'Reader warns against using pensions as a political tool' - your letters, plus a 2017 chess moment from the archives

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.

I did not spend my working life contributing to this scheme so that my pension could be repurposed as a foreign policy tool. I would much prefer it to remain what it was meant to be: a boring, sensible pot of money that quietly does its job.

I therefore urge Shropshire Council and the pension committee to resist BDS-style investment strategies and to focus on their core responsibility — protecting the pensions of people like me who have already done their bit and would now quite like a quiet retirement.

This is not about taking sides in a distant conflict. It is about keeping politics out of pensions and common sense firmly in.

Angela Stott, Liverpool

Parcels aren’t much better

Re. the Star front page “What’s happened to all of our post?”. My daughter's partner posted a parcel on January 6 with a 48 hour delivery which cost extra. This parcel went to Somerset and back to Newcastle on Tyne twice and back to their own flat. It was sent again by the postman who delivered it there. Having made several more detours it arrived in Oswestry on Saturday, January 24. If that's prioritising parcels, God help the people waiting for letters.

Janet Owen, Oswestry

Sorry to good folk of Iceland

In my letter of January 22 regarding the lunatics being in charge I said Iceland instead Greenland so I would like to apologise to all I may have offended.

Pete Lowe, Midlands

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