To think stopping the pension triple lock and bus passes would reduce inequality

[feellikeahugefailure]

Yes it would be great to give everyone free bus travel and put up their money each year. But the country is already in a financial black hole.

Most other benefits have been frozen for years but pensioners protected. Also the bus pass is given universally and not means tested, where as the bus pass for the unemployed was axed years ago.

There are many people like my wealthy ex in-laws who used the bus pass to avoid paying parking and getting the BMW scratched. The state pension they always called peanuts - as it was compared to their final salary pension. These changes would not affect their lifestyle one bit.

Ideally I'd like unemployed people and poor pensioners to get some help with bus travel (as it can be super expensive) and increases each year in money to allow people at the bottom to live their life with dignity, regardless of age.

jobhap.com/bus-passes-and-state-pensions-triple-lock-threat-on-brexit/

When the baby boomer bloc vote doesn't need something anymore it goes. Like free university education, the grant, affordable housing, jobs for life, final salary schemes etc, etc.

You think we wanted that? What a remarkably stupid thing to say. We have DCs you know.

Funny how they didn't manage to get themselves quite as worked up about the loss of those.

Some of us were out there with the students, protesting, where were you?

Bad form Bill... it ain't babyboomers making these decisions... Dave and chums are NOT boomers! Nor were the previous incumbents.

So... it would be more accurate to say it is Gen Jones doing the taking away, them and Gen X, 1960 into the 70s... is that you?

Baby boomers were born between 1946-1964. Most (if not all) of the things I listed took place under Labour or began under Labour.

So yeah, Tony Blair (born 1953) and Gordon Brown (born 1951) were most definitely boomers.

David Cameron is just outside at 1966, but it doesn't really matter if it is 'done' by boomers. It matters that it's done for them and the young are shafted so their votes are kept.

Silly boy! You lept at the usual epithet and didn't even think it might not be wholly accurate!

The more people use lazy labels to berate others the more and more separatist we will become.

but it doesn't really matter if it is 'done' by boomers. well stop being so lazy and saying it is...

It matters that it's done for them and the young are shafted so their votes are kept. which as as inaccurate as you blaming 'the boomers' in the first place.

But I suppose that once you have acquired a lazy habit, an easy target to blame, it is quite hard to see your way around it.

And no, before you leap to another incorrect assumption, I am not a boomer, nor are my parents

Free bus passes and tv licences for the elderly are fairly new entries and now they are taken for granted - it is far easier to give a benefit than take it away! Over 65s vote - and they voted for a government that disproportionately favours them. If younger people bothered to vote they could really turn things around.

Another age bashing thread. Nasty.

I am so glad that my DCs, nieces and nephews are not like this. And so glad that my elderly relatives are nothing like the evil elderly that seem to be swarming all over the UK hoarding all the money and slagging off the young.

Free bus passes and tv licences for the elderly are fairly new entries if you are going to be utterly impartial, so are family tax credits, childcare vouchers, DLA, HB etc

The free bus pass came after some of them!

Remind me - when were school children given free bus passes? It wasn't that long ago.

Yeah! Bloody pensioners! Can't even behave themselves in garden centres........allegedly.

I would only offer the free bus passes to individuals who agreed to forego having a car as well. MiL has both, thereby being able to pick and choose while others can afford neither. My own Mum, now dead, could no longer drive, however, but was too snotty (and ill and infirm - but snotty first) to use anything other than taxis. Thus they, sort of, cancelled each other out.

If younger people bothered to vote they could really turn things around.

Yes, then when they are older they can vote again in their own favour. Thats the system for you.

"Remind me - when were school children given free bus passes? It wasn't that long ago."

Nationally, never. Coalition were considering it, but it never happened.

London since 2005.

80% of the nations wealth is held by today's pensioners.

Source?

Baby boomers were born between 1946-1964.

So a great many of the baby boomers (those born after 1951) will still be working full time, will have seen their pension arrangements decimated and will be suffering the effects of wage stagnation as much as younger working people. But it's all their fault.

Everybody is entitled to their opinion but it costs only 56p per person, a total of £36million per year to maintain them. However, the Royal family generate £500 million in tourism a year. So, for ever £1 spent, we get £14 back. Not a bad return - I'd certainly buy shares in them!! I don't think tourists would be so interested if we had a republic.

Bus passes annoy me. There is an absolute need for some elderly to have them, but neither my parents nor in laws need one from an accessibility or financial point of view. I used to commute by bus and see workers being turned away as the bus was full of pensioners out for a jolly (having left car at home).

