Category Archives: Pensioners

Pensioners take note: evidence shows Boris Johnson wanted Covid-19 to get rid of you

Get the message? You never saw Boris Johnson actually sitting over a dying pensioner making rude gestures at them (and the rest of us), but he might as well have done it. At the time, This Site wrote: “Until pensioners realise that his policies on Covid-19 add up to the same, he’ll carry on – aided by the papers and TV channels that keep the over-60s tranquillised – easy prey for the cull.” How true that was.

Those pensioners who have supported the Conservatives with their votes may be forced to think again after the Covid-19 inquiry heard that former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson not only thought the disease was “nature’s way of dealing with old people” – but was agreeing with other Tory MPs in doing so.

It’s a staggering act of contempt for a sector of society that has propped up one Conservative government after another – and that comprises the vast majority of the Tory Party’s membership.

The BBC tells us:

The allegation comes from diary entries from former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.

In August 2020, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going”.

“Quite bonkers set of exchanges,” he said, referring to messages exchanged between Mr Johnson and others in a WhatsApp group.

In later notes from December 2020, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson said his party “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”.

Another note from December says Mr Johnson agreed with the Conservative Party’s chief whip when he said “we should let the old people get it and protect others”.

This message – that the government should leave senior citizens to die rather than try to protect the population as a whole – will come particularly hard to the families of the 30,000 people who died in care homes for the elderly after then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s “protective ring” around them turned out to be nonexistent.

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The BBC quotes Brenda Doherty, spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, who said reading Mr Johnson’s messages felt like being “punched in the stomach”.

“During the first and second waves of the pandemic the UK had one of the highest death tolls per person in the world from Covid-19 and it’s clear just how personally responsible for that he was,” Ms Doherty said.

Also providing testimony was former Prime Ministerial advisor and Barnard Castle visitor Dominic Cummings, who said there was no plan to protect vulnerable people, such as the victims of domestic abuse, in a national lockdown.

“I would say that entire question was appallingly neglected,” Mr Cummings said.

Boris Johnson – and more importantly, now that he has replaced Johnson as prime minister, Rishi Sunak – will face the inquiry later in the year, which is more than can be said for some of the key figures in the handling of the pandemic.

Cabinet Office Secretary Simon Case decided he was “too poorly” to testify:

And Hancock refused to appear unless he had immunity from the law – implying that his actions during the pandemic may have criminal consequences:

One element that is no surprise is the behaviour of Boris Johnson. Former Downing Street Communications Director Lee Cain, giving his evidence today (October 31, 2023), said

the pandemic was the “wrong crisis” for Mr Johnson and he was a “challenging character to work with” because he kept changing his mind.

This should come as no surprise because we already have plenty of evidence that Johnson was completely incapable of leading during the crisis and needed to be led through every step of the way by aides who feared that he would depart from logic (and indeed sanity) at any moment:

This is a man who was presented to the nation as the best possible choice to lead the UK in the 2019 general election!

I wonder how many people, presented with the evidence to this inquiry, would prefer Jeremy Corbyn in hindsight.

In any case, the Covid Inquiry is heating up – but will any political heads roll as a result of the fatal errors that are being discovered on a daily basis?

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With Labour and Tories agreeing on pensions, who will senior citizens vote for?

The answer’s simple, but will our pensioners work it out?

With both Labour and the Tories refusing to guarantee the continuation of the triple-lock, there is no reason for the worst-paid pensioners in Europe – ours, here in the UK – to give either party their vote.

Wow. 68,000 pensioner poverty deaths every year.

Find another party to support! Your life depends on it.

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The news in brief: Vox Political’s morning round-up for June 1, 2023

Paul Whitehouse, Lee Mack and Steve Coogan at Lake Windermere: here are three protesters who would be criminalised by Suella Braverman for causing “more than minor” disruption to other people’s day-to-day activities.

Right to protest: UK politicians urged to ‘do the right thing’

Peter Stefanovic’s emotional video clip demands that members of all Opposition parties in the House of Lords support Jenny Jones’s ‘fatal motion’ and kill Suella Braverman’s bid to stifle everybody’s right to protest with an undemocratic ‘Ministerial decree’. Let’s give him a moment to explain it:

Government hasn’t spoken to strikers since January

The general secretary of rail union ASLEF says the government hasn’t spoken to its representatives in almost five months because the Tories aren’t interested in ending strike action on the railways:

43 MPs throw support behind justice for WASPI women

From the i:

So far 43 MPs have written to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), calling for a speedy conclusion to its review of how much damage was caused by the way the pension age changes were communicated to women born in the 50s, and for fair compensation.

Among the 43 MPs are Ranil Jayawardena of the Conservatives, former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron, former Labour Party chair Ian Lavery and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party.

