It is going to have to be means-tested, whether the UK public likes it or not. If you run the maths there is no other option. It’s a matter of when, not if.
As for your other tiresome comments, try actually reading my posts. Nothing I’ve proposed would leave anybody in poverty and I’ve explicitly emphasised several times that there are people who are so disabled they can never work or genuinely cannot earn enough to save the meagre amount per month required to build any retirement fund, for whom a state pensions safety net will always - I’m sure - remain in place, rightly. The problem is the large number of irresponsible people who are working and absolutely could save a small amount per month and generate a sufficient fund over their lifetime to support themselves in retirement but don’t bother to do so and think it’s ok to make everyone else pick up the tab for this and plead poverty later in life when they chose not to bother to save. These people are selfish and entitled and I don’t think the state should give them any help whatsoever.
You seem to be agreeing with what I’ve said at first but then talk about “exploiting loopholes”. I’m not sure what you mean by this. The tax relief (actually mainly just deferred tax, the mirror image of the ISA arrangement) on pensions is a deliberate incentive to save, not a “loophole” which implies some kind of accidental feature of the tax system that enables tax avoidance. Using legitimate tax breaks designed for that specific purpose to incentivise positive behaviours (as tax should - sadly not many areas of our tax code do so and those that do are steadily being eroded) is not “exploiting” anything. It’s simply acting rationally in precisely the manner in which those designing the system were hoping people would respond.
As for your advice to claim welfare that is not required, that is not morally right although it may be legal. Obviously the welfare system has to have different design parameters to the tax system because it is meant to be a safety net, therefore if designed well it will have to set its limits more generously than the minimum requirement/ criteria for qualification in order to avoid fringe cases where people fall through the cracks and it therefore fails to meet its purpose. The main reason it is being eroded over recent decades and has become dysfunctional (aside from poor design such as providing state pension welfare without means testing which wastes £80bn per year currently, and levying tax on an individual basis which is dysfunctional anyway then providing much of welfare on a household basis, which obviously and inevitably has the effect of creating economic distortions and perverse incentives and harming growth and productivity) is precisely because of the type of attitude you express: “claim everything you’re entitled to”. Disrespect of what is meant to be a safety net and trying to milk all you can out of a system when you have no need of it, once this becomes a prevalent attitude, means that there is insufficient funding for those who do require it and that criteria have to be tightened, often hitting the wrong people (those it was intended to help, who actually need it) and the system starts to collapse.
For a society and economic system to operate properly there has to be some level of social responsibility not just a “grab whatever you can and screw everyone else” attitude and your comment exemplifies why this isn’t working anymore in the UK.