British Pensions in Australia

The International Consortium’s [ICBP] current and future activities

The few lead up weeks to Christmas time is usually a quiet period from the point of view of our activities. This is because in this season many people are focused on things other than their pensions. John Markham and Tony Bockman however have been working away at 2 key campaign issues;-

1. To develop a strategy for our continuing international campaign in 2012, primarily directed to the UK where we need to encourage a better understanding of our cause to interest the many thousands of retirees who, we are told, wish to leave the UK to join their families abroad, particularly in countries like Australia and Canada. However they are generally fettered in their decision in this regard by the U K Government’s current discriminatory frozen pension policy.
2. To establish a new website for the International Consortium of British Pensioners to super-cede the current ICBP website, www.pension-parity-uk.com. In particular this new website is to be directed at these UK based retirees to help persuade them to show an interest in our cause and to sign the petition which requires the support of 100,000 signatories to have any chance of achieving a HoC debate on the issue. [See below]

A teleconference is planned for some time in the next few weeks to be held with other members of the ICBP to establish our 2012 strategies and to agree an expense budget for those strategies.

Later in December with John’s, and I would expect Champollion’s involvement, an article was published in the IFA Magazine, and at December’s end in the Expat Telegraph, headed “Government tackles frozen pensions”.   This article can be easily accessed by googling on www.telegraph.co.uk and searching for, “Government tackles frozen pensions”. The benefit of this article is that it opens up the question we have previously skirted around concerning our team discussing this issue with the UK Government. We have been hinting at these meetings for several months but careful not to generate too much discussion while the UK has to cope with difficult times as they struggle to develop a workable 2012/3 budget for presentation and debate in the coming weeks of 2012. The UK’s budget’s implementation date is 6^th April 2012.

We also know that the UK basic pension will most likely increase by 5.2% from $102.15/week to £107.45/week in the UK’s 2012/13 tax year. This annual indexing adjustment under present pension policy rules is, of course, denied us in Australia, Canada, Thailand, South Africa and most Caribbean countries etc and it is for this extra retirement income, to which we are unfairly denied, that we are strongly campaigning.

John Markham’s and Champollion’s continued success with our issue’s publicity during past years are evident in the many articles which can be found at the Telegraph’s special website http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/campaigns/frozenpensions/ . You are advised to visit this site regularly to keep abreast of any new articles as they are published. Spread this message please among your British friends and any-one who has worked in the UK. Encourage them to contact us at BPiA our own website www.bpia.org.au , by phone via 1300 308 353 or email bpia@people.net.au .

Finally, if you have not done so thus far, please lodge your vote for the UK Parliamentary petition at http://bit.ly/BritPensions . Moreover do all that you can please to persuade your close family, friends and relatives, especially those back in the UK, to similarly visit this “Parliament petition” site and lodge their support for us by signing this petition. We have currently only achieved 14,000 signatures. Consequently much more activity on this issue needs to be persuaded and encouraged.

BPiA Activities

During the past month some of our team have been very busy answering many phone calls each day and attending to various emails following the publication of a short, 150 word letter, in Centrelink’s quarterly magazine News for Seniors, Issue 86 2011. This letter was negotiated with the then Human Services Minister, Tanya Plibersek. The primary purpose of the letter was to remove the doubts we have experienced hearing from too many pensioners that any extra pension we might achieve for them, with a win in our campaign for indexed UK pensions here, will be all lost because they believe wrongly that the Australian Government reduces their Australian pension $ for $. This view is so incorrect and we are hoping that our letter will help overcome this misunderstanding and more people will be encouraged to join BPiA to help our campaign’s funding to get us all some extra retirement income from Britain, to which we strongly believe we should all be entitled.

There are about 252,000 pensioners in Australia with a UK part or full pension, and yet only approximately 11,000 have joined BPiA so far to help fund the fight. Why, we ask, are the other 241,000 still sitting back allowing BPiA members alone to provide the funds to fight this battle for us all? How can we encourage many more of the 241,000 to become involved in this campaign for UK pension and social justice?

