TOWARDS the end of the 1930s the poet Louis MacNeice took a trip to the Western Isles.
There, he was struck by the passing of the traditional folk culture, almost before his eyes, assailed as it was by the influence of rampant urbanisation. MacNeice's response was to write a poem in which he comically contrasted the one against the other.
He called it Bagpipe Music because, he said, it was best read aloud in a droning voice that mimicked the sound of pipes. Once upon a time I heard the historian Angus Calder recite it in this manner in an Edinburgh wine bar. Had there been a stink bomb thrown among the Chardonnay classes the effect would probably have been similar.
I have always admired Bagpipe Music, not least for the following two lines: "It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections/ Sit on your a*** for 50 years and hang your hat on a pension." At the time that MacNeice was writing, state pensions were available to people who, against the odds, had achieved the biblical span of 70 years, and then only if your annual income did not exceed a certain amount. Thus, the idea of waiting half a century to be eligible to receive it was somewhat nonsensical.
It was nothing more than a reward - and a small one at that - for staying alive. But relatively few people did. Average life expectancy in the United Kingdom in the years leading to up to the Second World War was about 60. It was in the 1950s that it rose to 65. Now men who live in leafy suburbs can expect to live to 79 while their wives tend to "hang on" for three years more.
This is why pensions have become the hot topic de jour. Not only do we live longer, we expect to live better, and have the wherewithal to do so. Indeed, some of those among us will spend less time in work than out of it.
I know many people who, having retired in their early fifties, will probably still be visiting garden centres and trying vainly to reduce their handicaps well into their eighties. Moreover, they are forever jetting off to one sunny clime or another, returning home only to stock up on Marmite and regale us frostbite sufferers with how nice and cheap and ned-free it is in the Costa del Tuppence.
All of them, of course, have private pensions topped up with whatever George Osborne thinks they deserve from his coffers. The Chancellor, in concert with his best buddy, Danny Alexander, has had a gander at the nation's private pension pots and would like over-55s to be able henceforth to get their dirtless paws on them.
This is presented as a form of altruism. It's all about choice, say messrs Osborne and Alexander. "People who have worked and saved all their lives will be able to access as much or as little of their defined contribution pension as they want from next year and pass on their hard-earned pensions to their families tax free," said the former.
It may be me but whenever I see a politician use phrases like "hard-earned" the shutters come down and my hackles rise. What the Chancellor actually wants is for us to put capital into circulation today which, in normal circumstances, we would prefer to keep in a vault until later. One pensions expert, who may also be an expert in human behaviour, says Mr Osborne's proposal is "desperate, naive and seriously damaging".
Another has described it as "reckless". My preferred adjective would be "cynical". For if he really wanted us to have maximum benefit of our "hard-earned pensions" he ought to make them all tax-free.
As it is, however, he is making us take the kind of decision that will tempt those who, temperamentally, prefer to have cash in the hand rather than in the bank. Given recent history, this is understandable if regrettable. Having lost faith in the financial system, we have little alternative, it seems, but to grab what's going while it's on offer. It is a devil's bargain and whatever course one takes there is no way of knowing whether it is the right one.
What we do know, though, is that, like it or lump it, we have become a nation of gamblers.
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