Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Boris "eyes up" council pensioner money to invest in his "vanity" infrastructure projects?

Many of us are worried about the recent Government announcement on "levelling up", not least because it included a legislative commitment on Council pension funds to “publish plans for increasing local investment, including setting an ambition of up to 5% of assets invested in projects which support local areas”.

We know that the Government has long had an interest in the £337bn invested by pension fund members in Council schemes.

Some 6.1 million Brits currently have savings in the UK Council Pensions. I declare an interest. I have in it 28 years worth of savings.

Now I do not have a problem with council pension funds deciding to invest in infrastructure projects if they think they are good investments for the funds.

If the Government thinks that pension schemes should be investing 5% of its assets regarding of its finances then surely they should be prepared to compensate the funds if this proves to be a disastrous decision. Such infrastructure projects can be high risk.

Now, so far this is being peddled as being purely voluntary but we know that the Government has form on this. In the past Council pensions funds were forced to merge into large investment pools whether they liked it or not, in order to support infrastructure investment. 

Also, I understand that they are going to re-introduce plans to force council pension funds to only invest in line with "British Government Foreign Policy" (whatever that means).

What makes me most fearful is Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and his record as a supporter of "vanity" infrastructure projects as London Mayor (he wanted a floating airport in the sea and the £46 million of public money he wasted on the "Garden Bridge") and more recently his £20 billion plan on a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland and a £200 billion project link England and France.

Worrying times. We need to crank up our opposition to these plans to protect our pensions and make sure that import investment decisions are made on merit and not government personal edict. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

> he wanted a floating airport in the sea

How is that a terrible idea?. Heathrow is the size of a town. London desperately needs land for housing and business.

They want to build a third runway at Heathrow (part of it will be over the M25). Londoners will experience more aircraft noise. As flight come in to land, they generally have to fly over London. Some in East London, are blighted as they are both under London City Airport flight path and Heathrow jets.

An airport in the sea, can operate 24 hours day. Heathrow's first flight land in at 4.30am.

Heathrow has two runways, they want a third. However, other airports have multiple runways have six runways. Heathrow would need to keep knocking down homes, to build more runways.

They could put the airport in a place, which does n't cause nuisance to others.




Anonymous said...

How is Levelling up fair?

London redistributes billions to the regions. It is taking away money from deprived areas of London to fund it in the North.