Is there any way to protect pensions, or must we suffer?

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

I had a reasonable pension pot saved through company and personal contributions. Come the sub-prime con trick and RBS's implosion, I, like thousands of others, lost a sizeable amount of my savings.
I have a son who lives and works Down Under. When Donald Trump introduced his first round of tariff controls, my son lost over $100,000 NZ from his fund. Doubtless this will have recovered since as stock markets have apparently factored in this potential volatility and recovered. But with the UK FT-100 index now at over 9000 points, can it be sustained? Economic cycles recur in a predictable time scale and the next collapse is possibly overdue. If and when there is the next downward adjustment, or crash, what then for private pension funds? (Among lots of other critical economic factors.)
Does capitalism have an answer? Or will the hedge fund managers just keep profiting?
Ian Gray, Croftamie.
Read more letters
Increase IT use for pupils
Although your article on Holyrood's approach to workload in schools ("Teaching union dismisses AI toolkit"; [[The Herald]], July 29) showed a tiny insight from the Scottish Government on the needs of teachers, it seemed sadly out of touch with the potential scale of change required in meeting the march of electronic processing.
The culture of Scottish education remains strangely ossified when determining who should be the client when addressing the place of technology in schools.
As we approach the end of the first quarter of the new century I would have thought that by now we would have witnessed a complete revolution in individualised learning through the aid of effective and efficient technology.
Modern computers are remarkable teaching machines and in a number of school subjects or topics within subjects, a qualified teacher could be replaced with an IT coach/mentor. In this way some teachers would become more of a professional learning consultant and monitor.
The £1 million quoted as available to ease workload would be better spent on developing pupil software for programmed learning and this would assist in the long-term solution being sought.
Bill Brown, Milngavie.
Council's scheme could be rubbish
Councillor Paul Carey is quite right to ask where the millions Glasgow City Council has raked in by charging for garden waste collections is being spent ("Glasgow's rubbish bin millions: what has the money been spent on?", [[The Herald]], July 26), but it's only half of the story.
Every tonne of garden waste separated by householders saves the council around £155 in landfill charges (including Landfill Tax at over £126). Conversely if householders aren't prepared to pay to get their brown bin emptied, they are entitled to put garden waste into their residual waste bin or take it to the council's waste recycling centres. The first option means increased disposal costs that will appear on the cleansing services' balance sheets, while the second presumes that everybody has access to the transport required. There's also the possibility that some people might simply fly-tip their garden waste.
Has anybody in the council done some research to see if their waste disposal costs have increased due to these charges? If not, it's a bit premature to boast about the additional revenue these have generated.
And if the disposal costs have in fact risen, surely the income from charging has to be set against these?
John Crawford, Preston.
Fall in BBC standards
Over the last few days we've seen perfect examples of how far BBC technical standards on Radio Scotland have fallen.
On interviews between Glasgow and Turnberry and Aberdeenshire links have dropped or became so distorted that they were useless; this from the BBC, who invented outside broadcasts.
Seamlessly anchoring the Six O'Clock News from a war zone like Ukraine doesn't seem to be difficult but it frequently falls apart here.
Stuart Neville, Clydebank.
Remembering Dr Calman
I was very sad to hear of the death of Sir Kenneth Calman ("Sir Kenneth Calman, chair of Scotland's devolution commission, dies aged 83", The Herald, July 24).
I was a junior nurse in the Western Infirmary in the 1960s when he was a resident doctor. In those days the resident doctor had a room just off the ward and seemed to be on 24 hours a day. They probably did have some time off, but it was pretty full on.
At night we would have to go and rouse them if there was an emergency or a new admission. Often we would have several attempts to waken weary doctors, but not Kenny. He had a very unassuming manner, was such a pleasure to work with and was lovely to the patients.
A lovely and exceptional man.
Margaret Lancaster, Biggar.
Sir Kenneth Calman, whose death was announced last week (Image: Getty)
Market research
David Edgar (Letters, July 28) asks what is the meaning of "brought to market".
Indeed.com will tell Mr Edgar how to do so in 11 steps; phew! That would not in any case answer Mr Edgar's question.
Further research reveals that bringing to market is the process of transforming an idea into a marketable, sellable product. It involves brainstorming, researching, network building, and building marketing strategies. I suppose that that is gobbledegook for what estate agents do, except that it still does not answer Mr Edgar's question about whether these properties are ever offered for sale.
Good luck to Mr Edgar should he bring his own property to market.
David Miller, Milngavie.
Living in a different world
John Jamieson's letter (July 29) reminded me of the story of the 1980s Everton defender who, unhappy at the terms of a proposed new contract, told his manager he had agreed to to join Cape Town FC.
'But what about the Apartheid?' asked his boss.
'Aye, it's no' bad,' said the defender. 'Three bedrooms, all en suite. Magic!'.
Alec Ross, Stranraer.