Reply #5: Blair is trying to move back to 60% income from government?

[muriel_volestrangler]

That's news to me. The general trend is still towards privately held pensions for anything above the bare minimum. The current system has an insanely complicated state 'second pension' from which no-one knows how much they'll get until the moment they retire. You can opt out of this, if you want - but since you don't know how much you'll get from it, it's all a big gamble. There does seem to be a general desire to get rid of the 'means tested' nature of some of the government pension - which discourages those of modest means doing any saving for their retirement.

Here's an article with an overview. Note that the UK is saying "we wish we had your problems, America"; and that the push towards lots of private pension plans produced a scandal of dodgy salesmen promising far better benefits than reality.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/07/business/pension.html