WHEN the authorities in Westminster tell us that something is all in the name of progress, we should run a mile as we know it’s absolutely never the case and is almost always a way of the authorities squeezing even more money out of something to try fill the Treasury coffers and in many cases to also line their own pockets.

The English Parliament did learn from the best though, none other than the leaders of the not-so-glorious Empire and the East India Company back in the day. They saw a happy, prosperous India, and duly told them their country was broken and they were the very people to fix it for them, with a little persuasion from the odd cannon or two, of course. Trillions of pounds later they were shown the door.

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On a far smaller scale they are now doing the same with the council pensions under the pretence it would help the economy and make people’s money safer. Here they go again playing on people’s fears as ever, when the council pension funds are far from broken, but hey ... greed does terrible things to some people.

Whether it’s the genuinely idiotic so-called “smart” meters, the closing down of all the youth clubs everywhere and wondering why juvenile crime is through the roof, the closing down of all our town centre stores, the beating heart of every community, to allow the non-tax-paying giants to prosper at the expense of everything we have ever known, as quietly political parties get donations into their coffers instead of the giant companies paying their taxes.

Whether it’s the deregulation of the banks, which should have seen Gordon Brown and Tony Blair jailed, or a Prime Minister allowing companies to start closing their final-salary pension schemes and in doing so allowing millions of people to be quite literally robbed of a secure retirement they worked for all their lives – more often than not in poorer paid, but so-called safe employment.

The reason I mention all these is that this latest proposal to merge all the council pension funds is an absolute disaster waiting to happen and more worryingly Labour know it, but such is their genuine stupidity and lack of an ounce of genuine leadership they are now putting yet more lives at risk, and this time it’s millions of people.

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So rather than leaving the separate pension funds running along nicely as they are, so that if in the most unlikely event of one of the funds starts to fail, only one will be affected and the dozens of others will be fine, these walking, talking dummies need to put even more people at risk by downright lying that these new “mega” funds will outperform the old ones, when in reality they will still be being run by the same fund managers, but will also have to combat the huge transfer and management fees incurred in the process and in case you are unaware, the move to the mega funds will make someone rich beyond their wildest dreams for arranging the changes, due to the sums involved.

This stinks to the high heavens but keeps Labour on target to ruin just about everyone’s lives they possibly can, excluding their rich buddies of course.

It just completes the circle as they have already attacked the children and their young parents through the inhumane two-child cap, the workers by over-taxing small and medium-sized businesses who in many cases simply won’t be able to increase their employees’ wages, take on any new staff and are more likely in reality will be having to let people go. They have attacked the employers, they have attacked those on benefits by even trying to interview people in their sick beds and if you tell me that dimwitted dolt Wes Streeting is not a genuine Tory I will eat my hat. And of course before Labour even had time to get their coats off and hung on the back of the door, they were attacking and badly damaging the pensioners’ lives too. What a lovely bunch these little public school kids are.

Iain K
Dunoon