[Dottore]

Milt, can you really blame people for shopping around for jobs that have good pensions? It's nothing that ever occurred to me, but I know that this is something that animates a large number of people.

Where I live for example, judges get very large pensions, and I know lawyers who have sought out judgeships - even though they would make a heck of a lot more more money in private practice - because the big pension at the end of the road is a huge incentive.

One thing I do have a huge problem with is reducing someone's pension retroactively. People plan their retirement around their pensions. If they have a contractual entitlement, and if, for example, they stuck it out at a miserable job because of that entitlement, I think it's just plain wrong to try to feck with that after the fact.

You can always reduce pension entitlements for people that haven't earned them yet. Those people can decide whether or not they want to stay with the job given the reduced entitlements. But once someone's earned their entitlement, taking it away is essentially a breach of contract - and just plain wrong in my view. It's like someone reducing your salary retroactively, after you've already agreed a figure.