To think incompetent hypocrite Starmer has lost the respect of the people and his own party in record time?

[TealTraybake]

An excoriating letter from Rosie Duffield who resigned today..

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rosie-duffield-resignation-letter-starmer-labour-b2620603.html#comments-area

Been bad enough for her to resign, I wonder what will happen next. Does she know something we don’t?

I’m a boomer. I can assure you my property wasn’t ‘bought for a song’. Two very hard working adults in full time work with no wrap around childcare, no UC top ups and very little in the way of maternity support. Not to mention only having one wage counting towards the mortgage and interest rates of around 17.5%. It wasn’t all jam.

Thanks @Rosscameasdoody I’m guessing they are going to lash out more and more but it’s nowt to do with me

Happily

And are you now destitute because you will lose £200-£300 this winter?

go and tell the Waspi women that!

This. And in recent years the word ‘Welfare’ has been used by both parties to demonise benefit claimants and push through savage cuts that are ideological rather than necessary.

And there are lots of other people struggling big time, students with crippling debt who can't get a job (with suggestions for increases to tuition fees), families who can't make ends meet, broke working people. Why should pensioners always be exempt from all cuts? And as Theresa May famously said, there is no magic money tree and the legacy from the Tories' mismanagement of public finances has meant that cuts have to be made somewhere...

Nope. Didn’t say I was did I ? But I know a fair few people who will find it very very difficult if we have a bad winter because they are a couple of pounds above the threshold. Reeves knew exactly what she was doing when she tied WFA to pension credit. It’s lazy policy - the threshold could have been set higher if, as was their stated intention, they wanted to means test it out of the hands of wealthy pensioners. Unless you think £218.15 a week is wealthy ?

Who did bulb34 insult?

There seems to be a magic money tree wherever tax cuts for the rich are involved, but interestingly nothing left for those at the bottom. Same with the WFA. Reeves could have set the threshold higher to means test it out of the hands of the wealthy. Instead she chose to punish those just above ridiculously low thresholds.

A couple of posts deleted - one referred to another poster as a MN Agitator.

She said I was silly and disingenuous, a bit rich I thought

Perhaps Labour’s polling is getting to them

Nothing to do with me 😀

Sure, I’m just trying to find out if it was me who was attacked. And if so, to thank whoever reported the post.

(And to feel a little glow of satisfaction at being howled at by a Starmerite.)

I’m one of the Waspi’s. The compensation (if it’s ever rubber stamped) won’t be much, and I don’t think I disagree with that - but I’m sure someone will be along soon to tell me how wrong I am. I was informed that my retirement date had been set back and knew from the media that it was happening - it was well in the public domain. If you look at the report into the DWP’s actions at the time, no one actually lost out anywhere near the amounts that were being bandied about.

No it wasn’t you don’t worry

In record time?

I guess Liz Truss has already been forgotten...

Ah, ok. You get the honours. 👍

Here comes the pile on.

Whatever, I can't be bothered anymore.

I just wonder who you would like to be in charge after years of appalling chaos and genuine corruption under the Tories, Brexit (!), dodgy Covid policy and contracts, Liz Truss's disastrous time in office, umpteen scandals, you name it, all of which have meant people are poorer, everything is more expensive, but no, you lot have it in for Labour after three months in office because they suggest cutting the WFA from all but the poorest pensioners. Get a grip, honestly!

But I'm off.

Thanks for taking the time to quote my points. Are you a Labour Party MP?

Let me respond..

Caved into the unions- the train drivers for example work for private companies? Why should they be settle by the government? And aren’t train drivers already paid enough compared to a nurse or police officer? The rail unions don’t want to negotiate , they want it all on their terms.

Winter fuel allowance- ok some pensioners won’t be affected . But many willl. I’m glad you don’t personally need it.

Sending middle aged women to prison who made racist remarks on social media. A suspended sentence or a community order would have sufficed. I don’t think we need to spend £60k a year on this woman in prison. By the way I work in the prison system and have seen some of whom are getting released early. Some are in for quite serious crimes.. but you obviously know more than me.

GB energy- Starmer said he’d do this form day one. I’ve yet to hear how this
publicly owned company will save me money as a consumer..

Smash gangs. Isn’t it obvious why it can’t be done? We already have Border Force and Europol, Interpol and the NCA. None of these organisations have been able to stop migrants crossing over Europe. For every gang you might stop, there will be many others. I’ve yet to see how Starmer can fix it.

Nope. For me it’s a bit more than that. It’s the WFA for reasons stated many times - and for the timing of it. It was announced before the budget so that the qualifying week of 16-22 September could be amended to include pension credit as a qualifying benefit, knowing that many pensioners won’t have lodged a successful claim for the benefit by then, so won’t qualify for the 2024.

It's for kicking the two child cap into the long grass.

It’s for similar rhetoric towards sick and disabled benefit claimants as under the Tories for the last fourteen years.

It’s for not knowing the difference between out of work sickness benefits and disability support benefits and for the insinuation, yet again, that the sick and disabled are responsible for the financial mess we’re in. And it’s for the delay in confirming to all those disabled people claiming PIP and other disability benefits, that they would not be implementing the unconscionable changes proposed in the Tory consultation document - which Labour are scrutinising before making a decision.

And it’s for re-branding austerity as ‘fixing the foundations’. Labour are wolves in sheeps’ clothing. The last Tory governments were lying sleazebags, but at least they didn’t pretend to be anything else.

On a practical point, the means tests used for pension credit and UC are well established, complex, invasive and expensive, but necessary for the sort of benefit scheme we have. (Universal income is an alternative, for another discussion). But to set up a new means test with a different cut off just for the relatively small WFA would probably cost more than it saves. You can't just use the same forms and data. That's probably why it was universal in the first place, and no one previously has changed it - it's really only by using an existing means test that it can be done. The alternative, which I favour, is just to give it to everyone.

I feel sorry for all the newbie MPs shiny faced, enthusiastic, still trying to find their way around the buildings, sincerely wishing to make a difference, and this gets dumped on them from a great height.

They're on the outside perimeter, don't know Starmer etc. their constituency on their back about WFA which they had no say in. Finding out that if they don't agree they'll be deselected, out before they started.

This is why Wales a small nation gave everyone free prescriptions because so many are eligible, the cost would be too high.

I’m a Waspi too and not particularly interested in compensation now, it’s way too late. I disagree to a degree. The first change to retirement age in 1996 was fair enough - well publicised and with plenty of notice, I think it was only a year or so for me anyway.

The second in 2011 was brutal for a lot of women, virtually no notice with a much bigger delay and a transition designed by complete fuckwits with no attempt at fairness. I missed out on five months of pension because I was born eight hours too late!

yup. My husband died in 2011 and I wanted to know whether I would still be given a part of his pension entitlement as under the old rules or whether I would need to buy extra years. The pension people were lovely BUT. I was told first categorically I would be able to use his pension entitlement, then I probably wouldn't, then I definitely wouldn't, then they didn't know. I was told to phone back every week to get the latest advice. As the time ticked off, what I was told was "this is this weeks guidance but its not final or definite,. we are so sorry. One and all the people sounded lovely and absolutely worn out by the whole thing. Eventually I was sent a definite pension forecast. It was more than the minimum pension and less than I thought I might get, no explanation or calculation. I am in the fortunate position of still (just) being a tax payer and I decided at that point that to query it might result in the amount being revised downward and of course if it was revised upwards, I'd just be taxed more. I have got a friend born easrlier in the year than I am and the same thing happened, she got her pension one year, I got mine in the next year.