Whilst I don't know how to work it, I think pensioner passes should be means-tested. Also, disabled pass holders should be exempt from any charges (some are time-dependent) and those who cannot get a driving license for medical reasons (but are not 'officially' disabled) should also be eligible.

but how would you means test bus passes
in London the freedom pass is worth £1000s per year
in large cities it is worth £100s per year
where I and a lot of pensioners live out in the sticks - it is worth £10s per year because buses are infrequent, time consuming and sometimes not even there.
My take on it is that there should be a bus pass that entitles the holder to discounted bus travel after certain times - a bit like the railcard which is available to familes, young people, pensioners. the disabled and so on. So the lucky pensioners who have lots of lovely public transport will get a reduction rather than 'free rides' Probably would not work as there is no joined up bus transport !

Whoops sorry posted in the wrong thread!! Must be getting old!!

mollie123 very sensible :-)

Young people is another irritation - I used to get a free pass for college - but there was only one bus there and back a day to use it on so it did then job on getting me there. Current students seem to be able to use all buses any time so actually funding their social lives as well as education.

Elderly people in UK speak about relatives who fought and died in the First and Second World Wars, food rationing, bombing, evacuation and no money for luxuries.

There was no NHS

People left education earlier and started work younger

Not many people went onto further education

Houses were expensive to buy and mortgage interest rates were high

People died younger

You are lucky if you have your health when you are old
Therefore,
I agree with free bus pass and TV license for elderly

Currently, savings interest rates are very low

If we are fortunate we will all be old one day and I believe it would be nice to have a little respect !

----

If I was going to moan, I would be moaning at youngsters who dont make any effort to work and live on benefits

Future generations will look at how we treated our elderly...

So I shouldn't receive a state pension when I've worked for 48 years because people who've owned a car since they were 17, taken a year to travel to Thailand, Australia, Nicaragua or wherever, attend week-long stags in Budapest, have long weekends in New York, own phones that cost ten times what mine did, have to have the latest PS, and spend a small fortune on Starbucks, eating out and booze can't afford to pay my pension!

What a load of cobblers. ONS statistics show that the population segments that spend the most on travel, gadgets, cars (especially cars) and other consumer durables are the over-50s!

A small fortune in Starbucks? I once calculated that it would take over EIGHTY YEARS saving the price of a takeaway Starbucks cappuccino a day just to save the DEPOSIT on the average house in the south of the country. Never mind the rest of the mortgage. Just think of that again - more than the average lifetime of coffees just for the DEPOSIT on the average house in the south of the UK. Not even the whole house. Faced with that kind of economics, you begrudge the current generation their COFFEE? Which they are drinking probably to console them for never being able to afford to buy a decent home.

I'm for Remain, but just the thought of how a Brexit would absolutely crush both current and boomer pensions entitlements and the UK housing market is nearly, just nearly, enough to make me vote to leave. (But not quite, 'cause I'm nice like that )

Remind me - when were school children given free bus passes? It wasn't that long ago.

Some local authorities used to provide free bus passes for school children, but way back in the 70s/80s (my home area was one of the last to retain them and they were abolished there in the late 80s).

nonline really so workers in your area start work after 9.30 do they??? bus passes cant be used before that time, so if you see pensioners on the bus before then they will be paying for their fares unless in London

My pensioner husband works and cant use his pass in the morning, it would cost him to much just to get a single bus fare everyday so he gets a monthly pass which means he doesn't use his free bus pass at all and of course his pension is taxed along with his private pension and wages, he is a charity shop manager earning a tad over the NLW, I have a highly paid job in the print industry he pays more tax than I do.

People driving is very expensive so encouraging pensioners to leave their car at home to use the bus is actually a good thing. If that means giving a bus pass to well off older people then so be it. I'd rather a rich old lady leave her car at home and get a free bus than she drive that car in to town.

I mean people driving is expensive to society above

Bonnet
Even if over 50s spend more on consumer durables, it doesn't mean that otherage groups don't spend money on them; in fact it indicates that they do. And the ONS statistics only record who spent the money, not ownership - so if Dad spends £3k on a car for DS, the expenditure is recorded in Dad's age group. Trust me on this, I used to work in the Social, Regional and Household Expenditure Division of ONS.

You've also chosen to ignore the eating out and booze part of my sentence, just focussing in Starbucks. And since you wouldn't fund a house purchase solely by giving up coffee that's a rather strange calculation to make.

The point I was making was that people saying they cannot afford to pay for pensions do frequently appear to be able to afford "luxury items" for themselves.