JEFF PRESTRIDGE: The Labor attack on pensions is not over yet. This is why I think they will be attacked AGAIN in the near future

The reverberations from Wednesday’s budget continue – and they are not good.

As much as I hate to say this, it appears the country is heading for the buffers – plagued by anemic economic growth, burdened by a bloated and inefficient public sector, and undermined by a creaking corporate sector now under siege by a tsunami of new labor taxes and expensive regulations.

Maybe I’m too gloomy and I’ll be proven wrong (it won’t be the first time). But even the country’s leading economic think tanks are now questioning the merits of Rachel Reeves’ spending and borrowing, which is partly paid for by a £40 billion tax burden on businesses and households.

After Budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned that the country faced a ‘decade of higher taxes’, adding that ‘the state has grown and seems unlikely to shrink again anytime soon’.

Chillingly, it was said that the Chancellor would likely have to go back to households and businesses for yet more tax revenue.

For companies already reeling from the £25bn national insurance tax, that would mean lower profits, higher prices and a reduction in their workforce. For working households, this would result in moderate wage increases (at least if their jobs still exist) and even more taxes on their savings and investments. One step closer to financial dystopia.

With my personal finance hat on, my biggest concern after Wednesday’s sobering Budget is that Ms Reeves is in serious danger of destroying the country’s savings culture.

Last Wednesday’s anti-austerity measures – a fearsome inheritance tax (IHT) on pensions and a rise in capital gains tax on investment profits – were terrible enough in themselves. But given the IFS view that the Chancellor’s appetite for tax revenue is far from satisfied, it is clear that our pensions (private, not public) will come under fire again in the near future.

Edward Hughes, a 71-year-old retired shoemaker from Ware in Hertfordshire, speaks for many. He has been a saver all his life, but fears that the tendency of chancellors (past and present) to repeatedly dip into our pensions is hugely damaging.

On Friday he told me, “As retirement savers, we put money into a long-term savings vehicle that we won’t have access to until we’re in our mid-50s. The least we deserve in return for such a long-term commitment is the government’s assurance that the tax treatment of our pension will not change, especially not to plug the holes in public finances.’

Edward believes that the IHT raid on inherited pensions – on top of all the other attacks dating back to Gordon Brown’s £5bn-a-year tax raid on company pensions in 1997 – has now made private pensions ‘unattractive to current and future savers’.

He fears that the result of this growing antipathy will be that more and more people will turn to the state in old age and “build up a huge social problem for the future.”

Edward’s view is more financially dystopian than mine, but he makes an important point that the Chancellor should take into account. Tinkering with pensions is not in the best interest of anyone, including the public purse.

Increases in rail fares above inflation were hidden away in documents published with the budget

Rates are going up, but rail is still a failure

Wednesday’s announcement of above-inflation rail fare increases – tucked away in documents published with the budget – will leave many commuters depressed.

The 4.6 percent price increase on many tickets, effective from March, would be acceptable if there were indications of an improvement in the reliability and quality of train services. But I don’t see any, despite the generous rewards recently given to railway workers.

SWR and GWR, the providers of the services I rely on for my daily commute, continually frustrate me.

Late trains and canceled trains (especially on Monday mornings) are the norm. But the pain they cause – including the ear damage from the constant on-board reminders that anyone traveling without a ticket will face a fine and criminal charges – pales into insignificance compared to the pain regularly inflicted on me this weekend by Arriva’s CrossCountry.

I use the Bournemouth to Manchester service to travel to watch my football team, WBA, play. Yet it is like playing the lottery: winning (a timely service) is a rarity.

My last trip was a nightmare. Despite being warned when booking tickets that the train would be busy with Bournemouth supporters going to their team’s match against Aston Villa, CrossCountry had a service with four instead of eight coaches. Why? It meant that when it went on in Reading it was packed to the rafters, with people in the aisles. My partner refused to leave and went home.

Somehow I managed to get into my reserved seat, but only after getting someone out. It was truly a horrible and claustrophobic journey.

To add to the misery, the return train arrived more than 30 minutes late. Travel to the Third World at premium prices. My claim for compensation has been recognized, but not yet paid.

PayPal is second rate in terms of scams

Online scammers don’t care about controversial budgets. Their only goal is to rip us off.

Doug Brodie, founder of London-based Chancery Lane Retirement Income Planning, has dealt with his fair share of scams – and always gives me tips on them. Most are fake corporate bonds that offer ridiculously high interest rates.

But the latest was in response to his online order for postage from Royal Mail so he could send an envelope to the US.

Everything, he says, went smoothly: he paid online and arranged for the letter to be collected. But later that day he received an email, purportedly from Royal Mail, saying the delivery was ‘pending’ and a £23 fee was due. A link took him to a PayPal page where he was asked to make the payment. Doug has been in the scam game too long to be fooled by such a ruse (the fact that the PayPal payment request cost $23 – and not £23 as in the email – was a giveaway).

As a good citizen and fearing that others would fall for the ruse, he tried to report the fraud to PayPal. But that wasn’t possible without providing the username of the PayPal account he was directed to. Understandably, the fraudster had not provided that detail.

“It’s so frustrating,” Doug said. “PayPal must crack down on scammers – and listen to those who have received scam requests.”

PayPal said Friday that it takes payment security “very seriously.” Any recipient of a fake email should send it to: phishing@paypal.uk. Royal Mail said it would never send an email to a customer requesting payment. So if you receive such a request, it is a scam.