Boomers bumped

JEFF Salway's article (Between the Lines, 14 January) on Harriet Harman's proposed overhaul of the pensions provisions in the UK is superficial and a wee bit contradictory: he rightly points out that the recession has meant that many older workers are crystallising their losses by having to draw their pensions, but they lose their main source of income when the returns on their life savings are meagre. He goes on to repeat the old chestnut that the baby-boomers are having their c

The baby-boomers consist of that group of people born just after the Second World War. Harriet Harman, who reaches 60 this year, is not one of them. It is precisely this group of workers who are now crystallising losses by having to draw their pensions. These are losses caused by the debts incurred not by the over-50s as Mr Salway suggests, but by younger workers who over-borrowed on the back of the imprudent banking practices of people such as Sir Fred Goodwin, who is ten years younger than the baby-boomers and was in his forties when he sowed the seeds of the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland.

Due to the prudent banking practices of the 1960s and 70s, the baby-boomers were unable to take out 120 per cent mortgages and incur large credit card debts; it is the younger workers who established the practices which led to the banking collapse, and the baby-boomers are paying the price.

As Mr Salway points out, they put aside life savings for their now devalued pension pots, which makes it difficult for many of them to have their cake, let alone eat it.

DR FRANCIS ROBERTS

Greenbank Avenue

Edinburgh