Britain's pensioners are the poorest in Europe.

[ivanahoe]

Millions of elderly people in Britain are having to choose between eating and heating their homes because the UK's State pension is so low, and what's more the media are sweeping this issue under the carpet.

The basic state pension for single pensioners is just £97. 25 a week, and this is following a 30, 40, and 50 year working life contributing to the system both taxes and NI contribution which were mandatory

The State pension used to increase with British male average earnings, or inflation whichever the higher to protect its value prior to 1979, but when Thatcher took office in 1979, she broke to state pensions link with male average earnings, and the state pension has decreased in value ever since, being linked to inflation, and New Labour have continued Thatcher's pension policy.

Because we British are not generally politically motivated until things happen to ourselves, I wonder how many on this site know about the very serious plight of pensioners in this country ?

I mean, do people really want someone like Zak Goldsmith to order them to be green whilst he swans off to the Caribbean where he is supposedly domiciled on a private jet of a whim?

'One of the drawbacks of living in Belgium is its very high tax rates. Tax, social security contributions and other deductions often amount in total to more than half of an employee's monthly salary.

Foreign nationals who are living in Belgium will normally be required to pay tax in Belgium on their income from employment or other sources. There are certain exemptions for people working temporarily in Belgium for relatively short periods.

Tax rates are set on a sliding scale according to income, and are currently between 25% and 50% of salary after social security deductions. The highest rate is payable for anyone earning more than EUR30,210. Individuals are allowed to earn up to EUR5,660 tax free, with additional exemptions for spouses and children. There are also exemptions for professional expenses, usually to a maximum of EUR3,050.

Other types of tax payable include property tax, gift tax and succession duty. Property tax, payable by Belgian homeowners, is usually around 6%, but varies by locality.

The Belgian tax year is from 1st January to 31st December, and tax returns are sent out during April to be submitted by a specified date, usually within two months.

VAT is 21% on most goods and services, with a reduced rate of 6% on some items including food and transport costs.'

You might want to add that in Belgium you pay VAT on a house purchase, not stamp duty.

In Belgium your health care is a composite of state plus your contribution to a private insurer. In Flanders there is also a separate fund you have to pay into for old age as well.

I think we are better off in the UK than we realise with things like the NHS.

Its a pity you dont realise that high income tax rates generally mean well funded services, and it's also a pity that you didnt find our how much Belgium pensioners receive in state pension provision.

You presented a one sided view.

Britain is a "low" income tax country, but we are a "high local tax country".

And this is because unlike the Euro zone, Britain is losing the "role of it's State" re-State provision subsidy and investment.

Hence privatisation is creeping ever more into our lives including the NHS, and the British post office, and the railways went down that road under John Major in 1992, hence high fairs, wheras Euirope's railways are nationalised, and commuters travel cheaper.

I applaud the Euro zone for having an adult populas who realise that if they want their services up and running, then they know they have to pay for them.

But I scorn the British whose only thought is still for number 1, and low income tax.

We dont get nowt for nowt in this country, and its high time we Brit's grew up and realised it.

scaryteacher, I forgot to mention that social security payments across the Euro zone are much higher than Britain's antiquated means tested version, and I believe also non means tested.

ivanhoe

i work for a company that has been denationalised and when i hear some of the stories about how slow and wasteful it was before it makes me cringe. customer service used to be appalling - customers used to almost have to beg for things - its now so much better. I also have a friend who works for the NHS who says how wasteful they are. Countries in the euro zone have now found they can't pay for their services - look at greece, spain and portugal. its not privatisation that makes high fares - its the fact that the public don't have to subsidise them so much via tax. i would far rather pay less in tax and then choose which services i want and pay for them.

After reading most of this thread I have a few points to make.

My mum is 61 and still works fulltime in the NHS, she earns 28K per year yet last year when she turned 60 she started getting the state pension, she stopped paying NI, she has a bus pass and free swimming card and can do college courses for free. In the summer she is going to retire from her current job and get a final salary pension plus a lump sum and she is going to carry on working part time at the same hospital.

