts.

The policy would take effect if Nigel Farage secures victory at the next general election.

Reform UK has previously committed to ending such schemes for new local government employees, with the latest proposal extending the policy across the entire public sector.

The party, which is currently leading national opinion polls, is expected to perform strongly in next month’s local elections.

The pension reforms form part of broader efforts to strengthen the party’s economic credibility with investors.

Robert Jenrick, who serves as Reform’s treasury spokesman, confirmed earlier this month that he is reviewing pension arrangements for civil servants and other state employees.

FarageNigel Farage

Party sources indicate Mr Jenrick could announce a formal commitment to abolish defined benefit schemes as early as this summer.

The move is expected to be accompanied by wider welfare reforms aimed at improving the public finances.

Mr Jenrick, a former Conservative MP who joined Reform UK in January, has raised concerns about the scale of unfunded pension liabilities.

He said: “Such schemes were phased out in the private sector decades ago. They represent the Government’s second-largest financial liability”.

The total value of unfunded public sector pension liabilities currently stands at £1.4trillion.

Under the proposals, doctors, teachers and civil servants entering the workforce after 2030 would instead be enrolled in defined contribution schemes.

These arrangements involve pension savings being invested, with final retirement income dependent on market performance rather than a guaranteed payout.

Around six million existing public sector workers would not be affected by the changes and would retain their current pension entitlements.

The shift reflects a wider trend in the private sector, where most employers have already closed defined benefit schemes to new members due to rising costs and increasing life expectancy.

This has led to a growing divide between public and private sector pension provision, with guaranteed retirement incomes now largely limited to public sector roles.

Reform UK said its proposals would align public sector pensions more closely with arrangements common across British industry.

Analysis from Policy Exchange suggests that closing defined benefit schemes to new entrants would initially increase costs.

The think tank estimates additional spending of £1.1billion per year would be required in the early stages.

This figure is projected to rise to £3.4billion annually within six years, but would be expected to generate significant savings.

Annual savings are forecast to reach £6.1billion after 20 years, which, by 50 years, could approach £40billion per year.

Policy Exchange said: “The scale of the liabilities involved means that public sector pension reform cannot be avoided by any Government serious about long-term fiscal responsibility”.

A spokesman for Mr Jenrick declined to comment on the proposals.

HM Treasury has previously said it has no plans to reform public sector pensions and has rejected claims that they are unaffordable.

Steve Webb
Nigel Farage
Robert Jenrick

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From Pensions UK to CDC ; from St Johnstone to St Andrews

Posted on April 23, 2026 by henry tapper

The St Andrews Football team who last night won the Fife Cup for Derek Scott and others!

I enjoy the passion of those who comment on my blog. I am amazed by the quantity, quality and diversity of comment that I get over social media. Mostly through anonymous comment on my blog and occasionally from the irrepressible Derek Scott on just about everything!

I bring you three variations on a theme

First the dark voice of Jnamdoc

We haven’t heard much from “him or her” in a while but the message is clear.

Sounds as if Jnamdoc was at Pensions UK’s investment conference in March

I’m really not sure at all what is the purpose of Pension UK?

I’ve given up being disappointed by its group think and absence of system wide thinking. The recent conference ignored CDC and DB run on.

Seems their role is to support or to try to interpret what the Insurers or Govt are peddling

A Chair from Insurer background was like asking the fox to guard the chickens. Not that the fox is intrinsically ‘bad’ – it’s just being a fox.

Things that genuinely would benefit workers and members (eg CDC or DB run with member upside) seem to get short changed as they do not suit the commercial interest of Insurers. And they’ve swallowed the IA mantra of only solving ‘adequacy’ through higher contributions and higher fees. The only certain winners from that are asset gatherers.

I guess part of the problem with Pensions UK is an absence of genuine member representation (and let’s accept that does not include ‘professional’ trustees!). Perhaps half of its board and committees should be filled with union reps, and that should look to others apart from the ABI/IA for CPD?

Let’s be honest, UK pension provision, once an envy, is a mess after 20 odd years of NAPF/PLSA group think.

We can do better.

Next is Pensions Oldie, less angry but equally passionate!

And Pensions Oldie’s on my blog pointing tot the same important themes but with a different verbal paint brush.

