Good post.
Edit.
For example, I worked from the age of 16 for 50 years. And for that, I get the pricey sum of £169 per week. Hardly an amount someone could be expected to live on.
Westminster Politics 2024-2029
- Thread starter Pexbo
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Good post.
Edit.
For example, I worked from the age of 16 for 50 years. And for that, I get the pricey sum of £169 per week. Hardly an amount someone could be expected to live on.
A reckoning is coming at some point surely, there's no way as the population continues to age and the workforce becomes a smaller percentage of the overall population that this will be sustainable?
It's galling that the national pension pot that I've been paying into for nearly two decades now probably won't be there for me, but I've pretty much resigned myself to it now.
I doubt they will stop it, but I'd guess this attack is just the start.
The triple lock will go, and they will devalue the pension constinually. I also suspect we'll see the age you get it rise to 70 either in this government or the next one, tory or labour.
Pension could be means tested as well. You are not really paying for your own state pension, you are paying for the retired generations and I guess you then get yours as a reward. But I know someone who's pension is 70k and they get state pension. Surely it makes more sense to up the state pension for people who need it and remove it for those who don't.
That's what a kind society would do imho and not try to carp on about working hard their whole lives because everyone works hard and if you have a mad private pension that's your reward.
Oh absolutely, it's why I get tired of hearing "I paid in all my life" as if people put money in specifically for themselves and they have their own little segment of the pot made up of their own funds, while trashing the people paying for their pensions for not being able to afford a house.
I know the intergenerational warfare is stoked by design, but it's still pretty fecking exhausting.
I can opt out of paying for people's Child Tax Credits?
I think the main issue is that the threshold seems quite low.
Obviously a better way to make sure everyone in the country can afford to be warm in the winter would be to remove profit from the energy supply, but we apparently prefer a system of applying sticking plaster solutions with an unequal and unfair distribution based entirely on date of birth.
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Making pensions means tested would be a betrayal of the social contract.
Means testing an annual payment to target it towards those in need and encouraging the same people to claim what they are able is a lot different
Means testing an annual payment to target it towards those in need and encouraging the same people to claim what they are able is a lot different
The Tories' 2014 Pensions Act legally classified the state pension thus.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/19
Surely the root cause of the issue is letting the energy companies profiteer and that's where to focus legislation?
Landlords are warning they may raise asking rents in high demand areas if long-awaited reforms unveiled in parliament on Wednesday turn parts of the private rented sector into “Airbnb Lite”.
A ban on no-fault evictions and brakes on in-tenancy rent rises in England will be among key changes in Labour’s renters’ rights bill, as first revealed last week by the Guardian. But landlords are warning of up to 10% hikes if expected flexible tenancies mean tenants can walk away from deals in just two months.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/a...dlords-response-to-labour-renters-rights-bill
Hopefully the measures will not be watered down.
A ban on no-fault evictions and brakes on in-tenancy rent rises in England will be among key changes in Labour’s renters’ rights bill, as first revealed last week by the Guardian. But landlords are warning of up to 10% hikes if expected flexible tenancies mean tenants can walk away from deals in just two months.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/a...dlords-response-to-labour-renters-rights-bill
Hopefully the measures will not be watered down.
Yes but considering the leadership of both parties is made up of corrupt bastards, I doubt they'll be going after the energy companies, who in 6 months will no doubt again announce ReCoRd PrOfItS
As an accidental landlord, the rent hike argument doesn't really wash for me. Two months is adequate notice and lifting rent, when they're already high, narrows the pool of potential tenants further. Most people won't in reality want to move around that regularly, given it's expensive and a ballache, it just stops people getting tied into horribly long, expensive contracts. It should be a two-way street with landlords incentivising tenants to stay...by being good landlords.
I don't know any wealthy pensioners in France either.
They exist, obviously, as they do everywhere.
The English pensioners around this area who sold their homes in the UK and retired here, before I moved here, by buying a cheap property, now exist on the same lower pension (pre 2016) plus the added loss of value because of the collapse of the pound after Brexit. They are definitely not wealthy and are struggling to survive.
