Day 24.7 - More political incentives to depart these shores

From Saturday's edition of "The Scotsman" I learn, somewhat unsatisfactorily as the article gives nothing more than a statement of deficits with no analysis or conclusions, that there is a cumulative £5 billion deficit in Scottish company pension schemes. This concerns me as I have a third of my working life pension provision tied up in one of these schemes. The problem with UK pensions can be fairly and squarely attributed to the flawed Robin Hoodism of Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who thinks with his socialist mindset that it is up to him to spend the public's money. After all we wouldn't want the public to get their hands on their own money and spend it the way THEY want to when we have Gordon on hand to raid the pension schemes and spent it on good left wing socialist crap, would we? In previous times it was possible for pension schemes to reclaim the tax credits from dividends paid on their investments. In 1997 (I think) good old Gordon noticed this and changed the law to disallow the practice effectively redirecting pension fund income to the Exchequer. In real life this might be termed "theft", but we are dealing with politics where anything goes - so long as the socialists think of it first.

As if the pensions article wasn't enough to make me spit my coffee in disgust I choked on my bagel when I read that a 30% pay rise for local politicians is "not enough". Property taxes are excessively high in this country already without having to load the local tax payer with this level of pocket lining self pay rise allocations by councillors.


UPDATE:
Sunday edition of "Scotland on Sunday":
More coffee splatters on the newspaper as I read that local government, yes - the 30% payrise gang, has been redirecting £1 billion per year in Scottish Executive funding for education to the bureaucracy that is local authorities. Guess we all know how the proposed "inadequate" payrise will be funded.