In pension terms it assumes we will continue to live in a DC world.

It looks increasingly likely that the balance will swing back to a collective world with pensions pooled and the individual’s decisions minimised.

For most of the population, the key pension decisions are made by employers.

Which employer is going to continue to contribute to traditional DC (whether GPP or through a mastertrust), when they realise that those same contributions could provide a pension 60% larger if paid into a CDC scheme.

Employee or union pressures are very quickly going to call out those employers remaining with DC arrangements.

IHT and restrictions on salary sacrifice arrangements are already causing employers to reassess the benefits of their pension contributions accelerating the redirection from a savings vehicle towards retirement income.

While still restricted to a small base, companies with existing DB pension scheme are realising that their asset pool would be more efficiently used running on their pension scheme than paying the profit margin premium to buy out the pension liabilities with an insurance company.

Already they are realising that released surpluses are most efficiently used to fund future pension contributions.  It is but a small further step to realise that those contributions could be even more efficiently retained in the existing pool to fund DB benefits for its current and future workforce.

At present that will leave the self-employed and non employed using DC saving plans making decisions as how to turn them into pensions.  There may well be heterogeneity in risk preferences within this group.

Finally the irrepressible Derek Scott – with the full roar of Scottish passion about him!

and here is correspondence from Derek Scott about Scottish football affairs that touch on Scottish pensions discussions, St Johnstone is Perth (and Stagecoach’s) home football team and St Andrews is just down the road in Fife!

Followed by St Johnstone’s biggest night as they return to the Scottish Premier

and here’s the commentary from Derek Scott!

Not a hope we all thought, St Andrews against Dunfermline, and teenagers in either goal

and then the miracle and Dunfermline are victims once again!

I hope that made your weekday morning –  all this social media fires me up! Thanks – whoever you contributors are

 

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If Capita don’t deliver on pension administration milestones they should lose the contract

Posted on April 23, 2026 by henry tapper

 

Steve Thomas, Deputy General Secretary of Prospect union, responding to the government’s statement on the administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme by Capita, said:

“The ongoing problems with the Civil Service Pension Scheme are totally unacceptable and are causing real hardship for a significant number of recent retirees and delayed the retirement of many others.

“These issues have been going on for far too long already and we need to see a rapid resolution.

“It is right that Capita are facing consequences for failing to hit their targets but if they continue to not deliver as promised then the contract should be removed from them.

“The government has already opted to not give them the Royal Mail contract. It is becoming clear, if it wasn’t already, that outsourcing these contracts has been a catastrophic failure which should now be reviewed and work undertaken to assess the feasibility of bringing back in house.”

I think it fair to Capita to point out it inherited a terrible mess but it has added to it and should not have accepted the mess till it was cleared up.

To read the story, please refer to my previous blog

Posted on February 26, 2026 by henry tapper

Emergency payments scheme launched

This article is from the Public and Services Commercial Union and can be found on its website

Interest free loans are now available for pension scheme members awaiting payment of their civil service pensions.

The introduction of interest free loans of £5000 for pension scheme members, instead of the payments due to them from their civil service pensions, will hopefully alleviate the financial distress the Capita crisis is causing.

PCS has been working with our PCS parliamentary group on behalf of more than 8,000 members with delayed pension payments.

Particular thanks go to Lorraine Beavers, MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood for securing a Westminster Hall Debate, carried without opposition on Wednesday, which was well attended. Lord Davies of Brixton followed this up with a parliamentary question on Thursday.

Responding from the front bench, Baroness Anderson described the payments as bridging loans of £5000, or exceptionally £10,000, to get money into people’s bank accounts within days, not weeks or months.

Members are reporting to us that they are being asked for financial information in a humiliating telephone interview and then told a decision will be given in five days, but with a potential wait of 28 days to receive the payment.

In a meeting with the Cabinet Office on Thursday  the question was asked whether the measure is a bridging loan or a hardship payment. In response, we were told that the measure is intended to provide payment where pension benefits are overdue and that proof of hardship would not be required. PCS is monitoring this closely and, based on the intention set out by the Cabinet Office, our advice is not to accept decisions where the application is declined unless it is because your pension is not yet overdue.

