Champagne's time in the nation's typical shopping basket was brief and it has come to a predictable end.
The Office for National Statistics maintains a virtual basket of goods to track changes in prices and calculate the rate of inflation.
Champagne was slipped into the basket in 2005 at the height of the cork-popping, bubbly-soaked boom in the City and elsewhere.
But now, of course, sales are down. The age of austerity resulted in a 7% drop last year alone.
Instead, white rum (cocktails are back) goes in, along with totems of the digital age: eBooks and digital set-top boxes.
And feeding habits are shifting. Blueberries and stir-fry veg are added to the 700 items in the basket.
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Monday, 11 March 2013
400,000 women to miss pension uplift
The government has admitted that hundreds of thousands of women currently aged 59 or 60 are at risk of receiving lower weekly pensions than men of the same age.
They make up a group of 430,000 destined to reach the lower female pension age before a new, flat rate pension of £144 a week comes into force.
Typically, they will get £127 a week while men of the same age will qualify for the flat rate.
That's because the men won't reach their higher pension age of 65 until after the flat rate payment is introduced in April 2017.
The difference will be eliminated from that date - and from late 2018 women will retire at the same age as men in any case.
The Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, argued in parliament today that the women would be better off over their lifetimes.
"Many of this group of women will be thousands of pounds better off by being able to draw their pension years before a man of the same age," he said.
"And they would not thank us if we made them wait years longer for their pension."
The Department for Work and Pensions released figures showing that up to 85 per cent of the women will receive a higher income over their retirement under the current system than a man born on the same day.
The Department also stated that 75 per cent of them could defer claiming the state pension and qualify for a weekly rate of £144.
However, many women are likely to find that their weekly pension income remains lower than that of a similarly aged man, simply because of the timing of the planned reforms.
Fancy a guaranteed pension?
We all love a guarantee. It means we don't have to worry.
A guaranteed price, guaranteed weather, a guarantee that a product will work. But most of all, perhaps, guaranteed peace of mind when we retire.
A guaranteed pension. What's not to like?
That's why the pensions minister, Steve Webb has been pushing the idea of pension guarantees - and why he's likely to be asked about it when MPs interrogate him on pensions this afternoon.
He calls it Defined Ambition, but what he really means is two things:
A. Salvaging something from the wreckage of the best final salary pensions - the ones which pay a pension based on your salary when you were working and which are being closed down right, left and centre.
B. Or shoring up the inferior schemes which employers are offering instead, the ones which are little more than employer-backed savings schemes. They help you save; you cash in the savings when you retire, but take all the investment risk.
The inferior ones are what most people will get because most companies will offer these when they sign up staff for pensions automatically under the new policy of "auto-enrolment."
And adding a guarantee to them is a seductive idea.
The guarantee would be a promise that you'd get at least as much out of a scheme as you put in.
The problem is that guarantees cost money, in the form of insurance, a pooled fund, or hedging mechanism from the City. And the cost would reduce the size of your pension.
Version 1 would be simply to guarantee the cash amount of contributions, but after 20 or 30 years, that's hardly worth having - because inflation, or price rises, would eat into the guaranteed amount.
Version 2 would be to promise that you would receive at least what you put in, increased to compensate for inflation, which does sound valuable.
The pension experts at Hargeaves Lansdown say that the cost of Version 1 would be a mere 0.06% of your contributions per year.
However, that's only if you cash in your chips at a pre-set time. The cost rises to 0.39% if you want the right to take the benefit when you choose.
Version 2 would cost 0.24% if you stick to one cashing-in date (these numbers are from the OECD) but an unknown, much higher amount if you want freedom over when to start the pension.
Hargreaves says the price could rise to 1% extra a year, "far in excess of the kind of charges deemed suitable for default auto-enrolment schemes".
That's a lot when you compound it over a lifetime.
The question is whether the guarantee worth having is actually worth paying for.
A guaranteed price, guaranteed weather, a guarantee that a product will work. But most of all, perhaps, guaranteed peace of mind when we retire.
A guaranteed pension. What's not to like?
That's why the pensions minister, Steve Webb has been pushing the idea of pension guarantees - and why he's likely to be asked about it when MPs interrogate him on pensions this afternoon.
He calls it Defined Ambition, but what he really means is two things:
A. Salvaging something from the wreckage of the best final salary pensions - the ones which pay a pension based on your salary when you were working and which are being closed down right, left and centre.
B. Or shoring up the inferior schemes which employers are offering instead, the ones which are little more than employer-backed savings schemes. They help you save; you cash in the savings when you retire, but take all the investment risk.
