Catholics

I see here that politicians want to reform the laws that prevent Catholics coming to the throne.

Don't do it!

The Church of England has preserved Christianity in this county in a way that the Catholic countries of Europe haven't been able to. If they change the law about royalty marrying Catholics and still being able to ascend to the throne, then they could have a Catholic as head of the Church of England, which is silly. In fact, I can't see that at the moment, they can't have a Muslim as the head of the Church of England as there's no law against that.

When I was a little girl, and looking for a prince like in the fairy stories, I thought it a bit unfair on me that if I married an English prince he'd lose his throne. It wasn't meant to work like that. But now I want the law to stay as it is. There's no other discrimination against Catholics, and this one causes little bother to Catholics, and has had a lot of advantages to the rest of us. Let it stay.

Pensions again

Husband has a similar pension at Unisys to R's at EDS, so he started asking questions yesterday. CR, presumably in the same role as JB at EDS, said that this change was as a result of the Finance Act 2004 and she believed it would apply to the Unisys Pension Scheme.

Not satisfied with that, husband had already started talking to his colleagues, who have similar pension arrangements, and haven't been told that anything is changing. Similarly, son talked to friends at school, who were as indignant as him.

JB rang me this morning to say that it was 'good news'. Son can keep the pension up to 25. It only impacts on people who are not yet receiving a pension.

However, there are still issues:

• people (e.g. at EDS & at Unisys) running pensions haven't told the pensioners nor the prospective pensioners


• people paying into their pensions will have a reduced deal for their dependants


• EDS, if I hadn't queried it, might have carried on refusing to pay after the age of 23.
  

So where do we go from here?