first thoughts
WORKERS, MAY 2003 ISSUE
“Work till you Die” - Not a slogan from a Nazi labour camp but the official government answer to the supposed pension crisis. The ridiculously styled “pensions tsar”, Adair Turner, ex-Director General of the CBI, believes workers should “slog on beyond their 65th birthday”. But we wouldn't expect anything else from a “captain of industry”.
Carefully leaked Treasury statistics indicate that the state pension reserves are now only worth 25% of what they should be. Private company pension schemes are being looted on par with any scenes from Baghdad. Why? Because Capitalism continually has to find fresh reserves of blood to consume and there can be no niceties such as looking after Mr and Mrs Smith into their dotage.
Put aside all the hype and barrage of economic data to support the government's position: the wealth is there, it is created daily. What is lacking is control of its allocation and distribution. Naked, brutal, blood-red in claw and tooth capitalism of the early days of the Industrial Revolution has supposedly evolved into Blair's Third Way. Keep wearing the rose-tinted glasses, but don't give up the day job.