A million to march on Westminster!

[Lateralthinking1]

.....QT tonight. Justin King. I assume he is the Justin King who is the Sainsburys CEO. My goodness. He sat there wringing his hands about the younger generations and their payment of pensions in due course to the current middle aged. If we don't sort this out now, he said, they will end up paying for us. Is that really what you all want?

Well, yes, I do. You get this kind of ignorance all the time in relation to the state pension. Many current pensioners saying "and we paid into our pension all our lives" and everyone nodding their heads in agreement. Sorry but no you didn't. We are paying for your state pensions. You paid for your parents' pensions. The younger generations should pay for our pensions. And the next generation on should pay for theirs. Why should it be OUR generation that pays for the state pensions of our parents generation and our own generation and what increasingly looks like half of the pensions for the younger generation? It is completely unfair.

The young currently have a bad deal. Few jobs. Tuition fees. Difficult housing prospects. I fully support every measure possible to help them in these areas. In fact, I totally opposed the policies that put them in the position they are in. But sorting these issues out is what is needed rather than engineering changes in who pays for future pensions. Politically and economically, I'm cheesed off at the tail wagging the dog.

I actually blame middle aged parents for much of this nonsense. They have no way of finding measure with their adult offspring. One moment, they are tough on them to the point of draconian and the next they feel they all need to be mollycoddled like kids. Basically, it is the hard edge if they have to cough up and fluffy bunny rabbits if it's other's doing the paying. If they knew how to raise them maturely with adequate provision and reasonable expectation, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in.

I am sure that half of those who are influential haven't got the slightest clue on the basics of how things have worked. Either that or it is just more propaganda. I have a downer on Sainsburys and King's comments just confirmed my prejudices there.

[Sydney Grew]

For far too many it becomes a choice between food and heat.

May we recommend the virtues of the hot-water bottle?

[Flosshilde]

Well, it was always understood (or should have been) that the £250 was a one-off ...

In any case, do you really NEED that extra £200 in your account, Bryn? Not that I'm complaining, believe me, every bit helps but, in all honesty, I'd much rather the Government (whether it's the evil Tories/Lib Dems or nice Labour) kept the bloody thing and doubled the fuel allowance they give to the genuinely needy among us.

in other words maybe only give it to those with an income under a certain amount?

The winter heating allowance isn't paid automatically - when you reach 60 you get a letter with a claim form; if you don't return it you don't get the payment. So there's no need to feel guilty about it - just don't claim it.

Oh, & if you are over 80 it's been reduced by 25% (from £400 to £300), not 20%

[scottycelt]

The winter heating allowance isn't paid automatically - when you reach 60 you get a letter with a claim form; if you don't return it you don't get the payment. So there's no need to feel guilty about it - just don't claim it.

Oh, & if you are over 80 it's been reduced by 25% (from £400 to £300), not 20%

Your first point is an excellent one, Floss, and so is Patrick's, though I haven't the same aversion to means testing as some ... my bank has applied that same process with me all my life!

I suspect quite a few actually do donate their winter fuel allowance to more needy folk. My point really is that I find it absurd that everyone, including the well-off, can claim it. I know 'equality' dictates everything these days but I think 60 is too young to be receiving it in any case. Make it 65 or even 70, and give it only to those who are likely to need it, and pay them more!

As to that one-off larger payment last year (for purely political electoral reasons) it struck me then that this was a BAD idea as many would then expect it to become permanent, whatever was said to the contrary at the time.

For once, I appear to have been proved correct ...

[Bryn]

May we recommend the virtues of the hot-water bottle?

Virtues which were rejected when my late mother went from hospital into a nursing home. She was rightly very fond of her hot water bottle at night. However, when I tried taking one in for her it was banned on the grounds of 'health and safety'. "It might burst", was the 'explanation'

Hot water bottles, layers clothing, etc. are all fine contributions to keeping warm. They do not, however, constitute a panacea.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... and such aids to warmth are very little help against hunger and the inner cold it brings ....

mind you extra layers of clothing and a hot water bottle would no doubt be very welcome on a million strong march on Westminster in the autumn or next week ...

it is time to forgive debt [see Keen on Hardtalk or read Graeber]

that is the demand for the Occupy movement which we should all join for the big walkies .... cancel debt .... and no more City Finance Ponzi Schemes to buy our own houses etc .... yep that'll do!

[amateur51]

I know 'equality' dictates everything these days ....

PLEASE ... "Not those tired old tits again!

I know that as a professional grumbler you hug this idea close to your chest, scotty but it really is a more noble objective than you perpetually bang on about.

Gissa break, eh pal?!

[ahinton]

A thread whose principal thrust today appears to be state pensions and how they're financed, when and by whom appears already to have been supplanted by arguments about the Winter Fuel Allowance.

