In a shocking revelation that has sent the nation’s actuaries reaching for the smelling salts and the rest of us reaching for a stiff gin, the Treasury has been urged to act after figures showed that a staggering three-quarters of British workers are not on track for a ‘moderate’ pension income. Moderate, in this context, presumably meaning the ability to afford a modest one-bedroom flat in Hull, a single foreign holiday in Benidorm, and the occasional luxury of a haircut that doesn’t involve a bowl and a pair of kitchen scissors.
Let us parse these numbers, dear reader, in the way only a man with a liver pickled in taxpayer-funded martinis can. The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association – a body so exciting it could cure insomnia – has defined a ‘moderate’ retirement income as £23,300 a year for a single person. That’s £1,941 a month. Enough for rent, utilities, a Waitrose trolley dash if you skip the champagne, and perhaps a subscription to Netflix if you’re willing to share your password with your estranged nephew. But three in four workers, the report claims, are on course to fall short of this glittering prize.
This is, of course, another victory for the great British tradition of sticking one’s head in the sand while the tide of financial ruin sweeps in. We have auto-enrolment, that marvellous scheme where the government forces you to save 8% of your earnings into a pot that looks increasingly like a child’s piggy bank made of wet cardboard. But eight percent is a joke. A belch at the funeral of your retirement dreams. The real figure should be closer to 15% if you want to live like a human being rather than a Dickensian orphan. But tell that to the average Brit who’s just dropped £4 on a flat white and is staring at a rent that consumes half their salary.
The Treasury, that great monolith of fiscal conservatism, has been urged to act. I imagine this acting will take the form of a committee, a green paper, a consultation, a period of reflection, and then a new quango tasked with producing a report that will be filed next to the other 47 reports on the same subject, gathering dust in a Whitehall basement. Or perhaps they’ll just raise the state pension age to 75 and tell us to work until we drop. That’s the British way: shuffle off this mortal coil still clutching a stapler, a look of profound confusion on your face.
The real scandal, as ever, is the sheer gulf between the haves and the have-nots. While the likes of Sir Philip Green are swanning about with their BHS pensions intact, the rest of us are expected to retire on a diet of reduced-price tinned soup and the warm glow of knowing we contributed to the economy. The rich have gold-plated final salary schemes squirreled away in tax havens. The rest of us have NEST, the National Employment Savings Trust, whose name alone sounds like a charity for homeless badgers.
So here’s a modest proposal: why not abolish pensions altogether and just give everyone a state-sponsored speedboat? It would be just as practical as the current system, and at least we’d have fun. Or perhaps we could all take up residence on the streets, forming a colourful community of former accountants and middle managers, swapping stories of the good old days when a pension was something other than a cruel joke.
But no, the Treasury will likely do something dramatic like launch a ‘review’. Expect lots of earnest nodding from politicians, a few token measures, and then in thirty years, when you’re trying to decide between heating and eating, you’ll remember this article and laugh. A hollow, bitter laugh. The kind of laugh that sounds like a rusty gate swinging in a gale.
In the meantime, I’ll be at the pub, drowning my sorrows in a pension pot of Gordon’s gin. Because at least that’s something I can enjoy now. And let’s face it: that’s all any of us really have.
