Wishing you all a happy New Year

Sending very best wishes to all AMP members and their famlies for a happy, healthy and peaceful 2026 and beyond.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Wishing all our members and their families a very merry Christmas, and a happy, healthy New Year and beyond.

Image by Eak K. from Pixabay

Jodrell Bank is 80 years old!

JODRELL Bank Observatory in Cheshire is celebrating its 80th birthday!

Part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, the observatory was established in 1945 by radio astronomer Bernard Lovell, and has played an important role in the research of all things Space for the past eight decades.

A good opportunity, then, to re-visit a gem from the archives with this piece from the autumn 2019 issue of Mirror Pensioner celebrating former Daily Mirror industrial correspondent, Terry Pattinson, and his visit to Jodrell Bank with the BBC.

Autumn Mirror Pensioner is in the post

The latest Mirror Pensioner is on its way to members. Here’s a taster:

 

🔴 Annual meetings – reports and pix  🔴 Our website powerhouse 🔴 Committee Matters – The Cook Report 🔴 Things were different then 🔴 Donkey serenade 🔴 Campervanning 🔴 Big Band reunion  🔴 Tony Patey mourns the loss of hard news; Fancy a chat?  🔴 Finance and membership data 🔴 Sad roll-call of colleagues we have lost 🔴 Obituaries 🔴 End of an era as top golfing pundit retires 🔴 

The rebirth of Fleet Street

THE  redoubtable PIERS NICHOLSON, creator and protector of the Fleet St Heritage Project, has announced that a new temporary exhibition will be on display from September 13-21 during Open House Week at the Fleet Street Heritage Wall, at the corner of Fleet Street and Bouverie Street, London, EC4. Preparations for the installation are pictured.

For nearly 300 years, Fleet Street was dominated by the newspaper industry. Then in 1980 came the era of lawyers and financiers. The past ten years have seen them moving out and developers moving in. In the next three to five years, 20,000 new workers and students will move in, and a number of new small businesses will spring up to serve their everyday needs.

The Heritage Wall has 63 panels giving succinct summaries of the people, their ideas, the places and monuments which celebrate this iconic area of Fleet Street. The original exhibition started with the opening of the Fleet Street Heritage Sundial in 2021, and continued with the production of 98 Heritage Pages on a wide range of historical matters of interest in the area.

Piers added: “We have been given planning permission by the City of London to put up 68 of the panels underneath the sundial – they will be all-weather ceramics. The permission came too late for the Open House, so we have put up a temporary exhibition. We hope be able to complete the permanent exhibition early in the NewYear.” The permanent exhibition will be accessible to people with mobility, eyesight and other limitations. When completed, it will be one of the most inclusive public exhibitions available anywhere.

Robust safeguards needed in Pension Schemes Bill

UNDER new rules in the government’s proposed Pension Schemes Bill, the sponsoring employer – the company – will be allowed to extract surpluses from their defined-benefit pension schemes’ funds and invest them back into their own company/ies. A scheme’s trustees would have to agree the plan.

THE proposal set alarm bells ringing at the Association of Mirror Pensioners – formed in the aftermath of the Maxwell pension-theft scandal – and its officers and committee have been urgently lobbying for safeguards to be applied to the Bill (PSB).

The entire AMP committee has written individually to constituency MPs raising concerns about the PSB, and is urging all members of the MGN Pension Scheme to do the same. MP’s contact details can be found here: https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

Committee member David Tattersall, former Daily Mirror leader writer and past assistant editor on the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, said: “There is no such thing as total safety for our pensions and we can never afford to drop our guard. The clauses in the Pension Schemes Bill relating to surpluses are an open invitation to cash-strapped companies to plunder the savings of their employees. It is quite shocking that political memories are so short.”

The PSB has had its second reading but will enter the committee stage next month. Public Bill Committees accept evidence from the public and interested parties, and a submission from the AMP will be taken into account by the Committee of MPs when it examines the Bill, line by line, from beginning to end, in September.