Watching the Maggie Thatcher film recently I was struck by a comment attributed to her, “Right will prevail over wrong”. This is precisely what we are fighting to prove. This comment of hers, together with Edmund Burke’s famous saying that “Evil will triumph only if good men do nothing” are worth reflecting on.  Both inspire me, as well as all the BPiA volunteer workers, to maintain the fight in which we are engaged. Moreover I hope they will inspire our growing membership too, helping them to encourage many more pensioners to read our letter in News for Seniors so as to join BPiA to assist us fund and win our worthwhile battle against the British Government.

In the coming year 2012 we can look forward to a couple of events from which we might hopefully leverage more publicity and support. These events include the visit of the Prince of Wales and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. We should see how we can use both events to generate more interest in our campaign and publicise our message to many more British expats to persuade them to become involved in this fight for some additional and justified retirement income.

Since the end of November 2011 our membership enquiries improved significantly. In December alone we recruited a further 41 members most of whom joined in the last week. Then in the first 2 weeks of January another 83 have already taken-up membership, reflecting the effectiveness of good publicity mainly resulting from the letter in News for Seniors

On the subject of membership, in the past few weeks we have had some direct deposits paid into our bank account which we are unable to credit to either existing or prospective ‘New’ members due to lack of identifying information e.g. names, addresses, email addresses etc. Consequently if they are from New Members we are unable to send them a receipt or add them to our membership data base. It is also extremely important for existing members to include their 4 digit BPiA Member number at the very start of the reference line when paying by Direct Deposit or Internet Transfer. This number is ALWAYS shown on all Renewal Requests we mail out.

There are so far 2 recent “direct deposit” entries which we are unable to credit to members;-

1. a deposit from the Bank of Queensland,  transferred on 29^th Dec 2011
2. a deposit which just says “bpia membership,  transferred on 30 Dec 2011

If you believe either of these are your payments for membership, please advise me by email to jimtilley@bigpond.com , advising your bank, the amount paid, date paid, and name and address etc.

Finally just prior to Christmas we received a letter from Senator The Hon Kate Lundy, Parliamentary Secretary to the PM, Julia Gillard and Senator for the ACT, which has opened-up a more direct line of communication with the PM. The letter follows a meeting with the Senator by our ACT coordinators, Rob Cason and Ailsa Turrell, for which we are most appreciative. We will be taking advantage of this new, more direct line of communication to the PM in future months.

Thank you;-

Jim Tilley,

Hon Chairman;         Woronora Heights, NSW                                                   13^th January 2012

BPiA, a founder member of ICBP, is a non-profit volunteer association of expatriate British Pensioners intent        on forcing the UK Government to index the UK pensions for all expats living abroad. See www.bpia.org.au

Postal address – PO Box 474, Edgecliff, NSW 2027; Phone 1300 308 353; Email bpia@people.net.au

The International Consortium’s [ICBP] current and future activities

John Markham, ICBP Director, spent much of October in the UK meeting with various dignitaries in both Houses of Parliament and working with our PR team at Champollion to help publicise our message in various areas of the UK. A good article was published in the Yorkshire Post in October, with further articles to be publicised soon in the West Midlands, followed by London. There has also been a good article published in the Weekly Telegraph about the adverse impact on the pensions of Black Minority and Ethnic contributors to the NI pension scheme, one article of which appeared in the last week of November, identifying the interest in our campaign shown by a reputable social policy organisation called Runnymede Trust. This organisation, with the help of BAPA’s Peter Morris, who lives in the UK, publicised their strategy paper, which you may access by visiting the Runnymede Trust’s website

http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/PressReleases/PensionspressreleaseFINAL.pdf

