Given the chequered past of pensions in the UK, it is astonishing that any of us have retirement savings at all.

Long-term pension savers have seen their share of scandals, incompetence, fraud and theft. Private pensions, created in a blaze of publicity, descended into a multibillion-pound mis-selling scandal. Robert Maxwell’s plundering of his employees’ pension funds heralded a new low. Rules rushed in after the fat fraudster’s death to protect staff against thieving employers have failed to prevent subsequent, albeit smaller, fiddles.

When times were good on the investment markets, employers took long holidays from paying into their pensions; as soon as we hit a downturn, they raced to close their pensions. Then, of course, there was Equitable Life.

Now, we have a government which seems wedded to sending out a message to millions of savers that their pensions are risky, and they are on their own if it all goes wrong. Around 125,000 workers who thought their pensions were safe have lost their retirement income. The workers think that the Government bears some responsibility for the failure of the pension system. The Parliamentary Ombudsman agrees with them. A select committee of MPs agrees with them. The European Court of Justice agrees with them. This week, a High Court judge agreed with them, finding it “unlawful” and “irrational” that ministers rejected the ombudsman’s findings. The only people who do not agree are John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor.

Is Mr Brown trying to force us to hate pensions? He is obviously not keen on them, as he proved in his first budget in 1997 by launching a £5-billion-a-year raid on retirement savings.

If we don’t save for our retirement, fed up with doing the right thing but losing out anyway, future taxpayers will be lumbered with an astronomical bill to pay for our dotage. That will not matter to Mr Brown. By the time the consequences of our mutual antipathy to pensions make themselves felt, his political career will be a distant memory and we will be ruinously poor.

Your chance to tell British Gas its customer service is hot air

There is often a tension between being a shareholder and being a consumer. The majority of us fall into both categories. Even those of us whose biggest investment decision is looking at our company pension for ten minutes every fifteen years are investors in UK plc. Shareholders in British banks are anticipating bumper profits; as consumers of banking products they may feel aggrieved by high fees and charges, aggressive selling of insurance products and call-centre Muzak.

A classic example of the shareholder versus consumer dilemma emerged this week. While announcing profits of £1.44 billion, the British Gas owner Centrica revealed that its residential arm had made a healthy profit in the second half of the year, reversing a £143 million loss in the first half. The shareholder in you whoops; the consumer seethes. Domestic fuel bills soared by an average of 36 per cent during the year, despite wholesale gas prices plummeting by 50 per cent. British Gas did drop its prices after the recent fall in wholesale prices but, like its competitors, failed to pass on the full cost. It’s similar to the tactic that the banks use over interest rate rises; they are quick to pass on the bad news to customers but reluctant to share the good.

But British Gas’s customers are aggrieved primarily about customer service. We receive a host of gripes about badly behaving companies through our blogs, e-mails and postbag. But one company stands out: British Gas. Sam Laidlaw, the chief executive of Centrica, admitted this week that British Gas has “delivered less than satisfactory customer service”. Many of his customers will agree, but perhaps using more robust language.

Energywatch, the independent gas and energy watchdog, received 31,000 complaints about the company last year, up from 13,000 in 2005. If you have a problem with British Gas, don’t suffer in silence. Phil Bentley, the managing director of British Gas, will be answering your questions about its service on our website at 2pm on Wednesday, March 7. To submit a question in advance, visit our website at www.timesonline.co.uk/money .

The Budget's coming but it's nothing to lose sleep over

The Chancellor’s eleventh, and potentially last, Budget will be on March 21, he announced this week. Ever since he perfected the notion of the Budget stealth tax, accountants have scrutinised every word issued by the Treasury on the big day. Last year there was a palpable sense of disappointment as the Budget hid few sneaky secrets. There is a lot of kudos in being the first to spot the money-grabbing move hidden on page 345, appendix 3, sub-clause D.

This year’s Budget is not widely expected to hold much in the way of stealth nastiness, as it’s the Chancellor’s last turn at the dispatch box. He may even be tempted to throw out a sweetener or two to the electorate, stung by news from Horlicks, the drinks firm, that 5 per cent of women are kept awake at night by the thought of him becoming Prime Minister.

What would you like to see in the Budget? Are you desperate for the abolition of inheritance tax, or an overhaul of the loathed stamp duty rules? Would you be willing to pay green taxes? Let us know at timesonline.co.uk/tax .