CITY AND SUBURBAN
After all these years, my pension has turned up, but it's hardly worth the effort
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
It is like finding a five-pound note in a dis- carded pair of trousers. My pension has turned up. I had not counted on it. Much has changed since I worked for the company whose pension fund has now remembered me, and I am gratified to learn that the money and the records are still there. Indeed, the fund must have been rolling up at compound interest, and should now be worth — well, enough to buy me an annuity of 52p a week. Before tax and inflation, that is. Disappointing, really. I suppose that the costs of administration have eaten into the fund, meaning that a number of people will have earned their livings looking after it, and I get what they have left over. I suppose, too, that I was (in the jargon of the pension funds) an early leaver, and thus a loser in the pension sweepstake which forces leavers to subsidise stayers. There is certainly not much to show for the money and effort which were supposed to provide for me in my old age, and if, as the courts have laid down, pensions are deferred remuneration, I am not sure that this pay packet was worth waiting for. It is time that pension schemes like these were pensioned off. Most employ- ers still have them. They were designed for the days when we might have expected to have spent a working lifetime with Imperial Chemical Industries and then retired on a decent proportion of our final salary. Work- ing lifetimes are not like that any longer, and no more is ICI. Employers are not mono- liths and people move about. Their pension plans need to move with them. As for my long-lost fiver, it will hardly take care of my old age, so I have spent it.
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