to resent well off 60+ people that get free unlimited bus travel

[SuzzieScotland]

I can't afford a car, so I walk, cycle or bus everywhere.

The bus costs almost a pound a mile so it is seen as a treat for me.

A yearly ticket is 1000 or if your a student you can buy a £12 bus I'd card every year and get a yearly ticket that costs 750. This seams far too expensive.

Yet I see many pensioners who run two cars using the bus to get into town or to the airport totally free despite being well off. I think their would be uproar if a 20 pound admin fee a year was applied to these bus passes. In London a year ticket is 3k but anyone over 60 gets unlimited tube and bus despite 100000s of them still in full time work.

Just seams like the young and poor are getting a very raw deal to win grey votes.

Oh do me a favour.

It's not envy it's realism.

Well off disabled people get free travel, so are they fair game also?

They should get free travel.

You shouldn't be being screwed (by capitalism).

The answer is not to remove the free travel from the Oldies.

(I really hate how the Tories have got us all fighting over crusts. I imagine us all in a kind of pit, fighting over slops, and the rich bastards craning over the lip of the pit, laughing, egging us on, placing bets: having a whale of a time.)

Wow posting on Mumsnet.

That will change everything.

Or is it just a waste of time, writing all that content for free?

Care to engage with the democratic process and actually change something OP?

Or just a bit of a coward who thinks she's done something big and brave posting on a website?

People keeping whinging about pensioners driving too because they're a 'danger to the roads', yet complain when they're given a means to get around another way.

the cat Sounds like a Martin Rowson cartoon.

candycoatedwaterdrops : "I feel like we've moved from council house envy on MN to benefits envy. How heart warming!"

Well, I guess a change is kind of refreshing. The council house thing has been pretty much achieved, hasn't it? Time to round up the Oldies, call them all rich, slit our own throats - old age privision-wise - in the process , and perhaps move a few steps closer to the ultimate objective: starving the poor into grovelling, quelled submission or death.

It's not slops but money we don't have.So you focus on putting the little money we have to giving help to those that need it,not those that don't of which category many pensioners fall into.

Capitalism screws the welfare system too.
HB has allowed rents to rise out of all proportion to wages.
If HB didn't exist house prices wouldn't have risen so much.

This country had a good stock of social housing, then Thatcher introduced the Right to Buy.
My Nan used to rent a one bedroom purpose built pensioners flat. Most were bought by greedy / savvy relatives at a knock down price, then sold on at a great profit or let.
The purpose built pensioners flats are now all rented out by private landlords but not to the elderly.

That is why there is no one bedroom council accommodation available for the elderly to move to, freeing up their family sized council house.

ThecatfromJapan is so right. It is the rich and powerful who are the problem.

Retropear: Do you any bright ideas to eke the money out;

How about limiting women to two babies?

No IVF on the NHS

No organ transplants.

Euthanasia at 80 or earlier if in poor health.

I think that gets us from birth to death quite cheaply.

Of course we have the money. It's a question of how the govt chooses to spend it.

If Atlee could bring in a Welfare State at a time when GB was in ruins (and supporting a starving German population) with the help of a huge debt to the USA which we only paid off under Blair, then for sure we should be able to go on helping those in greater need. Which includes most parents and most pensioners, only a very small minority of whom qualify for the higher tax bracket.

paxtecum, I think we can go further: I think that women who have children while on benefits should be forced to give those children to the state. The state pretty much owns them anyway. Most of those children could then be recycled to provide food for communal food kitchens for people who cannot buy their own food.

I think this would really get us somewhere with saving money. And it is very ecologically friendly. It will attract the Green vote.

Nah I think we should simply start by not wasting money on benefits for the rich.

They don't need them.

It.is.chucking.money.down.the.drain.

Seriously, how long you live is still very much related to income level. Because of the stupid rise in house values, a lot of old people would be classed as well off who really are not. If you reduce their standard of living by restricting the ability to travel, that really will kill some of them. Never mind limiting quality of life, actually kill. What a truly dreadful place we have come to where people are actively chipping away at benefits for the elderly.

Only talking about the wealthy of which there are many.

OP haven't you got anything better to worry about? Envying older people will only cause you worry and stress... & when you get to their age having worked through life and raised your children and no doubt helped to raise your grandchildren, you probably rightly wont give a shit what younger people think of you hopping on a bus free of charge.

thecat

Sorry, that was a response to thecat's earlier post

I don't have a problem with people over 60 getting a free bus pass if their income is below a certain level. I would have a problem with people like my parents in their 60s getting them as they both still work and can afford to run a car each.

The downside of the free passes is the bus fares have shot up for other passengers. I live within a 30 min walk of the town centre which is fine for me to walk there and back but my 4 yr old will whinge like hell about walking back up hill. I can either drive in and park for up to 4 hours for £2.90 or I can get the bus which costs £3.90 for a return for me. Guess which one I do normally?! And as for if we go into town as a family it would be mad to pay nearly £8 for the bus.

My parents use their train passes to go into Leeds to have lunch at Harvey nicks and do a bit of shopping. They don't like to take the BMW as They worry about it getting scratched in the car parks there.
This is neither a stealth boast or me being sarky - it's absolutely true!!
They don't need free or cut price travel and use their fuel allowance to have a nice meal out or similar.
It should definitely be means tested!!!

Mistress I really think the wideing inequality in the UK is something well worth worrying about.

Apparently 66% of the wealthier pensioners (£30,000 or above) regularly use their free bus pass.
Now I know they are entitled to do this, but do they really need to.

YABU. I am 61. I have paid fares and rates and taxes for previous cadres of sixty-plussers to travel free without a means test and now it's my turn.

More practically, there are a lot of older drivers whom it's to the general benefit to keep off the road. They (we) ought to be compulsorily health- and sight- tested at regular intervals but we vote, and so do our children who don't want to be our chauffeurs, so that's not going to happen. Better we take the bus.

Usually I would disagree and urge us all not to turn on each other. But at the moment I don't think we can afford "perks" for anyone and when you think that there are people under the age of 60 on low incomes struggling to pay transport to get to work etc. Hmm.

OP, if the OAP travel pass were to be means tested, you can be sure no consequent savings would go in to providing services for those you wouldn't resent.