To worry that the conservatives are going to target pensioners next

[Sjdorset]

Have anyone else noticed the anti pensioner stuff out this week? Firstly about getting rid of the essential tripple lock (2.5% so not a huge increase) and the talk that pensioners are supposedly getting more than working age people (why shouldn't they after all they have worked their entire life and don't have options available to increase their earnings).

I'm worried they maybe next on the target list, quite frankly I think this is a worrying trend building up.

www.express.co.uk/finance/retirement/445956/Fears-for-pensions-as-government-s-crucial-triple-lock-guarantee-faces-axe

Today's pensioners will take out many, many more times than they've contributed. I know it isn't a credit/debit account and I think people should be provided for according to their need, but it gets my goat that it is assumed they are merely recouping what they'd paid earlier.

No one here has claimed they worked hard, I didn't use the h word. But they have worked as there wasn't a welfare state so they had no choice.

Unless they conducted all of their child rearing and concluded their working life before 1945 they will have benefitted from the welfare state.

Not all pensioners bought houses. Past threads here have moaned about old people living in 3 bedroom social housing.

So-called wealthy pensioners pay tax on their income, far, far more than they gain in free bus passes and winter fuel allowance.

If you work and save and invest in a good pension by "doing without" while working it would be very unfair to be penalised for your good management.

Put simplistically, there are pensioners who "never worked a day in their lives" just as there are young people now who will fit into that category eventually. I don't think it's right to "reward" the feckless by penalising those who worked and planned for their old age.

There aren't many pensioners whose working life was at a time when there was no welfare state. DH's parents are in their 80s. (Mine are not in the UK.) Most of their working life, they benefitted from the NHS, and from the knowledge that if they lost their job, there was a safety net. They didn't have to pay for their son's education. Public transport was cheap. They had the opportunity to pay in to pension schemes where huge bonuses were paid (in the 1980s). The value of their fairly ordinary house in the Midlands (ie, not London) has increased to 10 times what they originally paid for it.

These are ordinary working people, who have benefitted hugely from the financial circumstances prevalent during their working lives.

I know that there are poor pensioners, just as there are poor working age people, and poor children. And the safety net should be there for all these people.

I don't have particular sympathy for pensioners, as a whole, though. Many have had opportunities that the working people of today may never have.

Of course Pensioners will be targeted.
They may be the 'last ones standing' but they WILL be targeted.
How could it be other?

My parents are poor. Always have been.
Really NEED their winter fuel allowance etc and bus pass
But they will have been claiming a pension for 30 years now.
As is right and proper.

We wont get that chance though. There is nothing left.
(unless you are superrich)

I think it would be good to reduce some pensioners benefits.

Some pensioners dont need the free tv licence or winter fuel allowance.

My aunt is in her 60s. She bought her 3 bed council house this year. She is the only one who lives in it. Her partner of about 20 years lives in a 2 bed council house by himself. This doesnt seem right to me.

CaramelCurrant - perhaps the voters did want the amazons starbucks of this world to be taxed more, but saw that the Tories had introduced a 25% diverted profits tax rather conveniently just before the election from 1 April 2015.

Perhaps the voters got their information from parliament not the National Enquirer , Daily Mail or some dotty cleric's innumerate blog.

I would dearly love to know how you end up with more money than you know what to do with. My pension forecast scares the hell out of me and I'm lucky enough to still be in a reasonably decent scheme.

They will reduce these pensioner benefits for those of us having to work beyond 60 to get them. Not for current pensioners. I don't expect the universal state pension to exist by the time I retire. But the NHS and social care cuts will impact people now.

My aunt is in her 60s. She bought her 3 bed council house this year. She is the only one who lives in it. Her partner of about 20 years lives in a 2 bed council house by himself. This doesnt seem right to me.

I don't agree with the sale of council stock at all, but fail to see why your aunt's age, your apparent objection, is anyone's business. She's bought, it's hers.

As for her "partner" and how he can be a partner while living in another house is a mystery, just google the availability of one-bedroomed council stock and see what you get. There isn't any, hence the insanity of the bedroom "tax".

Surely all the fat bastard OAPs

Well aren't you lovely

My grandma hasn't worked a day in her life .
She had 6 kids and now lives in a mortgage free 4 bed bungalow and has a room full of collectable dolls houses that amount to thousands

She could do with a pay cut

Sarcasm, Shutthatdoor.

I am a pensioner. HTH.

Personally, I think young people on the scandalously low wage for under 18s need a free buss pass more than most pensioners

I so agree with this.

Adult fares kick in for a lot of public transport at 16. The full rate of the NMW (pitiful as it is) is not paid until 21.

