Expert View: Your retirement plan, courtesy of 'Dad's Army'

Nor can they opt for rental property. Warden Brown has seen to that

Watching re-runs of Dad's Army over the Christmas break I was struck by what I believe is the essence of its enduring appeal: within its characters the writers have managed to capture almost every type of personality there is.

Captain Mainwaring is the bluffing and blustering middle manager, seeking safety in rank and order, never admitting he is wrong, and with a chip on his shoulder about his public school sergeant - Wilson, the classic charming waster - over whom he is always trying to assert his authority. Corporal Jones, the survivor of Sudan, is the man in a panic, telling everyone else not to, while Private Fraser is the eternal pessimist seeing doom and disaster everywhere.

In an idle moment I see Cpt Mainwaring as the Government, Sgt Wilson as the Royal Family, Cpl Jones as the media, and Pte Fraser as the bond market economists. The vicar and the verger, well-meaning but with little or no grasp of the real world, nevertheless exert control over Mainwaring through their ownership of the church hall, and I see in them much of the role of the legal profession, binding government sometimes for good and sometimes not.

Of the others, Pike and Godfrey represent youth and age respectively and, I suspect, many readers would equate the spiv Pte Walker with the stock markets.

Thus in Dad's Army we have all four of Thomas Carlyle's estates - the church (vicar and verger), the nobility (Wilson), the government (Mainwaring), and the press (Jones). However, we also have the emergence of a fifth estate, health and safety, as represented by the officious and bullying Warden Hodges. He is the ultimate jobs-worth, not only applying the rules to the letter, but also revelling in the power it gives him over others.

The tendency of the governing classes to impose their views on the country is well documented, but the H&S approach extends well beyond issues such as smoking. In financial markets the safety-first approach has meant that almost all pension funds are being pushed to invest heavily in bonds and corporate bonds on the grounds they are "less risky" than equities.

This is great for the H&S officer advising the fund, not so good for the individual invested in the fund or the company sponsoring it. For with lower risk goes lower return, and lower returns mean pension fund "black holes". (It is also questionable whether they are really less risky, but that's another discussion altogether.)

Currently, UK gilts yield slightly over 4 per cent, so it would take 18 years to double your money. If - and obviously it's a big if - you could get 10 per cent from equities it would take only seven years. Even an 8 per cent return would mean nine years. Is it a risk-reward trade-off you are prepared to make? It doesn't matter really as the choice has been made for you by the H&S officers. You will take a lower risk and that's that. The fact that you are also "underfunded" is now your problem, not theirs: save more or work longer.

The obvious response here, of course, is that companies close down their defined benefit pension schemes and replace them with defined contribution, shifting the risk of their balance sheets on to that of the individual, although still investing in low- risk/low-return assets.

It is highly unlikely that self-invested pensions would take such an asset allocation, preferring instead to follow economist Charles Kindleberger's rule of thumb that your bond weighting percentage should match your age in years.

And I'm sure many would have opted for higher-yielding rental property with the added benefit of capital growth, but they can't have that either. Warden Brown has seen to that. Put that light out!

Mark Tinker is a director of Execution Stockbrokers. Mark.Tinker@Executionlimited.com