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.

No problem with CB being means tested if it is fair(it isn't at the moment),if it isn't cut from families not that much better off than those on tax credits and the same happens to other universal benefits.

ihategeorgeosborne, I agree with you completely on the land value tax issue.

Im almost 40 but DH is 63. He was disgusted at the pensioners featured on the programme. He does not have that attitude at all. He appreciates how much easier it was then.
I posted something a little while ago on another thread about his working life during the 1970s i will see if i can find it.

CloudsAndTrees - the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, that is workhouses rather than the welfare state.

Yes, like two parents being made redundant. Not like one parent working PT or NMW and having three children.

Or conceiving children whilst already claiming non childcare child tax credits/income support/CT benefit.

Custardo i fucking hate that phrase "should have kept your legs crossed" Sexist and mysogynistic in the extreme. Im old enough to remember Peter Lilleys attitude towards single mums in the late 80s/early 90s.

yes Hint, neither my DH's parents or mine (same as all friends) helped with housing, education, or anything because according to them 'they worked hard for what they had' they convince themselvs the house price rise was because of the extra value they put into it - not the over inflation of prices. DH's parents are also fuming about interest rates because they can live off the interest of their savings.

I think it is the ingratitude, the feeling they deserve it. They are a generation who have plundered and lived like teenagers, they've pulled the ladder up behind them and still have the cheek to moan about others claiming benefits. They laugh when i say i can't afford something. Like don't be ridiculous everyone has £200 to spend at the garden centre. Everyone i know in my parents generation are like that golf club lot. it boils my piss.

that is workhouses rather than the welfare state.

Is it?

Boils my piss too.

Yup Mrs here too.

Yes.

Can I also add that the system needs to be simpler. My gran is living off the pension alone and struggles to make ends meet, she spends hardly anything. It all goes on household bills. She also finds the system massively complicated, my mum is always trying to save her £10 here or there.

I think those guys in the golf club probably know exactly how to get their every penny back out.

The pensioners who really need it don't know what or how to claim. It needs to be simpler so that those who really need it get it and means tested. I got really frustrated with the woman on the bus, the ex-MP, with such a massive sense of entitlement.

It just feels like this government is picking and choosing it's policies to keep the already very wealthy even wealthier. It has completely shafted everyone else. I have never been so worried about our future. Maybe that's what having children does to you, but I am ever so slightly terrified to be honest. I mean what next............

Boils my piss too!

sheep I agree, I work with vulnerable older people and disabled people. I support them with benefit applications and I find it very confusing just trying to work out their entitlements.

I really think that the writing is on the wall for Child Benefit, as soon as Universal Credit comes in it is a goner.

Not all baby boomers have had the life of luxury, there was a huge amount of unemployment in the 1980's, no real equal rights for women including no maternity pay and no tax credits. In saying that there also seems to be quite a lot of baby boomers who always had a job and then retired early at 58 with a massive final salary pension (thinking of FIL). I can't see how i can ever afford to retire and TBH I think our generation has been shafted to pay for their retirement. No political party has ever wanted to displease the BBs as the demographic is so huge.

I think things will change in the future. Probably not for the current baby boomers who will continue to have it good, but for those of us coming behind the current model is unsustainable.

As it is, care fees are not free. Mil and fil are both in homes, and both paying full fees which amounts to about £1500 a week. Needless to say, their savings and house will soon be gone. So those of you counting on your parents' big houses as an inheritance had better hope they go suddenly with a giant heart attack rather than linger on to age 110 in a care home. The trouble is, with improved health and drugs, not so many people are having strokes/heart attacks, but are hanging on by a thread for 20 years needing ferociously expensive care which the state (ie taxpayers - you and me) cannot afford.

Oh, and I'm the only one on the bus who ever buys a ticket round here. It costs me large to take the kids on the bus. No change from a tenner. Then all the pensioners head to M&S to buy their succulent chicken breasts and ready mashed potato and a bottle of prosecco to wash it all down! Meanwhile, I head off to poundland and oxfam!! Then, I can't get a seat when I get back on the bus, even though I'm the only one who's actually bought a bloody ticket.

Crashdoll, TV licences are only free to the 75s and over, dental treatment is not free for pensioners, but don't let accuracy get in the way of a good rant.

Procrastinating I simply do not understand the mentality of parents who do not help their children out if they can afford it.

MrsK I don't play golf, thank God.

PISS IS ON THE BOIL HERE TOO.

DH's parents retired at 50, although his mum never worked. They have good final salary pension and 3 properties and continually ask us if we think we might ever buy a house. Have seriously had enough of all this one sidedness.

I stand correct, free dental is only for those on pension credit.

Yes Yes ihategeorgeosborne I am the only one who pays the huge extortionate bus fare round here too.

lainiekazan I hear they are talking about capping care home fees to the first £75,000. My mum told me this via the Daily Express so not reliable.

They are capping care home fees, and rightly so.

that people are begrudging pensioners a seat on the bus!

Hint - that's the problem tho, their mentality is that 'no one has helped them, they got where they did all on hard graft, so why should i help ANYONE'. but it's not true - as others have said - free education/apprenticeships, constant work (in the south at least), early retirement etc.

My parents got a grant to buy a house in 1980. they bought it for £11k, the same house is now valued at almost a million (they sold it a while back tho and bought a bigger one further out) . How could that ever be thru adding value? (unless they built a nuclear power station there of course...they didn't)