Fiction collides with harsh financial fact in "Corrie"

Coronation Street fans watched aghast as the scheming Tracy Barlow stove in the head of her lover, Charlie Stubbs, with an improbably convenient heavy ornament just after Christmas. The soap bitch from hell had already set the scene by convincing neighbours that she was a battered spouse, and now she wrought her deadly revenge for Charlie's infidelity with hairdresser Maria in supposed self-defence.

Not content with dispatching the hapless Charlie, Toxic Tracy is now set on ruining her parents, Ken and Deirdre Barlow. The murdering minx has dismissed the lawyer she was allocated under the legal aid system, and signed up with a hotshot brief who specialises in defending abused spouses. But who is to pick up the tab?

It seems Ken and Deirdre have volunteered to stump up the money to pay the lawyer, forfeiting their home and their retirement security in the process, and no doubt ending up in the workhouse, if those institutions still exist in the fictional Weatherfield. However, if I was in the accounts department at the firm of legal eagles now handling Tracy's case, I would be asking for the money upfront. Because none of the figures stack up!

The Barlows have pledged to pay the legal fees, which could be as much as £150,000, by "cashing in Deirdre's pension" and "taking out an equity release scheme".

Deirdre's pension isn't worth unlocking!

Dreary Deirdre works in a clerical role in the planning department of the local council - although she seems not to work a great deal, as she seems to be on screen at all hours of day and night. Assuming the murderess's mother does in fact have a full-time job, and we just happen to catch her on-screen on days off or on the sick, she is probably a member of the council's final salary pension scheme.

However, we know Deirdre is in a low-paid clerical job and cannot have many "qualifying years" in the scheme, because, aside from the time she spent in jail as the "Weatherfield One" in 1998, she has also had sundry non-pensioned jobs during her residence in "the Street", working for, among others, Mike Baldwin, as a caretaker of his bedsits, and for Alf Roberts and Dev Alahan in the corner shop.

09 March 2007 © Moneyextra.com

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