The Runnymede Trust is a well respected social policy research organisation focused on racial equality and race relations. Reading the press release demonstrates they were not impressed with discovering, with some help from one of our team, that the UK’s Black Minority and Ethnic [BME] population are, like us, being discriminated against by the UK’s frozen pension policy for some who worked in the UK. This was a point we were endeavouring to bring to the attention of overseas Commonwealth delegates at CHOGM last month. [Read more on this below]

John also met during October with Lord Shipley, who is supportive of us and he had agreed with our strategy to use the Cabinet Minister we have singled out, to assist us to get the initial change to the unfair pension policy for some currently frozen pensioners. Tony Bockman, en-route to Perth to join me for CHOGM, attended the meeting with Lord Shipley and later went on to Wakefield with John Markham and Champollion’s Annie Bruzzone to meet Dickie Bird and discuss with him our ideas of him as ambassador, what the frozen pension issue is and how he might help us. Dickie Bird is a close friend of Sir Michael Parkinson, another of our 3 ambassadors, who we still have to meet and brief. The third ambassador is Mervyn Kohler from AGEUK a well respected British seniors’ organisation with whom John Markham met during his October visit to the UK.

John met with Champollion and other organisations to help build-up the publicity campaign in the UK so as to increase signatures on the Parliamentary petition   http://bit.ly/BritPensions for which we are trying to reach 100,000 signatures, to be able then to demand a debate on the frozen pension subject in the UK’s Parliament. We trust you have already signed this petition and if not please do so ASAP.

Finally to keep abreast of the publicity ICBP, through Champollion is achieving, please regularly visit the Telegraph website www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/campaigns/frozenpensions/

BPiA Activities

Much of October was spent preparing for the trip to Perth for CHOGM. This entailed organising printed papers to hand out at CHOGM, finding a place to meet with some of our members in the West, organising T Shirts [see below] to use at meetings with the public to advertise our cause, finding accommodation in the Perth area at a reasonable cost and seeking access to publicity and to CHOGM venues.

All of this took much time but was worth the effort. One real benefit we achieved was to find a most helpful couple in the Perth area, Mike and Nicky Goodall, who have offered to take on the Perth area coordinators role, allowing our previous Perth coordinator Don Reeves  to take a back seat since he has had health problems which afflict too many of our aging membership. On the next page you will see the T shirt we had made for CHOGM. Moreover if you wish to purchase one, or some of these for yourself and friends, please order them from our Edgecliff office bpia@people.net.au and if we receive orders for more than 50 units we will organise their making, to sell them for $20, which includes postage.  Do not send any money for them yet please, just your intention to order some and the size, Medium, Large or Extra Large.

At CHOGM we opened on the Monday with a meeting at a local club. About 80 members from both BPiA and BAPA attended. There we spoke to a very interested group of members, who later in the week helped us by being at the 2 events at Speakers’ Corner, where we gave short public speeches about the frozen pension issue to the general public. Meanwhile some of our members took it upon themselves to stand at the main railway passage, in Central Perth, distributing our pamphlets and brochures to interested passers by. Tony Bockman and I then attended the Peoples’ Forum for 2 days, which enabled us to meet with several delegates from various parts of the Commonwealth and to have our papers distributed to all CHOGM delegates and media reps. From this we have made contact with key people from the Caribbean and one from Africa. One important person we met was the retired High Court Judge Mr. Michael Kirby who has said he will see if he can help us if I contact him in the New Year. Although we were denied access to the main CHOGM event we felt we did make ourselves known to some useful contacts.

Jim Tilley and Tony Bockman at Speakers’ Corner

We have now started to follow-up with these contacts since leaving Perth. The recent publicity  about BME people in the Weekly Telegraph and by Runnymede Trust has been sent to these contacts to emphasise our claim for fair pension treatment not only for us white British expats but also for many other nationalities. These include those, who have worked in the UK, many of them following WW2, at less attractive jobs helping Britain rebuild and recover after the War, and to whom the courtesy of an indexed pension would help encourage them to leave the UK to retire back to a more warm environment.