Noone can begrudge her any of this but even she says that it seems silly that she is better off now than at any other time in her life especially because like other contributors she had to struggle as a single working mother when I was younger.

I am aware that some pensioners are living in poverty and something should be done about this. Maybe investment in retirement homes with more efficient heating systems etc. but how many older people would move into these places voluntarily? Making older people aware of what they're entitled to seems to fall to charities like Age Concern and then it's up to the pensioners to contact them.

Means testing needs to occur in a more efficient way for instance why do pensioners have to fill in forms why doesn't the Inland Revenue deal with pensions.

The benefits system does need a shake up but it concerns me that if pensions were increased to the figures ivanhoe suggests (more than dp's wages!) what would happen to the cost of living for everyone else?

I've often thought that some benefits like child benefit should be means tested too, then I amuse myself with the thought of Victoria Beckham putting her CB away to buy the christmas presents!

I don't know, they'll never find a system that everyone thinks is fair!

The State pension is not a benefit, it is a right, and all pensioners have paid into it, so are entitled to it.

Means testing pensioners is costing over 15 times more to administer, than a higher State pension relinked to male average earnings.

Too many people judge this issue of this countries low state pension based on personal experience, this is a nonsense.

Pensioners deserve more than the basic state pension of £97.25 a week.

And one day cynicism and damn stupidy will be crushed into the dirt, and the British public will grown up and realise that old age in Britain should be revered, and not crushed as it is at the present.

How I wish we had the culture, and guts of the Europeans, the British are like children in comparison.

Not true that all pensioners receive the pension credit to top up their pensions to £130 p.w!

I live in France, (to be near my daughter, who is married to a french farmer) and although I would qualify for all manner of add-on benefits in the UK as my combined pensions are below the tax limit, non are available to me in France, with the exception of Winter Fuel Allowance. Life is a constant juggling of financial priorities, but I would not return to live in the UK for financial reasons only, all that crime, crowds and dirt!! Give me the peace and tranquility of the Normandy countryside any day.

'How I wish we had the culture, and guts of the Europeans, 'the British are like children in comparison.

You're perfectly free, as a British national, to move to another EU nation where people share more in common with your beliefs.

May I suggest the south of Italy? Where pensioners tend to live in bedsit type accomodation, being unable to afford the rent on whole apartments, and which frequently have not only no central heating, but more often than one would think, no running water? (there are pumps placed strategically at the end of roads etc, unfortunately they dry up when it's hot)

I'd like to see a Pension-Swap programme (perhaps we could suggest it to Ch 4?) where one of these poor Brits changes places with the little old ladies I see every morning emptying their slop buckets onto the street?

I also love these wide-sweeping "Europeans" generalisations that get thrown about on these threads as if "Europe" was one homogenous cultural/social lump. Try putting a German, A Greek, A Swede and a Turk in a room and see just how similar they all are.

and let's not forget Greece's erm, bit of a financial problem with paying out pensions arleady.

it was never meant to be a pay in-take out system whereby you could not work for 30 odd years and expect to live fully off the state.

it was meant as a safety net, a top up, for about 5 years.

people are going to have have to let go of this idea that they are entitled to not work ffor decades and be fully supported by the state.

there's no society who can support that long-term.

that is not cynicism, that is reality.

and stupidity is believing otherwise.

/////people are going to have have to let go of this idea that they are entitled to not work for decades and be fully supported by the state////

Ah I see the usual British bigots are having their usual rants about people not working, it is no wonder Britain is being run now by a right wing one party state, they love all this descrimative garbage.

The way some of you talk about your own kind ?, this country could easily be run by "nationial socialists", the like of whom attempted to take over Europe.

They managed to brainwashed cultured Germans that the jews were the problem.

Once descriminations starts, we all know where it ends.

////May I suggest the south of Italy? ////

May I suggest Britain where millions of pensioners live on the breadline on paltry state pensions and means tested handouts after paying into the system all their working lives.

Is it Groundhog Day?

