to think giving bus passes and winter fuel payment to JSA cliaments by taking it away from wealthy pensioners is not "punishing pensioners"

[dhdjdbrjrkbr]

I live in a very marginal constituency, lib dem won by narrow margin.

Anyway I wrote a long letter to all the parties I'm thinking of voting for.

Mostly they ignored the points I raised and pointed to useless policys like help to buy (that just exasperates the problem).

However the Tory guy said re bus passes and winter fuel payments he called it "punishing pensioners" to not give them universally.

The rest of the letter was bland crap, but this point really annoyed me. When I was on JSA luckily I had support from my family to get through, but I really needed them and it was very grating when I was often spending more than I got on JSA On buses to hear pensioners talking about their cruises or extensions.

One thing free senior bus passes do is reduce the number of senior drivers on the road or at least the number of trips that they do. As they are statistically a less safe demographic this isn't a bad thing.

..and yes, there are some that get them and still drive their big gold jags and never use the bus, but it reduces the number nevertheless.

80 year olds sat eating cold beans in front of a one bar electric fire, now they can and do receive help, as is right and just.

NO that's the point I made in my post, they do not get help unless they ask for it and if no-one tells them they can have it they don't ask do they?

The State pension is not means tested so when they claim for that they do not have to show other income and savings, therefore no-one picks up on the fact that they are entitled to more I will try and find an article from age uk witch highlighted the amount of pensioners who are entitled to claim extra benefits and don't

YANBU at all.

Pensioners are the group with the smallest proportion in poverty of any age group.

If anything, free travel should go to working age people who need it more.

Upthread I quoted 5.5billion in unclaimed pensioner benefits in 2013.

Today, 1.6 million pensioners live on or below the poverty
line.1 Since the turn of the century the number of pensioners
living on a low income has fallen considerably. But in recent
years progress has stalled. Too many older people in our
society are poor and low benefit take-up is a key reason.
Pensioner poverty remains stubbornly persistent, despite older
people being entitled to means tested benefits designed to
increase their incomes, including Pension Credit. As this report
shows, the really big problem is that many older people who
are entitled to these ‘top-ups’ to their low incomes never actually
receive them. Last year the Age UK network helped to identify
£160 million of benefits for older people but we know that many
more continue to miss out on the money that is theirs by right.
As a result, hundreds of thousands are struggling to afford
basic essentials like fresh food, warm clothes, and heating during
the winter. We cannot let this continue in 21st century Britain.
• 1.6 million older people live in poverty, of whom 900,000
are living in severe poverty.
• The latest estimates of take up found that in 2009–102
around a third (up to 1.6 million) of older people who were
entitled to Pension Credit were not claiming it. On average
they were missing out on over £1700 a year (£33 a week).

Oldsu I think that's a different point.

Knowing how to and when to reach out to pensioners to inform them of the help they are entitled to is an entirely different thing from giving that help to everybody regardless of income.

It surely wouldn't take a genius to print a leaflet and hand it out with your bus pass or whatever contact with "authority" a retiree has? I agree that people must be informed of their entitlements.

Sorry that was in response to your post at 19:31

But Oldsu the barnardos website states that currently in the UK 3.5 million children are living in poverty, of which 1.6 million are living in severe poverty.

And the government still means tested and cut child benefit.

So why are pensioners protected when children aren't?

Many pensioners are baffled by the system, too proud to ask, think they can get by.

Because pensioners vote.

Many years ago people who are now OAPs weren't able to have kids with no way of supporting them. Having seen that silly bint on This Morning moaning that she now needed to find a job after having 8 kids... She agreed it had been too easy, that wouldn't have happened 40 yrs ago

I have worked nearly 35 yrs and you bet I have saved for my pension, others haven't.

Well yes echt, it was kind of rhetorical

Hillingdon have you managed to save for your pension by:

a) getting in on the ground when a pension was actually a good deal
b) getting generous company top ups
c) being in continuous employment for 35 to 40 years

?

Because they are all luxuries which this generation doesn't have.

I'd like to know how the "silly bint" was going to find a job which was flexible around school hours, or which provided her with enough money after paying for 8 lots of childminder/breakfast club/after school club to be worth actually getting out of bed in the morning?

Because if she finds one maybe she could let everyone else know what the ingenious solution is?

They do help us. They bought a lot of stuff when I was expecting my little boy and they bought us a car. But my Dad has MS and he really is very ill. When it's cold here he gets really poorly. It's horrible to watch, he feels in a lot of pain and has trouble moving around, it really is nasty, I can't get across in a post how horrible it is. He really does suffer which is why they go somewhere warm so I understand that.

I just don't think they should get the handouts. Or a motability car. That might mean that they couldn't afford to help us out so much, but to be honest I would rather that the money was ridirected via the state benefits system rather than through them. Because I know I'm lucky to have parents who can afford to help sometimes and I have friends who aren't so lucky and I would rather the money was redirected to help all young families rather than just a few with wealthy parents. I mean, I'm benefiting from it I suppose, but I know it's not really right that my parents get those sort of things so they can afford to help me but other people's parents aren't in a position to do that so they miss out.

The measures we have of poverty are very poor, particularly when related to pensioners. It normally looks at income alone, I think the measure is half the national average.

So pensioners can be said to be 'in poverty' when they are living rent free in a house with a paid of mortgage and much more disposable cash than a familty of 4 living on the same amount of money with crippling housing costs.

What of the old people who are being bullied by their families into not spending any of their money because they think they've inherited already. You can't begrudge them a bus pass. And not having to pay for your ticket gives you an excuse to get out of the house a bit more which is a good thing.

I think the point is that they are taking the money from wealthy pensioners only (I could be wrong).

I am sorry, those sound like real problems but internal to families, and I am not convinced state money should be thrown at pensioners (like it disproportionately is) to solve these problems.

Have you never come across the concept of people being unwilling to spend on themselves before?

really, we are supposed to subsidise that?

The poverty point is ludicrous, apart from anything we're only talking about taking thus away from people who don't need it and two because pensioners are the group of society least likely to be in poverty. But they are the ones protected at all costs.

suboptimal

Sooty and Ptolemy I don't think your points stand at all.

I'm not talking about taking away their 50 inch telly because they shouldn't have nice things when they're on state help.

I'm talking about taking £100 off someone who wouldn't notice the difference and giving it to one of the many groups who have been properly penalised by this government.

Those posters typify the daily mail reader, they don't need these benefits but feel entitled to them

I thought MN were going to discourage these nasty ageist threads.

How is it ageist to discuss means testing benefits?

I don't read the Daily Mail
I'm not a pensioner. I work full time and I'm self employed as well so don't get these benefits.
I'm not a homeowner and don't have the safety net of wealth that you imagine pensioners have.
There are plenty of poor pensioners about.
I wouldn't be against means testing the WFA but I suspect it would be very expensive.

I just get the impression from the OP's posting that she's deeply resentful of pensioners anyway and probably would be happy if anyone over 65 did the decent thing and crawled off and died somewhere to avoid getting anything from the state.

No one has talked about "all pensioners" though sooty, just the ones who don't need an extra £100 a month.

Which is why shouts of ageism are way off the mark.

really, we are supposed to subsidise that?

Apparently yes, people with money in the bank won't spend it on heating so the working without money in the bank need their taxes to give free money so people are willing to spend it...