At age 70 in 2015, I shall receive a Treasury pension amounting to €9,429 and an NI pension reduced to shreds from €11,895 to €4,642, all figures being per annum.

For its pension-reducing exercise the NI department will use a figure of €12,572 in lieu of €9,429 in its calculation. It will add the €4,642 to the €12,572 and subtract €1,666 giving €15,548.

This figure of €15,548 is then pitted against a capping of €11,895. Since €15,548 is obviously more than the capping, no increase in NI pension will be awarded.

For the uninitiated, this €1,666, referred to as an ignored portion (from the treasury pension) has been building up since 2008. Initially, the ignored portion was €466 in 2008, increased by €200 in 2009, by nil in 2010 and by €200 annually in each of the years 2011 to 2015.

Since the trend is that this €1,666 will be increasing at the rate of €200 per annum I shall receive my first installment of €147 in 2034 at the age of 89.

I will break even in 2070 at the venerable age of 125 years, the last installment being one of €106.

Who does Joseph Muscat think he is kidding with this €200 per annum?

All civil servants started receiving an annual increase of 2.5 per cent annually year on year, i.e. in the manner that compound interest is calculated.

The aggregate for the five years 2012 to 2016 is an increase of 13.1 per cent on high salaries due to their being corrected between 2007 and 2010. This year I will be getting an increase of 58 cents per week – the price of a tin of peas.

There is certainly a gigantic discrepancy between €30 per annum for a pensioned ex-civil servant and a rise of some €600 per annum for a serving one.

We have millionaires in our Parliament ‘defending’ the poor and downtrodden.