Categories
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » So all parties look set to slash pensioners perks
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » So all parties look set to slash pensioners perks
Osborne suggests that pensioners perks like winter fuel allowance could be cut
http://t.co/jbEyjR6uAm pic.twitter.com/2UZ6c7mYqS
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
The LDs should have demanded that this commitment be ignored as part of the coalition agreement - like student fees.
In the current context they now look indefensible.
Volcanopete - if there are no paying customers, why should the bus routes continue?
It is paid by the tax-payer.
The national pensioners bus pass scheme was announced by Brown in September 2007 when we were getting a big development a day from the LAB government. It was all in anticipation of the GE2007 that wasn't.
I like my bus pass and would happily pay for it or accept a tax charge.
I just don't see why the taxpayer should pay for it. My mother loves hers - uses it whenever she comes to London. But she's not the best use of scarce state resources.
One of the problems for any political party in building a coalition (as it were) of voters is that the voters in the coalition may sense they have a disproportionate influence over Government policy.
As OGH frequently tells us, "it was the old wot won it" for the Conservatives in 2010 and those who believe that Conservative majority Government rule is gone forever should consider the demographics. If you win among the old, you'll probably win overall.
In some respects, the "elderly bloc" is akin to the "Union bloc" of the 1960s and 1970s though currently less organised (but that might soon change). Any rational analysis of public spending if starting from the premise of no sacred cows would have to include some of these "benefits".
That said, Mr Stodge Senior, at 85 years young, feels that strong sense of entitlement despite working all his life and serving in the Armed Forces.
It will be "courageous" for any political parties to take on this group but better to make the challenge in advance rather than (as the LDs did so disastrously in 2010) make a commitment in Opposition and perform a volte-face in Government.
The memory of the political debacle that was Norman Lamont's VAT on fuel in 1992 and the political carnage that caused the Conservatives in the succeeding years should be a salutary lesson.
Pensioners find it hard to alter their income (relative to other groups, although it's worth noting we have more OAPs working than ever before), so changing what the state gives them will always be contentious. That said, the youth of today will work longer for less. It's not on to expect them to subsidise perks they can never hope to enjoy.
Won't happen for a while of course as the entitlement culture is now too ingrained into the British mindset. But the western social model is already dead. We just need it to be properly buried.
Why cancer why not other life threatening-or not-conditions?
Because it could produce the biggest headline. That's all
The working family with a mortgage (especially a tracker or offset mortgage) have done extremely well and, with secure employment, may barely have noticed the recession.
This is, I think, a factor in the emergence of UKIP as traditional Conservative-voting pensioners have had cause to ask what this Government has done for them.
You are starting to scare me! You have started sounding as someone to the "left" of me with a brain-cell. And we all know that that cannot be you....
I was intrigued by this from OGH earlier in the week which showed the extent to which the Conservatives still have a big chance to win the next election. Given the 30% or so of the electorate which represents the Conservative core vote, the 48% of UKIP supporters wanting a majority Conservative Government suggests a potential pool of 7-8% additional voters who could yet be persuaded to back the blue team.
As we also know that UKIP support is disproportionately older, it seems there remains a key element of the elderly who might make the difference.
Contrast with the lower number wanting a majority Labour Government and the lower percentage of that desire among UKIP supporters.
In addition to the above, of course, the biggest prize of all is the 20-25% of the electorate who have yet to decide what they want.
But what could the government cut apart from winter fuel payments and TV licences that make up only £2.8bn in this tax year? The other £108bn that pensioners get (according to the IFS) is made up as follows:
Total pensions (including credit): £89.5
DLA: £10.5
HB: £6.4
Other (?): £1.9
I think the best thing is just to slowly increase the pension age in line with life expectancy (as Osborne suggested this morning). How is DLA and HB supposed to be cut for pensioners, unless more of them work?
But this is fiddling at the margins. A million over 65 now work. This will skyrocket in coming decades, as society still has yet to work out how to adjust itself to increasing longevity. When "65" became the "standard" (male) retirement age life expectancy was I think about 66. It's gone up and continues to go up at 18-24 months a decade, has now reached late 70's and company pension schemes now have to assume an average age of death for 40 year olds of about 89. It cannot be made to add up across the board and stick to "65"(and hence the complete ongoing destruction of private sector final salary schemes now having the last rites, destroyed by demographics and idiotic govt taxes and regulation with QE the final knife twist) but politicians are scared of saying " look truth is mr and mrs voter you're all going to have to work a lot longer, starting a lot earlier than we've let on so far". Watch those state retirement ages go up faster and earlier than thus far flagged up no matter who is in power - I note Labour's commitment to the state pension levels recently had left that door wide open despite the headlines of "protecting pension levels" - and quite right too.
