No wish to be boring here, but, since my last scoop:
Naoto Kan has resigned.
A bloke called Koizumi has admitted that he too, did not pay his pension premiums for 6 years. (At that point, paying was not mandatory)
I don't want to jump on the hysterical bandwagon the Japanese press seems to be generating about this. It seems clear that, for self-employed workers (including politicians), the rules on payment and non-payment are far too complicated for most people to understand. If nothing else, this whole debacle will presumably result in these rules being simplified.
67% of people in a recent poll said that they did not trust the currently elected politicians to pass bills reforming the pension system.
Posted by Gary at May 17, 2004 06:39 PM