LIES, DAMN LIES, AND...

For those of you who weren't able to see my Pensioners Platform column in the April-May 2015 edition of South Devon's Torbay Times newspaper, here it is in its entirety. By the way, I'm not in the habit of saying "I told you so" but read on:-

 

Benjamin Disraeli (Image courtesy of Pixabay.com)

VICTORIAN Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) is credited by many, including the celebrated American author Mark Twain (1835-1910), as having coined the phrase, “There are three kinds of lies: namely lies, damn lies and statistics”. Around 150 years after Disraeli first used the term, life today seems to be governed – some might say blighted – by statistics that invariably prove to be wrong. And that begs one question; can statistics ever be relied upon to be accurate?

Mark Twain (Image courtesy of Pixabay.com)

As I write this article, we’re being bombarded by statistics relating to the general election on May 7. Indeed, it will be interesting to see if any pre-election statistical prediction gets anywhere near the actual result. Will we be asking, on May 8, why the pollsters got it so wrong? If so, perhaps our next question should be, what’s the point of polls and statistical projections anyway?

Don’t worry, that’s all I’m going to say about the general election in this month’s column because I would like, instead, to share with you, a worrying example of how statistics can be used to mislead and misinform. Let me explain. On Thursday March 26, I was browsing through a copy of that day’s Daily Mail when, on page three, I came across an article titled, “Cheers to retirement!” Harmless enough you might think, but the sub-title made for rather disturbing reading, and I quote: “Typical OAPs take three holidays a year, splash-out £330 a month, go rambling, and put their feet-up with a glass of wine at 6.30pm every day.”

Excuse me? Typical OAPs? I then read deeper into the article to discover that a survey of retirees over the age of sixty had produced results that claimed 94 per cent of those polled “are enjoying their post-work life, while half said they were having more fun than ever before.”

The article then went-on to talk about, “an average disposable income of £330 per month, which allows them to go on three holidays a year, plus two weekends away, and seventeen day trips. The study also showed that most pensioners eat out three times a month, and one in ten do so more than twice a week.”

By the time I had reached that part of the Daily Mail article, I was wondering how “most” or “typical” pensioners could possibly afford that kind of lifestyle? My wife Jenny and I certainly can’t. In fact, I had to read the reference to three holidays a year several times before realising it wasn’t a misprint. Given the deeply discriminatory cost of travel insurance for the Over 60s today, we’ll be lucky to afford one holiday this year. In truth, Jenny and I have no such plans for 2015, because there are things that need sorting-out in our home, so it’s all about prioritising. In fact, the majority of our retired friends and acquaintances are in exactly the same situation. Surely, then, we are far more representative of average UK pensioners than those referred to as “typical” and “most” in the Daily Mail article?

As if I’d not already seen enough I then read a reference to, “one in twenty pensioners taking at least five weekend breaks in Britain every year”. That was when I lost patience and jumped to the end of the article to find-out who had organised the poll. It came as no surprise to discover the survey was commissioned by Senior Railcard, an organisation which runs a rail discount scheme for train companies. Senior Railcard will, of course, have an interest in how we UK pensioners travel throughout the year but, in the light of what I’d read in the article, I was sceptical. Just how reliable were the survey’s results?

My suspicions were soon justified because, on the very next line, I read that Senior Railcard had polled just 1,260 pensioners. Hang-on I thought: how on earth can a poll of a mere 1,260 out of more than ten million UK pensioners be expected to produce an accurate picture? Who were those 1,260 pensioners anyway? Were they a true cross-section of the UK pensioner community? Your guess is as good as mine.

Yet again, it seems, pollsters (statisticians) have taken the circumstances of a tiny sample of people and massaged the results to produce a distorted bigger picture. That’s what Benjamin Disraeli meant when he stated statistics are the biggest lie. And that’s why we should, perhaps, treat all polls with suspicion. In truth, some UK pensioners may be able to afford three holidays a year, but are “most” or “typical” UK pensioners in that fortunate position? I doubt it very much.

 Cheers to Retirement? (Image courtesy of Pixabay.com)

 

IT'S YOUR RIGHT ... USE IT

For those of you who weren't able to see my Pensioners Platform column in the March-April edition of South Devon's Torbay Times newspaper, here it is in its entirety:-

IN A FEW short weeks, we’ll be facing one of the most critical general elections to be held in Britain since the end of World War II. But why is it so critical? Because far too many of the most important people in any election have decided that their crucial role is meaningless. I refer, of course, to us, the voters: the decent, law-abiding majority who live at street level in the real world and not some privileged, cocooned existence many of our politicians have known all their lives. Yes, WE are the most important players in the coming general election, because the overwhelming majority of us have that inalienable, democratic right to cast our vote as we see fit, in a secret ballot.