Sky
The whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked details about snooping carried out by the US government, has landed in Moscow after flying from Hong Kong.
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, which says it is now representing Snowden, said he is using Moscow as a transit point to a third country.
That country appears to be Ecaudor, after the Reuters news agency reported that the country's ambassador to Russia had arrived at a hotel near Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.
A car bearing the country's flag was also seen outside the airport, while the AFP news agency said that he had requested asylum in the South American country.
The Australian’s Troy Bramston tweets that Newspoll has the Coalition leading 57-43, down from 58-42 last time. However, the poll has Labor’s primary vote below 30% for the first time this year, down one to 29%, with the Coalition also down a point to 48% and the Greens steady on 9%. Tony Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister has reached a new peak of 45-33, up from 43-35 at the last poll three weeks ago, but personal ratings are little changed: Julia Gillard is steady at 28% approval and 62% disapproval, while Abbott is down one to 36% and steady at 53%.
As Parliament returns for its last week before the election tomorrow, is it now curtains for Gillard?
Mr. Dancer, as our resident expert: clearing out some old books. Should I keep the Tom Holland Rubicon series - never got round to reading them, but should I do so at some point?
Why should people who don't work still get to own their own homes?
He needs to slash the non-cyclical welfare budget by £20 billion but is being frustrated from doing so by the Lib Dems who won't play unless he agrees to means test pensioner benefits.
By suggesting he may be prepared to move on the fuel allowance, Osborne is calling the Lib Dems hand.
Clegg can either stand firm and be isolated as the only party of the big three which is too frit to take the "hard decisions" or he returns to the table and joins with Osborne in agreeing a new base for welfare spending in the next parliament.
The two Eds deciding to become Osborne's bitches on austerity leaves Clegg with little option but to join them.
If not, then, from the bottom of my heart, please make that appear in Labour's manifesto next time round.
His little ruses have hardly helped the blue team over the years.
I'd just read the first chapter and make a judgement on that.
TBH, I feel rather sorry for the staff of the Ecuadorian embassy having Assange and his ego in perpetual residence - it must be like being haunted...
Indeed, I suspect the 1979-97 Conservative administration would have prepared projections as to future affordability of welfare payments of pensioners and that impact on the country's economic resources and while they might perhaps have assumed that continuous 4-5% annual economic growth would have made such benefits afforable in pepetuity, that seems an incredibly dangerous assumption to have made.
It's analagous to those people who took out endowment mortgages in the 80s and 90s based on credible yet over-optimistic forecasts of profit and now find themselves with maturing policies well short of the amounts expected.
The 1997-2010 Labour Governments are equally if not more complicit in this disaster as they could see the demographic crisis coming but either were too politically weak to make the economic and cultural changes required to combat it or too economically inept to realise that if 4-5% annual growth didn't happen, there might be big problems.
The emerging concensus on this is encouraging but there seems sure to be a rearguard action against any change and it will be fascinating to see if UKIP decides to take on the mantle of the pro-pensioner party and how they will respond to questions about the ongoing affordability of these benefits.
It's ridiculous that Obama being ignorant is somehow a negative against Osborne (who has plenty of real negatives to deal with). Then again, he was attacked for being on a yacht and neither taking nor asking for donations from him.
I am not sure if this has already been mentioned as it was from yesterday's Telegraph but given his very strident statements that this simply will not happen I wonder what RCS is making of the latest announcement from Ofgem?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10136903/Energy-regulator-to-warn-over-blackouts.html
I have never quite understood why Robert is so firm that blackouts will not happen.
Now this is true. Gilt yields ( around which annuities revolve and therefore the price of any given £ of pension payment ) were last this low somewhere around the time the Duke of Marlborough was getting on his horse to trot off to Blenheim ie the early 18th century ( yes eighteenth). Notwithstanding last week's little rise from the floor these yields have crucified the spending power of anyone with savings and forced up the effective cost of pensions causing companies and individuals to save even more as defensive mechanisms thereby taking demand out of the economy. Those with debts have seen spending power protected by the same mechanisms. Where the balance lies is for future economic historians to fathom but QE sure ain't a painless panacea. Stil,l think of this, when the buyer of last resort with literally limitless cash exits the gilt market and starts to unwind the policy, not only will the buying have stopped but a whole third of the total stock of gilts will flow back to the market lowering prices and therefore ( 'cos it's hard maths folks) increase the yields artificially so what goes around comes around. Unless bond holders are paid back with inflated £'s to square the circle of course........
Labour haven't had 2 consecutve weeks at less than 40% since November 2010.