This brings us to the issue of net migration, which is currently a sore point in the UK. We believe by indexing the UK pension many of these BME people will find it more acceptable financially to emigrate from the UK thus helping to improve the net migration figures to the benefit of the UK. We are investigating whether to use this as a way of persuading the British Government to move more quickly on indexing our pensions.

The issue of net migration was mentioned at BPiA’s AGM presentation [See our website] which took place at the end of November. Attended by about 70 stalwart members on a foul weather day in Sydney, we took the opportunity among other matters to outline the strategies which will be put to the ICBP committee for discussion by way of a tele-conference hook-up sometime before or soon after New Year.

There is little doubt that much of ICBP’s focus next year will be on promoting our cause in the UK, endeavouring to achieve more signatures from the UK to support the petition which we mentioned earlier in this report. We will also continue to promote our cause as well as the help we provide to many expats and Aussies who have worked in the UK in recent years. This is about the UK pension to which they are probably entitled, when they reach pension age, and how this can be increased by making voluntary contributions and how worthwhile these are, even if the UK pension is not indexed.

Thank you;-

Jim Tilley,

Hon Chairman;         Woronora Heights, NSW                                                               6^h December 2011

BPiA is a non profit Volunteer association of expatriate British Pensioners intent on forcing

The UK Government to index UK pensions for all expats living abroad

PO Box 474, Edgecliff, NSW 2027; Phone 1300 308 353; Email bpia@people.net.auBPiA is a founder member of the International Consortium of British Pensioners (ICBP)

AGM Presentation

BPiA Newsletter No 15 Spring 2011  just click the link to view/download    FAIR PLAY

It can take a little while to load – its a fair sized file, please be patient.

The International Consortium’s [ICBP] current and future activities

John Markham remained in Ottawa this month and with Tony Bockman they are managing the ICBP strategic programme from there. John has been actively briefing the London Working Group during the past few weeks but with summer vacations in Europe during August, not very much has been done on this project recently.

The main item of interest, in the past few weeks, has been the introduction into the UK Parliament of another petition on the subject of the frozen pensions. In the past few days many of our members who have previously signed an earlier ICBP petition will have been sent another invitation to sign this latest version. So please bear with me as I also invite those who have not been asked so far to get involved for we need to apply a maximum effort on this occasion because if we can achieve 100,000 signatures, the British Government claims the matter petitioned will be debated in Parliament. Please therefore ensure you have signed this petition and ask all your relatives and friends, especially those living in the UK, to sign it too.

Rather than repeat the petition which is on the subject of; “END THE UNFAIR OVERSEAS FROZEN PENSION POLICY”, it is recommended that you access it by holding down the CONTROL (Ctrl) Key whilst “left-clicking’ on the website http://bit.ly/BritPensions, follow the prompts and;-

• click on “British Citizen” even if you have taken out Australian citizenship, signing this petition is only open to British citizens.
• and apply your Australian address (include your State name immediately after your Town).             Enter your Australian Post Code where shown.
• Then for Country, find Australia by scrolling up in the listing offered. It works.
• And tick the box agreeing to the terms and conditions. Follow the instructions by entering the security codes in the box shown. This will prevent your message being treated as ‘Spam.”
• Finally you will have to confirm your involvement when you receive back a confirming email.

This latest petition was developed by Peter Morris of BAPA who was asked to prepare it for ICBP. Peter lives in the UK and it required someone living there to set-up the petition. Champollion assisted him in this project. Please take part in this aspect of our campaign and please encourage many others to do the same so we can reach 100,000. We have a year to September 2012 to achieve this number but we hope to reach the 100,000 target long before that.