The inferior ones are what most people will get because most companies will offer these when they sign up staff for pensions automatically under the new policy of "auto-enrolment."
And adding a guarantee to them is a seductive idea.
The guarantee would be a promise that you'd get at least as much out of a scheme as you put in.
The problem is that guarantees cost money, in the form of insurance, a pooled fund, or hedging mechanism from the City. And the cost would reduce the size of your pension.
Version 1 would be simply to guarantee the cash amount of contributions, but after 20 or 30 years, that's hardly worth having - because inflation, or price rises, would eat into the guaranteed amount.
Version 2 would be to promise that you would receive at least what you put in, increased to compensate for inflation, which does sound valuable.
The pension experts at Hargeaves Lansdown say that the cost of Version 1 would be a mere 0.06% of your contributions per year.
However, that's only if you cash in your chips at a pre-set time. The cost rises to 0.39% if you want the right to take the benefit when you choose.
Version 2 would cost 0.24% if you stick to one cashing-in date (these numbers are from the OECD) but an unknown, much higher amount if you want freedom over when to start the pension.
Hargreaves says the price could rise to 1% extra a year, "far in excess of the kind of charges deemed suitable for default auto-enrolment schemes".
That's a lot when you compound it over a lifetime.
The question is whether the guarantee worth having is actually worth paying for.
Pensions grilling
Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister, is being grilled by MPs over reforms in the Pensions Bill this afternoon, including the £144 flat-rate pension.
So here's what's actually in the draft Pensions Bill:
Reforms to the State
Pension system (the £144 a week single-tier pension)
This draft Pensions Bill
contains provisions to introduce a single-tier pension which will, for future
pensioners, replace the current two-component State Pension (basic State
Pension and additional State Pension) with a single component flat-rate pension
that is set above the basic level of means-tested support - likely from 2017.
Bringing forward the
increase in the State Pension age to 67
The first change brings
forward the increase in the State Pension age to 67 by eight years, as announced
in November 2011. This means the State Pension age will gradually rise from 66
to 67 between 2026 and 2028.
Introducing a framework
for future changes to the State Pension age
• a review of the State
Pension age every five years, with the first review taking place in the next Parliament;
• the review to be based
around the principle that people should expect to spend a certain proportion of
their adult life in retirement; and
• the review to be
informed by reports from the Government Actuary’s Department analysing the
proportion of adult life people reaching State Pension age within a specified
time period can expect to spend in retirement and from an independently-led
body on other factors to be taken into account when setting the State Pension
age.
Reforms to bereavement
benefits
through the introduction
of Bereavement Support Payment, a single
benefit to support people after bereavement
Amendments to private
pensions legislation
including a new provision
to allow regulations to be made to ban the practice of providing non-pension inducements
to encourage individuals to transfer a cash equivalent value of their accrued
rights from a Defined Benefit scheme to an alternative arrangement.
Students squeezed
The government's announced that students will get an increase of just 1% in maintenance grants and student loans in the academic year 2014-15.
Here are the details.
Increases are limited to 1% this autumn as well, despite inflation running at 2.7% (or 3.3% according to the Retail Prices Index.
Here are the details.
Increases are limited to 1% this autumn as well, despite inflation running at 2.7% (or 3.3% according to the Retail Prices Index.
Friday, 8 March 2013
Mortgage hikes
Andrew Tyrie's blistering letter to the head of the FSA about Bank of Ireland's plan to bump up the tracker mortgage payments of 13,500 customers. Some will see payments triple.
Barclays millionaires
Barclays has revealed that 428 of its staff worldwide earned more than a million pounds last year.
It says it is the first bank to publish detailed information on the pay of all its employees. Many are likely to be working in investment banking and an undisclosed number would be in the US or elsewhere.
Barclays has been caught up in a series of scandals, from the attempted rigging of the Libor interbank interest rate to mis-selling Payment protection insurance - so the disclosure of so many staff getting over a million pounds is bound to stir up controversy.
The bank points out that the 428 total is down ten per cent from 2011 and that those earning over 5 million pounds are down from 17 to 5.
71,000 are on less than £25,000.
The information is being made public after Barclays appointed a senior banking figure, Sir David Walkers as chairman.
He'd previously recommended that all banks come clean about pay to high flyers.
Barclays has also given more detail on how its bonus pool
has been reduced to reflect the various scandals the bank has been involved in.
We already knew the bonus pool for 2012 was £2.168bn, down
from £2.578bn in 2011.
Now we learn that it was reduced by £290m for the Libor
affair and by £570m for PPI and interest rate swaps.
There was also a 10% reduction to reflect that they are
trying to bring down total pay.
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