As the emergency payments are being processed as employer loans, pensioners are being directed to contact their former employer. If your employment ended more than 12 months ago, and for payments to beneficiaries, this facility cannot be provided by the employer and people should contact Capita direct.

Capita can be contacted via their website or on 0300 123 6666. The postal address is Capita Pensions Solutions, PO Box 713, Darlington DL1 9JZ.

It is not just the unions who have been helping out

Civil Service Pension Scheme: Advice from a barrister on compensation and redress

Here’s a barrister, Paul Newman doing his best to help out; this post addressed to civil servants affected.

The dos and don’ts to protect your position and preserve your right to redress, according to pensions barrister  Paul Newman 

Civil service pension delays and errors can have immediate consequences: retirement may be postponed, household finances can come under pressure, and members may spend weeks or months chasing answers. Although official updates have acknowledged serious administration problems and a recovery plan is under way, that does not resolve any individual member’s case. If you are affected, it is important to deal with the problem in a way that protects your position and preserves your right to redress.

A recovery plan does not answer your individual case

A scheme-wide recovery plan may improve service levels over time and include priority handling or hardship support. But members still need answers on their own files. In practice, the key questions are:

  • What is my correct pension position?
  • What is outstanding, and when will it be paid?
  • Is anything missing from my record?
  • What impact has this had on me?
  • What redress is available?

A general update can explain what is being done across the system. It cannot answer those questions for any one member.

What problems are members typically facing?

The most common issues are:

  • Delays (relating to quotations, calculations, pension payments, lump sums, responses and corrections)
  • Incomplete or inaccurate information (such as missing service history, changing figures, delayed record updates)
  • Poor communication (involving long waits, repeated chasing, inconsistent answers, no clear timetable)
  • Poor communication can turn a manageable delay into a much more stressful problem.

What redress may be available?

It is natural to focus first on: “When will I be paid?” That is the right starting point, but it is often not the whole issue.

In many pension administration cases, there are two separate questions: putting the pension right, and redress for what went wrong. The former may include correcting records and calculations, paying arrears, and confirming future payments on the correct basis. The latter, depending on the facts, may include:

  • Interest for delay
  • Compensation for distress and inconvenience
  • Reimbursement of financial loss (if evidenced)
  • A written explanation and apology
  • Fair treatment in any overpayment recovery case

A common mistake is to pursue the correction but never ask about redress.

Capita’s explanation of their failure makes no sense.

Capita complain here that they were not given the full state of affairs with Civil Servant Pensions and that only a proportion of the problems are down to them. Why was the problem given to Capita to sort things out?

At a session of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee yesterday, chief executive of Capita Public Services Richard Holroyd and Capita Pension Solutions managing director Chris Clements insisted the scale of the workload was not made clear.

MPs heard that there is now a backlog of around 120,000 cases, up from 86,000 when Capita formally took on administration of the pension scheme on 1 December last year. Thousands of newly-retired scheme members are still waiting to receive lump-sum payments and their regular pensions.

Some perspective – civil servants are relatively well off

It’s a nightmare for retiring civil servants. It is  good to see MPs looking at this . But there are plenty of people not so lucky that need parliament’s attention too.

 

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BP Targets £4 billion UK Pension Fund Surplus – Blocks Trustee for Fifth Consecutive Year

Posted on April 23, 2026 by henry tapper

There are few things that annoy me more in pensions than the behaviour of BP’s management in blocking the Trustee’s wish to distribute part of its substantial surplus to members.

BP pensioners will be out in force at BP’s AGM today with lots of questions for the new Chairman and new CEO.

Pensions disputes may not be the biggest problem for BP’s new leaders – but the attractions of getting hands on a £4 billion surplus may be irresistible with Government’s new Pension Schemes Bill about to become law.

Below is a press release from the BP Pensioner Group whose Website is https://bppensionergroup.org/

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A positive from the morass that consumer VFM is stuck in!

Posted on April 23, 2026 by henry tapper

The nonsense of pensions VFM for the consumer (As devised by some “expert” or other.

The pensions industry has struggled with the idea of Value for Money for the consumer. I can’t remember who produced this infographic but it demonstrates the morass it fell into!

