Macroscope | Some thoughts on addressing Hong Kong's 'age-old' problem

Today is my mother's 86th birthday. My father passed 86 three months ago. They reached retirement age in Britain more than 20 years ago. I have thought a lot about their experience as Hong Kong has debated what Richard Wong on this page yesterday eruditely called the "age-old" problem of retirement provision.

My father entered the working world, after military service, as the second world war ended and Britain's first labour government came to power. This government laid the foundations of Britain's welfare state - from public housing, to the national health service, to retirement protection.

My father, a factory engineer and a passionate socialist, subscribed enthusiastically to all of these reforms. He contributed every month to a company and a government pension scheme that he confidently believed would provide him with security and dignity in old age. My mother stayed home and devoted her life to raising five children. So far so good.

Then came the '70s recession and the Thatcher years. My father's factory was closed. My father lost his job at the age of 50 and was never fully employable again. His company pension plan was liquidated along with the contributions of thousands of others to repay company creditors. My mother never had a pension because she only began working after we children had grown up, and then worked too few hours to accumulate a pension. In short, a bad situation.

They headed toward "retirement" living on benefits, and with no expectation of anything more than a minimum state pension. Thank heaven for a large and close family.

This experience left me with firm views about pensions. First, the system proudly put in place in the early '50s let down my father, and millions of other British workers.