Information age

Yesterday's money section in the DT had one of their shock horror articles about the iniquities of the proposals to change state pensions, an article which, as is usual in our so sophisticated media, neglected to mention how hard it is to change things like this without there being losers as well as winners when you are not in a position to chuck money at them. Article contained scary talk about the plight of people born in the fifties and sixties of the last century - of which BH is just one. Did we need to move into expensive topping up action? I was not so sure that pension changes would be allowed to affect people who were already getting their state pension and managed to find words of comfort in another piece about all the people who had already retired who would not get any benefit from the change. So, having done the DT, we were unsure what all this meant for BH. I'll sort it out, sezzaye. I'll sort it out on the web.

So off to the web. First stop Google, second stop the Ministry of Work and Pensions. All kinds of helpful stuff but nothing at all about the proposed changes. At least nothing that I could find.

Back to Google to get pointed at a whole lot of media coverage of the proposals and eventually spotted talk of a statement by one Steve Webb. Brain suddenly springs into life and I think Hansard.

Hansard turns out to be published on quite a fancy web site and I am quite quickly able to find Steve's statement. Not terribly long but there is talk of a White Paper. The 'White Paper' phrase was highlighted so I thought home and dry but the link turned out to take me to a Wikipedia article about white papers in general.

So back to Google where I am quite quickly connected to the White Paper and where it turns out that the proposals are the product of some elaborate consultation exercise. All the great and the good in the world of pensions. Clear that change is needed, not really a party political matter at all and I dare say ground work had been done during the New Labour time on the bridge. Neither side has any real ideological axe to grind, although both will seek traction on the issue; that is the way our two party, adversarial system is intended to work. But that is by the by, what I want to know is how does all this affect BH.

Start to browse the White Paper, which all seemed very thorough & decent and after some to-ing and fro-ing, eventually light on paragraph 13 of the executive summary and saw light where it said: 'Those already over State Pension age when the reforms are implemented will continue to receive their state pension (and the Savings Credit, where applicable) in line with existing rules'. So we had arrived: none of this will affect BH at all.

Finding this out took me about half an hour. A younger nerd might have done it faster but I dare say that there are plenty who would have done it slower, if at all. Wouldn't it be nice if papers like the DT made such important things clear up front? Focused more on providing information and less on spreading doom and gloom?