'Reader warns against using pensions as a political tool' - your letters, plus a 2017 chess moment from the archives
Readers share their views on pensions and the postal service.
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Leave politics out of pensions
I refer to your recent article in the Shropshire Star, regarding pressure on the Shropshire Local Government Pension Scheme to divest from certain companies and to adopt BDS-style investment policies.
I write not as an armchair commentator, but as someone in receipt of a pension from this fund. My retirement income depends on it, which means I read about its investment strategy with rather more interest than I read about celebrity family rifts.
Like many others, I have strong views about events overseas. But I am uneasy about political campaigns being directed at a pension fund whose job is not to solve the world’s problems, but to make sure people like me can still afford to heat our homes and buy the occasional biscuit.
The LGPS exists to provide stable, long-term returns. It was not set up as a branch of the Foreign Office, nor as a testing ground for fashionable political causes. Turning pensions into instruments of protest may be emotionally satisfying for some, but the financial risks fall on ordinary pensioners who did not sign up for their savings to double as a political statement.