The AMP sent a 3-page letter calling for support from its three Patrons: House of Lords – Lord Austin of Dudley; House of Commons – Christine Jardine MP; Scottish Parliament – Rona Mackay MSP.

Copies of the letter have also been sent to:
Torsten Bell MP, Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury) and Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Helen Whateley MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Liz Kendall MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

In addition, as a courtesy the AMP has also written to Reach CEO Piers North. The independent chair of the MGN Pension Scheme’s trustees, Quentin Woodley, has also been appraised of the AMP’s actions to date.

AMP life vice-president, veteran journalist Tom Brown, said: “We don’t need long memories to remember our shock and anguish when Robert Maxwell ripped off our pension fund. The sense of being victims of such an arrogant outrage still lives with those of us who experienced it.
“The ill-advised Pension Schemes Bill would legalise the ability of employers to plough surplus DB pension scheme funds into their own companies – the very thing that Maxwell did illegally.
“We are campaigning to make sure we won’t face such an ordeal again, and that other pensioners will be greater protected in the future. We currently have a stable pension fund, and trustees we can trust – but our experience makes us feel we cannot take our future for granted, and we also have a duty to help protect other pensioners.”

In an impact assessment on the proposed changes, the Dept of Work and Pensions admitted: “If schemes choose to modify their rules to enable surplus extraction, this adds an indirect cost to members in terms of the increased likelihood of members not receiving their pension benefits in full.”

Opposition was voiced by the Association of British Insurers: “There is disagreement among experts about the benchmark used to measure whether a scheme is deemed extractable. DB scheme members will want confidence that this [extraction] will only happen once the core purpose of the scheme – to pay members their pensions – is met. “We maintain that the safest funding threshold for members, before surplus is extracted, is buyout levels.”

Other opponents to the relaxation of the rules on surplus include the National Pensioners’ Convention (https://www.npcuk.org/) which stated: “It is astonishing that the government would risk the pensions of millions. Defined Benefit schemes should be protected.

“The NPC believes the regulatory reforms introduced following the Maxwell-Mirror pension scheme raid should be enough to provide protection for today’s DB Schemes. Any loosening of regulations puts schemes at risk from unscrupulous people – and there are many of them out there.”

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) which is “the public body that protects workplace pensions in the UK”, has issued advice and guidance for trustees in relation to the PSB, including this, which clearly illustrates the TPR is well aware of possible pitfalls:
“…As a trustee you will have to agree to the release [surplus extraction]. We expect you to work collaboratively with your scheme sponsor. At the same time, we would expect scheme sponsors not to put trustees under any undue pressure including, for example, aiming to replace trustee board members with the sole aim of the new trustee board being able to agree a release.”

How is that guidance to be enforced?

Members of the MGN Pension Scheme have their own personal axes to grind, but there is surely also concern for pension schemes facing an intimidating employer.

Patron Lord Austin of Dudley said he fully understood the AMP’s concerns, and has written to Liz Kendall (Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) to ask her to take the AMP’s views into account and consider what she can to do to address them. He also offered to arrange for her or one of her colleagues to meet the AMP.
Rona Mackay, MSP can’t directly influence the passage of the Bill because she sits in the Scottish Parliament, but said: “I agree with the points you made in the letter and I am similarly concerned about the implications of this proposed Bill. You have my full support in opposing the proposal.”
In support, Laura Trott, MP, said: “I completely understand the anxiety that can arise when members of Defined Benefit schemes feel their future security might be at risk, particularly given the history you’ve outlined. Your points about the need for robust safeguards are well made.
“I will write to the Pensions Minister to raise the issues you’ve flagged.”

AMP chair, Rosemary Cook, said: “I urge all MGN Pension Scheme members to write to their MP about this Bill. While we are grateful for the steady stewardship of the trustee board and the MGN Pension Scheme in recent years, the fall-out following the Maxwell scandal has had a profound and life-long impact on all of us. Nobody can foretell the future, and so we are taking steps to try to protect pensioners from the potential harm the PSB may cause further down the road.”