Yesterday , I published an account by Guy Opperman of VFM as it has emerged long after he says he had the idea though I think we’ve forgotten over time what the bright idea was.

He did the job of bringing VFM to parliament’s attention but did not anticipate how it would move from a measure helping employers and savers measure the success of their savings to a means for regulators to narrow down sources of workplace saving.

I got an irritated former regulator contact me last night, complaining that I was unfair on regulators . If I seemed critical , I do apologise. It is not the Pensions Regulator or the FCA that have landed us with this system of VFM, it is (as Opperman says) a systemic problem.

My correspondent says that something good will come out of the mess…

The … thing about VfM is that industry and advisors love it. They make more money.

By dragging out VfM on accumulation, adding the service nonsense, asset managers avoided DWP (aka Guy) himself looking at drawdown charges.
And advisors saw easy money.
Hopefully we will get to 10 commercial providers at most and very few advisors.
Then Value for money will be cracked.

What VFM has become , to my correspondent’s eyes, is a system of decumulation he calls drawdown and the savings industry calls Guided Retirement Pathways or better “default decumulation +annuity” or better still “flex and fix” which I suspect came from the brain of previous pensions minister Steve Webb.

Either way, a few advisers will devise the drawdown out of the Pensions Bill and most won’t. Most small schemes, whether commercial and multi-employer or “own occ” will  find the business of VFM too hard and precarious . If Lloyds have said they’ll pack in their multi billion staff scheme to get Scottish Widows’ master trust towards scale, then watch out every other small DC scheme.

What will emerge will be more than a few multi-employer DC schemes.  There will also a few multi-employer CDC schemes and they will be set the task of offering pensions. The CDC will offer pensions like DB did and DC will offer individuals the freedom that Osborne brought them and that will be the choice for the employers.

I think Government and its regulators will not allow the proliferation of CDC in the way DC occupational schemes, GPPS and SIPPs have multiplied over the past 40 years.

To get to a consolidated world describe by my correspondent, employers must recognise that the regulation of their schemes will now be based on outcomes – VFM. It will be a traffic light system that will be arbitrary and almost certainly unfair – but it will spell, as my correspondent said, a contraction of an overblown pension industry which at one time meant the Pension Regulator counted over 40,000 DC schemes under its regulation.

The bottom line is whether the retail DC schemes or the institutional CDC schemes will live happily side by side. I suspect that ultimately the Retirement CDC will gradually turn DC master trusts into institutional CDC plans as everybody realises that all but a few of us have no use for pension freedom.

There will be a small but thriving SIPP industry for those who want out of institutional pensions and they will see VFM in having their own fund, but SIPPs (formerly known as personal pensions) will be for the wealthy , the risk-takers and those who live their lives – self-employed!

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I give up on VFM for pensions and so does Guy Opperman, I like the guy!

Posted on April 22, 2026 by henry tapper

I don’t suppose that former Minister Guy Opperman knew he would be reported at the Aptia conference yesterday. He works for them a couple of days a month and was delivering the kind of comments that would have gone down like a lead balloon had he still been at the DWP!

But well done Chris Marchant of Corporate Adviser by this excellent account of what he had to say (I don’t often agree with the guff that comes out at these events but I like what  Opperman said and how it was reported (strangely comical picture!)

Guy Opperman: VfM framework should be scrapped

Of course the Pension Schemes Bill will not drop VFM even though it should. The rumour is that a lot of money has  been spent at the Pensions Regulator and FCA to get a system which can punch out VFM assessments. This is not a criticism of the regulators, it is what regulators have to do when the legislation is wonky!

Although I wasn’t at the Aptia event (presumably still the privilege of Mercer clients) I can enjoy the words of Opperman reported here

“They made a complete basket case of Value for Money, and they should scrap it and throw it away and start again,” says Opperman.

“It is utterly unworkable, as they have presently proposed it. Sadly, anyone who works in the pensions industry will tell them it’s government by committee. The madness of having two regulators (The Pensions Regulator and Financial Conduct Authority) who don’t talk to each other has made it a really awful example.”

