The legacy of Margaret Thatcher lives on

[Dai Corner]

Oh tell me about it.....its mind boggling to say the least. I have 2 of them on the go as it happens.

I spent a few years in the 1980s organising the buy-outs of schemes where companies wanted to divest themselves of their liabilities or had gone bust and the receivers had to do the same. The admin was even worse than the valuation. Imagine having crate upon crate of unorganised paperwork arriving in your office.

It was rewarding though at times, with some lovely letters and phone calls from people who had forgotten about their pensions until we wrote to them to tell them we were taking them on.


Apologies for going even further off topic than the thread already was.

 

[Moonshot]

I spent a few years in the 1980s organising the buy-outs of schemes where companies wanted to divest themselves of their liabilities or had gone bust and the receivers had to do the same. The admin was even worse than the valuation. Imagine having crate upon crate of unorganised paperwork arriving in your office.

It was rewarding though at times, with some lovely letters and phone calls from people who had forgotten about their pensions until we wrote to them to tell them we were taking them on.


Apologies for going even further off topic than the thread already was.

No apolgies necessary .....in actual fact a legacy from the thatcher years was also providing pensions for yourself as opposed to relying on the state.

 

[MAV39]

Thye are obliged to offer you a pension scheme. It doesn't have to be any good! I am suspicious of many investments. My late father paid a great deal of money into an Equitable Life pension scheme that should have paid him a good level of return in his retirement. He got nothing.

This simply doesn't seem correct, I paid in to an Equitable Life pension scheme for some years. When they went belly up, they kept me pretty well informed on the value of the funds and the various alternative courses of action. When I transferred the funds to another provider, the value was approximately 15% less than I would have expected without the Equitable 'crash'.

 

[AndrewE]

I have never seen any suggestion of the Government pumping funds into our pension

Who said anything about "pumping in?" That pejorative phrase could have come from the Sun or the Daily Express and hints at a foaming-at-the-mouth antipathy to any government spending.
At privatisation the government guaranteed the pension fund, I understood that it had put in a bit of cash at some point, then it can take the surplus when the fund is in surplus... and it might even turn out to have made a very good return on the (possibly relatively small) amount of money it put in. So why "pumping funds in?"

 

[Moonshot]

Who said anything about "pumping in?" That pejorative phrase could have come from the Sun or the Daily Express and hints at a foaming-at-the-mouth antipathy to any government spending.
At privatisation the government guaranteed the pension fund, I understood that it had put in a bit of cash at some point, then it can take the surplus when the fund is in surplus... and it might even turn out to have made a very good return on the (possibly relatively small) amount of money it put in. So why "pumping funds in?"

Ol I ll rephrase it....I have never seen any amounts of taxpayers money put into the Rail pension pot.....of course I am happy to be proven wrong.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Don't worry Paul - it wont be you. It will be someone on a zero hours contract in a warehouse somewhere.

What prize is awarded to the winner of "The race to the bottom". I still think there are extremely rude connotations to be made by that phrase and both the names of Julian Clary and Larry Grayson suddenly spring to mind.

 

[fowler9]

What prize is awarded to the winner of "The race to the bottom". I still think there are extremely rude connotations to be made by that phrase and both the names of Julian Clary and Larry Grayson suddenly spring to mind.

Ha ha ha. Brilliant.

 

[GusB]

Shut that door!

 

[Dai Corner]

This simply doesn't seem correct, I paid in to an Equitable Life pension scheme for some years. When they went belly up, they kept me pretty well informed on the value of the funds and the various alternative courses of action. When I transferred the funds to another provider, the value was approximately 15% less than I would have expected without the Equitable 'crash'.

I was surprised too. I got the impression from his previous posts that @DarloRich 's dad worked for Equitable Life so would have been in their staff pension scheme. I've no wish to pry DarloRich but would be interested to hear whether you or whoever dealt with your father's affairs contacted the administrators of the scheme after his death and if so what they said.

 

[DarloRich]

I was surprised too. I got the impression from his previous posts that @DarloRich 's dad worked for Equitable Life so would have been in their staff pension scheme. I've no wish to pry DarloRich but would be interested to hear whether you or whoever dealt with your father's affairs contacted the administrators of the scheme after his death and if so what they said.

He simply paid his hard earned money into a private pension scheme they offered. I can only go on the paperwork we found when sorting out his estate which showed he got very little back from them. Certainly not the levels of payment they guaranteed.

With so little in the bank and no real assets it wasn't worth paying anyone to deal with the estate. It is a fairly straight forward process in any event.

 

[SteveP29]

You can, however, travel from Edinburgh to London via the WCML without changing.

Still Virgin though, isn't it AND it's a longer journey

 

[najaB]

Still Virgin though, isn't it AND it's a longer journey

Completely different company though.

 

[Dai Corner]

He simply paid his hard earned money into a private pension scheme they offered. I can only go on the paperwork we found when sorting out his estate which showed he got very little back from them. Certainly not the levels of payment they guaranteed.

With so little in the bank and no real assets it wasn't worth paying anyone to deal with the estate. It is a fairly straight forward process in any event.

Yes, there were some very optimistic projections ( guesses!) made across the industry in those days and not all salesmen made it clear that's all they were. I know, I did the figures (but didn't make the optimistic assumptions, that was the management).