The Government and their friends are certainly good organisers of spin - Gold-plated”, “Pensions Apartheid”, “Not Affordable”, etc. We offer some irrefutable facts as an alternative to their spin.

• Since the Teachers Pension Scheme started in 1923 serving teachers have paid a staggering £46 billion more into it than has ever been paid out of it in pensions to retired teachers.
• The Prime Minister claimed in Parliament that a retiring teacher on his proposed scheme would get more in pension than on the current schemes. He forgot to mention that they will have to work until they are 68 to get it. If they retire at 60, they would receive £13,800 against the current £19,100 a loss of £5,300 every year.
• Tax relief on the pensions of the richest 1% in Britain amounts to £10 billion.
• The average pension of company directors is a whopping £175,00 a year.
• The average pension of a woman worker in local government is just £2,600
• 2.5 million UK pensioners live below the Government’s own poverty line and UK pension poverty is among the worst in Europe.
• The state pension is worth only 15% of average male earnings.
• The Hutton Report concluded that the cost of public sector pensions are falling and will continue to do so for the next 30 years before stabilising.
• In the last 10 years the number of private sector workers in a pension scheme has fallen from a half to a third
• Corporate profits are now 21% of GDP compared to 13% in the 1970’s.
• In the 1990’s employers failed to pay £18 billion worth of contributions into their workers pension schemes.

Liam Conway, Notts NUT Joint Secretary, speaking in the Albert Hall about the Great Pensions Robbery and how a united trade union movement can force the Government to back down. There were no damp squibs in the hall, just angry public sector workers.