Vocal Voices

... says another group of pensioners who get more in two days "attendance allowance", free food and drink and expenses pondering such things than a pensioner gets in a month.

I have a better idea. Let us cut their number to 150 and have them voted in rather than being where they are by birthright or grace and favour appointments. Let us pay them the average daily rate for a worker on the days they bother to turn up. Let us only subsidise their "canteen" at the same level as those for the average worker, and let every item of their expenses be scrutinised to the nth degree by an independent committee of those on the average wage.

If the country is going to hit pensioners let it hit them all fairly and squarely. And if the retirement age is 67 then let it be for all, including Lords, Ladies and politicians. Oh, and another thing, let us prosecute anybody for a hate crime if they describe a pensioner as being on benefits. We are not. We, most of us, paid into the scheme all our working lives. It is part of the deal we made with the country when we started work and there was no opt-out.

We are one of the largest demographics in society and politicians better not forget that.

If heard they are stopping free tv for over 75 as well still iv had 2years so we shall see
It's disgraceful how much they get in the house of lords per day tho

The state pension is actually not all that munificent, only around £9-£10,000 pa even if you've made full contributions for all your working life. Neither are private pension annuities that great; low interest rates since 2008 have seen to that. The only pensioners getting a decent private pension are those who were lucky enough to be in a defined benefits scheme, such as civil servants or the police.

And don't forget, they're all subject to income tax, so a state pension + a private pension will put you over the threshold to pay.

The only well-off pensioners are those who have received inherited wealth or have been paid eye-wateringly ridiculous salaries for the "day job" such as corporate managers and executives. They're the few, not the many.

So maybe the way forward is means-testing. I'm no fan of means-testing which is overly complex and bureaucratic, but at least it would preserve some perks for the seriously less-well-off pensioners.

Yes! I am no big fan of means-testing, either, but sometimes needs must.

So, once the HoC and HoL payments and expenses packages are brought into line they can then look at pensions.... eh?

Why not use tax codes to approve or knock out the extras for pensioners? Anyone on or just above the baseline get the full package then as they go up through the codes things drop out.

It works with in-work benefits for those on lower pay and there are plenty more of them than there are pensioners.

Means testing does not have to be complex and bureaucratic if they do not want it to be.

I'm fully expecting the pension to be means tested eventually.
Os is right, there aren't many who get rich on the state pension. I have a modest vocational pension, but I'm aware it's a lot more than some people get. I did pay into it for thirty odd years mind you.
Pensioners are the ones most likely to vote (although some students have boasted on line about how easy it is to vote twice ), so it would be a brave politician who starts targeting them.
I don't get this worship of youth and the young. In real life I don't see many young people whinging that their future has been stolen, but there's a lot of it in the papers. And don't get me started on that pudding faced 16 year old climate change activist Greta Thurnberg, who our MP's were prostrating themselves before the other day...

cromwell wrote:And don't get me started on that pudding faced 16 year old climate change activist Greta Thurnberg, who our MP's were prostrating themselves before the other day...

LOL! Well, I quite agree. This, of course, is the person who started by encouraging children to skip school on Fridays. Personally, if I were a home secretary, I'd have had her banned from entering the country as a dangerous radical, but there you go …..

Ship her to China and India to preach her message there.

Many of us oldies have paid our taxes and national insurance for a good many years. Most of us do not have occupational pensions, or not very big ones, and exist mostly on the state pension. Also what should be remembered, is that the older generation once they retire, have no means of increasing their fixed incomes, and the older they get the harder it is for them to manage. I am all for helping the young to get started, but not at the complete expense of the older generation, who get so little anyway. I am not sure how our pensions compare with the rest of the countries in Europe, probably near the bottom of the scale. The wealthy pensioners can always be encouraged to decline the few benefits they are offered, if they choose to do so.

Medsec, I had a quick google of "British state pension worst" and it came back that ours is one of the worst in the developed world.
Ours

To me it is just another example of stirring up things that divide us: Remain / Leave; Fat / Thin; Left / Right; North / South; Young / Old etc.

We are becoming a very divided and quite spiteful nation.

And stop picking on China. It needs all those power stations in order to produce all the crap and tat we buy. If they did not make it somewhere else would. And with 783 million Indians working in call centres, not all of them legit, it too needs power - lots of it. The USA needs lots of coal power for all those eco-friendly Tesla cars it is (not) building and Brazil needs to chop down the Amazon to plant soya for the cows to eat so that we can eat the cows.

Greta might have a pudding face, but she is sort of right... except for bunking off school on Fridays. Come Monday and we would have got a damned good caning for that sort of behaviour. Kids nowadays!