BP: British Pensions?

Pensions. A subject which, for one reason or another, I know a fair bit about. Perhaps more than a self-confessed cool-dude I like to think of myself as, ought to. It is a truism that most of us ignore them yet most of us will, at some point be relying on them. So it is with some interest I've been following some of today's development involving BP.

Or perhaps that should be 'British Petroleum.' President Obama has been naming it thus, and his reasons are self-evident: this is no American company and therefore by implication as the American president he could not be held responsible. Anyway, his rhetoric has sent diplomats and politicians into a tailspin.

The reason is pensions! BP's recent troubles have seen its share price take a mammoth tumble, down over 260p since 20 April, wiping billions off its value. More
importantly though, it has wiped millions off the value of the investments of pension funds, and potentially putting the savings of thousands of retirees (and soon to be retirees) at risk.

Hence the ridiculous scenes today where the Prime Minister, apparently a Conservative and others like Lord Tebbit, definitely a Conservative, pleading with Obama to calm the 'British' rhetoric and thus calm the markets and safeguard the UK voting public's retirement.

Now, I think it is important to say that I am not opposed to this, per se. This is damaging to a lot of people's financial security and ought to be a high priority. What I object to is the abject hypocrisy displayed by the likes of Cameron and Tebbit while obstinately refusing to recognise the real issue.
This is market interference, something Cameron, as a Tory, should be opposed to. Fair enough, one can argue Obama started it, but in that case shouldn't the market be self-correcting? Isn't that what capitalism is all about? The efficiency of the markets?

Anyway, enough of the hypocrisy, my real problem with this is how it represents what is wrong with the pension provision in the UK. The dependence on the stock market to provide the kind of returns needed to sustain pensions is fundamentally unstable and BP's troubles highlight this. This issue though, is being brushed under the carpet by Cameron and his talk of getting Obama to tone down the rhetoric.

What we need in this country, and what pensioners deserve, is a safer, more realistic system, immune from the ups and downs of the market. Unfortunately it seems that Cameron, on the evidence of today's performance is not interested in tackling this issue.

P