Bishop of London Richard Chartres condemned the way today’s ‘fortunate generation’ of retirees are soaking up tax- payers’ money.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2340670/Anger-bishop-tells-baby-boomer-Senior-church-cleric-dubbed-divisive-unfair-wrong-comments.html#ixzz2W5OxjtdY
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OAP-UK COMMENT:-
AS a Baby Boomer himself, the Bishop of London must surely recall the austerity - the hardships - of the 1950s? Or was he shielded from such things by accident of birth and never used a bomb site as a playground? Or sat in a primary school class of more than forty kids? Come into the real world Your Grace. You're bang out of order! We Baby Boomers helped to re-build this nation post war. And even The Bible says you reap what you sow! That's what we Baby Boomers are doing today ... we're harvesting our rightful entitlements, for all our hard work over 50 years and more. It's the politicians and ill-iinformed academics who've turned Britain into the mess it's in today ... not we Baby Boomers!
Thursday, 13 June 2013
Monday, 10 June 2013
A TWO TIER STATE PENSION?
Iain Duncan Smith ~ just one of the 'strip wealthier pensioners' brigade
AT THE END of my post titled "Europe's Poor Relations" I suggested that the recent threats by high
ranking political figures to strip “wealthier” UK pensioners of their bus
passes, winter fuel allowances, TV licences and free eye tests, was an attempt
to divide and rule. By creating a ‘them and us’ culture within the pensioner
community, the politicians appear to be hoping that we’ll be left squabbling
among ourselves. That, in turn, would prevent us uniting under a common objective
and realising our full potential as an election-winning voting bloc.
Sadly, this politically
driven, divide-and-rule ploy doesn’t end with the bus pass/winter fuel
allowance/TV licence/eye test issue. On the contrary, the recently announced
flat-rate state pension proposed for April 2017 “at the earliest” can also be
seen to have divide-and-rule at its core. In fact, the proposals, as they
stand, threaten the creation of an even more divisive ‘them and us’ … ‘haves
and have nots’ … culture within the post-2017 UK pensioner community.
Here are the ‘flat-rate
pension’ proposals in simple English: only new pensioners will be eligible, so existing pensioners and anyone who
qualifies for a state pension before 2017 will continue to be paid under the
present system. This can be topped up with pension credit and other means
tested benefits where circumstances demand. In other words, tthose
of us who are already drawing a state pension by the end of 2016 will continue
to do so under the proposed changes, but those retiring from 2017 onwards will
be paid the equivalent of £144 per week in today’s money.
In the Long
Run
Rowena Crawford at The
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) goes further. She said that the Government’s
proposals for a flat rate £144 a week state pension from 2017, “imply a cut in
pension entitlements for most people in the long run. The main effect will be
to reduce pensions for the vast majority of people, while increasing the rights
for some particular groups: most notably the self-employed.”
Ms Crawford then went-on to
say that the proposals were, “a welcome simplification. There will be a fairly
complex pattern of winners and losers from the reform in the short-term, but the
main effect, in the long run, will be to reduce pensions for the vast majority
of people.”
So, according to a very
highly placed and respected spokeswoman, the 2017 flat-rate pension proposals
will eventually amount to a cut in pension for the vast majority. She actually
uses the phrase “in the long run” twice which, in plain English, translates to
“as today’s pensioners die off (that’s you and me folks) so the flat-rate
pension becomes the norm”. Here I must refer back to another point I made in
my "Europe's Poor Relations" article, namely: when expressed as a percentage
of a nation’s average weekly wage, UK pensioners are already paid one of the
LOWEST state pensions in the EU. That, in turn, raises one simple question. Are
the powers that be suggesting we should be at the very bottom of the state pension pile
beyond 2017?
Political
Inertia
Some might call it
crying over spilt milk, but the fact remains that the immediate post World War
II governments should have seen, and acted upon, what any self-respecting
anthropologist could have predicted for Britain from the 2010s onwards. But
they didn’t. Consequently all of the surviving
members of the Post War Bulge … the original Baby Boomer generation … are arriving
at retirement age at the same time, and they’re being blamed for the mess
successive post war governments have caused through lack of vision and
forethought. Indeed, it’s ironic to think that married couples were actively
encouraged by the government of the time to have babies as soon as World War II
ended, in an effort to restore the UK population to its pre-war levels. Hence
the Post War Bulge … the Baby Boomers.
Clearly the damage was
done by political inertia more than sixty years ago and, regrettably, that’s all
water under the bridge. However, our life styles have changed dramatically since
the Post War austerity of the 1950s, so there’s still time to remedy the
situation and, in doing so, provide all UK pensioners with a decent single-tier
state pension that places us near the top of the EU pensions league, instead of
at or close to the bottom.
Solution?
So, how might that be
achieved? Simples! Suspend or scrap
altogether our bloated, and largely discredited, Overseas Aid hand-outs and use
the savings to put our own house in order FIRST … i.e. pensions, NHS,
education, infrastructure, law and order, etc … before trying to assist other
nation states with their problems. After
all, every penny frittered away in Overseas Aid has its origins in the UK taxpayers’
pockets!
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
BALLS AT IT AGAIN !
NOT satisfied with threatening to withdraw the Winter Fuel Allowance from "wealthier" pensioners, earlier this week, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls (pictured) has now implied that a Labour government would also withdraw free TV licences from the top five per cent of "wealthier" UK pensioners.
My pensions income amounts to less than £10,000 pa, so I'm not likely to be targeted on the WFA or TV licence threats. However, once again, I find myself asking: will this TV licence plan prove to be the tip of the iceberg? Would it be the first step towards the complete withdrawal of free TV licences for ALL of Britain's oldest pensioners? Most important of all, how does he propose to impliment such a move ... through a blanket means testing of EVERY pensioner in the land?
Clearly, Balls is hoping, here, to deepen the culture of "haves" and "have nots" among Britain's pensioners. And that's called divide and rule. But, whatever our feelings on the issue, before we start saying it's fair to deprive the richest UK pensioners of these benefits, we MUST demand an assurance that this kind of move ... by any government ... would not mark the first stage of the wholesale axing of such benefits or entitlements.
Monday, 3 June 2013
BALLS THREAT TO FUEL ALLOWANCE
Brrrrrrr or should that be Grrrrrr?
ED Balls threatens a Labour policy to withdraw the Winter Fuel Allowance from all pensioners with an income of more than £42,000 pa (Mirror on-line June 3).
Point 1) ... that's ripe coming from one of the major players in the Blair-Brown govt's 'spend, spend, spend and to hell with the consequences' regime, that helped to get us into the economic mess we're in today!
Point 2) ... how does he propose to enforce such a move? A blanket means test for all pensioners?
Point 3) ... but will it end there at £42,000 pa? Or would this be just a first step to the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Allowance altogether? Those of us who have a lot less than £42K coming-in need a clear undertaking from Balls & Co that our WFA is safe!
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