Tories with best numbers since Ukip's rise after last week in April. "Out of intensive care and into recovery".
Lib Dems seems stuck on about 10% after starting to recover to 11% or 12% in March and April.
Why Gordon bottled a snap election in 2007.
"Labour's own research showed that that the Tories' tax-cutting promises at Blackpool had scored well not just in the national polls but among voters in crucial marginal seats. The Conservatives' policy of cutting stamp duty had gone down well with young voters, while women in Middle England's marginal seats in particular were impressed by the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's plan to raise the inheritance tax threshold from £300,000 to £1m. "It became clear that the inheritance tax had had a big impact in the marginals," said one Downing Street source."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-what-election-why-brown-lost-his-bottle-394416.html
Are we happy to have our phone's hacked or to have the whistleblowers who inform us of these facts arrested? I'm not and I'd be surprised if many of us are
Oh, wait...
Now Ed is endorsing his spending plans. Another ruse that has back-fired.
Oh, wait...
Starbucks paying UK corporation tax for the first time in 5 years. Why didn't George sort that out?
Oh, wait...
[Sunil suddenly clutches his head, screaming, as his Tebbit Chip kicks in....]
Aaaarrrrgh!!!
[...before a more servile expression crosses his face]
Must be loyal to England.... must be loyal...
Charles. My main concern is that people have had a massive capital windfall that they haven't worked for. So I would take a lot of that of them. Also don't see why those who don't work but get their mortgage paid by the state should benefit from ANY capital gains.
'Are we happy to have our phone's hacked'
I couldn't care less and if it results in one less person being murdered by Muslim nutters then it's job done.
Are you my father in law? He has this view of the world as far as I can work out.....
The campaign was screwed long before the short campaign by the Tories just not having a clue what a ground campaign looks like. Fortunately we can almost say the Tories have screwed the next one as well.
Who can forget, man on a boat, man gets out of a car, man cries at a funeral, and of course everyone's favourite, the bet that paid for the PB Tories cocktail night, man will apologise for agreeing with his opponent.
It's an impressive record, one that may never be matched.
Not as bad as these 'i'm being spied on' paranoid idiots.
The first line should have been:
Osborne is close to restoring the standing of the Tory party.
It is the reason tim is raging at the dying of the rose tinted light.
The man who wanders the streets saying 'the end of the world is nigh' will be right one day. But I postulate that he is a paranoid idiot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wXMnjLU63I
"If you've done nothing wrong
You've got nothing to fear
If you've something to hide
You shouldn't even be here "
and, prophetically:
"Everyone has their own number in the system that we operate under
We're moving to a situation where your lives exist as information"
Even the Lib Dems are laughing at Labour
@politicshome
Lib Dem MP @malcolmbruce: Labour's acceptance of some welfare spending restraints "undermines their credibility." @JPonpolitics
More to the point John is just indulging in a deflection strategy to avoid the basic argument about whether people should welcome or fear wholesale intrusive government monitoring of the population.
From that point of view it's far more important that he helps restore the fortunes of the wider party. If by 2015 he has helped restore the Tory party as the party of economic competece then a 1992 style result may be possible. It also helps that Labour are all over the shop on the economy at the moment. Which perhaps explains their comparatively small mid-term poll lead.
Clegg is using it now as it has the utility of exposing Osbrowne's posturing to gullible tories over yet more welfare cuts since Clegg usually replies "when you do so for the richest pensioners". Clegg knows Osbrowne won't dare do that this side of the election.
Now you're standing there tongue-tied
You'd better learn your lesson well
Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell
You'll see your problems multiply
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2VBmHOYpV8
Bell
Trott
Root
Is that anyone's dream Twenty20 batting line up?
Might I suggest the England cricket team try some
F L E X I B L E T H I N K I N G
"Having reshaped his Cabinet substantially last summer - sacking two Cabinet Ministers in the process - David Cameron is unlikely to do so again during this one. This is because to do so would both risk destabilising his already fractious Parliamentary Party, and offend his instinct to keep changes to his front bench to a minimum. From the Prime Minister's point of view, it makes sense to delay a substantial Cabinet clearout until next summer, when a team can be put in place to fight the election in 2015.
Leaving the next big shuffle until later in the Parliament will also minimise any backlash from sacked Ministers, since they will rally round Cameron during the election run-up (that's the theory, at any rate). The claim that Sir George Young will stay in post for the time being would dovetail with such an approach. The Prime Minister's most likely reshuffle course, therefore, will be to restrict change to the lower ranks of the Government - but to promote to just below Cabinet level men and women who, in his view, are capable of making it to the top table next year.
