Pensions

[Big Al1st]

I reckon the older I get the thicker I am.

It is proposed that 4% of salary paid by you into a government pension fund with 3% contribution from the Company to go towards your pension. I thought that was what some of your stamp money went towards.

Is this another tax that will eventually be diverted to other things and another way of creating more civil servant posts. I dunno!

[Englishbird]

I don't like to think that I'm 'unintelligent' but I'm afraid all the pension stuff goes over my head. I'll be sodding amazed if I live that long, but on the off chance the booze, fags and mobile don't get me first, I'll just turn up on the council's doorstep and make it their problem.. wearing purple, just like the poem.... I've worked since I was 16 (now 30) but I refuse to spend my life worrying about what will happen to me in old age. ..

for anyone who doesn't know it...

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised ... When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

[Big Al1st]

God, I didn't know I was like that. Dont wear purple though.

You have made me think that I better change my ways quick.

Incidentally, I drink, gave up smoking thirty a day 3 months ago and am 67. Dont use a mobile though so you little English Bird, to live as old as me stop using the mobile, thats if you want to live that long.

Poem's a bit sad though

Rgds

[Englishbird]

Not suggesting you're like that at all! It's just all the press re politics and how doomed we all are just gets me down. I quite like the poem, makes me smile. x x