Excessively burdensome

The EU’s universal pension is on its deathbed

The EU is no stranger to one-size-fits-all regulation, from restricting Ireland’s ability to raise interest rates and avoid financial meltdown to absurd regulations on the shape of fruit and vegetables, which lasted 15 years before the “return of the curvy cucumber”.

Yet few policies have been as disastrous as its idea for an EU-wide pension, the Pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP).

Four years after it was created, just 10,000 people have signed up from a working population of almost 260 million.

Despite its noble aim of boosting retirement planning among a sceptical population, the EU itself even described it as “excessively burdensome”.

It's the bureaucratic balancing act the EU has never achieved, staying clear of that zone where chair-polishers render life so excessively burdensome that economies flounder, systems crumble and funding falters. 

Even if we put aside the ingrained problems of bureaucracy, the EU still has major problems over an ageing population and pension provision. Not specific to the EU, but it's one of those huge, steadily evolving problems the EU is poorly equipped to tackle at an EU level.

    

Europe is mired in an ageing crisis: by 2030, a quarter of EU citizens will be over 65 after decades of falling birth rates and rising life expectancy. Two thirds of workers have zero pension savings, adding a potential old age poverty epidemic to the unprecedented strain already facing health and social care services.


A related problem is that EU bureaucrats never seem to give up on dud ideas, never willing to learn from experience, change direction and move on. It's another of those obvious yet serious weaknesses EU enthusiasts tend to avoid.


Despite the extremely disappointing take-up figures, however, the EU is not giving up.

In November, it proposed a series of changes, including removing the advice requirement and 1pc fee cap from Basic PEPPs. A tailored PEPP, offering the more complex and potentially more lucrative investment options some savers seek, would also be available and the requirement to offer membership in multiple countries will also be scrapped.

The intention is also to make the product more suitable to workplaces in the hope that take-up is bolstered by auto-enrolment.

It won't work.

Or there is the digital approach

North Korea demands neighbors spy on neighbors in surveillance push

Authorities are offering rewards and threatening punishments to normalize citizen surveillance and reporting of "anti-socialist lifestyles"

According to a source in North Pyongan province, regional branches of the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea (SWUK) held year-end review sessions starting Dec. 20. The meetings evaluated how well members followed directives from above, including participation in political study sessions and compliance with neighborhood watch protocols.

Officials repeatedly instructed attendees to “keenly watch for behavior that goes against socialist lifestyles.”

“They kept emphasizing that we must raise each other’s awareness and immediately report non-socialist behavior so the enemies’ schemes don’t take root in people’s lives,” the source said.

Grim of course, but there is a flavour of old school totalitarian measures about this. It's a long way from facial recognition or China's social credit system.

And yet...

The UK pandemic debacle was merely one reminder that it is possible to encourage natural informers to indulge themselves when confected virtue is on offer. It's as well to be politically vigilant.

Which of course we aren't.

The wrong electricity in the line

Elon Musk’s XAI datacenter generating extra electricity illegally, regulator rules

A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee.

xAI has been fighting for a year and a half over truck-sized gas turbines the company had parked near its Colossus 1 and 2 facilities, arguing to local authorities that the electricity-generating turbines were exempt from requirements for air quality permits.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared on Thursday that the generators were not exempt. In its ruling, the agency revised the policies around gas turbines, saying that operating the machines still requires air permits even if they are used on a portable or temporary basis, as had been the case.

There is a strong flavour of "Get Musk" about this, especially as it's the EPA sniffing out the wrong electricity in the line.

Chopped Off

Scientists Warn Sun Could Vaporise Earth—Why This Matters to Life as We Know

TTE

Miliband’s wife set to lose battle to stop new £5m flats

Ed Miliband’s wife and the actor Benedict Cumberbatch are set to fail in their attempt to prevent a new residential development from being built close to their north London homes...

Other residents highlighted the inclusion of external heat pumps, warning that they could generate persistent noise. One neighbour, Ruth Liebling, said the equipment would cause “constant noise pollution to nearby properties”.

Last year, Miliband’s own department said research it commissioned found that noise complaints from heat pumps were not common and that heat pumps were largely thought to be quiet.


It's not that we should make the mistake of assuming this was Ed Miliband's protest, but perhaps it still allows us to refer to him as TTE, or Two Tier Ed. 

Yet maybe Mad Ed is still preferable. That's modern political life - so many appropriate names but politically 'Mr Miliband' just doesn't hit the mark.

UK Snow Bomb Warning Horror

UK snow bomb hitting sooner than expected in Beast from the East warning

The next bout of snowfall in the UK is set to arrive sooner than expected, with flurries predicted to start as early as next week. A significant snowfall, dubbed a ' snow bomb', has been forecast for Wednesday, 21st January by a leading forecaster from British Weather Services.

I wonder when snow bombs were invented? For example, did Charles Dickens know anything of snow bombs as he wrote A Christmas Carol? Apparently not.

On consulting Google Ngram Viewer, we discover without even the faintest flicker of surprise that references to snow bombs became more common as heavy snowfalls became less prevalent.

Search for lost mind called off

Sacked Robert Jenrick was 'consumed by personal ambition' and has 'actually lost his mind'

Former Tory colleagues of Robert Jenrick tonight blasted his defection to Reform and said he appeared to have ‘lost his mind’.

Conservatives in Westminster and Mr Jenrick’s Newark constituency – who were left stunned by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s decision to sack him - expressed their disappointment at his secret scheme to join Nigel Farage’s rival party.

Some said Mr Jenrick was ‘consumed by personal ambition’ rather than by loyalty to his former political allies.

Former colleagues say Robert Jenrick was 'consumed by personal ambition', a common political malady with which they must be intimately familiar.

Lost minds aren't uncommon either.