Furlough is ending.

[Workingman]

Cue the back biting and spiteful remarks.

Boomers! Triple-lockers who got free education, full work, cheap housing, lording it over the workers on their fat pensions while they destroy the lives of the younger generations with all this debt.

There is not need for this and it is dangerous.

Boomers didn't bring on the pandemic and those who have benefited most from furlough will be the younger generations who were in work when it kicked in. Pensioners didn't get furloughed.

It was a necessary scheme brought in to try to save the jobs of many of those in work. Whether it was operated in the right way and at the right level is debatable, but it was there to try to help, and the debt it has created will have to be paid back somehow and by someone. Except for the tax evaders and avoiders we will all be chipping in, including us pensioners. We will do it by paying VAT on the goods and services we buy, spending money in shops, cafes and restaurants, buying clothes, heating and lighting our homes, and so on.

The way some people bang on you would think that pensioners get everything free and that they never paid in a penny for their 'free' spending money.

[medsec222]

Pensioners have paid in all their lives through national insurance and the pension we get is not that great. I don't like that it is two tiered now and also a lot of women fall short of even the basic rate. I don't think pensioners get anything much for free, perhaps a bus pass, with many don't use, and the fact that many of us now own our own homes is often levelled as a criticism, despite the fact that we didn't have the holidays, cars, x-boxes, etc which the youth of today consider essential requirements. Their choice of course.

I should imagine that a lot of the boomers will be helping their offspring through turbulent times so that they can get a foot on the ladder, which is a lot more than most boomers got. My parents gave their all but there wasn't that much to give and I suspect this was the case for the majority of boomers.

[Suff]

Germany extended their Furlough scheme to the end of 2021. If you watch the currency closely, it was about that time, when the UK confirmed that it would be ending the scheme, that the £ started to rise.

The markets don't think that long term furlough is a good idea.

Also what you don't see, about Germany, is that the Government went after all the companies they had paid out aid to and checked if they had spent it. If the companies had been thrifty and agreed rent deals with landlords and been very frugal to get by, the government demanded the aid back. If you had just spent it, then that was OK.

I don't listen to all this back biting. A whole load of those on furlough are about to lose their jobs. It was always going to happen and it will be the fault of x-y-z. It is a consequence of an uncontrolled pandemic which threatens to destroy the entire world economy. But x-y and z will be all to blame when the jobs go.

[Workingman]

I don't give fig about how Germany is doing things or NZ or the EU or the US or Tuvalu.

I do give a very big, massive, huge fig that the UK has turned into one of the nastiest, selfish and most entitled nations on Earth. We have seen it, and are still seeing it, with Brexit, the lockdown, social distancing, face masks, anti-vaccines, visits to the beach, raves - the list goes on. It is all "Me", "My view", "Nobody else matters".

It is too easy to blame it on social media or the main stream media when the people doing it are acting from a position of a lack of knowledge and / or biased thinking and closed minds. These people make outrageous and provocative statements, but if they are challenged those challengers, no matter how well mannered or correct, are "(multiple expletives deleted)" and will be sorted.

I know that they are mostly keyboard warriors and would most likely collapse in a shaking heap if anyone said "Boo!" to them, but nonetheless it is frightening that their thought processes and words exist.

[Kaz]

Pensioners have paid in all their lives through national insurance and the pension we get is not that great. I don't like that it is two tiered now and also a lot of women fall short of even the basic rate. I don't think pensioners get anything much for free, perhaps a bus pass, with many don't use, and the fact that many of us now own our own homes is often levelled as a criticism, despite the fact that we didn't have the holidays, cars, x-boxes, etc which the youth of today consider essential requirements. Their choice of course.
.

This, absolutely!! Not to mention the fact that those of us women born in the late 1950's have had to swallow a huge hike in our pension age, from 60 to 66. I would get a lot of use out of a bus pass, but that doesn't kick in until the SPA at 66

[cruiser2]

As I have already said, I have had an electrician and a plumber to do some work recently. Both have been working full time during the lockdown.

Also had a new garage door fitted last week. Ordered just before lockdown but have had to wait for it to be delivered.
It seems to be the big firms which are having problems with the furlough and keeping employees in work.

[Suff]

I don't give fig about how Germany is doing things or NZ or the EU or the US or Tuvalu.