However, in recent decades, vast numbers of us have not been bothering to vote, and that has resulted in very poor turn-outs which, in turn, have brought unpopular government after unpopular government. To make matters even worse, in the run-up to this May’s general election, the seemingly ubiquitous, self-appointed, public spokesperson Russell Brand has been trying to make a virtue out of not voting, by encouraging others to follow his lead. He claims by not voting he is making a protest. But he is wrong! So wrong, in fact, his ‘don’t vote’ strategy undermines the very fabric of the democratic process. Indeed, if that unravelling of democracy were to gain momentum, it would have the potential to propel us all into the nightmare of an unrepresentative totalitarian government.

So, in response to Brand’s assertions, I would like to put forward the other side of the argument. In short, not voting is not a virtue or a protest. On the contrary, it’s a cop-out and a rejection of a human right. By not voting, you throw away your rights to express your opinion through a secret ballot, and you also throw away your right to complain when a government makes decisions that are against your interests. Far too often, these days, we hear people claiming that they have rights, but how many of them actually vote? And how many of them know the true meaning of democracy?

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:  “Democracy is a system of government in which all the people of a state are involved in making decisions about its affairs, typically by voting to elect representatives to a parliament or similar assembly. The term Democracy originates from the Greek word demokratia which translates as rule of the people.” But how can the people rule, and how can a Democracy exist if vast numbers of the people don’t bother to vote?

Here, then, is an alternative to not voting. If you’re on the electoral role and you want to make a protest on May 7, the only way of doing so effectively is by attending your polling station during voting hours and casting your vote. If you don’t trust any of the individual candidates listed on your voting slip and/or any of those leading their respective political parties in Westminster, say so! Simply spoil your voting slip by scrawling across it “I don’t trust any of you” or any other words of your choice, then fold it, and place it in the ballot box. By doing so, not only will you have exercised your right to vote, but you will also have made a powerful protest, and you’ll be helping to keep democracy alive.

And here’s how. Every vote in every ballot box is counted, and that includes spoilt voting slips. The more spoilt voting slips cast in an election, the louder the protest will be, because the returning officer in every parliamentary constituency is duty-bound by law to state how many spoilt voting slips have been counted. He or she does this when publicly announcing the details of the election’s results. So, if you really don’t have a preferred candidate or political party on May 7, get out and cast your vote anyway, by spoiling it. That voting slip will be counted along with all the others and, if enough voters decide to protest in this fashion, the political powers-that-be will be forced to take notice.

Please don’t listen to those who try to make a virtue out of not voting. They’re wrong! Not voting is not a protest. On the contrary, not voting removes your democratic human right to protest, despite what others might try to tell you.

WHO CARES?

If you live outside south Devon in England, and you were unable to see a copy of the February-March 2015 edition of The Torbay Times, here is my "Pensioners Platform" column in full:-

FOR more than seventy years Westminster politicians from all parties have been sleepwalking towards a demographic nightmare, yet none of them have woken-up to the problems that would eventually confront us all. To make matters even worse, I’m not talking rocket science here, or even unreliable statistics (are they ever otherwise?), but simple arithmetic and the effect the numbers game has on the passage of time.

By the time World War II ended in May 1945, the government of the day was already trumpeting the need for an increase in birth rates to redress the population imbalance caused by wartime mortalities. Five years later, the Baby Boomer generation had more than made-up for that shortfall. However, no serving MP since 1945 appears to have grasped the simple arithmetical fact that those Baby Boomers who survived into the early 2000s would all have arrived at the age of 65 by the end of 2015.

As if to add injury to insult, on Wednesday January 28, 2015, it was announced that the spending on care in England for those of us aged 65 or over had fallen by a fifth in ten years. Yes, twenty per cent! In 2003-4 the official data showed that £1,188 was being spent on every person receiving care aged over 65 and living in England. By 2013-14, once inflation had been taken into account, that figure had fallen to £952 per person.

Before I go any further, let me clarify something: the care of the elderly is the responsibility of local government, not the NHS.  Indeed social care is provided by councils and, at present, it is up to those councils to set the point at which a local resident becomes entitled to care. Most councils set the threshold at ‘substantial’ or ‘critical’ needs, which means only those with the highest care requirements can get help.

And it doesn’t end there because people with assets of more than £23,250 have to pay the full cost of that care, regardless of whether it is in a care home, nursing home or in their own home. In fact, if the care is to be administered outside the person’s own home, that figure may include the value of their property.

In April 2016, though, the system is changing. From then onwards the cost of care will be capped at £72,000 from the age of 65. However, that sum only includes the care element. Approximately £230 per week of the costs charged by the care home will not count towards that cap because such sums will be classed as living costs that people would otherwise have to pay in the community to cover such things as accommodation, food and bills.

