Tories ACCELERATE rise in state pension age in ‘spit-in-your-face’ response to protests
Head down: David Gauke hung his head while he announced the change.
A defiant Tory government spat in the faces of millions of UK citizens yesterday when it announced that increases in the state pension age are to be accelerated, rather than reversed.
So this is how the Tories have chosen to respond to calls for them to have mercy on the so-called ‘WASPI’ (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaigners.
These women, born in the 1950s, have spent years fighting Tory plans after they were told without warning that they would not be retiring at 60, as expected. Instead, their retirement age was being increased in a stepped programme, to create parity with that of men.
The Conservative government of John Major made that decision in 1995 – but it was kept quiet and those affected did not start to receive notification until 2009 – 14 years later and long after it became impossible for many of them to address the loss to their income that it implies.
The pressure has been too much for some of the women affected, and we know of at least one who has committed suicide because of this policy.
David Gauke (visit this article to learn more about him), currently Work and Pensions secretary, had the bare-faced cheek to say that the proposals would create “fairness across the generations, and the certainty which people need to plan for old age”, and insisted he wanted Britain to be “the best country in the world to grow old”.
He said that the change was needed because people are living longer after retirement. But this was a lie. We know that, because of Tory policies, life expectancy in the UK is falling. People are more likely to die younger – possibly before they even reach retirement age.
How can this ever be the best country in the world to grow old if, under Tory plans, you’re either worked to death before you ever receive your pension or you commit suicide because you know you won’t have enough income to survive?
Gauke reckoned failing to increase the pension age would put an unfair burden on younger generations, who would be expected to pay for it with their taxes.
There’s just one problem with that: The National Insurance Fund, from which state pensions are paid, makes a surplus of £2 billion each year. It currently has a surplus of around £30 billion.
So there will be no extra burden on younger generations if the situation carries on as it is.
In fact, the Tories could reduce the pension age of the WASPI women and the fund would still be in surplus.
What can we conclude?
Only that Mr Gauke – and the minority Tory government – are lying to us again.
They clearly want to cut the amount of money being spent on pensions.
Does this mean they are planning yet another tax cut for the already-obscenely-rich?
And Theresa May had the front to tell the nation in Prime Minister’s Questions that the income gap between the richest and the poorest is narrowing.
It’s more than a month past time these liars were gone. Let’s spend the summer pushing them out.
Britons born between 1970 and 1978 will have to wait an extra year, until they are 68, to claim their state pension, the government has announced.
David Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, announced the controversial rise for about 7 million people in their late 30s and early 40s just before the House of Commons breaks up for its summer recess.
The move implements the findings of a review by the former CBI director general John Cridland, published in March, which recommended accelerating the planned increase in the pension age to prevent the costs of the state pension becoming unsustainable.
Source: State pension age to increase seven years earlier than planned | Money | The Guardian
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The Nasty Party gets nastier and nastier and nastier. No money for pensions, but over a billion pounds to bail out a rotten, corrupt Tory government.
Death is no respecter of age. These pensioners to pay into a system from which they are entitled to draw. The Tories have made it so that young people are having to draw from a system into which they have either yet to pay into or have paid very little. How is that fairness across the generations? There are many people who, for many reasons, will not live long enough to draw their pensions and many others who will not be entitled to, because of changes that were made in the 1990s. There are also young people who will not live to pensionable age.
These [Tory] people seem to forget that they are human, just like the rest of us and that money cannot fix everything. They cannot eat it, live in it, nor be clothed by it. The sooner that they realise that there are more important things that having more money than they know what to do with, the better off we will all be.
That should say, “These pensioners have worked to pay into a system from which they are entitled to draw.” I know not what became of the rest of that sentence.
This government is shameless, I wonder how many people who voted for the nasty party are effected by this evil plan and can’t complain.
Admin PENSION 60 NOW
The Tories lied even on the last day of parliament. Because the youngest who were interviewed on the telly news do not have a pension age of 68 from the Tory government commissioned Cridland pension review, but a pension age of 70.
The pension age of 68 was already for those 38 today. The ladies who turn 60 now are closer or at 67 pension age.
90 per cent of the payouts each year from the National Insurance Fund is to state pension, pension credit, winter fuel allowance, yet it remains full and in surplus each year and has done over the century of its existence.
Socialist Labour PM Attlee continuing paying women’s pension at 60, reduced from 65 in 1940 and paid all through the war, from 1945 onwards, at which time Attlee faced a 200 per cent national debt from the cost of the 2nd world war. Attlee created the welfare state and with Nye Bevan, the NHS and so much more. Attlee PAID OFF HALF THE NATIONAL DEBT in one term in government.
So the state pension is sustainable at pension age 60.
In 1993 Jeremy Corbyn said in a civilised society the state pension payment age would be equalised at 60 for men and women.
In 2005 the actuaries informed that raising the pension age to 67 would mean around 1 million working class would be long dead and never drawn any kind of pension.
The rich living, on average, 25 years than the rest of us, who face decreasing lifespan. The working class anyway remained with the same death averages of lifespan as back in the 1870s.
Admin PENSION 60 NOW
I presume I’m missing something here: on the face of it, saving more money by working longer would mean a rise in income?
My Father died suddenly aged 49 and drew no pension, or any other benefits. My son is 49 at the end of this month and has terminal cancer, so he will not draw his pension and his wife and three children will not get the original Widowed Mothers benefits for her and the three girls, in education. There are many people who die before pension age or just after retiring.This Government is treating us all like slaves and serfs and seems determined to take everything from our young people, including their retirement years. We must get rid of this government!
The Cons made a big announcement about increasing the Pension value which embraced many add ons that made life difficult for the Pensions office to administrate and created issues. However the announcement was not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but etc because they failed to say at the time that contributions will have had to be fully paid up which of course many are finding out to theoir costs this was yet another cunning plan key information piece that was ommitted when they took the full glowing press reviews about their wonderful upward revisions to pensions.
I noticed Kuenssberg changed the focus of this announcement to mention that this might irk those who wiill be affected when they consider that those who are already collecting a pension will be unaffected.
I’m waiting for the day when that woman decides to stand as a Conservative candidate. She’s certainly wasn’t slow to take the opportunity, in true Tory fashion, to try to use it to set one group against another.