The Fabian Society is having its turn at pensioner bashing

The Fabian Society, not renown for the excellence of its academic analysis, has published a few words about how the pensioners are not 'paying their share' and all of the other intergenerational claptrap.

The first thing I do when I see read an analysis about the wellbeing of pensioners is to search for three words - 'annuity', 'interest' and 'public sector'.

Not surprisingly, the Fabian Society didn't bother to address the issues concerned with each of these words.

Annuity = The pension that a person's savings provides has never been so low due to the effect of QE. You cannot talk about pensioner incomes without taking this into account.

Interest = Interest rates have never been so low for so long. Who does this impact the most - the old. The young have never had such low interest rates to help with their mortgages. Fairness?

Public = Public sector pensions are the thing that divides retired older people. There is one group that has the state take all of the risk from their pensions and contributes money the country does not have to ensure they increase with inflation.  The private sector takes all the risk on their own pensions and then has to pay to ensure their public sector peers receive a guaranteed pension.

Any serious analysis of the financial position of older people has to take these points into account. How very strange that Fabian Society decided to ignore all references.  Unfortunately, pensioner incomes/wealth is a Xmas tree issue. It is a convenient subject to hang the authors political bias and dogma - in this case it is muddled headed, sloppy socialist thinking. Dick Stroud