NEVER before has a policy shake-up triggered so many dire warnings of impending disaster, yet no one seems brave enough to oppose it.

I’m talking about the Government’s pensions revolution, which – in just ten weeks’ time – will unleash glorious new freedoms for millions of older people with tasty savings.

From April, anyone over 55 can turn their private pensions in cash – ending the “patronising view that pensioners can’t be trusted with their own pension pots”, George Osborne said.

They will no longer have to lock their money away in hugely-unpopular annuities, receiving an annual sum for the rest of their lives.

The announcement, in last year’s Budget, was hugely popular, because annuities are offering less and less to pensioners in this era of ultra-low interest rates and rising life expectancy.

Two million people are expected to exploit the new rules, cashing in a whopping £6m in just the first four months – although no one really knows.

But, as the days tick away to the revolution, the warnings grow louder that it is a reckless gamble – both for individual pensioners and for the nation’s fragile finances.

Recently, the charity Age UK predicted that old folk will run out of cash by the age of 75, by wildly underestimating how many years their savings would last.

That fear was echoed by a Channel 4 documentary, which suggested people typically live five to eight years longer than they expect.

It carried alarming footage of marketing companies who – completely unregulated – have set up websites making false offers of lucrative investments in foreign parking bays and forest-felling.

Such inducements to the foolish, but suddenly wealthy, laid bare the Government’s failure to put in the “free and impartial advice” it offered to everybody.

The experience in Australia suggests many will blow a chunk of their savings on holidays and cars – perhaps a Lamborghini, as pensions minister Steve Webb unwisely suggested.

So what, you may say – it’s their money? Well, no, because pension pots are built up with generous tax relief, so this is also money the state has set aside for retirements.

Worse, if pensioners then fall on hard times, they will expect the state and struggling younger generations to bail them out – but not until current ministers are long gone.

And what about the people who still want to do the level-headed thing and buy an annuity? As numbers fall, so will annuity rates – so they will lose out.

Not much has united Labour’s Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) and Liberal Democrat Ian Swales (Redcar) these past five, troubled years. However, both criticised the change. Mr Swales worried about “scams” and ignorance about pensions, while Mr Blenkinsop highlighted the potential for a £3bn tax-avoidance racket.

Yet the Pensions Bill cleared the Commons unopposed and Age UK – despite its “they’ll run out of cash” warning - declared: “We welcome people having more flexibility in how to use their pension savings."

On Channel Four, Mr Webb admitted that “some people will lose out, some people will make bad choices”, but breezily concluded: “The vast bulk will be set free”.

But is it the sort of freedom we gave to the banks to do what they liked – because we know how that ended up?