Poor Brit Pensioners .

How about a 20% VAT?

Yeah, that's a glorious idea.

This thread is really making me depressed I opened it as I thought I would see something illuminating but alas that was not to be,#Bye

trubrit wrote:

BobHelm wrote:

State Pension age is 65 for men born on or before 5 April 1959 and 60 for women born on or before 5 April 1950.
State Pension age for women born on or after 6 April 1950, but before 6 April 1955, is rising from 60 to 65 between 2010 and 2020.
State Pension age for women born on or after 6 April 1955, but before 6 April 1959, is 65.
State Pension age will increase for both men and women from age 65 to 68 between 2024 and 2046.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Pensionsand ... /index.htm

Well of course though this might save the govt money from paying pensions it has a knock on effect of increasing the pool of people seeking work. Not all will be able to continue with their current job as a lot of employers are notoriously age discriminatory. against which there is no legislation as there is with gender, colour and various other no no's .This will mean a massive transfer of people from being pensioners to being unemployed or claiming sickness benefit. So its difficult to see where the financial advantage is to the govt. You are also at the same time , increasing the labour pool, making less jobs available to younger applicants .
One thing not often mentioned, is that a lot of benefits are age related, prescription charges for example . with the increase in the age of retirement, your entitlement to these will be delayed until reaching the new retirement age. So a double whammy at what is possibly the most vulnerable time of your life .
I find it incredible that the law compels private pension providers to maintain enough contributions to ensure paying all contributors,whilst the govt collects money from us, on the pretext of paying for our pension and promptly puts that money in the general taxation pot to pay current spending on defence and a multitude of other things .Effectively meaning they can only honour their pension commitments from the contributions of those still working .Our money , paid in over the years has gone .All hell would break loose if that was a private company .

These Regulations may be cited as the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, and shall come into force on 1st October 2006.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2006/20061031.htm

As a Brit about to retire with inadequate funds, and too little UK state prsion, I intend the following.

I will emigrate from UK to Zimbabwe. After one year I will take Zimbabwean nationality. I will then produce a magazine that criticises the Zimbabwe Govenment and Mugabe in particular. This will put my life in danger, so I will then flee to UK where I will claim asylum. The UK govt will then give me a house, pension and other benefits for the rest of my life.

Yeah, but you will still have to live in the United Kingdom!

its a big problem for many people in the uk.im 46 with no private pension.i just work in a job all hours for a few months to save enough to come to thailand for a holiday twice a year.
the way things are going i could be 70 before i claim my old age pension so would have to keep working till then.
but i was reading that there are countries in south america where you only need an income of about 500 dollars a month to live there.could be an option for a lot of people as thailand seems to be getting strictor.

sean

Hi Sean
If you do deceide to go to South America. Best you pack a gun or buy one out there, because there is a good chance you will need it !

Here's an idea, souness.
Forego trips to Thailand for the next four years.

Save that money. When you turn 50, come to Thailand. Deposit the saved money into a Thai bank and get your annual visa. You can live here for 20 years eating grubs and foraging for berries and leaves. (Don't be tempted to touch your insurance stash. ) Then, when you're 70, your pension will kick in -- setting you on the road to freedom in Amazing Thailand -- Land of Smiles.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... -online.do



Mother of six living at your expense in £2m house she found online
Rashid Razaq Rashid Razaq
15.02.10


A single mother of six is living in a £2 million house in Sir Paul McCartney's neighbourhood at the expense of the taxpayer, it emerged today.

Jobless Essma Marjam, 34, is set to receive £6,400 a month in housing benefits to rent the five-bedroom property yards from Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood.

Ms Marjam, who is separated from her husband, also receives an estimated £15,000 a year in child benefits and other allowances for her children aged between five months and 14 years.

She is believed to have found the property through a private letting agency on the internet rather than wait for Westminster council to house her. She then applied to the council for the maximum allowed benefits of £1,600 a week. The house has two bathrooms, a double living room, large kitchen and landscaped garden.

Ms Marjam said today she had only recently moved into the property. “I did find the property myself and have applied for housing benefit but I haven't received anything yet from the council.”

According to a report in the Daily Mail Ms Marjam has two large flat-screen televisions and several leather sofas. She's also believed to have received large purchases from Argos and other home stores over the past week. Ms Marjam said: “I'm entitled to a five bedroom house. I was in a three bedroom council house but I needed a bigger place once my new baby came along so the council agreed to pay the £1,600 a week to a private landlord as they didn't have any houses big enough.

“I'm separated from my husband. He's a solicitor in Derby but I don't know if he's working at the moment. He doesn't pay anything towards the kids. Things are quite difficult between us. The house is lovely and very big but I don't have enough furniture to fill it.”