It's a benefit, it is defined as such in UK law. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. And you don't "pay into it", there is no pot of money you are paying into, unlike a private pension. Again, sorry if that makes you uncomfortable,
While yes you have to "pay in', it is not unique in that regard, some other benefits also have qualifying contributions.
And the UK expected you to, incentivised you to, and now forces you to make payments into a private pension, so you cannot exclude this type of pension provision when you are talking about "our pension being the lowest in the developed world".
For years, there were final salary, defined benefit etc pension schemes that existed alongside the state pension. The generation suffering from the "lowest pension in the developed world" also had those massive advantages - my one doesn't.
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I'd sooner see it fixed through the tax system. We've already got a mechanism available for means testing. Everyone is in it more or less automatically and the people who have to do the form filling are generally the ones who can do it (or can pay someone to do it)
I'd also get rid of those anomalies like people not currently paying NI on pensions, rents, dividends, capital gains etc. But that's a broader discussion.
Right now. They could have cut the fuel benefit for higher rate tax payers or even for all taxpayers. The pension credit issue just adds a whole new layer of bureaucracy for a group that are almost by definition the most likely to struggle to apply for it.
Unless of course the whole idea is to get more people to apply for pensions credit itself which is a lot more valuable than just the fuel benefit (and will likely cost more than the fuel benefit cut if everyone eligible claims). Maybe they've got a team of trained form fillers heading out into the community to do it for people who need help or encouragement to do it - somehow that sounds unlikely.
Nobody anywhere wants to pay taxes. Taxes in the UK were much higher in the UK when I started work than they are now. They do exist elsewhere.
I will always remember arguing with my father who insisted that I should pay into a company/private pension scheme. I told him I needed the money then as I didn't have enough to live on. But he did persuade me to do so. Luckily I listened.
People who earned less than I did, how they did they pay into a private scheme?
My father paid into such a scheme as well but never lived that long after retirement to benefit. He and my mother, who lived into her late 90s, could never have survived on the state pension.
One more thing on this. The below sounds so open to interpretation, given how property values can vary massively depending on condition, layout, decor, location street by street etc...
It sounds like a regulatory body will have to have oversight of that. Which may lead to an Ofwat or Ofgem for housing with similar powers?
This approach sounded so much cleaner and fairer, particularly given the problems with pensions credit take-up. Either way they need to radically simplify the pensions credit form- 243 questions is way too much and I can't imagine how it's that complicated. Tax returns are way, way shorter and they're a pain to fill in.
That's not quite correct, you're not forced to pay into a private pension now. An employer is obliged to auto-enrol you in one if you meet the criteria, but you can opt out of it.
Someone should tell this poor man, that soon they could remove 25% single person council tax
It’s mad that this would actually benefit the country.
Those two examples of regulators are not ones that inspire confidence.
It's difficult to set market rate though, so subjective.
I dunno. I often wade into private landlord chats and I won’t rehash all of my noise here…
But we could just break the concept of
‘Market rate’. Throw it out.
If I move into an area and it’s a shithole, people pissing and defecating in my doorway monthly, and that area becomes sanitised-cool and desirable (as happened to me in Dalston around 15 years ago)…. The landlord did feck all. My rent shouldn’t go up.
I’d cap rental prices at 80% of mortgaged cost. If landlords want to invest, make them. They can top up the mortgage cost, and never be able to charge tenants more than it’s costing them. They can have all of the upswing on property increases, but not both.
My metrics may be militant, but it’s a valid starting point. In every street in the land we have Mortgages costing £500/month and £2000/month for identical properties, purely as a product of purchase date. We could have exactly the same environment for renters.
You wouldn’t get such wild disparity between rental costs as the market would equalise closer together. But allowing it to operate as it does now is really nutty.
Well fair enough that is right. But it's not opt in.
My point is more that you have always been "expected" to make some sort of a workplace or private provision for your old age as part of the UK approach to pensions, that's the other side of the lower level of contribution we make thru the tax system, compared to other countries. Most people do make some contribution (adequate or not) and you have to factor that in when comparing between the systems across various countries.
