The budget proposals to free up pension pots. Right or wrong?

And if you don't have a very long life after retirement you will not get back what you paid in and neither will your heirs. Whereas if you can choose your own investment and should die prematurely, at least your heirs could benefit from your thrift.

Once again, it depends on the individual's situation and the amount of money involved. Tax will be paid on the money, bar the first 25%.
Tax is also paid on any investment made with the money. Whilst annuities do not always look attractive, one has to be very careful with choosing alternatives. Also, the numbers have to add up for the rest of your, hopefully, long life. X

just my own anecdote which suggests an annuity is not necessarily wrong for everyone.
my private pension pot was around £100k
I took the £25k tax free bit at 60
the remainder is in an annuity ( I did play around with drawdown initially on the advice of an IFA which was around 2007/8 and cost me because returns were so bad and should never have been recommended for someone with such a small pot)
so I opted for a compromise - guaranteed return in part and investment based for the other part - this gives me currently around £4K income to supplement my state pension
now to get back the £70k in my annuity I have to live till I am about 80 (not beyond the realms of [possibility)and I have been drawing annuity for about 5 years now
if I had taken the £70k as well as the tax free I would certainly have worried about where to put it - property - too risky, stock and shares - riskier still, savings - appalling interest rates and ISA allowances not big enough to hold it all.
so - from my own experience and at my age I would welcome a bit of risk but like the regular annuity payment which is small but regular and I don't have to worry about it (other than the fact it is not index linked)
once the hysteria has died down I can see very few future OAPs being reckless with their money unless they don't believe they will live long enough to make an annuity sensible.

I would have preferred this option when we bought out annuities but that is because I think I am financially savvy. Not so sure everyone is quite so well informed and when I think about the people who have huge credit card debts, who have mortgages they can't afford etc I do worry that they may run out of funds very quickly and then expect the rest of us to top them up.

I think there will be a big improvement in the sort of financial products available to pensioners and that the market may well get very competitive which can only be a good thing.

At first I thought it would encourage irresponsibility, but then I thought, if the government are going to make people work up to seventy, why should n't they blow the lot on a Lamborghini and enjoy their remaining bit of freedom?

It sounds good in theory and I would have welcomed the money in my AVC pot rather than the meagre pittance I am receiving from it.

However, if the money is spent, responsibly or not, would that mean more people will be needing welfare top-ups to the state pension if they do not invest in something to bring an income in retirement?

In Australia people have been able to 'lift' their pensions as lump sums which has led to some financial firms offering quite suspect schemes which have resulted in disaster and extreme hardship.