Vergil Berger
Pensioners' lunch
Friday 14 May 2010
The couple of pensioners' lunches in London that I attended were indeed pleasant occasions and it is sad that the peanuts to which Michael Reupke eloquently referred are being withheld, or rather abruptly abolished [● No more pensioners’ lunches - Tom Glocer]. But surely the more important issue for most pensioners is not the lunch, but the pensions themselves. The lack of reasonable annual increases, more or less in line with inflation, for those who toiled over many years to transform the news agency which I joined half a century ago from an impoverished struggler into a company now able to pay its leaders millions each year is disgraceful. Yes, of course such increases would incur a modest dip into Thomson Reuters profits, especially now with the Pension Fund's income hard hit by external factors far beyond its control. But they are feasible if those now at the top would give due recognition to the very hard labour of those who made their current position possible. Or should we just resign ourselves to saying: "Why did we bother?"
Vergil Berger
Vergil Berger
Doris and the trolley
Sunday 27 December 2009
Pleasant to note Peter Mosley's honourable mention of the 85 Fleet Street tea trolley (Haunts - London: 85). I am sure he would endorse this tribute to the incomparable Doris who steered that vehicle through the second and fourth floor editorials during much of the 1960s. I spent only five in total of my 34 Reuter years in London (and two of those tucked away in a management post outside 85) but the always cheerful arrival of Doris was a daily highlight of my editorial stints on the fourth floor between foreign postings. She was diminutive for a Jamaican (or perhaps she hailed from Barbados, I cannot remember for sure), pretty, but above all vivacious and humorous. In terms of gastronomy, I usually held the contents of her trolley in low esteem. But, like some colleagues who also failed to relish the food and tea she served, I always dutifully lined up just to savour her wit. Though she was probably younger than many of us, her jokes were often flavoured with motherly concern. If someone looked unwell, or merely showed the effects of a long break in the Cogers, she noticed and did her best to make the sufferer smile. A great lady...
Vergil Berger
Vergil Berger
