JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Loyalty counts for nothing if you want cheaper insurance cover

The biggest predator in town is American fund manager Saba Capital, led by financier Boaz Weinstein. It has built stakes in seven trusts in the hope ultimately of taking them over – Baillie Gifford funds Edinburgh Worldwide, Keystone Positive Change and US Growth; Janus Henderson trusts European Smaller Companies and Opportunities; CQS Natural Resources Growth & Income; and Herald.

They are an embarrassment, run by the unions for the good of their members. A travesty.

‘I have not made a claim for at least 25 years and have no penalty points. The only thing that has changed is that I am a year older.’

Second, it makes hypocrites of all those Labour ministers who in opposition backed ‘Waspi’ (women against state pension inequality) to the hilt, only now to give them the proverbial two fingers.

Like any smart consumer, Tony shopped around for alternative cover – and found a policy with Ageas costing a tad over £600.

Happy New Year, readers. A new PM by this time next year? Don’t rule it out.

Then this month it dealt a hammer blow to 3.6 million women now in their mid-60s and early-70s by refusing to pay compensation for being given insufficient time to prepare for a sharp increase in their state pension age.

For Tony, there was no 15 per cent decrease, no 1.1 per cent price drop or 4 per cent increase. The AA wanted him to pay £1,079 to renew – 43 per cent more than last year and triple the £309 he paid three years ago.

The hurdle for Saba is a low one. All it needs to start forcing through change is a simple majority of voting shareholders in individual trusts to say yes to the new directors.

Averages, however, don’t tell the entire story, as reader Tony Anderson points out.

Not someone to be scorned, Tony will also refuse to renew his breakdown cover next year, ending a 40-year relationship with the AA. ‘You would have thought that loyalty would count for something,’ he says, ‘but it doesn’t. AA thought I would pay whatever it asked for. Well, I’ve called its bluff.’

Early next year, shareholders in each of these trusts will be asked to vote for the appointment of Saba-supporting directors to the board. If voted on, these newbies will then push for Saba to take over the existing investment contract before seeking to merge the seven trusts. Other trusts – it has disclosable stakes in 24 – could also be targeted.

Their company structure means investors can attend annual general meetings (I’ve been to a few in my time) and ask questions of the board and managers (I’ve asked a few). They also get the right to vote. All very democratic.

Understandably, Tony, a retired managing director of a forklift truck company, isn’t best pleased.

Driven to distraction: Average quoted car premiums have risen by 117 per cent – that is, more than doubled – since October 2013

Instead, I jumped on a bike to Waterloo where I caught an SWR train that stopped at every conceivable station possible between London and my home town of Wokingham. I stewed like one of my late mum’s hot pots.

Yet like all listed companies, investment trusts can attract the attention of predators, especially when their share prices are cheap. And boy, many investment trusts are as cheap as chips, with share prices sitting at deep discounts to the value of their underlying assets.

Time may be up for bungling Starmer

Victimising the elderly has become this Government’s hallmark. First it cruelly removed the winter fuel payment from more than 10 million pensioners.

The sad fact is that our railways are not fit for purpose, either in private or public hands.

Last weekend was no different, with massive gaps in services running from Reading to Paddington. When a train finally did turn up, most people couldn’t get on it. Those who did felt like human sardines.

Revolt is in the air with a Commons vote on Waspi compensation likely in the New Year. Though the Government will win it, the backlash from Labour MPs will be stronger than over winter fuel.

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