I tried, with Hymans Robertson , to offer DWP a system that would not have cost billions or indeed a million pounds. It would have cost a few quid to analyse data from member’s accounts and tell us all who had got VFM and who hadn’t. We chose a score out of 100 but we could have done a traffic light system but it was not deemed good to go. A few quid would have got something meaningful for employers and for members and made accumulation more meaningful. We were turned down in favour of what we have today.

I suspect we were accused of offering the truth, something that has never been a value of performance measurement that will give us a lot of actuarially derived mumbo jumbo which really is no good for the man or woman on the Clapham Omnibus (the underground not running).

Thank goodness we have Guy Opperman as well as the VfM podcast condemning what has become of the original intention which was to give people a verdict of what they had got by way of “interest” on their savings. Ok, I use the wrong word but that’s what people think of as the internal rate of return and rightly so. If I give you money, can’t you tell me the interest rate you got, if you can’t tell us what interest rate you expect to offer?

There is of course no measure of  VfM for CDC , because what you get is not a pot but a pension and the pension cannot fit within the VFM approach adopted by the Government.

No worry, CDC is not subject to the point of VfM which is now to cull underperforming pensions. As it stands the VfM framework will operate under a “traffic light” system, with consistent poor performers losing the ability to receive auto-enrolment contributions.

If you aren’t in the herd (and the bigger you are the more you’ll hug the herd), you will be put on zero rations and have to sell up with a big fat workplace savings scheme. Of course this is nothing to do with pensions but everything to do with  tax incentivised saving plans.

I give up on VFM for pensions and so does Guy Opperman, I like the guy.

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England’s best pension academics aren’t English, here a dynamite young lady talking about risk!

Posted on April 22, 2026 by henry tapper

A great video for those who couldn’t make this Tuesday’s session

It was a  good session of the Pension PlayPen Coffee Morning

And it got a thumbs up from our presenter from Exeter University

How good to hear academics from abroad enlightening us. Not since Anna Tilba have I heard such enthusiasm from eastern Europe.

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April 2026, 6 months from October when the pension dashboard should be ready!

Posted on April 22, 2026 by henry tapper

I was like 500 others attending by phone, laptop or desktop the Pensions Dashboard update. I will not take the wind out of Richard Smith’s sails. I follow him, his sails are taking me (I hope) to where the Dashboard is going and this session was a stop off in the harbour to have a catch up!

I am sure that most in the “500+” had been involved in the development of the pension dashboard but there will be a few who (like me) look on and say thanks. Most of the early stage testers were at WTW, L&G and Royal London. In the fourth group were people in the BT DB scheme but for the most the testers had a financial services background.

It will become a different  for Chris Curry and Adam Gifford when they stop testing the functionality and start testing the reactions of people who know less about pensions. That is not to say that the session yesterday did not throw up many “insights” into the reactions of users.

I am sure there will be many outcries from savers who think their pots are pensions and who think the projected ERI pensions they see will go up as the state pension goes up, leaving a pension for the spouse if they survive the pensioner.

These things cannot be solved by the dashboard or the wider MHPD team at the Money and Pensions Service. People complain that they don’t know what “next steps” they can take in this early stage testing. I hope that MaPSs will develop an interactive service and that they will use Artificial Intelligence to deal with the scale of requests that will come when the dashboard opens.

The vast majority of inquiries are expected to come from those close to retirement for whom the big questions are “can I afford to retire?” and if so “how do I draw my income to replace that I get from work?”. It seems absolutely right to give those who make these inquires numbers and details of those who can pay them.

Of course there will be mistakes, both from providers and from users and there will be frustration. But for these conversations to be happening (even in a test environment) is a step forward. When the Pensions Dashboard will be open is a decision for the Pensions Minister, his call will lead to a 6 months period before opening. It has gone unannounced that we are 6 months from October when the Pension Dashboard must be ready (in terms of data).

I hope that it will not be much longer till the Pensions Dashboard can be opened by the Pensions Minister. I expect three great steps forwards in the early months of 2027,  the first is the opening of CDC schemes , the second the arrival of Guided Retirement Pathways from our workplace DC plans and the third is the Pensions Dashboard.

It is one thing to hope, another to see these hope realised. It has been a long wait , more than ten years since the Treasury announced a digital dashboard in 2016. But maybe in 2026/2027 MaPS and the DWP can deliver!

