To be raging at Dispatches "rich and on benefits"

[crashdoll]

It's talking about pensioners and all they get from the welfare state regardless of income or savings. Cue clip of David Scameron saying he won't touch their benefits.

"policies that increase the gap in incomes and unemployment between areas are likely to exacerbate health inequalities. Allocating resources to local authorities on the basis of their ?performance? at increasing life expectancy is likely to reward more affluent areas, rather than disadvantaged areas with greater needs" That's funding policy.

The other policy is that of protecting international finance at the expense of populations - or what they call neccessary cuts and rebalancing.

The net result, greater inequality of health and social care and in real terms a fall in living standards. Draw your own conclusion as to the effects.

which says nothing about reducing the life expectancy of anyone

Domjolly - research which shows that over any ten year period 60% of people will spend at least a year being relatively poor would suggest that the idea we could do without welfare is wishful (I use this term with some reservation) thinking.

Faster - if a raising of income increases life expectancy then what would you suggest a fall in income does?

'No expensive 'toys'...smartphones, telly packages, nice cars, spa days, acrylic nails or suchlike. '

No shit, Sherlock, no one had them. Why? Because they didn't exist!

It is now 30-40 years on.

Plenty of people don't have any of that, are working their arses off but at the end of it, they won't get your fat pension - they will get nothing.

lucky - ?smaller increases in life expectancy over the next decade" as the report you linked to says.....

Sorry Eliza i think your post is full of nonsense.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and my father earned a compatible wage to dp,kept his CB(quite a nice sum off his mortgage long term)and paid no tuition fees,even wangled full grants as he retired at 50. The lifestyle was massively better.

We lived in Oxfordshire(not cheap) and my dad commuted into London every day.We went to the South of France every year,dad had a new car every few years,mum and dad ate out every week and went to social work functions.Mum bought whatever food she liked from Sainsbos and the heating was always cranked up high.Frequently visited family and friends elsewhere.

Fast forward to 2013.

We live in the SW,we can only run one very old battered car we keep nursing(never had a new car).Can't afford the 20 min petrol for dp to commute so he cycles every day,can't visit family elsewhere as petrol too high,can rarely buy meat restricted budget,Lidl queen,never go on holiday just camp in Cornwall but not this year too£££,never eat out,heating off as much as we can etc,etc.

Manicures,gadgets-don't make me laugh.

Sorry you haven't worked any harder than families today and aren't entitled o any more.

We'll have a shocking retirement and won't be able to whine,moan over trivialities such as bus passes etc.We'll have to get on with it and cope with the sky high mortgages your generation gave us whilst living without a lot of perks your parents gave you such as CB,an NHS,free education etc,etc so quite frankly I think the baby boomers can poke up with austerity creeping into the aisles of John Lewis and M and S food hall.

You've worked harder and deserve no more than anybody else.

No harder

Clouds "Someone in her position does have more right to money out of the pot than someone who has created children they can't afford to bring up."

Aaaah, well that's not a universal welfare state then! You are hugely contradicting yourself in this thread.

I'm a bit of people purposely ignoring what this thread was started for. I clearly was not talking about pensioners who are struggling to heat their houses. It is about wealthy pensioners who do not need winter fuel allowance, free prescriptions etc. It's about why disabled people and families are at the mercy of the welfare cuts but wealthy older people are not.

Oh and dp and I never and I do mean never go out.

I hate this "I've worked harder than everyone, so I deserve more". Are we back in Victorian times of the deserving and undeserving poor?

faster, this is the last time I try and explain this to you. That report was set against the background of a growing economy and an expected slowing down of growth and living standards. What we have now is no growth and a reduction in living standards. There was report a couple of years ago dealing with roughly the same period as the Liverpool Uni study that showed a .75% increase in the life expectancy of women in parts of Scotland and that was during a period of growth and investment in Health care.

Yes Crash. I agree those poor pensioners struggling to eat and heat their houses I feel should get more however the first port of call to fund it should be from those wealthy pensioners who have contributed zilch to removing the deficit and who are costing us money we isn't have on benefits they don't need.

lucky it was "published on December 5 2012" - 5 years into the downturn

I grew up in the 70s. My father had a very small business, my mother did not work. We had a new house full of new things, two cars, three foreign holidays a year. They had lots of hobbies and my grandparents babaysit twice a week. I remember power cuts, they were nothing. Father retired young, now wealthier than he was when working.

Now myself & dh both work full time, no childcare so I work at night. We might camp for a holiday in England if it is a good year. We never go out. One car, old, barely used. No gagets whatsoever. We work twice as hard as our parents and have very little.

Please don't tell me that we CHOSE to pay too much for our house. What were we supposed to do, wait for the rich pensioners we bought it off to stop being so greedy? Meanwhile I suppose we could have rented a buy-to-let off another set of rich pensioners.

I can not believe people are being so blind! Just because you have a better paid job doesn't mean you have worked harder, and people who have no savings haven't necessarily frittered all their money away.

We are always going to need people in lower paid jobs, but that doesn't mean they are less important or not trying. The TA at DS2's school who works 1:1 with a DC with SN is just as important as the HT, but the HT is going to have a massive pension and no less need for WFA than the TA, that doesn't mean the TA has been wreckless with her money.

FWIW I don't believe you should have 11 DC when you have no means of supporting them and I don't believe people should choose benefits as a lifestyle choice (if they actually do).

Apparently, we are all in this together, so Dave should put his money where his mouth is and bring all of us, including the wealthy pensioners in, and put us all in it together.

And yes gadgets were bought in the 70s and 80s-My sister had a Sinclair Spectrum,we had Walkmans,radios,records,Cabbage Patch dolls etc,etc.

My parents didn't exactly fritter either.

I agree with CloudsAndTrees. If you have paid in to the system all your life then why shouldn't you get something back?

There would be less vitriol if they were made to it their hands in their pockets like everybody else.

Wasting money on benefits that aren't needed is wrong and chucking money away.

Erm Crinkle we've all paid into the system and continue to do so but are having money taking away and will lose a lot less long term than the wealthy pensions being discussed.

So if it's good enough for us it's good enough for them.

More long term not less

Crinkle, because it is not a bloody savings account for one thing, and they have 'had something back' all their lives for another.

We all use schools, hospitals, GP services, Dentists, the road networks, council services, libraries, the Police, Fire Service, Armed Forces, etc etc. Where do you think the money comes from for those?

The vitriol is not because they get benefits they don't need, it is because they think they deserve a better life than everyone else.

Whatever they "paid in" has run out after all the free university education, prescriptions, dentistry and universal child benefit they got.