To give you the pensioners facts

[Moier]

So many threads about pensioners being well off.
I've just had my forecast.
I turn 66 in November .
Those born after September 23rd 1958 will not get the winter fuel allowance no matter what credits you are on.
Esa etc etc.
My forecast us £221 per week.
Also pensioners still have to pay rent.
Council house tenants will still pay bedroom tax.
Pensioners won't get council tax reduction.
Unless you have paid into a private pension .. pensioners will be the poorest they have ever been.
And we waited an extra 6 years for bugger all.
Stammer is the theif that has stolen all our golden hours.

@Rosscameasdoody Agree about the criticisms and the comments re grabby moaners. I’m not retired yet but my husband has and tbh sometimes he’s commented that he’s scared to leave the house.

I find MN equally scary re some of the appalling comments from those with no idea.

I agree. My generation has asset wealth and also liquid assets. But not all of us - some are on the basic state pension (as my late DM was). We are the people who vote and spend money. Starmer must have bats in his belfry to annoy us. We will not all die off before the next election. But, of course, he is thinking of a short, technocratic fix, rather than looking at the reason for holes in the UK budget and finding ways to sort them - possibly because this exercise might involve real politics (not technocracy) and an allignment with an ideology that put people before profits (not that profits are wrong, but the economy is for the people; neo-liberalism forces people to feed the economy for the benefit of a few). It might be that the entire world needs to roll back from globalization (more than likely) which is revolutionary and will take time - but will happen, though it may be unpleasant (revolutions usually are).

Your right, pensioners do vote and they vote predominantly for the party that for the last 14 years has completely destroyed this country.

But hell will freeze over before pensioners will happily contribute to fixing the mess we are in. Young working people must pay for it all. I suppose it serves them all right for being such snowflakes??

Young working people must pay for it all
There are not enough people of working age to pay for the numbers of people who are over working age.
(That's not the fault of either group of people)

They're fast enough to shout about "snowflake" teenagers with anxiety and depression

What a ridiculous comment. Some pensioners may be affected by depression and anxiety. Some pensioners may work full or part time supporting people with these needs. Some may volunteer in this capacity.

I have never shouted about a snowflake in my life. Its a horrible expression.

On the contrary, many pensioners are Labour voters. And Labour also spent a number of years destroying the country under a PM who introduced and continued destructive policies from the previous Conservative government. The Red Wall fell in 2019 because Labour would not listen to working-class people, who pointed out that they gained little from the EU and did not want to be in it, since they understood better than many middle-class bien pensants what loss of sovereignty meant long term. Those voters supported re-nationalisation of the giffen goods, that's utilities and public transport such as railways. A giffen good is an item on which spending increases when the price goes up. Bread is a giffen good. The reason that spending increases on these items (e.g. electricity) is because people have no choice but to buy them. This being so their price cannot be controlled by market forces and thus are apt for profiteering on a captive market. Working-class people and pensioners generally have less disposable income than the majority of middle-class professionals even if, in the pensioners' case, they were originally from that group. Thus price rises in the items they must purchase cut deeply into their income and ability to afford other things which they can choose not to buy, such as more healthy food options.
Why you think most over 60s vote Tory I am not sure. I don't know anyone who votes Tory among the trades people who make up my social circle. We know where our bread is buttered and it's not really in Tory land, but when Labour will not listen, who do you vote for, there is no left-wing version of Reform to give Labour grandees a shock.
As to the suggestion that pensioners refuse to pay for what is needed, we have already paid in taxes, VAT, NI, our work and the sacrifices we have already made to bring up children and to fund welfare and the NHS - and we continue to pay in taxes and VAT now. Many of us were born just after WWII and lived through the struggle to recover from that (no picnic). How dare young people accuse us of not paying up? Shall we pay with our lives as we shiver in our homes - because that is what not turning on the heating (produced through a giffen good, remember: we have to have electricity or gas whatever it costs, so we will cut consumption) means. The excess death rate will go up. And one day the young will be old, and faced with the same problem - unless we start fixing it now, and not with the technocratic decision to cut off old people's heating, but with ideas about how we end profiteering by energy companies.

