Planned pension-age rise means most will die before ever seeing it
Iain Duncan Smith is a genuinely evil little man, isn’t he?
He spent years orchestrating the deniable deaths of uncounted (literally – the Department for Work and Pensions deliberately did not check on what happened to these people) sick and disabled people by changing the benefit assessment system to make it easier to cancel their payments.
Now the Centre for Social Justice think tank, of which he is chairman, is recommending that the age at which we may qualify for the state pension should be raised to 75 by the year 2035.
(Its previous big success – ha ha – was Universal Credit, which it dreamed up on the back of a fag packet in 2009 and which David Cameron adopted as Coalition government policy a year later.)
Apparently all the state-shrinking cuts inflicted by the Tories, along with the tax cuts they have given themselves and their super-rich friends, mean that the Treasury can no longer afford the ballooning cost of supporting an ever-increasing elderly population while the birth rate continues to decline.
Importing workers from other countries would have helped, but Brexit and the xenophobia the Tories have nurtured alongside it have put an end to that.
The aim, of course, is to avoid paying the state pension at all – to make ordinary people work until they die.
This is one of the reasons the Tories have been working to ensure that life expectancy – the age at which we may expect to die – falls.
They have succeeded in this aim, as David Hencke noted in an article last year:
“Britain is literally dying. Ever since the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition came to power a 50 year improvement in the death rate year on year went into reverse.”
He wrote that the lowest life expectancy in April 2018 was in Glasgow, Blackpool, Dundee, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire, where men could expect to live until the age of 75.4 at the most.
Under Iain Duncan Smith’s plan, that means most men living in these places would never draw the state pension, despite having paid into it for the whole of their working lives.
Well that will be the final nail in the coffin of the Tories if they do this. Poorer people in areas like Blackpool and Glasgow will be long dead before they reach pension age. No doubt that is what wealthy Iain Duncan Smith intends to avoid paying more tax himself. https://t.co/rMmEQKr429
— David Hencke (@davidhencke) August 17, 2019
As comedian George Carlin told Americans, the same now applies in the UK: “They’re coming for your social security money, they’re coming for your retirement money. They want it back.”
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Oh for God’s sake, it just gets worse. It won’t affect me as I’ll probably be dead and gone by 2035, the Doctor said I can expect to live to my late 60s or early 70s, and I qualify for State Pension at age 66. I wish they would have brought it down to 60. It’s a bit of a myth that people are living longer, some are, but 7 people I’ve known have died in the last 4 years, most in their 50s and one aged 66. Just a few years back they were quoting a figure of 85 as the average male life expectancy somewhere in the south of England whilst at the same time the average in Bradford, West Yorkshire, was just 58.
Aktion t4 rolling along without much of a ado
I have no words of niceness to describe this thing, he should have been charged for misconduct and tried in court, if found guilty he should have been shipped of to prison, horrid nasty conceited ignorant arrogant nasty piece of work, that is all I can think for him
Odious , pompous, vile man.
Only “think-tank” he should be allowed near, is that run by a highly qualified psychiatric doctor as part of his “therapy” in group sessions, in Broadmoor!
No way should he ever be able to peddle the delusions in his head again, as solutions and positive reform.
One must, of course, remember that when the Labour government introduced the paygo pension in the late 1940s the life expectancy of a man was 66 years and a woman 72 years. whether one agrees with IDS’s figures or not clearly with the increase in life expectancy either the age of retirement or the level of NI contribution must also go up…or an alternative needs to be found. Variations in the immigration figures would have little impact on the overall available budget.
Your last point is debatable. As for the others… An increase in NI contributions might be worthwhile if we were all getting a decent, more-than-living wage. But we have a Tory government that doesn’t believe in paying that sort of thing to the plebs.
While the last point is debateable it has to be noted that the declining balance in the NI Fund prior to the more recent state retirement age changes was not offset by the free movement within the EU. On the second point I doubt if a Conservative government, having taken millions of citizens out of paying income tax, would wish to plunge them back into it, solely to fund the NI scheme.
robbo – “the increase in life expectancy”, it’s true that some people are living longer but not everyone, you can use statistics to present things in a certain way, but there are other factors to consider, poverty, stress, depression, isolation/loneliness, geographical location and living environment as well as lifestyle choices and genetic influences all have a part to play in life expectancy. Many people I have known have died recently in their 50s.
trev – It is accepted that not everyone is living longer but more are doing so and this is creating the pressure on the funding of the pension. As you have said you have lost some people you knew who were in their fifties but they would not have qualified for a pension whatever the age of retirement …even if had remained at 65 for men and 60 for women.
You also highlight other factors but these are not a phenomenon of the 21st century and are factors which are taken into consideration already when looking at the state age of retirement.
I am not totally in favour of what this think tank has suggested but with the NI Fund predicted by GAD to be in deficit by around 2030 some action is needed if the current system is to be maintained.
Then robbo, how do other countries manage to pay their Pensions? Or maybe they don’t, I don’t know, but am curious, thinking of EU countries and Scandinavian, Ireland etc. I haven’t looked it up yet but there must be some alternative to putting it up and up. There’s lots of money in this country but it’s mismanaged and wasted on allsorts of crap.
Ah, I found something that sheds more light on the subject of UK Pensions Vs. EU countries but not sure if I can post links on here. It’s on a website called fullfact dot org
Trev – Different countries have different systems and whether they face the same problem I don’t know. The fact that the current system was unsustainable without either increasing contributions or raising the retirement age (or as I said above some other means)was recognised by all political parties over twenty five years ago. At the back of my mind is whether auto-enrollment is designed to form the bulk of ones pension and coupled with a means tested state pension.
When the age in the UK was raised to 66 for men the situation outlined by Heske and the question of regionalising pensions based on life expectancy was mooted the many flaws in his case were certainly highlighted at the time.
A difficult problem for which i have no solution!
Of course IDS and his cronies will be able to retire whenever they like on fat pensions. I’m all right Jack ans stuff the workers.
I hope everyone who reads this blog will publicise the article in order to inflict maximum damage on the Conservatives. It is very much what they deserve.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=iain+duncan+smith%2bsalam+yaqob&view=detail&mid=1955A2533A8D486364AE1955A2533A8D486364AE&FORM=VIRE
Ah IDS (£39 breakfast man) yet again has dreamt up another diabolical evil nasty “good idea” . . . stealing their old age pensions
which they have paid for!! thousands & thousands of them I’m sure have worked very hard in crappy jobs & would have welcomed their pensions, but now this.. how low can you get stealing yes stealing their pensions & hoping that they’d snuff it before they hit that magic number. . I hope that the older persons remember this at the next Gen Election . . . God help us all