But why didn’t the politicians of successive parliaments from 1950 onwards see this sorry state of affairs coming? Was it short-sightedness on their part or ineptitude, or a bit of both? Or was it more a case of they just didn’t care, because their tenure as an MP was only temporary, and they would be either dead or receiving a fat pension at tax-payers’ expense by 2010?  Whatever the answer, we over-65s are now compelled to experience the appalling mess left in the wake of their inaction.

However, I believe there are a couple of straight-forward remedies that, if implemented by the next government, would not only repair our badly damaged care system overnight, but would also breathe new life into the funding of the NHS, mend our pot-holed roads and crumbling schools, and provide new, affordable homes for our grandchildren.

I’ve said this before in the Pensioners Platform column, and I make no apology for stating it again. Firstly, the deeply discriminatory Barnett Formula should be scrapped. It has been in existence since the 1970s, and it places England at a distinct fiscal disadvantage when compared to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Secondly, like it or lump it, Britain is no longer a genuine major player in global affairs. To pretend otherwise is pure folly. We should therefore stop acting like a universal benefactor … cash cow might be a better description … before we too become a Third World nation.

Surely, then, it’s time to, at least, suspend the profligate Overseas Aid programme and put our own house in order. Goodness knows we have an awful lot to put right, before feathering the nests of any more corruption-riddled nation states. When all is said and done, the cash used as overseas aid is UK taxpayer funded. The politicians may not care where the money goes, but we – the people – do!

WE'RE IN THE FIRING LINE !

If you weren't able to read my Pensioners Platform column in the Jan-Feb 2015 edition of the Torbay Times, here it is:-

FIRSTLY I wish you a happy and healthy 2015, but make no mistake about it: in the run-up to the general election on Thursday May 7 this year, we UK pensioners are going to be a prime target for politicians of most persuasions, and some sectors of the media too.  Over the past five years of coalition rule, we’ve been threatened with the withdrawal of our bus passes and our winter fuel allowances, among other benefits. Those threats have invariably come from high-ranking politicians, some of whom have also accused us of being cushioned from the austerity measures put in-place by Prime Minister Cameron’s government. And I predict we’re going to hear a lot more of the same over the next few months.

A SHAMEFUL ARTICLE

In fact, the “let’s bash the pensioners” brigade have been getting-up to their tricks already, and here’s the proof. I found this shameful article on-line at AOL Money in early December, and I reproduce it here, word for word:-

“You’ve probably heard older people bemoaning how ‘everything was better in the old days’ but for retirees it seems that everything is also better now, especially when it comes to their financial situation. Most of us are feeling the pinch from Osborne and Company’s austerity measures. You may be someone on a low income who has seen benefits slashed or been subject to the particularly nasty bedroom tax, or a signed-up member of the ‘squeezed middle’, who has been tipped into the higher rate income tax bracket thanks to government tinkering; you may have even lost your full entitlement to child benefit. But one group of people who have not suffered are retirees, who have been fiercely protected from austerity measures by a ring-fencing of their benefits.

Chancellor George Osborne has saved £2.5 billion with his measures but the plan to cut the welfare and pensions bill by £19 billion has been thrown off course by the decision to ‘triple lock’ the state pension, which means it is guaranteed to rise at the highest of inflation, earnings, or 2.5 per cent.

Coupled with people living longer and it is no surprise there has been a £5 billion increase in spending on the state pension since January 2010. While working age benefits have been cut by 6 per cent, the cost of pensions has jumped 11 per cent. Figures by the IFS show total spending on pensioners was over £15 billion more than total spending on the rest of the population in 2013-14. The cost of older people isn’t going to slow down either; we are all living longer. There are ten million people aged 65 and over in the UK and in 20 years’ time that figure will increase by 5.5 million.

It’s not realistic to carry on providing benefits that are as generous for as long, it is too much of a burden on those of working age. Older people annoyed about state pension age rises argue they have paid national insurance – which is widely believed to be your contribution to your state pension – and deserve to take their pension at 65. In reality NI is used to pay for existing pensioners, there is no ‘pot of money’ waiting for you in retirement built up of NI contributions.

Of course we should make sure older people are not living in poverty, but equally they need to do their bit in these times of austerity and the ‘make do and mend’ generation will have to employ that sentiment once again.”

A CONSIDERED REPLY

In response to the above article, I would like to respectfully point-out to the author and her editors that the UK State Pension is NOT a benefit ... it’s an ENTITLEMENT! Furthermore, the UK State Pension is known to be one of the meanest state pensions in Europe. To suggest, therefore, that we ‘need to do our bit’ is not only an insult to the work we have already done and taxes we have already paid over the years (and still pay to this day), but it is also a shameless example of ageism.

We’ll probably be witnessing more ageist articles and public statements in the coming weeks, and when we do, we must protest as loud and as long as we can. If we don’t the powers-that-be and the media will see us as even more of a soft touch than we already are. Don’t let them get away with it!