To think we can't afford the triple lock

State pension is not means tested. UC is.

It's 15% higher than state pension
Yes but pensioners are entitled to more than the state pension.

A person who was entitled to the maximum benefits pre-pension would likely get a significant "raise" at pension age.

I looked.

Benefit cap for a single adult household with no children is 14753.00 pa, or
16,967.00 in London. This includes housing support cost.

It's 15% higher than state pension. SP doesn't have London allowance either.

As to pensioners who didn't work - there is very little they can do now when they reached pension age. Those who are of working age now can and should. Unless truly and severely disabled.

Yes, in SE a very significant proportion of housing would be over 1m. Do they need to sell their family homes and move?

Why not to move unemployed households to the areas where housing is cheap instead? This would reduce benefits bill substantially. When I suggested this first I was told there are no jobs in these areas - but I'm talking about unemployed households, so shouldn't be an issue.

Yep, when people say anyone can do care work... all I see is that the most vulnerable in society don't deserve the best care.

£184 off people who are vulnerable and "paid in"? They could have been the people "too anxious" to work and have hit retirement age. Why do you assume all pensioners have worked from age 12?
My paternal grandmother had kids and never worked again due to being a carer for my disabled grandfather. Her only respite was after his death, and then dementia claimed her shortly after.

I have seen websites show how to navigate the PIP system.. because it is complicated. That is not the same as cheating. Whatever you put on the forms... you have to back up with evidence from professionals.

Long term unemployed people are those who are fit to work. Do you know how much they get in UC? Maybe look it up.

You can't just throw any old Tom Dick or Harry into care work. Carers look after vulnerable people, and some people are not suitable candidates for the work. I get so tired of this assumption that any old mug can do care work, it's just wiping arses etc etc. I'm not a carer myself but a close relative has carers daily and we've been caused a lot of stress in the past by carers who weren't fit to do the job.

I agree.

Let not take the 184 quid per week off the people who are elderly and vulnerable and who have actually paid in.

Article in the local paper just today. One suburb of Leeds (pudsey) has 10.7 percent of adults on PIP. Its no wonder when there are websites advising you how to cheat the system.

Start cutting benefits to the long term unemployed, if they can work but choose not to. Employ more people to catch benefits cheats, sometimes you have to spend to save and that would save billions per year

Youd have thought people would have learnt just how precarious many pensioners lives are after the winter fuel debacle but seemingly not.

Where are your figures for the young people who can't work due to anxiety?
And whilst we are at it, look up the job vacancy to job seeker ratio.

Oh FFS we give money to Pakistan because we get important intelligence from them.

Foreign aid a really important tool.

Well said. Always lots of bleating about the poor young people who won’t get a pension. But it’s those same young people who are rinsing the benefits system because they ‘can’t’ work due to ‘anxiety’. Let’s kick all those scroungers off benefits and leave pensioners alone.

Why are there so many care vacancies? Because the job is poorly paid and the workers exploited.

I don't disagree with you fundamentally @11AndCounting . I am 70, and DH and I didn't hit replacement rate reproduction because we were 35 when we met and it took time to agree that we liked each other enough to have a child. And now we're past having kids, we're left with just one. We very much hope that they will find a soulmate and make a family. A blended relationship mismatch would be a disappointment.

I don't disagree with you fundamentally @11AndCounting . I am 70, and DH and I didn't hit replacement rate reproduction because we were 35 when we met and it took time to agree that we liked each other enough to have a child. And now we're past having kids, we're left with just one. We very much hope that they will find a soulmate and make a family. Another blended relationship mismatch

Incidentally, I don't think anyone thinks that pensioners "have it too easy" and so don't "deserve" a reasonale pension.

But the reality that we have to contend with is that of an aging population. People are living longer and having fewer kids.

It's one thing to have a demographic pyramid where there's 5 taxpayers to support every pensioner, it's another thing when that ratio becomes 2:1, or less.

Particularly given that forcing more and more working people into poverty is only likely to lead to more people foregoing having children.

But the aid budget can pay for everything! All the defence costs, all the pensions costs, again and again. It's the hardest working 0.3% of GDP you'll ever see.

I used to work in hotel services in a hospital. Many of my collegues would absolutly fall under the umbrella of ND and mild learning disabilites, although not diagnosed as many were middle aged, and several still living with a parent.
They were poorly educated, if at all.
They were also doing a job that was vital such as cleaning the wards, or moving patients about.

Some people are simply not capable of more than low paid work. But the low paid work should pay enough to have more than a substinence life style.

Amazon UK Services Ltd: Visa Sponsorship Jobs, Salaries & Company Data | Hunt UK Visa Sponsors

In 2025 alone Amazon sponsored 1323 work visas, 450 out of which are in 20k-50k bracket, so not exactly high skilled. 162 of these visas were in storage and warehousing. I'm struggling to understand why these roles cannot be filled by unemployed Brits.

A few years back there was an attempt to unionise Amazon warehouses here in UK. It failed because Amazon offered those who reject unions to support their visas. This means that a lot of warehouse workers are on visas, even if not sponsored by Amazon. These aren't the most desirable jobs for sure, but why imported labour and not local NEETs?

“I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

30 Priceless Quotes from the Great Thomas Sowell

My DC earns NMW, and lives in Guildford in a house share. On an apprenticeship wage. He manages because we subsidise his rent and utilities.

State pensions are the benefits bill

You are clearly not a person who has ever earned enough to have anything to lose. It is very easy and cheap to claim that people are too greedy to pay their taxes. Most people who earn enough to be liable for higher rates of tax actually have a well-defined view of what is worth paying into (education and health, and now defence) and what they don't want to pay for. For me, I do not want to pay for dysfunctional idle anyone to stay home asleep all day and play videogames all night smoking weed. Call me conservative.

Tell me you've never had to try to live on minimum wage without telling me you've never had to try to live on minimum wage.

Quite