Re: Can anyone help?

There is widespread anger over the refusal by successive UK 
governments to index-link or otherwise adjust state pension payments 
to those who chose to retire abroad. If one retires to a country 
within the European Economic Area the state pension increases 
automatically every year. This also happens if one retires to a 
country with which the UK has made a special agreement. In the absence 
of such a mutual agreement, the state pension payments are frozen at 
the sum payable at the time one moved abroad. There is a government 
web-site that gives a little information about this (though it fails 
to list which countries are within or without the agreement)

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/BritonsLivingAbroad/Moneyabroad/DG_4000013

It is possible that the lady who retired to South Africa might be 
elegible to join the Civil Service Pensioners' Alliance, who are 
publishing a series of angry letters on this matter in their quarterly 
magazine, and who might be planning to campaign against this 
injustice. Try contacting the CPSA Membership Secretary:

Mr D. Gamester,
FREEPOST SEA14168,
Welling,
Kent DA16 1BR

e-mail: membership-JoG+c80/[email protected]

South Africa is only one of many ex-Dominions and ex-Colonies who are 
not in the Agreement. Australia is, notoriously, also excluded from 
the Agreement to increment pensions.

The current issue of the CSPA journal carries a letter from Alan A 
Berends (among others) who complains of the "threatening" tone of a 
document that he and others are now being sent by the Pensions Service.

Several members of this BPARK list will know of Alan Berends as the 
author of the small monograph: "Chasing Enigma - procurement of German 
Army ENIGMA messages in the North West Europe Campaign 1944-45", 
published in Australia 1995. As Captain Berends, of the Intelligence 
Corps, he was part of Mobsec, the Mobile Section of 1 Special Wireless 
Group. After D-Day his section functioned as a mobile listening 
station, intercepting ENIGMA transmissions, and moving forward as the 
battle-front advanced. At this time the ENIGMA transmissions were not 
readable at the UK listening stations, so the Mobsec intercepts 
provided Bletchley Park with the necessary signals material.

Alan Berends retired to Australia in the late 1980s to be with his 
family near Melbourne. He still receives his state pension from the UK 
but it is a pittance, still fixed at 1988 rates. His main current 
complaint is the threatening wording of the annual document that he 
now receives from the Pensions Service, who need to know that he is 
still alive and needing the pension (he is in his 90s). The wording of 
the document is unfriendly and warns that if the Pensions Service do 
not receive the fully certified reply within 8 weeks of them sending 
it, his pension will be stopped immediately. It seems that the 
document has to be certified, with a photograph of the pensioner, and 
only certain categories of people can be accepted by the Pensions 
Service as being qualified to certify. Alan Berends goes on to list a 
number of reasons why it might take a pensioner longer than 8 weeks to 
get the reply back to the Pensions Office - one being that the UK 
Consulate General in Melbourne do not have anyone in Australia 
authorized to witness signatures!

There are several letters in this, and the preceding issue of the CSPA 
journal, from retired civil servants who are receiving their pittance 
state pensions somewhere abroad. I suggest that the lady who retired 
to South Africa might try to join the CSPA and jointly try to get 
their positions improved.

Martin



Robert Philpot wrote:
> I heard on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 at about 13.00 today of a
> lady, 95 years old who was a senior person at BP during the war.
> 
> She is now living in South Africa on her UK pension for which the British
> Government send her the sum of £6 GBP per week!
> 
> Apparently all that she is entitled to, and that forms her total income!
> 
> If true this is obscene!
> 
> Does anyone have contacts at the BBC who can look further and maybe get 
> this
> lady some belated help?
> 
> Robert Philpot

-- 

Martin H Evans        mhe1000-v9/[email protected]
       Maritime Museums in Britain and Ireland:
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/marmus.htm

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