As far as the latter is concerned, the shortcomings of scotty's idea of ensuring that it goes only to those who need it are nothing to do with matters of perceived "equality" but everyting to do with the fact that the sheer costs of the requisite assessments of the net disposable incomes and assets of everyone currently entitled to receive it by virtue of being 60+ would be so great as to more than mop up the amounts of those allowances in any cvase; I'd have thought that the administrative costs of all means-testing were already sufficient well known as to dismiss any idea of its potential application to the entitlement to and payment of the Winter Fuel Allowance.

As to the form, however, the position is much as Lat sees it, only even more so. People do not contribute towards their state pensions by paying taxes; those taxes are used within a week or less to fund state benefit payments including state pensions. It should be understood at the outset that state "pensions" are in principle a state benefit just like any other state benefit; as such, therefore, they are effectively a misnomer, in that true "pensions" are funds into which contributors invest and which are invested in the market place on their behalf by the pension trustees in order (hopefully) to achieve growth over the entire contribution period, whereas what are quite misleadingly referred to as state "pension contributions" cannot be invested for growth because they are paid out almost immediately to other state benefit recipients. Ever since the launch of this state "pension" "system", successive governments of all political hues and none have nevertheless continued to hoodwink the electorate into assuming that their taxes include contributions to the state pensions to which they'll become entitled at state retirement age, which is now a movable age in any case and will almost certainly continue to increase until the point at which the state finally admits that it can no longer afford to maintain this particular state benefit and abolishes it altogether, much to the obvious, understandable and justifiable chagrin of the hoodwinked. Looked at closely, the state "pension" scam is just another Ponzi scheme licensed by successive governments; I suspect that a legal case could be made out that it is indeed fraudulent.

So, in conclusion - and to return to the original thread topic(!) - were a million members of the British electorate indeed to march on Westminster in protest, I submit that the long-term history of this "scheme" as mis-sold by its proponents for more than six decades would be as good a reason as any for them to do so.

[scottycelt]

Oooooooooooo ... what a vicious personal attack ...

At least you have the ability to recognise a true professional grumbler, amateur ...

[gradus]

An underlying but crucial issue here is the impoverishment of private sector pension schemes in recent years, still covering millions of employees. I can't see any practical mechanism for reinstating what has been lost to private sector pensions following the abandonment of final salary schemes. By all means let unions campaign but for all, not just those in public sector pension schemes.

[ahinton]

An underlying but crucial issue here is the impoverishment of private sector pension schemes in recent years, still covering millions of employees. I can't see any practical mechanism for reinstating what has been lost to private sector pensions following the abandonment of final salary schemes. By all means let unions campaign but for all, not just those in public sector pension schemes.

I agree. This fact, taken together with the recognition of the nonsense of so-called "state retirement pensions", does indeed send alarm signals to many people of below what might at any time be tought of as "retirement age", although it could equally well be argued that the gradual consignment of pensions of all kinds (i.e real and false) to history is at least occurring concurrently with the consignment of the very concept of retirement thereto, even though the fact of the former is at least partially responsible for the inevitability of the latter; that said, I temper what I write here with the word "partially" in recognition of the fact that it's not only a matter of people in their 60s and above being unable to afford to retire, it's also that such people do not all wish to be forced to do so as many of them still are, even today.

There is little sense in unions seeking to campaign for better pensions for anyone in the face of the incontrovertible historical evidence of the previous government's irreparably devastating interference with them, especially since that interference was brought about during and by a Labour administration and, even today, those unions remain Labour administrations' principal sponsors; whilst I can well understand why they would want to try to do this on their members' behalf and indeed applaud any such attempts in principle, the damage to the British pensions industry and market that was done by the last Chancellor of the Exchequer but two is so immense that the unions, with the best will in the world, are - and can only be - on a hiding to nothing here, for if no one else can repair that damage, not only will the unions be unable to go it alone and do so, they will also risk weakening their own cause as well as those of disadvantaged pensioners-to-be by taking "industrial action" as part of their efforts to encourage the restoration of better pensions for public sector employees alone.

[Lateralthinking1]

Where I would give ground, although when being public sector bashed I tend not to do so, is that measures introduced by one G Brown did nothing to help people with private sector pensions. In fact, they were disastrous. The right way to look at those pensions is to see them as having been more of a gamble than public sector pensions. People chose that gamble. But, the gamble should have been about marginal benefits and disbenefits rather than about them going completely down the pan.

The union action is in support of the private sector too. Many private sector employees will be on strike. Unions have never argued for low pensions for ordinary private sector people. You won't read that in the Daily Mail.

ahinton is right to see the state pension as a benefit. However, I do not agree that it is likely to go. It is more likely that any attempt at consolidation in the future will be via the state pension. Of course, the reason why younger generations have paid for pensions of those older is simple. When pensions were introduced, they were the only people working to pay for them.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If we're talking about pensions, I don't often become angry with politicians spouting rubbish on television, but when they say there is "no more money on the table" when referring to pensions, they make it sound like pay negotiations. It's nothing to do with pay negotiations. Teachers have already been paid, but have had money deducted from their salaries each month by agreement to pay their pensions. The amount paid in now exceeds the amount paid out by £46.4 billion(allowing for inflation), so the lying politicians cannot say pensions are not affordable. If there's no money, it's because they've stolen it, Robert Maxwell-style.