My grandma hasn't worked a day in her life . She had 6 kids

Please tell me this is a joke.

There certainly was a welfare state for today's pensioners. Furthermore today's pensioners are generally from the "housewife" (woman not working after marriage) generation so huge numbers of them haven't paid any/ little tax.

There are absolutely things which should be taken off pensioners and they should not be exempt from
Ie bedroom
Tax

Agree that some young people need a bus pass more than pensioners, but the bus pass only costs money if it is used. My parents used their bus passes for a few years but as their mobility reduced they could no longer walk to the bus stop and it cost them £30 each way for a taxi to a hospital appointment. Also part of the intention behind free travel is to reduce social isolation - that potentially has a lot more benefits than the pure financial "do you have enough in the bank to pay your bus fare" argument.

Quite a few pensioners actually would be happy to give up the bus pass - even they think it is unnecessary..

I do generally agree with the tone of the thread. My biggest bug bear is free prescriptions. Everyone including pensioners can afford to buy basic medicine like paracetomols, skin cream, etc. Free prescriptions for basic medicine should be got rid of. I don't believe the NHS budget should cover medicine for simple ailments and if we did get rid of those free prescriptions many pensioner visits to GP would be unnecessary and clear doctors surgeries for serious conditions.

Pensioners are no longer poor. My MIL, not wealthy but with FILs public sector pension, state pension, no mortgage and free travel in her local area on buses and £12 per year for her Tyneside Metro pass she hardly has any costs other than food and her heating bill is partly covered by winter fuel allowance.

Had four holidays this year. Worked for 5 years in her whole life. FIL did not pay enough NI to cover all that. They got mortgage tax relief as well when they were buying their house.

My working class mil went to uni. And on to be a teacher she's 73.

For me the total cluster fuck is these final salary pension schemes. I know a few people who thanks to promotions have already had out more than they paid in and both still in their sixtys so maybe 30 more years of paying.

We also need to extent the bedroom tax to pensioners nearly all the 3,bedroom council houses in our village are occupied by single pensioners only one with a family in it. .

And there HAVE already been some significant changes to pensions. It used to be that men received the state pension at 65 and women at 60. There was a process to equalise these and so women's state pension age was raised to match. Now both have been raised further to 67. This is to reflect the fact that people live longer.

Part of my work based pension will come a public sector job and I am fortunate in that I can still access this small sum at 60 but my SIL who is 2 years younger than me will not be able to get her work based pension till she is 67.

So at BOTH ends of the spectrum there have been changes - parents having to work when their children are younger and people having to work into much older age.

The problem with means testing is the ones who lose out that are just on the threshold.

My nan has just over the threshold coming in from her state pension and my late grandads private pension. She literally is one of those pensioners that won't turn the heating on. But her neighbour who didn't bother sorting out a private pension gets pensioners tax credits ect ect.

And they tax my grandads pension which brings it down to just over £100 a week. You get taxed on your wages which you pay part of into a pension and then get taxed on it again coming out.

Of course they will! And all the pensioners who sold the younger fee ration down the river by voting Tory will find their birds coming home to roost.
All benefits should be means tested.
Some pensioners need their fuel allowance and bus pass.
Some really really do not.
And not all pensioners worked hard all their life....that's simply untrue.

I am 71 and grew up in a council house in a NE pit village. Dad was in a wheelchair with MS. Mum worked in a clothing factory 5 days a week and on a market stall on Saturdays.
I passed the 11+ and went to grammar school then teacher training college. At 30 with a disabled husband and two children I did a degree at evening classes.
I had free college education and living grants and every woman had child allowance in her name to cash at the post office. I was widowed at 41. I remarried a man with 3 teenagers and an ex wife. We are all happy.
We are comfortably retired, no mortgage, 9 dgc and a small car. We usually manage one one week holiday abroad and a couple of UK B&B weekends a year. I look after dd's children a couple of days a week.
We have been very lucky but we also paid massive taxes and had very high interest rates to contend with. We have very little in the way of savings but we have enough. I would hate to manage on a State pension and many old people are cold, frightened, hungry and lonely.

In 40 years today's feckless job shy youth will be pensioners. I wonder if they will be described as having worked hard all their lives. Probability says that lots of pensioners haven't worked hard all their lives at all.
Not that pensioners deserve to be struggling, of course, but I object to the rhetoric that pensioners deserve non means tested payments because of their age and therefore automatic respectability.

Things which seem to be basic medicines in mid life can become essential in older life - skin care and foot care is especially important as circulation decreases -dealing with pressure sores or toenail infections is more costly than preventative care.