I do give a very big, massive, huge fig that the UK has turned into one of the nastiest, selfish and most entitled nations on Earth. We have seen it, and are still seeing it, with Brexit, the lockdown, social distancing, face masks, anti-vaccines, visits to the beach, raves - the list goes on. It is all "Me", "My view", "Nobody else matters".

It is too easy to blame it on social media or the main stream media when the people doing it are acting from a position of a lack of knowledge and / or biased thinking and closed minds. These people make outrageous and provocative statements, but if they are challenged those challengers, no matter how well mannered or correct, are "(multiple expletives deleted)" and will be sorted.

I know that they are mostly keyboard warriors and would most likely collapse in a shaking heap if anyone said "Boo!" to them, but nonetheless it is frightening that their thought processes and words exist.

Well, in my sad experience, the nastiest, most selfish and most entitled are those who are ranting and raving about how the UK "has" to do this and "has" to do that to save jobs and "has" to bow down to BLM and "has" to be inclusive and "has" to accept immigrants.

The only thing they are totally silent about is how much they will "have" to pay for it! Because they don't want to pay for it. They want someone "else" to pay for it.

I care what other countries are doing because it has an immediate material effect on me and my pay and my job. I am currently paid in €. If the UK were to pass legislation to extend furlough for another year, raise punishing taxes and drop interest rates to negative numbers, my remuneration would go up in relative terms. I'd rather "pay" to see the UK recover as quickly as possible and, as you know, whilst all those furloughed workers were getting their 80% pay and a home stay holiday to boot, I was getting paid nothing.

To quote #1 son, "You can find Sympathy in the dictionary, right between Shit and Syphilis".

[Workingman]

All very interesting but all very irrelevant to the issue at had and that is that there is a large cohort of under thirty somethings in the UK laying the blame for all their ills at the door of pensioners.

Apparently our extravagant lifestyles have stolen their future.

We had massive families to keep the child benefits rolling in.
We had full employment?!
We demanded and got humongous pay rises.
Most of us got free university education.
There was no inflation
Interest rates were unbelievably high
Houses were as cheap as chips
So was fuel
We created the three day week
And on and on and on they go.

They fervently believe all of the above, and more, and in doing so they are building up a hatred of the older generations. Fortunately many of us have succumbed to Covid so the cost of the pensions pot has reduced! Take a look and you will see that last sentiment, or similar, is doing the rounds in the UK. Anybody trying to offer a different view to the popular narrative gets body slammed - and hard.

[Suff]

Rather a lot of snowflakes.....

I won't see my pension until 67, at today's rate. It will be a base pension.
I paid a mortgage at 12.5% and considered myself lucky that it had dropped so much.
I wound up in the Army due to no jobs because the 70's killed all the jobs in my city
The 26% inflation from 1976 killed most of those jobs
I came out of the Army to 50% unemployment in FIFE
Yes my college was funded by grant, but I had to go into Employment Training when I got out because there were no jobs.
Yes I got onto the low rung of the ladder as the ex council houses were resold. But that only happens ONCE. Before Maggie sold them all off, people didn't have the money to buy homes. I remember people saving to get a deposit, no chance of 110% mortgages. My first mortgage was on Mrs S' wage alone. My second mortgage they only allowed us 70%, only my wage and forced us to take a top up loan to do the purchase.
I remember sitting in the dark with a paraffin lamp for light because the power was off.

But history has been re-written.

like this...

[Workingman]

Another thing they forget is that my "boomer" generation, the one before it, and to some extent the one following, dragged this country out of the desolation left by the war. We created the safe and comfortable country (for most) they were born and brought up in. We invented / developed the technology and systems they use every hour of every day that make their lives so easy by comparison with ours.

There were many bumps in the road we travelled but we just kept on going and now we are all sharing in this, their first real bump. We didn't cause the pandemic or the bumpy ride we are on, it just happened. They will not be able to blame us for the next bump and nor will they want to be blamed for it..... and there will be another one or maybe a few. They had better get used to them because they are a fact of life.

I just read an interesting suggestion to help them out. The government is about to put £2bn into "Kickstart" a training scheme for those leaving education and the suggestion is that at the same time it should, temporarily at least, reduce the retirement age to 60 - 62 to free up some jobs in the market.