http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7197338 ... ecade.html

Bad news if you have not saved enough and odds are with rising house prices you almost certainly have not saved enough.

Define enough. What was enough won't be after the pension funds got massacred. Getting old aint no fun.

Well the pension funds got hit because they did not have enough in the form of bonds for people who were about to retire. Most pension funds are nearly always fully invested in shares in order to get a decent return for the fund. That leaves those close to retirement suffering when there is a stock market crash close to retirement. Also most people do not save enough either. You need a significant sum in order to have a decent return on that sum to live on. With annuity rates falling because of low interest rates they effectively make many more pension funds inadequate to pay the pension.

Could have something to do with Labour starting to tax dividends for pension funds when they came to power in the late 90's. It severely crippled growth potential of funds and caused the abandonment for final salary schemes as they became too expensive as a result.

Yes that was a huge mistake. Though most mistakes have come from the finance industry.

The biggest mistake of all was done by the Tories years ago when they mandated that pension fund surpluses could not be more than 5%. That meant they could either increase benefits or allow contribution holidays for the companies concerned. Companies took the easy route, took a contribution holiday and there by boosted profits, and the taxes that they had to pay the then Conservative government. Both parties are at the same scam.

the Govt 30 odd years ago enabled you to opt out of pension NI and start a private pension with these NI contributions while still maintaining a state pension then when the private pensions gained some worth the Govt taxed the hell out of them

now the Govt are going to put in place a separate pension scheme which will cost the working person extra on top of the NI contributions
do you start to see a long term pattern, take your money for a pension then use it to finance other parts of Govt expenditure then create a new pension scheme which will be used for other Govt expenditure which you have no say or control over, wash rinse and repeat …