The pension is actually 8% for Captains, which (although pretty poor) is still more than Thomson will be offering new recruits soon DooblerChina!
I heard a rumour recently that new joining DEC's from the Middle East have been told a basic salary of about £100k. Anyone else heard this? Sounds implausible to me considering the rest of us skippers (apart from those on increments) are at least £15k below this level.