The PHSO could recommend compensation anywhere from £100 to £10,000 or more per person.

Women born in the 50s claim they were not given enough notice that their state pension age would rise from 60 to 65, in line with men. It then moved to 66 for both sexes.

Many women retired early or made life-changing decisions based on getting their pension at 60. The ramifications of the policy change and lack of notice has left them in emotional and financial distress, they say.

Their plight is under review by the PHSO, which has already found the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) guilty of maladministration for failing to sufficiently inform the women about the state pension age changes.

Though the PHSO maintains its investigation is fair and impartial, it decided to take another look at its findings after recognising part of the report was legally flawed. This move has raised hopes of a higher compensation award, although it is not guaranteed.

As Waspi awaits the results of the review, which could come before summer, it is urging supporters to contact their MP to put pressure on the PHSO to “complete the investigation with a sense of urgency” and make “fair” recommendations for compensation.

Latest Universal Credit change will leave parents worse-off

From The Canary:

BBC News reported that the DWP will be rolling out a change to the amount it pays in childcare costs to parents/guardians. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced it in his Spring Budget. Until now, the department has paid £646 a month, per kid, towards childcare costs under Universal Credit. Now, as BBC News wrote:

The government will allow parents on the benefit to claim back £951 for childcare costs for one and £1,630 for two or more children – a 47% increase.

Universal Credit’s increase in childcare costs payments is still nonsense.

The cost of childcare is huge:

  • For full-time childcare, the average cost is £285 a week.
  • For part-time, it’s £148 a week.

The DWP’s £951 maximum for one child is per Universal Credit assessment period. That’s usually a calendar month – running from the same date one month to the next. So, on that basis the department would pay, at the most, £219 a week.

This is £66, or 23%, short of the average costs. Meanwhile, in 2022 parents were already paying out up to two-thirds of their wages on childcare.

DWP secretary of state Mel Stride has trumpeted about the news. Stride said: “These changes will help thousands of parents progress their career without compromising the quality of the care that their children receive. By helping more parents to re-enter and progress in work, we will be able to cut inactivity and help grow the economy.”

Stride’s claim of the DWP ‘helping parents re-enter’ work is based on parents effectively being worse off in work.

Labour policy pledges need a 3p income tax rise

From the i:

Labour’s policy pledges so far would cost the equivalent of a 3p rise in income tax, i analysis reveals.

Sir Keir Starmer has promised not to borrow for day-to-day spending, and to bring down the size of the overall public debt pile as a percentage of GDP.

Analysis by i suggests that Labour’s policies will require an additional £20bn of funding every year – the equivalent of raising the basic rate of income tax by more than 3p – beyond that already promised through small tax increases such as imposing VAT on private school fees and ending non-domiciled tax status.

Labour’s biggest recurring spending commitment is to extend free childcare to all children aged 11 and under, promised by shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson earlier this year. The IPPR think-tank estimates the cost at almost £18bn, although taking into account the Government’s own childcare plans announced at the last Budget the net cost would be more like £13.6bn. The party said that an expansion of childcare to all children is not its current policy despite Ms Phillipson’s promise.

The pledge to increase the foreign aid spending target to 0.7 per cent of GDP, after Rishi Sunak cut it to 0.5 per cent, would cost around £5.5bn; party sources say this will only be implemented when it is affordable to do so. Labour has promised to set up a £1bn “contingency fund” for the energy industry, and would also have to spend around £1.7bn on GPs’ salaries if it went through with plans by shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting to nationalise the network of family doctors in England – something which the party now says it will not do.

Other current spending commitments which would total less than £1bn each include increasing the number of mental health workers, recruiting more police officers and setting up breakfast clubs in every primary school.

There’s a lot in the i‘s list that Labour now says it won’t do. Doesn’t this suggest that Keir Starmer is really planning just a continuation of the current neoliberal Conservatism that is pushing the UK further towards ruin every day?

Also, considering the Tories gave £800 billion to very rich people for no very good reason, This Writer can’t see why Labour couldn’t produce £20 billion from the same place, and then tax the rich to keep the books in balance and prevent any inflation.

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Voter ID to be spread to postal votes. Do the Tories have a death wish?

The Tories introduced voter ID at polling stations and the electorate in the local elections turned away from them en masse; they lost 1,063 seats in the greatest local election defeat any UK political party has suffered.

What conclusion did they draw from this? Well…

It’s possible that the Tories tried to gerrymander postal votes at May’s election, by persuading voters to send their ballot papers to their local Conservative association instead of their local council.

Bringing postal and proxy votes in line with “in person” votes makes sense if such an attempt at gerrymandering failed.