Literally every single election statistic will tell you that pensioners are the most dedicated Tory faithful voters in the country. You are all now quite simply redoing the rewards of what you have repeatedly voted for. Brexit included.

Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it untrue.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-tory-vote-conservative-brexit-b2568658.html

Being dedicated Tory votes does not equal a majority of pensioners vote Tory. Brexit was a good idea. There is a price for freedom.

'The current average Tory voter is aged 62, voted for Brexit, and has voted Conservative in previous elections. Polling from More in Common shows that Conservative voters are slightly more likely to be white, and more than half are comfortable financially.' (Source, Independent).

The paragraph above talks in averages (it doesn't say which sort btw so I don't know what it means). It is not proof that most pensioners vote Conservative, only that some Conservative voters are middle-aged (not pensioners at 62).

I also am a pensioner. I voted for Brexit, as a socialist I could not in conscience vote to stay in a capitalist cartel that intended to introduce a pan-Europe hegemony superceding local democracy and subsuming workers' rights to those of big business. As a clause 4 socialist and follower of Tony Benn how could I vote otherwise?

You might like to read Tony Benn on why the UK should not be in the EEC/EC/EU.

So much wrong here.

Average UK wage in 1980 was £6000, not £3000, so Mr and Mrs Average in 1980 could have stretched to borrowings of £36,000, not £15000.

That you were below average earners is irrelevant, pls compare like with like.

Average house price in 1980 was just under £20,000, so a couple on average earnings could buy a house for 1.6x their yearly income.

Avg house price now is £305k, some 4.5x the average combined wage.

Now tell me you and i had it so hard?

NHS dental care in the 70s and 80s was readily available for all, its not now.

NB You didn't answer my point on why the young should expect pensioners to pay, when they have already paid. And not by voting Tory.

Except you didn’t read what I wrote. I said pensioners predominantly vote Tory which the statistics from every recent election including the last one show

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379439/uk-election-polls-by-age/

I did not say a majority.

and the “we’ve already paid” claim has been
roundly and solidly debunked multiple times even just on this thread.

Pensioners quite simply did not contribute enough during their working lives to cover their use of NHS, social care, care homes, pensions, winter fuel allowance, tv licenses, prescriptions, bus passes.

If you had this country would have a surplus due to the size of pensioner population and we wouldn’t be in such a bloody great mess.

I didn’t say £3000, I said £5000, which was our combined wages. Our first house cost £16,000 and we had to find £1000 deposit which was a fortune on £5000 a year between two. And if we were below average wage earners by £1000, so what ? We could have stretched to £30,000 or so but the interest rates were much higher, so unaffordable for many, including us, especially when interest rates leapt by over 4% when Thatcher took over in 1979. And prices are relative to area. Where we live a decent three bedroom property can be had for around £200,000. On an average salary of £60,000 combined that’s less than 2.5 times salary And mine and everyone else in my circle of friends had free dental care stopped at age 18. And I am comparing like with like. The figures I quoted are for average earners 2004. Not everyone earns anything like it. Neither did we. Did you live through it, because I did. Fucking sick of people on MN blaming everything on previous generations of pensioners.

Exactly.

We bought our first house in 1983.the building society would only take my husband's salary into account when approving a mortgage. His salary was just over 4k

Right and how much did the house cost?

Didn't vote Brexit. Never voted Tory How dare you assume these things.

If it was anything like us, that salary would only have got you around £16000 - in our case enough for a tiny new build two up and two down semi. We moved in with two deck chairs, a cooker and a fridge. The only heating was a gas fire - building society wouldn’t cover the equivalent house with central heating. This thread is just an excuse to direct unwarranted vitriol at pensioners who were just living our lives, worked and paid tax like everyone else. I was the poster that the ‘so much wrong here’ comment was directed at. I lived through it, so I beg to differ.