BPiA Activities

Meanwhile back here in Australia I have continued to achieve some of the issues that needed to be fixed up with regards to our upcoming visit to CHOGM in Perth during late October. We have organised Tony Bockman’s, (ICBP Chairman) travel arrangements and I have booked for him to stay with myself at FreoMews apartments at 111 South Terrace, Fremantle for the week, October 23^rd-October 29^th.

We are hoping to organise a meeting of BPiA members in WA and their friends, if they are interested in joining BPiA. We hope to organise this meeting to be held probably on the Monday October 24^th, somewhere close to the city of Perth, if we can find a suitable site. Any suggestions of suitable locations would be very welcome please. But meanwhile one of our members has tentatively asked if we might use the facilities at his retirement village at City Beach, which I see is some 10 kms from the City. We will let our WA members know for sure where we decide to hold this, hoped for, meeting before I arrive in Fremantle.

This week I spent a day in Parliament House Canberra at the invitation of my local Federal member, Craig Kelly [Hughes]. This visit provided me the opportunity to speak face to face with an adviser of Tanya Plibersek, Federal Minister for Human Services, with whom I had met earlier in the month in Sydney. On that earlier occasion I asked the Minister for some time to speak with her team, when I was to be in Canberra. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss how we might achieve publicity for BPiA in Centrelink’s “News for Seniors”, quarterly magazine.

The meeting was organised as requested and from the meeting we are very hopeful that we will receive some useful publicity to encourage additional membership from the over 200,000 UK pensioners retired here. These are among the thousands who’ve ignored our efforts to encourage them to join BPiA, mainly because many of them mistakenly fear losing their Aussie pension or having all the additional money that we are trying to achieve for them from the UK, being taken off their Aussie pension. This mistaken view held by so many UK pensioners here, who receive a part Aussie pension too, is of course incorrect, however we are hoping that an article from Centrelink in the summer edition of “News for Seniors” will confirm our correct advice to pensioners on this issue. As a result we hope more will join us to help fund the final push for success in our campaign for justice.

I also spoke with advisers from the Foreign Affairs Minister’s Department [DFAT], requesting them to advise Kevin Rudd, ahead of CHOGM, to make sure the issue of our frozen pensions is discussed at least in the meetings’ margins, i.e. when the many delegates are socialising in the margins of these events. The same message was provided, in conversation and followed up with a comprehensive email, to an adviser for the Prime Minister. Also when Julia Gillard is in Perth for CHOGM I requested an audience with her, if at all possible, when the P.M. opens the Peoples’ Forum, at which Tony Bockman, Derrick Prance [BAPA] and I will be present.

The Opposition Deputy Leader Julie Bishop’s staff have also been approached and asked to pass on our campaign message. We ask this of her for Julie Bishop is an experienced MP who is Federal member for Curtin, on which Fremantle abuts. She may also be present at CHOGM and could perhaps provide us with some help during our presence in her Federal constituency. Other Federal MPs in the Perth area to be approached include Stephen Smith Minister for Defence and Gary Gray, Federal MP for Brand.

Other activities undertaken to help publicise the pension issue, which we would like to have discussed in the margins, have included writing a letter to almost every one of the 53 Commonwealth Heads of Government who will attend CHOGM. So having been briefed on the issue, by our letter, they will be able to engage in discussion on the issue when it is hopefully raised in the margins.

We expect to have some time for displaying banners with our various messages and I would be very much in debt to our members if they can think of and send me their suggestions for messages to be displayed on the banners, which we expect to show the world during events at CHOGM Perth. We are investigating the offer to speak at Peoples Corner during the Festival in Perth. Help in Perth from our many members in WA will be very much appreciated at CHOGM. Some of you, thank you, have already indicated your interest in providing us with assistance at this event. I will be more specific as to what resources we will need as our planning progresses in the next few weeks. I am also approaching WA State member John Hyde for help if available in this regard.

Last month we mentioned the EDM 1895 but with many in UK’s Parliament now on vacation there has been little activity on this front and in fact EDM 1895 has gained only 92 signatures to date and mostly from Labour members.