I make this point because in other ways it makes no sense for the Tories to do this at all. For instance:

Newly announced government rules to require identity checks for postal and proxy voting in UK parliamentary elections are likely to make it harder for older people to take part in elections, a leading charity has warned.

Age UK said… [it would] “erect additional barriers to older people exercising their democratic right to vote.

“Rather than strengthening our democracy our worry is that it will weaken it, if some older people with postal votes find it too hard to submit their ID, or to re-register every three years, and simply give up.”

It strikes This Writer as a strange way to treat a segment of the population that has previously been  – mostly – supportive of the Conservative Party at recent elections.

Making it harder for pensioners to vote means another group will find it harder to vote Conservative.

One fails to see the logic in it. Considering the need for voter ID was fabricated (there aren’t enough fraudulent attempts to vote to justify it), the logical choice would have been to roll back voter ID altogether.

But then, maybe these Tories have a political death wish.

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Sunak threatens the pensions triple lock – how can he still say he’s ‘compassionate’?

The triple lock ensuring that pensions rise by the highest of 2.5 per cent, average earnings, or inflation is in danger of being dropped by Rishi Sunak’s new Tory government.

It seems the new prime minister, whose personal wealth is greater than that of the King, is not keen to allow pensioners’ payments to rise in line with the cost of living; inflation currently stands at a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent, due to the failures of previous Tory administrations.

His press secretary has merely claimed that Sunak has a record of being “compassionate for the most vulnerable”. This Writer is not convinced that such a claim holds water.

It seems clear that the pensions triple lock – which was a Tory idea, let’s not forget – was never intended to allow payment increases of the kind being demanded now.

It was a lie intended to dupe senior citizens into thinking the Tories support them and therefore into voting Conservative at elections.

It was dropped during the Covid-19 crisis because wages, having fallen, then rose by eight per cent and Sunak refused to pay. That was a special case, though, because the triple lock did not take account of falls in wages; the rise in fact only returned wages to where they were before.

This is not a special case. The cost of living has increased enormously and richer-than-the-King Sunak is indicating that he wants pensioners to be unable to afford to pay their bills any more.

Oh – and Sunak won’t commit to raising state benefits in line with prices, either.

The decisions on these issues will come on November 17, in Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s winter Budget that is replacing a statement that was due on Monday. Hunt has been given more than two weeks’ grace to find a way to make the situation work for pensioners and those on benefits.

Do you honestly think he’ll bother?

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Grandparents: snap up this little-known childcare benefit while you can!

Here’s more useful information from Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert:

So there’s no penalty for the parent if they’re working and earning NI credits from that.

Any good?

Asda’s offer to the over-60s: better than the Tories?

I pass this on for your information. Please do the same if you know people who may benefit from it:

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Why didn’t the government act on energy price cap increase earlier? It’s what we expected!

Martin Lewis: he’s been saying the government has been able to predict the rise in the energy price cap for months – so why hasn’t it acted to protect vulnerable people yet?

Here’s a good question, posed by a Facebook friend of This Writer:

“Why [announce the inflation-dictated energy price cap rise in] October? Is that because the inflation rate, by which pensions are increased the following April, is set in September?

“Whether its intended that way or not (and I’m a cynic, I’d say it is), pensioners won’t get the inflation rise caused by October’s and April’s energy price rises – until April 2024 – having to go a whole year with insufficient money.

“It might apply to other benefits too.”

Can you see anything wrong with the reasoning here – especially when we knew the rise was coming and could predict exactly what it would be.

That’s what Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis says, anyway (along with very many other pertinent points) in this clip:

So there’s no reason for the government to deprive pensioners (and possibly benefit recipients) of inflation-linked pensions and benefits – or, indeed, to have delayed mitigating measures until after a new prime minister is sworn in.

And now we know that – possibly at least in part because of this failure – the number of people in fuel poverty, spending more than 10 per cent of their income on energy bills, is likely to almost double, from 4.3 million to 8.9 million within 12 months.

The price cap is now set to rise from £1,971 per year to £3,549 per year on October 1, and is projected to rise to an excruciating peak of £6,616 – almost double again what it is rising to reach in October.

Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has said options for further household support packages are being drawn up – but we are also expected to cut our electricity use by between 15 and 30 per cent, according to our means.

To me, this suggests that the Tories are preparing to blame members of the public if they die of cold this winter, by pretending that they didn’t cut their energy use enough.

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Will Sunak bow to pressure over cost of living – or will he stick to doing the wrong thing?

Rishi Sunak: he knows he’s doing wrong but he’s doing it anyway.

With Parliament about to reconvene with a new legislative programme, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is being urged to (at last) address the cost-of-living crisis.

The British Chambers of Commerce have called for a three-point plan that would slash VAT on energy bills from 20 per cent to five per cent, offer free Covid tests for companies and the reversing of a recent National Insurance hike.

