To think all the targeted pensioner benefits ie bus pass, TV and winter fuel should be abolished...

[Figmentofmyimagination]

.... And the equivalent amount added to the pension credit of low income pensioners. That would overcome the logistical/cost based arguments against means testing these benefits.

I need to refute the notion that all pensioners have final salary pensions. Very many do not. Yes. some do, yes there aren't so many available now but there are MANY pensioners who are getting by on a bare minimum.

And of course (as I always point out on these threads) they have no means of improving their lot, whereas younger people can do so.

Nowhere, bar MN, have I ever come across so many people being so very rude to older people and assuming they are all rolling in money!

Most pensioners weren't old enough to fight in the war but they still lived through a lot of crap. And post war Britain was pretty grim.

The "rich" pensioners that I know have had ordinary jobs, never got into debt, saved and were prudent with money. Some of them were lucky with houses and pensions, but some were not and some were made redundant so not all. And some stayed in a smallish house prefering to pay off the mortgage not to constantly upsizing to somewhere grander. And people begrudge them decent cars, food shopping etc? It's their money.

I agree Didothedodo -We are nowhere near retirement age but we have had free education, plentiful employment, cheap housing, holidays, new car every so often. We are definitely better off than our reasonably well off pensioner parents. Just like most of our similar aged friends. Have things really changed that much?

I don't think anyone is assuming all pensioners are rich. This thread is about rich pensioners. When expensive houses and final salaries are mentioned, I expect it is assumed that these are received by rich pensioners. My dad turned 80 last year and at Christmas, when we visited, he produced a nice crate of wine and told us that he'd bought it with his extra £100 that he got for his WFA because he's 80. Yet when I mention my wrath about losing child benefit, he talks about how we need to cut benefits. He really doesn't see himself as a recipient at all

No we didnt fight in this war shit. We grew up with rationing and little in the way of material goods that everyone expects now, but with the benefit of a welfare state and a fairly stable economy. That has changed out of all recognition. The war shit we did fight was for womens equality, for the rights of gay people and minority ethnic people, for many of the rights which you enjoy today as women particularly. We are also the generation that gave the world Stephen Hawkin, the secrets of DNA, the internet, personal computers, etc etc. No, no need to say thank you, just stop being so shortsided and bitter. Pensioners should go cold at 80 while you push out another sprog and hold your hand out to the taxpayer for help with childcare, tax credits, child benefit, free education, maternity benefits...fuck off.

Those who fought in the war (or fought at home) were rewarded for it after the war. The unprecedented economic boom, more and better housing and the welfare state, for example.

Oh good. I'll be sure to mention this to my mum then. I'm not certain that's how she'll see it....

My mum was born in the 30s - it took a bloody long time to get their "rewards" - rationing for meat only ended in July 1954....

the country was dirt poor for well over a decade after the war - The UK was almost bankrupt due to turning over 55% of our home economy to armament production, there was no exports to generate currency to pay for foreign food or goods, so the US loaned us the money to pay for imports from them - we paid back that loan in 2006.

The "rich" pensioners that I know have had ordinary jobs, never got into debt, saved and were prudent with money.

You can make this argument about any demographic of the UK. The government never rewards the fiscally prudent.

ANKLES have never voted conservative in my life and never will.

Why not? Tell me what she says Dido, I'm doing a lecture on it on Saturday.

University wasn't "free". It was means tested. No tuition fees, maybe, but the grants depended on your parents' income and they were expected to make up the difference. DSis and I made a substantial hole in our parents' savings.

We paid them back by making sure our DCs all left university practically debt free. They are doing fine, own homes, cars, holidays - more than DH and I had in the 70s. And they are saving for their pensions. Not all young people are struggling, any more than all older people are wealthy.

One thing a lot of pensioners do say to me is that they wouldn't want to be young today. I genuinely wonder why they say that if the young apparently have is so good.

Exactly why I said the ones that I know personally. Very wealthy people who can afford to pay for their own fuel and tv licenses but get them free anyway and spend the difference on gin or whatever. It seems very fair to me that older people who need help should get it, obviously. But there are some that don't need it. The figures on age groups that make the effort to go and vote are very telling. Last time I voted I didn't see a single other person under the age of about sixty at the polling station.

my dad left school at 14, drove a lorry for the munitions factory, and had no hope of ever going to university - normal people didn't. No-one from my father's secondary school went in the 4 years he was there. It is laughable that people think you had to be 18 or over to fight or be involved in the war.

I wasn't on about the government actually. I was saying it because of some of the posts being shocked about seeing pensioners shop in Waitrose and having cars etc. I was pointing out they have the money, because generally they didn't waste it. People up thread moaning about pensioners spending their own money that they have saved!

There's a difference between being alive during the war and fighting in it.

It's crap that universal pensioner benefits couldn't be means tested. They could easily and pensioners paying higher rate tax for example lose their entitlement. The resulting savings could then go to increasing pension credit.

There's a difference between being alive during the war and fighting in it.

Yes -there were people who were bombed, and who suffered dreadful disability due to munitions factory explosions, or had to work the land, transport munitions/planes/ships to the forces, or metal collecting and smelting, or a million other jobs .... they were not fighting (or eating more than subsistence rations) - but still gave up all for the war effort - it was not a tickety-bloody-boo bed of roses for those back home.

The whole country was "fighting the war" - that was the difference in those days.

Now a war takes place away from home with a few thousand combatants and a few thousand supporting that effort from home.

Not the millions that were involved in "the wars". 400,000 forces personnel died in WW2 (after 900,000 had died years earlier in WW1) - around 70,000 British civilians died too. (11 MILLION Russian military and 7 million Russian civilians...). Think of the scale of it all.

David Cameron has to please the people he knows will vote, and vote for him. DH, me, DS1 and DS2 are all completely uncertain how we will vote.
I took my mother (88) out for lunch on Sunday ad asked her who she would vote for. "Conservative" she responded, "because I always do" . She still hasn't forgiven her own mother for voting Labour in 1945!

I've only ever known one Tory voting pensioner in my life, and that was my mother. I'd love to know where they are hiding, around here they vote Liberal or Labour.

Well, my dad votes tory, dh's parents vote tory, many of my aunts and uncles vote tory. I seem to know a lot of older tory voters, not so many young ones though. The younger people I know who did vote tory, all seem to have changed their minds over the last five years. Can't think why

You didn't have to be wearing a uniform to have had a tough time during WW2. Around 69,000 civilians were killed during the bombing.

My aunt spent her teenage years evacuated to Wales, leaving her mother working in London, and living with a family who made it quite clear she wasn't wanted.

I didn't see my father for 3 years - he was serving with the RAF in W.Africa. At least he came home safe. But it was a bleak time for my mother coping with air raids and a baby on her own.

And after the war is when the hard times really began. Rationing didn't end till the early '50s and was more austere than during the war. There were shortages of gas, coal, electricity. And one of the worst winters in years.

The 50's themselves weren't great for ordinary families. Most left school at 15 and most secondary moderns didn't do 'O' levels. University was only for a v small percentage. Most families rented.

Just to correct some misapprehensions about the past.

Haven't RTFT but I just love the way so many people claim to know EXACTLY how much income their grandparents have, how much their houses are worth and even how much cash they have in savings.

My dad often says to me though about his own life "we lived in a golden age". I know he was poor and there was no money and he had a pretty hard life, but why does he say that if now is so much better. Also, as I said earlier, many old people do tell me that they wouldn't want to be young today. Again, are they saying that when they grew up was better. I don't know BTW, just wondering.

Probably because people were nicer, more helpful, less materialistic and less greedy?