Most of BPiA’s recent activities have focused on implementing ICBP’s strategy, but we continue to recruit more members, 33 more in August, although we lost about the same number for various reasons, so our membership at end August numbered 10,603.

Finally, many thanks are warranted to those of our members who continue to give us their financial support. Meanwhile for the members who may have allowed their memberships to lapse, we have attached a Renewal Form and ask you to reconsider please, renewing your annual subscriptions. As you can see from the contents of this report, much time and effort is still being expended by BPiA’s committee solely IN YOUR INTEREST and your financial support is pivotal to the eventual success of our efforts.

Yours sincerely

Jim Tilley,

Hon Chairman;         Woronora Heights, NSW                                  19^th September 2011

BPiA is a non profit Volunteer association of expatriate British Pensioners intent on forcing

The UK Government to index UK pensions for all expats living abroad

PO Box 474, Edgecliff, NSW 2027; Phone 1300 308 353; Email bpia@people.net.auBPiA is a founder member of the International Consortium of British Pensioners (ICBP)

The International Consortium’s [ICBP] current and future activities

John Markham is now back in Ottawa and managing with Tony Bockman the ICBP strategic programme from there. He has been actively briefing the London Working Group but with summer vacations on in Europe at this time not very much is being done just now.

Since I reported in early July, John has advised us of his activities in London following the Pensioners Conference in Blackpool. He was invited to attend the TUC Pensions Committee with just 24 hours notice and found his address to them well received. He achieved their agreement to help get our message across to the British general public. He tells too of various meetings with several MPs, most of whom are supportive of our cause, like the Plaid Cymru MPs Elfyn Llwyd and Hywel Williams. John also met with the supportive Bob Russell [Colchester] and Roger Gale [MP for Thanet], who, being one of the longest serving MPs, has the ear of some useful members of the current Cabinet. He advised John that, when the time is, in his opinion, right, he will touch on our situation with some of the more senior Cabinet Ministers with whom he speaks.

John met too with Jonathon Djanogly, Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice who has agreed to write formally to DWP for their advice on withdrawing the need for reciprocal agreements. This requirement has been a major block to us winning our campaign. Finally Stephen Buckby, CEO of Champollion our PR consultants, met with John and Stephen will raise the issue of our presence at CHOGM with the contacts he has at the Commonwealth Office.

BPiA Activities

Meanwhile back here in Australia I have been working at achieving some of the issues that need to be sorted with regards to our upcoming visit to CHOGM in Perth during late October. I am working with Derrick Prance of BAPA who lives in Perth and has also booked into the Peoples’ Forum where it is our intention to try to achieve the Forum’s agreement to present a motion to the Commonwealth Foreign Minsters. This is to express our disagreement at the way in which UK pension recipients in some [7] Commonwealth countries have their pensions indexed, while in the majority, [47] of the Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia British pension recipients’ UK pensions are not indexed. Your committee has also invited Tony Bockman, ICBP’s Chairman to be at CHOGM at BPiA’s expense. We believe Tony’s presence will strengthen our team, for we have about 3000 delegates to potentially approach and 1000 International media operatives.

For many years we have had our members suggest we find a champion to help promote our cause. Last month John Markham advised us that Sir Michael Parkinson and ‘Dickie’ Bird, the famous cricket umpire have indicated to us that they are prepared to join with Mervyn Kohler of AGEUK to form a team of ambassadors to raise public awareness of the frozen pension issue”. John is now preparing with Champollion a tasking paper to present to this team of 3 ambassadors but with John back in Canada and Sir Michael unavailable at this time, the discussion of the tasking paper will have to wait awhile. Meanwhile I am advised Sir Michael will be in Australia in October. If he is staying in Sydney, which he generally visits, having, I believe, a home here and if Sir Michael is available before I travel to CHOGM in Perth, then we have suggested and it has been agreed as an excellent idea, that some of BPiA’s committee may be able to organise a meeting with him. This is being negotiated as I write.

