Carrying you out in a box

I'm finally in the position where I can now save for a pension, kids are all gone and there's only myself and my good lady, problem is, it's probably too late to make a difference, well not unless I'm prepared to work well into my 70's (which sounds ok now, but wait till I reach them) Not that the situation has been helped by the Gordon Brown pension raid back in the early Labour days which transformed a fairly successful scheme into an gravely underfunded one, as one off taxes went, that was a stonker and hit the less well off far harder than most, so much for Labour being the party of the working class.
Express.

THE demise of Britain’s private pension system has been graphically exposed by a damning official report revealed to the Daily Express.
Government experts have predicted the era of final salary pensions is coming to a rapid end and that within six years no new members will be enrolled on to the lucrative schemes.
Department for Work and Pensions analysis shows that many of the schemes have died out already.
Millions of workers now face the grim reality of having to work well into their 70s.
The death knell of generous final salary pensions has been sounded in a damning official report which ­confirms how millions of us will have to keep on working into old age.
The stark analysis by the ­Department for Work and Pensions warns that many company defined schemes have already closed down and those that survive will be closed to new entrants within six years.

Problem for the companies is that because of reduced staffing and increased costs plus the losing of their float by Browns robbery they can no longer afford to keep their pension schemes going, it's costing more than what's actually going in. This means that anyone who wants a fairly decent pension is going to have to save longer and harder, which kind of rules me out, I had a fairly good private pension scheme till the CSA got it's claws into me then I struggled to bring up two families it seemed as strangely enough the CSA did not chase after the father of my good Lady's kids as he was self employed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter about the situation and I never begrudged paying my way and the kids turned out fine, it's just that I now have a bit of a problem on my hands and it's going to cost me, so in a sense I'm back to square one.
Of course we could resolve some of the problems by topping up the state pension, taking a chainsaw to government spending and using the excess to top up the pension scheme, the foreign aid budget could go for a start along with all the money spent on fake charities, quangos and translation services.
Mind you, so far the pension crisis only applies to the private sector, the public sector are being cushioned (as ever) and that needs to change too.
If we're all in this together, then we need the system to be fair, I don't like the idea of paying through my taxes for someone to retire earlier than me and on a better pension, especially if they haven't contributed a decent amount into the system themselves.
I expect I'll have to work till I drop to pay for some civil or public servant to retire in relative comfort, that grates a little and I suspect that the older I get the more it will grate.