[ahinton]

Where I would give ground, although when being public sector bashed I tend not to do so, is that measures introduced by one G Brown did nothing to help people with private sector pensions. In fact, they were disastrous. The right way to look at those pensions is to see them as having been more of a gamble than public sector pensions. People chose that gamble. But, the gamble should have been about marginal benefits and disbenefits rather than about them going completely down the pan.

Well, I'm certainly not "public sector bashing" you or anyone else over this! The Chancellor to whom I referred was indeed the said G Brown and what he did damaged private sector pensions beyond repair, so the only reason to see them as "more of a gamble" than public sector ones is because he didn't do the same to them, for reasons bst know only to himself if indeed to anyone at all. That said, it would be grossly unfair were "the right way" to look at private sector pensions to be as "more of a gamble" than public sector ones just because said Brown damaged the former while leaving the latter comparatively unscathed, because that would be tantamount to implying that private sector pensions are supposed to be a "gamble" when public sector ones aren't; the untenability of such a viewpoint is amply demonstrated by the reduction that government is now seeking to make to public sector pensions which will render them as much of a "gamble" as any. All pensions are a "gamble" to some extent, because all contributions to them are invested in the markets; the same goes for privatec sector pensions as it does for public sector ones, the only difference being that contributions to the former are invested by pension trustees and those to the latter are invested by government. People don't "choose" which gamble they'd prefer; the only way to do that would be to use pension schemes as the sole parameter for determining whether to work in the private sector or the public sector (although there are some peoiple who do both, of course). State "pensions", on the other hand, are in reality not "pensions" at all (as I have already stated), because no contributions towards them are ever invested by anyone.

The union action is in support of the private sector too. Many private sector employees will be on strike. Unions have never argued for low pensions for ordinary private sector people. You won't read that in the Daily Mail.

True. The problem that unions have in fighting (when and as they do) for the interests of members who contribute to private sector pensions is one of credibility in that, as I also wrote previously, as the principal sponsors of the Labour party, they have to deal with the fact that the desecration of the private sector pension industry was brought about at the hands of a Labour Chancellor.

ahinton is right to see the state pension as a benefit.

All pensions in payment are benefits! The difference is that those from private and public sector ones arise from vesting individuals' pension pots that have built up over the years, whereas the fraudulently named state one arises from no investment whatsoever.

However, I do not agree that it is likely to go.

It will have to go - or be subject to the risk of compromise and cuts just as other pensions are now - if and when the government of the day finds itself in receipt of insufficient revenues to be able to afford to continue paying them as they do now; it is worth bearing in mind that, whereas state "pensions" and other state benefits used to be funded entirely by the taxpayer, they are now in part funded by borrowings because the taxpayers' contributions alone are already insufficient to cover the costs of those benefits that the state pays out. It follows, then, that when government can no longer afford to pay out state "pensions" as it now does, it will as likely be as a consequence of its difficulties in borrowing sufficient funds as it will be due to lack of sufficient tax revenues.

It is more likely that any attempt at consolidation in the future will be via the state pension.

"Consolidation" of what, exactly, I don't understand what you mean (but perhaps I'm just being rather dense - it wouldn't be the first time!).

Of course, the reason why younger generations have paid for pensions of those older is simple. When pensions were introduced, they were the only people working to pay for them.

But that's not true! Everyone who pays certain taxes - not just those of the "younger generations" - funds all state "pension" payments and this has been the case pretty much ever since this crackbrained Ponzi scheme was inuagurated. It is a fact that, under current British law, employers who employ staff of state retirement pension age and above remain indefinitely liable for taxes on behalf of most of those employees and that a proportion of those taxes, like everyone else's, goes towards the funding of state benefits including state retirement "pension".

[ahinton]

If we're talking about pensions, I don't often become angry with politicians spouting rubbish on television, but when they say there is "no more money on the table" when referring to pensions, they make it sound like pay negotiations. It's nothing to do with pay negotiations. Teachers have already been paid, but have had money deducted from their salaries each month by agreement to pay their pensions. The amount paid in now exceeds the amount paid out by £46.4 billion(allowing for inflation), so the lying politicians cannot say pensions are not affordable. If there's no money, it's because they've stolen it, Robert Maxwell-style.

Some but not all of that is true. The "no more money on the table" argument is credible only to the extent that (a) the funds invested are producing insufficient returns, (b) their performance has not been compromised as a consequence of having been Browned or (c) ditto as a consequence of having been Maxwelled (as you rightgly observe). In the case of state "pensions", that argument will apply for different reasons as I have outlined in my response to Lat above.