Saving pensioners

The paper here says that old people are going to be ever so badly off because water bills will be so high - as high as £300 per year. But our bills have gone
down,
down
and down!

since the children left and there aren't long showers, and so much laundry to be done. We've gone down from something like £44 a month to £5. Husband says if we had one more teenager to leave home, the water people would be paying us for water.

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?