It is said that 350,000 British pensioners live in Spain. One has seen his state pension drop from 410 euros (for 4 weeks) over the last twenty months to 290 euros ($406). It should be noted that he is not on the full state pension for having been invalided out of the army after service in Korea he was told that he did not have to make contributions, something that the Department for Work and Pensions changed their mind on after several years which resulted in a short fall in his contributions. A similarly aged pension (a former RAF intelligence officer) who wrote to this department about his difficulty received an insulting letter from a Civil servant stating "there is no legal requirement to help pensioners. The Governments priority is to help pensioners living in this country (England) and it will continue to help them so they are able to have a decent income." (reported in The Olive Press). It is estimated that at least 5% of pensioners will have to return to England putting a burden on that country, but I personally believe that it will be much higher.
Perhaps there should be a common European Union pension where all pensioners receive the same basic pension. English pensioners that were not claiming the heating allowance before they retired do not get it whilst pensioners that moved to Spain or another European country do not. What happened to equality?
Who is to blame? The people that speculate in currencies and secondly the English Government/Bank of England for the possible mismanagement of the sterling weakness. Should the Governer of England King not have reduced interest rates at the same time as the Fed in the USA?
George Soros is still speculating in sterling saying today that he had stopped betting on sterling at $1.40 and can be blamed for sterlings weakness. Jim Rogers makes alarmist remarks about the UK (possibly to line his own pockets) and U.S. hedge fund Paulson & Co's profit (short selling), which could have topped 270 million pounds if it sold all its RBS (RBS.L) position, Other short sellers of UK bank stocks could have been in part to blame for the collapse in their share prices and the resulting talk of nationalisation which further weakened sterling. Of course Sir Frank Goodwin (or will it be Frank Goodwin) comes into the equation for his running of RBS allowing Paulson & Co's to short the banks shares!
We did write to Bloomberg suggesting that the word Nationalisation should not be used by them for at least a month and I have only heard it mentioned once (not forcefully) and it does not appear to have been on the ticker tape. The share price of UK banks appeared to have recovered by over 100%