Especially women. Remember David Cameron's opposition pledge to aim at making a third of his Ministers women by the end of the Parliament. The promise was always a little ambiguous, and the Party is in coalition. But Conservative women MPs won't have forgotten the pledge. (Neither will Conservative male ones, for that matter.) Nor will the Prime Minister himself, who is anxious about the Party's slide in ratings among women voters. Furthermore, those two Cabinet Ministers dismissed last year were both women: Cheryl Gillan and Caroline Spelman.
I suspect that the proportion of women on Cameron's Commons front bench will be larger than it is now once the reshuffle has taken place. The Prime Minister would do well to stick with rather than sack the women he has in Cabinet already. But if there were vacancies, the women Ministers below Cabinet level are: Helen Grant, Esther McVey, Chloe Smith, Anna Soubry and Elizabeth Truss. Cameron will have an eye to regional balance as well as political outlook if he is looking to promote one or more of them."
Anyway, on topic
it's about time the boomers started contributing, but it needs to go much further than just axing the free bus passes. I don't doubt that it will seem unfair to the pensioners that they were promised all this stuff and now it's being taken away, but they need to understand they were sold a lie. The boomers had too few children and are living far too long for their children (and grandchildren) to pay the bill. The generational settlement is null and void & needs renegotiating.
We should do these things immediately;
1. Make retirement much more flexible - the general retirement age needs to rise to the mid-70's. that's what todays young people can expect
2.pop the btl/house price asset bubble With german-style renting rights. Your grandchildrens right to rent/buy an affordable house to live & raise a family in trumps your right to a btl property portfolio.
3. backdate £9k tuition fees to all graduates. Charge interest at commercial rates, but allow penalty-free immediate repayment. That would make a decent dent in the national debt
4. Expand the scale of the QE programme to cover much more of the total debt, then go for a bout of hyperinflation. I'm convinced this is the plan anyway, but we can be more aggressive about it. It's the most painless way to default on the unaffordable obligations to the oldies.
94. Remove free bus passes
But don't underestimate the need for the British to mock and often dislike the political leaders they respect the most.
He can be David's rock.
Justin Rose first Englishman to win the US Open golf tournament in decades;
HM Queen becomes the first reigning monarch to win the Ascot Gold Cup;
The Lions win the first Rugby test against Australia;
Mo Farah storms home in 5,000 metres at European Athletics Team Championships;
British Eight and two women's pairs win Gold at the Rowing World Cup;
and,
England wins the ICC Trophy.
Not a Lib Dem performance in sight.
F**king Coalition Cricket!
"Mr Atherton said the risk was not of blackouts but of a “substantial price spike” needed to attract mothballed gas plants back on. “You are looking at 15pc to 20pc on retail bills,” he said."
Alternatively, we can introduce a scheme to pay people to put capacity in now that we don't need. That would, however, require payments to generators to develop plant they would not otherwise develop, which would raise rates now.
So: do you think the government will (a) raise power prices now, to prevent possible power price rises in 2015/2016; or (b) chance power prices rising 20% in 2015/2016?
But then again the markets didn't predict banks crashing and the worst recession for over 100 years either.
'More to the point John is just indulging in a deflection strategy to avoid the basic argument about whether people should welcome or fear wholesale intrusive government monitoring of the population.'
Wrong,as I said in my initial response I couldn't care less.
Whilst some people have always got to find something to worry about,I would imagine in general, this issue has the same level of concern as the lunch menu in the local town hall. .
Esther McVey!!! All the appeal of Lucretia Borgia.
Besides it could only hurt current workers not current pensioners.
Inflation rewards those with lots of debt and screws the virtuous savers who are the innocents in the debacle we are living through. People get screwed by it, they get angry, and snake oil politicians can step into the breach. That's why modern Germany is still so hung up about it and the Euro. They have folk memory of inflation going really pear shaped.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10138031/Police-spied-on-Stephen-Lawrence-family-in-smear-campaign-says-whistleblower.html
If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer, I'd plumb new depths of unpopularity.
Given the increasing debt interest payments were increasing and needed to be funded. Additionally, managed expenditure was expected to increase because of the economic situation. Consequently departmental expenditure had to be squeezed to keep the overall spending envelope in acceptable limits.
If you wanted to freeze cash spending at Brown's levels the implications for departmental expenditure (Avery do you have the figures?) would have been horrific.
These things have to be done over a period of time
More evidence that the current establishment is incapable of self-regulation; give people power and they'll abuse it.
@Neil
"I'm impressed she's managed to make an impression on you!"
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/6/69951/2981246-giuseppe+veneziano+3.jpg
(Although, the headmaster at my old school tried it: he called us all up and tried to argue that since they had mispriced our education at the time we had a duty to contribute...)