No one expects the Pensions Minister to say we are ready to go in April 2026 so no one expects the Pensions Dashboard to be open as soon as its ready. But we can hope that the testing goes well and we will have an announcement from the Pensions Minister in a month or two.

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DC workplace pensions can try to eat the CDC mouse, but Tom never got to swallow Jerry!

Posted on April 22, 2026 by henry tapper

This is an interesting post from Joe Dabrowski formerly of Pensions UK now of Smart. I was surprised when I went to the Edinburgh Investment Conference that there was not one session devoted to the work pension CDC that is available – rather than one that might be here  in a couple of years (Retirement CDC that suits master trusts.)

I had wondered if Pensions UK had a memory loss of what the Government launched on October 22nd 2025. Sadly, it looks as if it is in the morass of Ralfean myth.

You may get past a few fervent “likers” but not Derek Scott,  who responds to Joe

Chris Blackwood of Border and Coast backs up Derek though he’s fair to Joe!

This is not the end of the pensions banter between two of the top players in pensions over the past 30 years.

And at the end, the dagger is plunged into Joe’s argument for DC’s Guided Retirement Path (GDP). The mouse will get away and the cat will have to try again, in another episode!

I would rather Derek Scott and Chris Blackwood’s grudging interest than the Pensions UK’s ignorance of CDC (I mean them ignoring and being ignorant of CDC).

I hope that Smart will be taking CDC’s multi-employer workplace pension –  a little more seriously than Pensions UK have done (so far)!

 

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Transport disruption is a CHALLENGE not a problem for Londoners.

Posted on April 22, 2026 by henry tapper

I was in the City and I’ll be in the City and West End of London every day this week. It is a tough week to get about but I have learned how to use bikes and busses and not to go underground. I have one friend , the Queen Elizabeth which (for me ) connects Reading and Slough with the West End, City and Canary Wharf. The QE is still running and was packed yesterday as it took up the strain of tube lines that couldn’t be trusted.

I was in the FT’s British HQ yesterday lunchtime, the building was empty. There was one person at reception , no queue at the canteen and we went onto the roof where we could walk alone.

Leaving the FT to visit University College Hospital, I walked the streets and the roads were thronged with busses and taxis getting those who had to get about – about. The urology unit of the hospital in Westmoreland Street was full of people, we do not get better because the RTI have gone on strike! I talked with the nurses about how they were getting home, they were doing what I was doing, making other plans.

I would like to thank First Bus, Arriva, Metroline, Stagecoach and Go Ahead, all of which helped me or could have. Like other regulars, I have apps that tell me where busses are and when they can get me to out of the way places where the tubes no longer went! I like getting on busses and finding myself talking to people I wouldn’t otherwise talk to. We seem to find a different and more social atmosphere being upstairs!

Thanks too to my legs and the increasing fitness that I am finding from swimming most days. It is part of my deal with my surgery that I will be below 100Kg and away from obesity. I walk and no longer run, but I walk with a purpose and notice that many people of my age are walking hard in London!

It is five years since I last owned a car and a year since seizures stopped me from driving one. I have neurological problems but I have turned them into challenges. My challenge now is to make myself fit for my last thirty years of life! I am not going to rely on taxis, I will go forward using public transport and if the tubes are not working , I will use buses and trains (the QE train especially).

I do not have it in for the RTI, though rail workers and underground workers seem to spend more time on strike than most.

I do not have it for businesses that ask their  workers to go to work nor people for wanting to stay at home and talk to me on Zoom or Teams.

But I am a firm believer that we are social animals and that there is no substitute for face to face interactions and if you know me, you will know that I like being about.

My mother packed in driving her car at 93, she was up to it but felt she could rely on those she loves and likes to get her about. One of my brothers has given up driving for ecological reasons and my partner rarely takes her car out of her garage. I feel very sorry that thousands of cars got stuck in a traffic lock-up, one brother never made it to his golf-match at Woking. I went to a website to discover what was the cause of his driving grief, this is what popped up

I felt smug but no that my brother walks with his dog and that he has no choice, living in the country but to drive In London we have a choice, we can, even when challenged, get by. I am looking forward to the rest of the week and have my phone at the ready to get relief using busses when my legs can take no more!

 

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