The average salary in 1980 was not 6k and Mr and Mrs Average could not have borrowed 36k. An average house was between 6k and 10k in 1978 (I bought one then, and 10k was our upper limit, on one and a half salaries). Cousins bought a house in London in 1977 - a 3-bed semi - and it was an astonishing (and unaffordable) 12k. I don't know where your average price of 20k comes from but that was not the sort of mortgage Mr and Mrs Average - who were more than likely on only one salary since women tended to stay at home with their children - would be taking on.
Salaries were lower and outgoings as a percentage of that income were much higher. I recall not being able to contemplate a house costing 8k (southern England) in 1974 - this was beyond our joint income of 27k, which was a considerable income at the time, and my salary (which was higher) would not be taken into consideration for the mortgage, which did not change until the mid-seventies, the assumption (a correct one) being that a young married woman would stop work for several years once she had children (I did not return to work until my eldest child was ten, which was entirely normal, and I was part-time, too).
Social conditions were different, which made the struggle to buy a home (or rent one, sometimes) as great as it is now because the assumption we now have of women returning to work almost immediately after having a child (which I think regression, not progress) rather than taking time to bring up their children (after all, it makes no-one any money if women do this for 'free'!) did not exist. We had to live on one salary, because a) two were not available (and equal pay only existed in the public sector) and b) if it was available it could not count towards a mortgage and going back to work with small children was very difficult.
The struggle now is no worse than the struggle then; it's just different.

It cost 14k. However, it had no fitted kitchen, just a sink, was a 2 up, 2 down run down terrace with the second bedroom just big enough for a cot because it had been chopped in half to put in a bathroom. Rotten windows and no central heating. We painted the living room before we moved in and it took weeks to dry.
We moved in with only a bed, a couple of 2nd hand chairs and an old electric cooker. I didn't have a washing machine until 1985 and even then it was a 2nd hand twin tub.

Right and how much did the house cost?

I was earning £3,000 Pa in 1980, and a 2 bedroom maisonette cost £12,000, in the town where I lived (to get the job) in the SE - 4x my salary! Interest rates were about 14%. In the mid 80s, I was married and pregnant - my employer expected me to be back at work, when DC was 6 weeks old, as I’d been there less than 2 years and had no right to any more maternity leave than that. I also lost my pension contributions, as I left.

The women in the present generation wouldn’t have the equal rights and job opportunities, they have today, if the previous generations of women, now pensioners hadn’t fought for them.

You cannot bring in average figures now but only compare to your particular finances back in the day.

I'm not blaming any previous generation i lived through all that you did and bought property too, with a £2,000 deposit, i was earning £9k per year in 1982 and it was doable, my rent, all in, was £35 per week, a room in Reading.

the difference is i accept that i had access to affordable housing, my DD doesn't, she is nhs band 6 on avg earnings and unlike me, can never afford her own house, rents cripple her saving potential, the only way she will buy a house is through inheritance.

i needed various dental work back then and i paid a pittance for it, my DD has just paid £800 for a wisdom tooth extraction.....

I also went to college and they paid ME !! i got all fees paid plus £600 per term living grant - my DD owes the Govt £43k for her degree and that was despite parental support and her working too, for an average salary and huge car parking costs.

Tell me again how hard we had it?

If you haven’t saved any money in pensions or elsewhere by the age of 66, you only have yourself to blame for me.

If you haven’t saved any money in pensions or elsewhere by the age of 66, you only have yourself to blame for me

Blame isn't helpful. Many people ( women) do the best they can. Caring responsibilites, no family or difficult family, poor health.

Correction! I forgot the . in my salary. In 1974 I earned 1.4k and my ex earned 1.3k = 2.7k altogether. An 8k house was beyond us. I was a minor civil servant and he was a teacher.

👏👏👏 for that Last paragraph!