Ms Marjam says she does not work as she has to look after children Zekia, 14, Abdulhakim, 13, Jihad, 11, Hamza, 10, Ayman, two, and five-month-old Nasir. The four eldest children have the surname Benjamin, while the youngest two have the surname Khan.

Under Local Housing Allowance guidelines the maximum amount that can be claimed in housing benefit is set by central government and not local councils. Westminster councillor Phillipa Roe said: “We would like to see the entire system changed as the current rules are wrong and do not offer the taxpayer value for money.”

It comes after a similar case in Westminster in which Nasra Warsame, her seven children and elderly mother were also being paid £6,400 a month in benefits.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “It is not right that in London high rents have been able to distort the system resulting in a small number of people getting excessively high payments. Only a very small minority receive such high rates of housing benefits.”

no body listened to mr powell they all stabed him in the back mp i mean what go;s round comes round. its pay back time at our expence

This is the big problem.Us Brits who paid our taxes and National Insurance all our lives are now having our lifestyle compromised because the Government puts the needs of asylum seekers,illegal immigrants and scroungers,like this slapper with 6 kids,before us.
If you are British,born and bred and white,you are becoming a stranger in your own country.This is not meant as a racist comment,by the way.

IMO

The entitlement mindset has turned a large slice of Briton into beggars, schemers and whiners.
Robin Hood has his fingers into so many aspects of life there, senior citizens now get fuel heating payments from Nanny.
Those aspects of life citizens should have most control over (education, health care, housing) have been largely surrendered to local councils and government bureaucrats to ration and fritter away to others. The idea of self determination, blazing one's own trail, has given way to a generation of bitter, spiteful people who either want to run away and have nothing to do with it, or scam their government for as much as they possibly can. Success and wealth have come to be viewed as evil and immoral. The rapidly vanishing notion of "taking care of those in need" is losing what little merit it might have once held. Britain's entitlement culture is a runaway train.

Gaming the system has become national sport. Getting one over and outsmarting the layered, inefficient government is a favorite hobby of millions of enthusiastic players -- all in a race for benefits that are freely handed out to the unwilling and undeserving.

Definitely a nation in an unrecoverable death spiral.

has given way to a generation of bitter, spiteful people who either want to run away and have nothing to do with it,

Are you talking about. British Expats ?

[quote]

The British, according to that study published this week, have become more tolerant, but, plainly, there are limits. The Tesco store in St Mellons, Cardiff, for example, has imposed a dress code banning customers from shopping barefoot or in pyjamas and nightgowns following complaints from other patrons.

This seems a pity. Supermarkets can be rather dull, I find. How refreshing to come across someone in nice stripy jimjams mulling over the bewildering choice of cereals or someone else in a lot of chiffon and ribbon weighing up an avocado or feeling some plums. I'm not quite so convinced by the bare feet, though: so many of them are unattractive, and I'm dangerous enough already with a trolley without having to dread a slight bump of the wheels and a scream near the biscuits.

I suppose, too, given the discernment shown by most Cardiffians – this is, after all, the city which gave us Dame Shirley Bassey – that the complaints from other shoppers do not centre upon flannel, silk and the odd cravat, but on somewhat less flattering, more synthetic, and, how shall we put this, clingy materials.

I myself, being the son and grandson of Lancashire grocers, always make an effort for my visits to the aisles, although I no longer wear a tie on Fridays. The principle, as in all matters of manners, is to put others at ease. Mind you, some people can be very sensitive: you will recall Michael Foot's problems with his short coat and the Remembrance ceremony, and Bertie Wooster's with Jeeves over several items of fetching, if lively, design, including, if I remember correctly, a pair of socks and some spats in Old Etonian colours.

That also reminds me, for some reason, of David Cameron and another finding in the report, the swing to the Conservatives. Could the Cardiff revolt against excessive informality in the supermarket be a reflection of this, portending a return to past conventions, like buttons? Could it signal the end of "leisure wear", items requiring elastic suspension, and the delightfully subversive practice of obviously unsporting people wearing sports kit they're too old and round for?

If so, allow me to pass on a few crucial pointers. A friend of mine once came across an aristocratic acquaintance in pouring rain and sodden tweeds on his return to London from the country. Why, he asked, no umbrella? "What?", came the aghast reply, "With country clothes?!". Also, do be aware that you should never wear a Panama hat in town until after Goodwood.

I wonder, as well, how Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco and a man with highly attuned populist instincts, might have reacted to the Cardiff ruling. Positively, probably, as there's nowhere on a pair of pyjamas to place the tiepins he used to hand out, inscribed "YCDBSOYA". He used to say it was Yiddish: in fact, they are the initials of "You can't do business sitting on your arse". Pip, pip!
[/quote]