You mean the safety net that is ESA that the government is one step away from limiting it to 365 days and on the 366th day if your spouse earns over £149 a week you get NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING.

Or the safty net of DLA so I can pay my gas bill because my heating needs to be on full all day in the winter and the means to have transport to be independant that the government are reassessing and reports are that 98% of DLA claimaints will not be eligable for the new PIP (Personal Independant Payment).

Or the safety net that cancer sufferers having chemo have to go through a Work Related Assesment to see if they are fit for work?

Your doubts are wrong. This governement are as callous as they come.

Not at all, they can sleep soundly knowing their future and their money is safe and well in the hands of the likes of Bob Maxwell.

So my sister hasn't helped save lives then?
You had better tell her that because she is damn sure she has.
Still if it gives you a warm feeling 'peddling this BS' as you put it feel free.

Exactly. Private businesses will look after them. Or miss-sell them a pension. Or, as with RBS, gamble so irresponsibly that people will lose money.

So the way forward is for everyone to become a financial wizard. And then they can buy their own pension ...

Oh, hang on a minute ...

Now I've got to ask, who the fook are HSBO?

Halifax Scotland Bank of (rearrange as necessary)?

Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Organisation?

It's the UK elite's equivalent of an ASBO: The Highly Splendid Behaviour Order, awarded to bankers alongside their much deserved bonuses.

Meanwhile, Peter Tatchell has some good ideas:

[urlhttp://www.redpepper.org.uk/economic-democracy-the-lefts-big-new-idea/[/url

...and if they'd had the decency to declare from the outset that actually pensions are investments and investments are unknowns which are just as likely to go down as up (not "can" but "will") rather than skim over those facts with a loose tag line while smiling and offering assurance that you definitely will be much better off giving your money to them to look after - then we would at least not feel hard done by.

The fact of the matter is that these are not back street shady cash-in-hand dealers who disappear to the pub with your weekly money every time you call, we're talking about international banking organisations who asked us to trust them and then shat on us all, and when the likes of Nat West brazenly just sell the whole of their pensions business lock stock and barrel to Aviva and declare that they aren't going to do pension investments any more then you know that actually, they probably didn't know what they were doing when they promised that they would look after our money until we needed it several decades into the future.

Meant RBS – and changed to reflect that.

Indeed. And if you look at that as an indicator of how people trying to be responsible are treated, then how can you continue to demand that people behave responsibly?

I mentioned the Fred the Shred documentary earlier: when everyone can see people like him getting away with what he did (and he's far from alone), and paying no effective price for what he did and the damage caused by the company under his control, then what incentive is there for anyone to behave responsibly?

she trained and is paid for it but it doesn't make her saintly or a nice person and worthy of some sort of hero worship like she's above 'normal' human beings, it's a job, granted with a lot of responsibility but i don't hold nurses above any other trained and dedicated person

Yes, because they were wielding too much, undemocratic, power.

I appreciate each person's experience and each hospital is different, as is ours. I can name the hospitals that have been shocking in our experience and can name others that have been excellent. But, the shocking ones are not, in our experience, isolated. Of course, individual nurses even in within a partcularly good or bad hospital can be outstanding.