Last month we spent much of the report to comment of the EDM 1895. With many in Parliament now on vacation there has been little activity on this front and in fact EDM 1895 has gained only 84 signatures, the greater majority coming from Labour MPs. The Conservatives, who before the General election were supportive, have now hidden behind the official department statement that the UK Government is following the legal outcome of the ECHR case and anyway they cannot afford to pay us now. We of course claim otherwise and will continue to pursue them to treat us fairly and with the equality and dignity which was declared by the Commonwealth nations who agreed to use all their powers to foster, as per the CHOGM agreements from Singapore 1971 and Harare 1991. It is these declarations to which we will be drawing delegates’ attention when we are at the Peoples’ Forum in Perth CHOGM towards the end of October.

We’ve been advised by several of our members that they have had returned official denials from the UK MPs to whom they had written and several of them have followed up by sending my suggested response to those UK MP’s.  We thank these members for making that effort, whether this approach has had any good effect, only time will tell. Meanwhile we will be following up on our campaign to achieve more EDM signatures when Parliament reconvenes later this year.

Earlier this month most of our committee attended the Menzies Lecture at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. This lecture was given by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Rt. Hon Iain Duncan Smith [IDS]. Following his lecture we had the opportunity, during refreshments, to speak openly with him face to face. His reply to us was that “something is being done [about our complaint] back in the UK”. This was interesting for I had not ventured to him that I knew of the Working Group which was sometimes in action in London since April, as we have reported previously.

After refreshments were over I was invited with about 18 other people to attend a dinner with Iain Duncan Smith. The large table seated 20 and the attendees included John Howard, Alexander Downer and Kevin Andrews, the Opposition’s Shadow Minister for Families Housing and Human Services, equivalent to Labour’s Jenny Macklin. This proved to be a very interesting end to the evening’s events and during the dinner we were all invited to explain to the other attendees why we were there and what we were trying to achieve. At the conclusion of the evening John Howard opined to Iain Duncan Smith, that from his own experience BPiA would not give up and IDS accepted that view.

I subsequently wrote to IDS, with whom I left a copy of “Broken Faith”, the Book of Heroes that we had presented to the UK Pension Minister Steve Webb just prior to Christmas outside No10 Downing Street. I have had no response from IDS but hope for a  reply sometime soon; however I guess he will now be rather busy with the current violence and looting taking place in the UK, for his lecture spent some time outlining the deteriorating social order that he fore-saw developing in the UK. It should be no surprise then to those of us who attended the lecture to read and see TV film of the recent events across the major UK cities.

Most of BPiA’s recent activities have focused on implementing ICBP’s strategy, but we continue to recruit more members, 36 more in July, although we lost about the same number for various reasons, so our membership at end July numbered 10603. Help in Perth from our many members in WA will be very much appreciated at CHOGM. Some of you, thank you, have already indicated your interest in providing us with assistance at this event. I will be more specific as to what resources we will need as our planning progresses in the next few weeks.

Finally, many thanks are warranted to our members who continue to give us their financial support. Meanwhile for the members who may have allowed their memberships to lapse, we have attached a Renewal Form and ask you to reconsider please, renewing your annual subscriptions. As you can see from the contents of this report, much is still being done IN YOUR INTEREST and your financial support is pivotal to the eventual success of our efforts.

Yours sincerely

Jim Tilley,

Hon Chairman;         Woronora Heights, NSW                                       11^th August 2011

BPiA is a non profit Volunteer association of expatriate British Pensioners intent on forcing

The UK Government to index UK pensions for all expats living abroad

PO Box 474, Edgecliff, NSW 2027; Phone 1300 308 353; Email bpia@people.net.auBPiA is a founder member of the International Consortium of British Pensioners (ICBP)