 

Reading the audience

THIS website’s audience is microscopic when compared with those of media giants such as the BBC, and the UK’s national newspapers’ websites.

But it is the AMP’s window on the world and a vital channel of communication for our members – no need to worry about a paywall here!

While the biggest UK news websites battle it out for viewers/readers, audience engagement fluctuates every month. The latest data for June from Ipsos iris for the top 50 newsbrands in the UK by audience show that, while the BBC is streets ahead with an audience of 40 million, the Daily Mirror is in fifth place in the rankings, just pipping the Daily Mail which is in sixth.

The top five newsbrand audiences in June were: BBC, Guardian, Sun, Independent, Mirror.

In the next tranche in the list, the Mirror’s sister paper the Daily Express had a good month and achieved eighth place. Further down, the Daily Record came in 20th in the top 50, the Daily Star 30th. With thanks to Press Gazette/Ipsos iris/CampaignCreators

Our tribute to Tony Boram

TONY BORAM, our beloved founder, and the “father” of the Association of Mirror Pensioners, has been honoured with a special memorial plaque in the journalists’ church, St Bride’s, in London’s Fleet Street.

It is a unique way of remembering the debt we all owe to Tony, who, in the teeth of fierce opposition, led us to victory in the High Court and saved our pensions, risking his house as collateral in the process.

A CANDLE burns on the Journalists’ Altar in St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street in perpetual memory of journalists in danger or who have died. Also on the altar, there’s a display of commemorative photo plaques to journalists such as Marie Colvin, Jamal Khashoggi, and Lyra McKee, which is rotated regularly.

And now, on the front of the pew just to the left of the entrance into the church, this ebony veneer inscribed plaque for Tony Boram (above) is on permanent display.

Following the dark days of Robert Maxwell’s pensions plunder, Tony was praised by the late Geoffrey Goodman [Daily Mirror industrial and assistant editor], who said he had “a special kind of bravery under fire – his physical courage coping with terrible eye problems, and his moral courage to fight against Maxwell”.

Mirror pensioners are the living beneficiaries of that courage, and St Bride’s, where 400 friends and colleagues packed Tony’s 2004 memorial service, is a fitting place for our small tribute.

Former AMP chair, Deborah Thomas, who first suggested the memorial plaque, said: “It is a simple memorial to an honest, brave, decent and very special man.” The plaque was financed from AMP funds, and committee member Jean Carr oversaw the project in conjunction with James Irving, St Bride’s head of finance and fundraising.

St Bride’s, (above), on one of the most historic sites left in London, is one of the finest of Wren’s churches. Its distinctive wedding-cake spire survived a 1940 German incendiary bomb. The church’s links as a Ministry to Journalism began in 1500, when William Caxton’s apprentice, the wonderfully named Wynkyn de Worde, set up a printing press in the churchyard. The emerging profession of journalism established its national base nearby, around Fleet Street. And St Bride’s remains the spiritual home of all in the news and media.

Its Rector, Alison Joyce, reminds us: “Attacks on press freedom and on the individuals striving to bring us the truth are greater than ever, and our Ministry to Journalism never more important.” (Pix: Paul Duffett; Rosemary Cook)

Big events coming your way in May

Your spring Mirror Pensioner will be hitting the doormats during the first week of May. Twelve fact- and feature-packed pages to enjoy – no shrinkflation here!

 

 

And you’ll be able to read all about our 2025 annual meetings on their new dates – AGM London, May 20; annual meeting Glasgow May 28.

WE hope to welcome even more of you to our annual meetings in London and Glasgow now we’ve moved them from gloomy, dark October to bright, sunshiny May. Apart from the bonus of much kinder weather, trustee chairman, Quentin Woodley, will be hot off the press with his report on how our MGN Pension Scheme has performed over the past year. Our annual general meeting in London on May 20 is at Stationers’ Hall, Ave Maria Lane, London EC4M 7DD. The Scottish annual meeting on May 28 is at 55 Douglas Street, Glasgow G2 7NP. Both meetings are at 11am for 11.30 start.