This is a bridge too far. This is bad faith.
Even allowing for the 1996 co-op deal and the 2004 out-of-hours opt-out, by 60 I will have worked 147,000 hours. At 65 it will be 163,000 hours or more. Most people get their pensions after 40 years, at 2,000 hours per year. I passed the 80,000-hour career mark at 43 years and six weeks. Our ‘overtime' was compulsory and paid at 30% of basic. We did the 136-hour weeks, I did 80-hour weeks or more until I was 49.
The NHS pension fund is in profit to the Treasury at £2bn per annum till 2015. The Doctors' and Dentists' Review Body already factored in the value of our pension schemes when making pay awards, so where is my back pay and, just to put my mind at rest, where is my actual cash pension fund Mr Osborne? Show me – or is it paid from next week's contributions, successive governments having used the money for other things?
From Dr Peter Holden, GPC negotiator, Matlock, Derbyshire, via pulsetoday.co.uk
Like a lot of 50-plus GPs, working for 30 years, I'll be giving serious thought to 24-hour retirement and placing my superannuation payments to better effect.
Have the powers that be not realised how destabilising for the current scheme it will be if possibly thousands of higher contributors both take the current half-decent benefits a few years earlier than expected and don't contribute for those years? Brainless.
From Dr Colin Russell, Larkhall, south Lanarkshire, via pulsetoday.co.uk
To add your name to our 'No to 65' pensions petition, or to simply find out more about the campaign, visit http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/noto65.
