Pay up and keep paying

Which probably comes as no surprise because both are run by the same people - the chaps, and they are mainly chaps, who own damn near everything left standing in the country.

So what is it that can hit you between the eyes while you are working and even after you've gone into a well-earned retirement? Why, it's your pension, of course, specifically your company pension, if you have one, which isn't true of everybody.

It used to be said that a company pension was a sure-fire way to a happy retirement. Gone were the days of ekeing out an existence on an inadequate state pension and in were the days of milk and honey, the promised land in which everyone over 65 would take their ease, secure during their twilight years.

Well, you can forget that, for a start. No longer 65, retirement age now is whenever you can afford to stop work and, for most, that will be a long time coming.

And, when it does come, it's going to be a costly exercise one way or another. Moneyfacts magazine told us all on Tuesday that the income people can expect to receive from their pension has hit a record low, with annuity rates at the lowest since records began.

Apparently the average annuity rate paid to a man had fallen by nearly 46 per cent during the past 15 years, while women have suffered a 42 per cent drop and with gilt yields low and life expectancy increasing, they are likely to fall even further.

Moneyfacts editor Richard Eagling said: "With every passing month the outlook for those approaching retirement appears bleaker." And that's just for those about to retire. For others, it's even worse.

The Association of Consulting Actuaries added to the woes of the prospective company pensioner by pointing out that around 40 per cent of companies are likely to reduce future scheme benefits in order to meet the additional cost of the government's automatic enrolment scheme.

This plan is intended to force everyone into a company scheme, presumably as part of a long-term plan to trash state pensions entirely.

And that means that you are going to be reliant on a market-based money-purchase scheme in which the size of your pension will depend not only on the amount you pay into it, but how efficiently it's invested and with whom. That's a pretty bleak prospect. The market isn't delivering any too well these days.

As BBC finance guru Robert Peston pointed out recently, a near-zero bank rate and the creation of £200bn of new money via quantitative easing "has had a devastating effect on the sustainability of final-salary savings schemes and on the returns for those putting cash into defined-contribution schemes."

He warned that, "if you retire today with a pension pot identical to that accumulated by your older brother when he retired 10 years ago, your pension will be around half what he receives."

Which doesn't bode well for any of our futures. But that's what you can expect if your life is based on a free-market system. Pensions, as well as savings or even the price of your house can, and do, go down as well as up, at the whim of those markets.

Which leaves us with the burning question. If market-based, employer-based pensions are so vulnerable as to leave millions in the lurch at the end of their working lives, why base your nation's pension plans on them in preference to improving the state scheme?

Well, the cynical view would be that market profiteers prefer your money in their hands to gamble with, rather than it going into government coffers to rot.

But we couldn't possibly be that cynical about those upright banking and City gentlemen who damn nearly bankrupted the country with their outrageous failed gambles before - could we?