Money to burn but not for pensioners

I COULDN’T help being struck by the juxtaposition of two points made in Eddie Barnes’s article, “Osborne’s Home Guard” (Insight, 27 November). He said, in relation to infrastructure investment for up to 40 major projects, that “Upfront cash [could be] provided by Britain’s huge pension fund”. Yet just three paragraphs later he wrote: “The danger for the government is that the public begins to ask, what was the point of austerity if not to get Britain back on the straight and narrow, and ... sides with striking teachers, nurses and civil servants protesting about changes to their pension deals,” presumably their reduced pension entitlement.

The line of reasoning seems to be that there may be plenty of cash in “huge” pension funds to pony up for, and potentially lose, on large infrastructure projects ... but there are unlikely to be sufficient funds in “huge” pension funds to pay the pensions that were expected by some working people due to retire in the next ten years or so. I’m glad that’s clear to me now.

Richard Jones, Leeds