Pensions: a well-informed, impartial man quietly explains.

Anyone who is worried about their pension, or that of anyone they know, in an independent Scotland owes it to themselves (and, frankly, to all the rest of us) to set aside the time to download, save and listen to this (alternative link here). The speaker is Neil Walsh, who’s the Pensions Officer of the Prospect trade union. Prospect is "the union for professionals". Its members are engineers, scientists, managers and specialists in areas as diverse as agriculture, defence, energy, environment, heritage, shipbuilding, telecoms and transport. Neil Walsh knows his stuff. You can find on YouTube clips of him speaking to members of his union on developments in relation to civil service pension reform, their pensions and pension entitlements.

This link though is to a recording of a tele-conference that he conducted for the union’s members, dealing specifically and at some length (it's around an hour) with the implications for pensions of a Yes vote in the referendum. Prospect is a UK-wide union and is entirely neutral on the referendum question. It has no stance, no position to argue or defend. What you’ll hear in the recording, then, is an independent expert with no axe to ground calmly and rationally addressing all the issues from the perspective of the 140,000 members of his union.

You'll do well if you hear a clearer, more reasonable, more informative or more balanced assessment of anything between now and September 18th. If you are worried about pensions, listen to what he says, please, as soon as you can. Or download the clip, or bookmark this page, and listen to it later.

I'll be blunt: you'll have failed the rest of us if you vote without doing so.