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From what I gathered from the Guardian article I read there's about a million pensioners eligible for but not currently claiming pension credit. It's my understanding that they will have their winter fuel payment removed until they do so. Is this correct?
Same here, do you think they are waiting for us to fall off the perch?
Just to be sure they have taken away the winter fuel allowance for us 'second class' pensioners.
I can understand why this approach is being taken and in the way it's been done, I think it's Starmer's equivalent of 'speak softly but carry a big stick'. The fact that with a bit of thought, it could have had a softer landing is the interesting bit and that he and Reeves didn't 'take the edge off'.
The real issue is perhaps within the Labour party itself and the discipline to be adopted going forward.... it's basically Starmer's message to PM's, to keep on side. There are bigger battles coming and if this Labour government is to make its mark, then they need to close ranks and be more disciplined than in the past.
My 93 year old mum was moaning to me about her fuel allowance being cut. My reply was, you still get my dad’s massive private pension, you’ve got thousands in the bank, and your outgoings are about £400 a month! You’re not going to really suffer are you!
That is my understanding as well.
£400/month! Does she live in a tent?
He's locked her in a wooden hut in the forest and she lives off nuts and berries.
I think it is a politically interesting fight to have now. A lot of the commentary assumes it was an error or misjudgement, or Treasury driven but I wonder if it was a deliberate signal to pensioners that their interests are no longer the govt's top priority. It is a tough message for them to hear, but maybe a necessary one.
They are an obvious group, as the wealthiest demographic, for a cash strapped government to look at. I don't think withdrawing the winter fuel benefit is the end of it. Extending IHT is one obvious way to do a wealth tax, for example. There's lots of ways they can take with one hand while nominally keeping promises with the other, like the triple lock. (The winter fuel payment withdrawal has effectively reduced the original £460 pension rise this year to something more around the current rate of inflation)
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That gentrification doesn't happen overnight though. I lived on Commercial Road about 25 years ago and it's still a shithole now.
Linking rent to mortgage payments would still result in massive inequalities by your example if some are paying a fraction of what others are, purely down to random factors like when they move into an area or what the prevailing interest rates are. Landlords need to have a cushion too, eg this year we had to replace the oven, fix the bathroom lighting and get some other bits and bobs fixed, plus we bought the tenant a new bed for the tenant's daughter- the old second bedroom had a sofabed.
No comment on you, just my politics, but I don’t think landlords should have a cushion. It’s an appreciating asset, not an ATM. In my opinion. And I’m a militant twat about it.
With regards to massive inequalities, yes. But less than what we have now, by orders of magnitude. Society isn’t fair. Everyone would want the cheaper properties, but that already exists. But currently we reward wealth and let asset owners take as much as possible from those that don’t own anything. Better is better. Period.
in general, reasons not to means-test:
1. What you said: admin costs spike, sometimes more than savings.
2. Paperwork and bureaucracy involved means that some "deserving"/eligible people don't get it because they mess up or forget the paperwork, or because the test is insane.
Some extreme examples of this from the UK's means-tested disability benefits over the last decade, the same happens with US Medicaid and disability payments, and also school meal vouchers in the US. Also happens in India in massive amounts for our govt food programs.
3. A small means-test (excluding billionaires, say) can be expanded quite easily (excluding all above the official poverty line).
4. Universal programs (the NHS in the UK, Social Security in the US) create a wide base of support that keeps them politically untouchable for at least decades. It's easier to gut means-tested programs that only benefit a small proportion of the population, especially if you can demonise that segment and that segment's voters are captive to one party.
5. The same thing (clawing back money from high earners) can be achieved by universal programs and progressive taxation.
It's generally an appreciating asset, though people do get into negative equity when there's a market shakeout.
We've actually nearly paid the mortgage off (under three years it's been rented out, rest was us paying). What would you set the rent at there, given there's no market rate and everyone's mortgage payments vary wildly based on multiple factors?
I know government systems and IT are shite and not joined up, but given the amount of info the authorities -from HMRC to the DSS (or whatever it is now) and NHS- have on you, it's crazy that we can virtually never means test anything cos it's deemed prohibitively costly.