In very different ways both groups are a good distance from grasping the value of their pension provision in the wider contexts of their lives, the lives of others and a world economy that lurches furiously from sovereign debt  crisis to eye-wateringly small growth forecasts and all-things-gloomy in between.

Ever terrifyingly-prescient, the late J.G Ballard in 1967 said 'our lives are not conducted in linear terms. They are much more quantified; a stream of random events is taking place'. Here in the fag-end of year fraught with anarchy, tragedy and controversy, issues around pensions are anything but linear, and are very much part of a broader conservation still yet to happen.

The Pensions crises (headline grabbing in the public sector, mere footnotes for the private sector) need to be dragged into a much wider public debate about defining the new boundaries of what the individual and the state should provide. Right now, the spotlight moves from one group to the next, all jostling for position in this vision of the near future that nobody can quite yet see.

A slow and painful dismantling of Bevan's vision of free, universal healthcare; a 13% drop in university applications spelling out a new order of access to higher education; automatic enrolment, where private sector workers are enrolled into pension schemes as normal practice. Just three examples of big change that will reshape people's expectations of state, employer and individual responsibility.

Automatic enrolment is at least a band aid (thankfully sans Geldof) to this savings malaise. But without any education on the vitality of pension saving, and getting under the skin of why people don’t save, the same wounds that are draining life out government coffers will open up again and again.

But it isn’t just a gentle hark back to Blair's rhetorical-tourettes of 'education, education, education' to get people taking responsibility for their financial futures. It's the deconstruction and reconstruction of this steady balance of our expectations from the individual, employer and state that we've built up post-Thatcher, unravelling in the face of economic catastrophe.
 
Jimi Piggott, Communications Development Executive, Friends Life