Once upon a time there was a West London borough controlled by a Labour Council...

And it wasn't great.  It was OK, but not great.  Then there were a couple of scandals.  Then a local council election in which the local Labour Party were so complacent they didn't bother campaigning.  Now there is a West London borough controlled by a Conservative Council.  I could moan for hours about how the Tories got in, but that's not the purpose of this post.  The purpose of this post is to relay the sad news that our lovely pension fund administrators have lost their contract to a nasty, big outsourcing company.  The Tories have been outsourcing pretty much everything since they came into power.  Rubbish and recyling collections are now run by a big company.  Mother is up in arms because they aren't collecting the recycling properly.  All the 'leisure' stuff has been sold off.  Now it's our poor old pension fund administrators.  No longer will I be able to phone up and speak to a team of people who've been working on our pension for years.  Now we'll have to put up with a call centre in Sheffield.  It won't be the same.  I understand that cost is important but I'm almost sure the service won't be as good.  Pensions are important and the people who enquire about them are often vulnerable, easily confused pensioners.  Wanting to move services out of Central London to save on costs is a great idea in theory.  In practice it leads to confusion and staff who have no personal connection to the work they are doing.  That, however, is the way of the world.