I am now drawing my pension and I have a separate tax code for this (i.e. pay 40% on all of it) and a different code for my new main job.
Melchett and AIR - thanks for your contributons to this thread. Nice to see a thread totally devoid of nonsense and, instead, containing a lot of informed opinion.
I agree with a couple of other contributors in that, since 1997 when Brown "prudently" raped the pension system of certain tax benefits, the whole shebang has been doomed to crisis. Literally billions each year have been creamed off from this policy, mainly to help pay for the three additional parliaments and all the associated staff and other costs that go along with them. Did you all know, for example, that the main Westminster coffers subsidise the Scots, Welsh and Irish enormously? If each regional parliament was made to be self-sufficient this would go some way to reducing the additional burden carried presently by those in England. Please don't think I have anything against the Scots, Welsh or Irish - I don't. I just fail to see how Brown's vision of a "fair and equal society" works in this instance.
I would like to think that our Servicemen and women will continue to benefit from the pensions they have been promised and rightly deserve. I'm not sure it will actually happen, and agree that should benefits be cut we will see a snow-balling crisis of retention and unrest.
HH