IDS Plans to Raise Pension Age So Most People Will Be Dead Before Claiming It

Yesterday, Mike put up a piece reporting and commenting on the latest plan by Iain Duncan Squit, sorry, Smith. The Gentleman Ranker and his Centre for Social Justice, truly an oxymoron in any connection with the Tory party and especially him, has decided that the pension age should be raised. Because life expectancy is increasing, so say. Well, as Mike has pointed out in his piece, it was, but is no longer. It went into sharp reverse with the Coalition, and for the first time in fifty odd years, the average life expectancy started falling. This has not prevented the man responsible for the tens of thousands of preventable deaths due to benefit sanctions, the work capability tests and his brainchild, Universal Credit, from claiming that the rise in pension age will boost the UK economy. I don’t believe it will, not for a single moment. The increase in the pensionable age will simply mean that that a sizable chunk of British senior citizens will be caught like the WASPI women. There really will be massive poverty. I’ve got a feeling IDS is justifying this by saying that it will get elderly people back into the economy and into work. Well, it will mean that the older people, who should rightly look forward to retirement, will be forced to go on working, if they’re able and the firm doesn’t want to get rid of them in favour of younger, and potentially cheaper workers. But it also means that the many older citizens, who have health problems that prevent them from finding suitable work, will be forced into poverty. You can expect them to be faced with the humiliation and futility of going through all the rigged work capability tests, with the assumption that, no matter how serious their health problems, they should be able to find some work to do.

And Mike’s article also quotes David Hencke about the real issue looming here: many people in the deprived parts of the UK, like Blackpool and Glasgow will be dead before they attain pensionable age. Hencke said in an article last year that the average male life expectancy in Glasgow, Blackpool, Dundee, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire was 75.4 years. So if blokes do reach pensionable age in those areas, then on average they’ll have all of five months or so to enjoy their pension before they die. Which means, to the Tories and Iain Duncan Smith, £££££savings.

Whatever Squit, sorry, Smith says, I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that many older people will die before they reach the age when they can actually claim the pensions they’ve paid in for. For decades parts of the financial sector have been debating reforming the pensions system in line with the increase in life expectancy. The idea here is that the state pension system is, or will be, in crisis because they are too many elderly people living longer and drawing their pensions for longer. This is as the birthrate falls, so there are fewer younger people to support them. The Financial Times was talking about this in an article in the 1990s. And ominously, this article cited the fact that when Bismark introduced his ‘Socialist Law’ granting Germans the right to state pensions and payment for medical treatment, he set the pensionable age at 70. The article stated that this meant that the majority of German workers would be dead long before they could claim it. The Financial Times at that period was a Lib Dem, rather than a Tory newspaper, but that didn’t stop at least one of its other columnists supporting the very Tory policy of workfare. The reasoning for raising the state retirement age is that it has to be done to stop the younger generation being taxed to the hilt to pay for benefits for the elderly. But it actually looks more like the real reason the unspeakable Smith has done it is for the same reason the Tories always want to cut welfare benefits. They had the poor, all the poor, as scroungers, and simply want to give any savings they make from the benefit cuts to the rich as tax cuts. Which will include the millionaire Smith himself.

For further information, see Mike’s article at: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/08/18/planned-pension-age-rise-means-most-will-die-before-ever-seeing-it/

Smith is already a mass-murderer thanks to the carnage he’s inflicted on the unemployed and disabled. Support Corbyn and get him and his murderous government out before they cause more chaos with a no-deal Brexit.

Tags: 'No Deal' Brexit, Benefit Cuts, Benefit Sanctions, Bismark, Blackpool, Centre for Social Justice, Conservatives, David Hencke, Deaths, Dundee, Glasgow, Ian Duncan Smith, Lib-Dems, Life Expectancy, North Lanarkshire, Pensions, Tax Cuts, The Economist, The Elderly, the Poor, the Rich, Vox Political, West Dunbartonshire, Women, Work Capability Tests, Working Class