For a person considering saving into a pension scheme for the first time, pensions minister Steve Webb’s recent plans for colour-coded pensions are intriguing.

As part of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) initiative to ensure the success of auto-enrolment, the minister suggested the quality of a pension scheme should be denoted by a gold, silver or bronze badge. Such a colour scheme would tie in with the London Olympics in 2012.

DOUBT has been cast over the cost neutrality of the £140 state pension following ambiguity in a green paper recently published by the government.

In the state pension reform, the government heralded the £140 weekly sum in a nod to the Beveridge report’s objective to reach an amount that should prevent the need for recipients to claim means-tested assistance.

A rather worthy article appeared in the Daily Telegraph on March 11, following the publication of Lord Hutton’s report into the future of public sector pensions.

Was anybody else left underwhelmed by Lord McFall’s Workplace Retirement Income Commission (WRIC)?

Last month the pensions bill 2011 was confirmed, to a surprisingly large amount of media fluff. But in reality, there was very little news in it – we’d already heard it all before. It included:

POSTAL workers must be rubbing their hands with glee. Business secretary Vince Cable’s announcement that Royal Mail will be mutualised, with the government taking on the liabilities for the pension scheme, is music to members’ ears.

But given chancellor George Osborne has been banging on about how all cuts within the spending review are “fair”‚ one has to question how just the Royal Mail deal is.

The postal services bill, published last month will, if passed, allow the transfer of assets and liabilities from the scheme to government, and for the secretary of state to set up a mirror scheme.

Do trustees have any genuine practical powers? I pondered this while reading the minutes of an emergency general meeting held by the BBC Pension Trustees in September.

Over the past two months, the phrase ‘libertarian paternalism’ has crept into the national press. This Orwellian-sounding term dominates the theory of Nudge economics – the idea that markets are fallible because they are run by human beings, and can be influenced or nudged in a certain direction using behavioural triggers.

As if the beleaguered UK pensions industry didn’t have enough on its plate, it suddenly found a new foe in the form of the leader of the free world – or so some quarters of our national press would have us believe.
Headlines not a million miles away from ‘Barack Obama ate my pension’ screamed out from newsagent stands as the effluence from BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill rippled out towards the US coast.

On the morning of May 7, there must have been a fair number of pensions lobbyists scratching their drowsy heads. Months of building close ties with the former Conservative shadow pensions minister Nigel Waterson looked to have been in vain at just the time when his party was in pole position to form a new government.

Why are the Liberal Democrats suddenly a political force to be reckoned with? It’s certainly not down to their pensions manifesto.

Pensions will not be at the top of any incoming government’s agenda. It might be argued – though many readers of these pages would disagree – that the worldwide financial crisis, overseas wars and global warming should take precedent.

You know you are nearing a general election when political rhetoric goes Star Wars. When it was revealed the government was looking at how different ways of funding long-term care would play with voters, the Tories were quick to accuse it of plotting a death tax.

Activist investors found an unlikely poster boy last month as Billy Bragg announced he was refusing to pay his taxes until chancellor Alistair Darling reined in bonus payments at state-backed lender Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Owen Walker looks back on a frantic PADA admin procurement process and sees it into the final furlong

Last week, Nigel Waterson – the pretender to the crown of minister for pensions reform – noted a change in dinner party conversations from property market anxieties to the daunting prospect of delaying retirement. And it is not difficult to imagine why.

Some months ago I used this column to outline the growing trend among many industry bodies to refocus their lobbying away from the sitting government and onto the party in waiting. With just six months until a general election, the pensions industry is in the advanced stages of deciding on which side its bread is buttered.

First it was Germany and France, then Japan got in on the act: it seems moving out of recession is currently at the height of vogue. But sadly for the UK, we still appear to be trotting around in last season’s downturn turn-ups.

It needed something big to knock the expenses debacle off the political debating stage, and we got it. David Cameron’s Conservatives actually began to come out with some vaguely concrete economic policies.