TAKING US FOR MUGS?

IF YOU live outside South Devon, England, you probably won't have seen my Torbay Times Pensioners Platform column for November-December 2015, so here it is....

 

 

ONE morning, a few weeks back, as I logged on-line to check my emails, I spotted a pensioner-related article on the BT news feed which made my blood boil. According to the article, the right-wing Taxpayers’ Alliance think tank has called on Prime Minister Cameron’s government to cut pensioner benefits. Sadly there’s nothing new in that kind of demand coming from right, left or centre, but what I then went-on to read plumbed new depths of discrimination against the elderly. In fact, the report contained several quotations that displayed some of the worst examples of ageism I have ever seen in print.

 

For example, Alex Wild, the research director of Taxpayers’ Alliance (pictured above) was quoted as saying that many UK pensioners might “not be around” at the next general election, and apparently he added that other pensioners may forget which government had made the cuts. Mr Wild was further quoted by the BBC as having said that cuts to benefits such as winter fuel payments and free bus passes should be made, “As soon as possible after an election for two reasons. The first [of those reasons] will sound a little bit morbid: some of the people ... won’t be around to vote against you in the next election. So that’s just a practical point, and the other point is they might have forgotten [who made the cuts] by then.”

 courtesy: telegraph.co.uk

Another member of the panel, Dr Liam Fox, the MP for North Somerset (pictured above), was also said to have insisted that any such cuts must be made permanently, in order to help the next generation. He is then reported to have suggested that older people would understand his position on the issue. Oh really Dr Fox? Well, you can count me out for starters, and I dare say a great many of my fellow UK pensioners would say the same.

Unfortunately, it didn’t end there because Dr Fox added, “We have a broken opposition. We have just won a general election and we need now to take the tough decisions we believe are right.”

Then, as if to add injury to insult he said that, in order to fund current pensioner benefits, the State is, “Borrowing from the next generation to spend today”. By all accounts he even tried to justify his viewpoint by comparing this alleged ‘let’s rob Peter to pay Paul’ process to a pyramid selling scheme, adding that such an arrangement is unsustainable and needs to be changed.

“We can’t afford it now, we can’t afford it in the future, why don’t we try to get a longer-term plan put in place so that people can make the adjustments they will need to make for us to be able to get back into balance,” he said.

Firstly, I’m puzzled by Dr Fox’s reference to getting back into balance. In truth, I’ve never been much good at arithmetic, but even I can grasp the fact that, at the end of March this year, the UK’s National Debt stood at £1.56 trillion, and it’s growing by an eye watering £2 billion every week! Bearing that in mind, targeting UK pensioner benefits as a way of helping to reduce our National Debt would, I believe, amount to the saving of a few drops in a huge ocean. Surely a much better place to start would be to scrap the profligate and increasingly discredited Overseas Aid programme that, last year, cost the British taxpayer more than £12 billion?

As for Alex Wild’s suggestion that, by 2020, many of us would have forgotten which political party made cuts to our benefits. Is he trying to take us for mugs? Think again Mr Wild! We may be of advancing years, but most of us would never forget who cynically discriminated against us in such a measly manner.