/////Try putting a German, A Greek, A Swede and a Turk in a room and see just how similar they all are////

Try putting a half dozen or more British people in one room for an hour or so, and find out what they know about anything to do with politics today, "zilch" will be the answer, and the politicians love it.

//Is it Groundhog Day?//

Is it Groundhog Day ?

most pensioners are actually really quite well off. The poorest pensioners actually do not receive the basic state pension, being single elderly women who have not worked. If you care about pensioner poverty why focus on something that not everybody gets. The minimum income guarantee (the level of income below which pensioners are eligiable for extra help) is increased in line with earnings.

/////most pensioners are actually really quite well off///

How interesting, I never knew that.

You're really grasping at straws here, ivanhoe, but I admire the change of tack: formerly, anyone who didn't agree with you was just a Thatcherite. Now, they're Nazis!

'May I suggest Britain where millions of pensioners live on the breadline on paltry state pensions and means tested handouts after paying into the system all their working lives.'

My FIL's paid into the system all his life. Back in his day, you could work from the age of 14. So he did because his father had left the family and there was his mother and sister and him.

He's still working, still paying in, now in ill health (diabetes, arthritis), still poor.

But he's only in his 50s so he doesn't count as much, I guess.

We all pay into the system all our lives.

SO WHAT?!

That doesn't entitle any one of us to not work for 30 odd years and expect full on state support.

IMO, age discrimination in employment needs to be way more of a priority than increasing pensions.

People are going to have to work longer because they are living longer.

So that needs to be made possible first and foremost.

Im not grasping at any straws dear boy, im merely stating that it is obscene in a nation with our collective wealth that the state cannot look after us in old age.

Im British born, ive paid into State coffers all my working life, just like pensioners today older than me naturally.

I cannot see why British people working in Britain, paying taxes and other contributions, are not able to look forward to a bloody good pension from the state when people retire in their old age.

Please tell me what is wrong with this scenario ?

Aside from the propogandist garbage that people are living longer, because this implies becoming a pensioner, is also becoming a burden.

Do tell.

First of all, I'm female, not a boy.

Secondly, this is a capitalist nation. That is why it is not a society set up for the state to supply a person with a 'bloody good pension' to an increasing segment of the population who are living longer and longer.

Some of your earlier posts declared that the money Britain contributes to remain a member of the EU is a waste.

Yet you uphold the Continental model of pensions as something we should follow.

Furthermore, many of these European nations are much, more socialist than the UK, with the taxes that go along with that.

I see a dichotomy here, does anyone else?

'Aside from the propogandist garbage that people are living longer, because this implies becoming a pensioner, is also becoming a burden.'

Um, no, it implies that, because people are living longer, they are going to have to work for longer before drawing a state pension unless they have managed to provide their own means to live without working before said age.

It's not propoganda, it's fact: more people living longer = more people drawing pension = pension bill grows larger.

I'm pretty socialist in tone (as some of you may have noticed ) but you're just, erm, wrong ivanahoe.

If you look at cumulative wealth of recent pensioners overall, they have greater assets than those in work, and considerably more than younger adults.

The rate of poverty in older people has dropped considerably in the last 20-30 years. According to recent estimates, 2 million pensioners live in poverty; while 9 million don't... This 2 million figure has reduced from nearly 3 million in 1998.

The state pension is poor but retirees as a whole tend to compensate for this with other pension pots, housing equity and if they have been homeowners, they tend to match the reduction in their income on retirement with comparable reductions in outgoings, specifically necessary daily travel to work and mortgage payments.

However, I think what you mean to say perhaps is that the gap between most pensioners and the very poorest has increased, which is also true. In particular women who have suffered divorce or bereavement are at particular financial risk and they indeed are often living in poverty with no assets, no pension and little savings. Many also have no paid sufficient NI credits to be entitled to a full state pension although this is being rectified by other benefits to some extent. This unequal situation has worsened lately while overall pensioners are better off.

////while overall pensioners are better off//

This is not what im saying.

Take a read of my original posting.