You can read the rationale for it here.

Sunak is making vague noises about tax cuts – which would be just as well, considering his government has inflicted more tax hikes on the UK’s population than any other in decades.

But he hasn’t actually done anything yet.

Instead, it seems, he’s taking billions from pensioners by freezing something called the Lifetime Allowance for five years.

Confused? So was I. Here‘s the lowdown:

The Lifetime Allowance is currently £1,073,100, which may seem substantial to many.

However, many could find themselves propelled over this sum due to the Chancellor’s decision to freeze the Lifetime Allowance for five years.

It is thought a saver who withdraws cash in a lump sum will lose an extra £180,125 to the taxman by 2025.

The figure represents the tax payable on the difference between the frozen lifetime allowance and the £1.4million had the sum been unfrozen.

Apparently this means he’ll take £6 billion off of people, when he’s being asked to let us keep more.

How is that supposed to help?

Source: Rishi Sunak urged to announce emergency budget as living costs spiral

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Why did ex-Gurkhas have to go on HUNGER STRIKE in DOWNING STREET over unequal pensions?

Hunger striker: the government agreed to talks after Dhan Gurung (pictured) returned to the hunger strike outside Downing Street. He had been admitted to hospital after his heart slowed.

The answer to that is simple: racism, ingrained into the way British governments treat people.

Allow me to tell you the story:

Once upon a time (1814), the British East India Company, then in control of India, declared war on neighbouring Nepal because of Gurkha incursions that had taken place.

The war was extremely civilised, with both sides controlling looting and respecting non-combatants.

The war ended in 1816 and both sides decided to build a friendship in which 10 Gurkha regiments were recruited into the East India Company’s Army.

After the partition of India in 1947, a tripartite treaty between Nepal, India and the UK meant four Gurkha regiments were transferred to the British Army.

Here’s the problem, though: the terms on which the Gurkhas joined the British Army were not the same as those for any UK-born soldier.

Those who retired before 1997, like Mr Gurung, currently receive a fraction of the pension the rest of the British Army receive because the Gurkha Pension Scheme (GPS) was based on Indian Army rates.

The Not New Labour government of Tony Blair tried to paper over this racist injustice in 2007, when it eliminated the differences between Gurkhas’ terms and conditions of service and those of their British counterparts.

The change was backdated to July 1, 1997, because that was the date when the UK became the home base for the Brigade of Gurkhas (it had previously been based in Hong Kong, which itself transferred to Chinese rule on that date) and changes in immigration rules meant retiring Gurkhas may settle in the UK after discharge.

The difference between pension rates pre- and post-1997 has long been a subject for grievance because it seems to be impossible to live comfortably on pre-1997 rates, either in the UK or in Nepal. Former Gurkhas who had served the UK as some of our most effective service personnel were therefore consigned to lives of poverty and misery because they weren’t British.

That is why Dhan Gurung, Pushpa Rana Ghale and Gyanraj Rai went on hunger strike on August 7.

Challenged to meet the hunger strikers and discuss their case, current UK prime minister Boris Johnson did what he always does when offer the chance to be a statesman: he ran away.

Previously, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had said he would be happy to meet  protesters, but argued no government “of any colour” had ever made retrospective changes to pensions of the kind they were demanding.

We can see from the actions of the Blair government in 2007 that this was a lie of the kind for which the Boris Johnson government is now justifiably infamous.

It seems the politicians’ position only softened when it seemed likely that one of the hunger strikers may suffer serious harm to their health on the prime minister’s doorstep.

Dhan Gurung was hospitalised after his heartbeat slowed, after refusing food for 12 days. It was initially believed that the diabetic veteran was having a heart attack.

He returned to the protest yesterday but shortly afterwards the government announced that it will hold talks with the group, and with the Nepalese government, and the hunger strike has now ended.

Further information on the situation is available in this House of Commons Library briefing.

I think it is important also to note that a petition, calling for Gurkhas to have equal pensions as other British veterans of the same rank and service, has reached the 100,000 signature threshold for a debate in Parliament.

How would any such debate run, if one or more of the protesters had suffered significant harm to their health because they had to go on hunger strike even to have their demands noticed?

And the discussion with Nepal seems dishonest, too. The four Gurkha regiments suffering the pension prejudice at the heart of the protest have been employees of the British Army since 1947; their pay and conditions are really nobody else’s business.

Whatever happens, this is another opportunity for Boris Johnson to drape himself in disgrace. He has already fled from dealing with this matter and his Defence Secretary has lied about it.

Who can doubt that they’ll concoct an excuse to short-change – once again – some of the bravest soldiers the UK was ever lucky enough to have?