It is little more than a year ago when I first qualified for my pension. I confess that I was somewhat disappointed to find out that the first payment would not be made until a month after my first birthday, but I consoled myself with contemplating the size of my lump sum.
Not that my pension arrangements are anywhere near the Fred Goodwin/John Elvidge model. Sure, I receive a little more than the average public sector pension of about £8,000 per annum but it is not enough to roll about in. The Ferrari will have to await the killing on the football pools.
And the bastards have already (in Slasher Osborne's budget) switched the uprating from the RPI to the CPI. OK, it may only amount to one or two percentage points per year but, over 20 years (with compound interest), it represents a fair whack.
Still, I mustn't grumble - I'm in a far better position than most. But I do feel sorry for those young civil servants now in their 20s and 30s* who will never attain the kind of reasonable pension provision that makes life in retirement relatively comfortable.
Do I feel guilty? Hell, no! They deducted more than enough from my monthly wage packet; and if my employer didn't sort out the accounting of the not unreasonable contribution expected from it, then that's his look-out.
*And God help them if their kids want to go to university.
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