Pensions

[Varche]

Perhaps along with your P60 and tax return, everyone should be issued with a bill by HMG to cover the national debt. Along the lines of...

The UK national debt is approximately £42,000 per person (or around £80,000 to £81,045 per taxpayer / working-age adult. How would YOU like to pay your share? Cash or Cheque? You will get your state pension once you've cleared YOUR liabillity. 

Surely the national debt isn't just borrowing to pay state pensions - my guess would be 10% ? Rather the country ( not just Britain by any means) is living beyond it's means. Maybe better to focus on what the other 90% is spent on?  Using your analogy it would be Pay 4,200 in order to get your state pension. That actually might be palatable. Of course what would actually happen is ( my) £4200 would just be spent on some daft project or cause

[LC0112G]

Perhaps along with your P60 and tax return, everyone should be issued with a bill by HMG to cover the national debt. Along the lines of...

The UK national debt is approximately £42,000 per person (or around £80,000 to £81,045 per taxpayer / working-age adult. How would YOU like to pay your share? Cash or Cheque? You will get your state pension once you've cleared YOUR liabillity. 

Surely the national debt isn't just borrowing to pay state pensions - my guess would be 10% ? Rather the country ( not just Britain by any means) is living beyond it's means. Maybe better to focus on what the other 90% is spent on?  Using your analogy it would be Pay 4,200 in order to get your state pension. That actually might be palatable. Of course what would actually happen is ( my) £4200 would just be spent on some daft project or cause

Don't call me Shirley.

No, the national debt isn't just borrowing to pay SP. But in 1986 (when I started my working life) the national debt was £166Bn . Today with 5 years to run till my SP age it's £3Tn. So in the past 40 years the govt has spent £2.833Tn more than it has raised in taxes. In other words they've spent £2.833Bn more on 'us' than 'we' have paid in taxes. 'My' share of that excess spending is roughly £42K.

I have had use of the NHS, Education, Defense, Benefits etc for the past 40 years. I may not agree with some govt spending, but regardless it has been spent on 'my' behalf. So why am 'I' not liable for paying for that spending? Or do we just fob things off on future generations to pay for 'my' excess spending, at the same time as 'they' have to pay 'my' State Pension and save for their own futures?

If the national debt were still £166Bn as it was in 1986 then you could argue that 'we' have paid our way during 'our' working lives, and paid for previous generations SP. Therefore, you could argue that there should be expectation that future generation should continue and pay for 'me' and 'my SP. But 'we' haven't paid our way, we've just dumped the load on future generations.

Selfish doesn't come close to describing it.

[STEMO]

My view is much more simple. Stop paying out benefits to people who are able to work and stop spending money on illegal immigrants. Let them starve and live on the streets.
Plus, there's nothing to stop pensioners being 'disabled' and claiming mobility allowance as well as other available benefits. But pensioners don't tend to do that, because they think they can muddle through. Unlike the scroungers who spend their whole lifetime on benefits. Being from Liverpool, I've seen first hand how easy it is to opt out of working society and get by very nicely.

Of course, this government doesn't see it that way, and is going to re-introduce child benefits for as many future scroungers as you want to drop next April.


Me, and so many others like me, have torn up the social contract. I really couldn't give two hoots if this pathetic little island, puffing its puny chest out around the world, goes down through its obsession with net zero and wokeism.

[STEMO]

And the rest of Europe with it.

[STEMO]

And, as for the national debt being the liability of every person in the UK, that's nonsense. People who say they have 'paid in' and are, therefore, entitled to a pension, at least worked for their pension. Unlike the people who live off the state all their lives. They are responsible for the national debt. Them and féckless politicians who spend billions trying to stop the sun warming the planet.

[Rangie]

And, as for the national debt being the liability of every person in the UK, that's nonsense. People who say they have 'paid in' and are, therefore, entitled to a pension, at least worked for their pension. Unlike the people who live off the state all their lives. They are responsible for the national debt. Them and féckless politicians who spend billions trying to stop the sun warming the planet.

.

Got to agree with you Steve 100 percent , I've worked bloody hard all my working life, and have no guilt at all about collecting my pensions, just hope that I can pass something decent on to my kids & grandkids before the idiot leaders of nations destroy the planet completely.

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

A quick Google AI  shows Liberal PM  Asquith, in 1909, as the man who started the 'pensions' scheme. But you needed to be 70 or older.

A married couple would get 7/6d  (37.5p) a week  equal to £58 today. It was strictly means tested though, and most poor people would struggle to hit 55 in 1909 let alone 70.

So it didn't cost much.

Today the country is awash  with coffin dodgers who don't have the decency to die sooner....

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Calm down STEMO, your blood pressure will go through the roof. 
Your spot on though. 

So many completely undeserving things have huge amounts of money completely wasted on them. Many of them are nothing to do with the UK or its people.
If the Politicians sort through that lot and cut off the funds, then they can come for a slice of my pension if the country still really needs it. 

[LC0112G]

Me, and so many others like me, have torn up the social contract. I really couldn't give two hoots if this pathetic little island, puffing its puny chest out around the world, goes down through its obsession with net zero and wokeism.

Like it or not, you and I have already splurged £3Tn up the wall over the past 40 years, and done absolutley nothing to stop it. We keep on electing politicians who promise the moon, but have no idea how to pay for it. It is OUR fault for electing these cretins. And if it's our fault, we should pay.

The current debt has virtually nothing to do with current spending. It's the accumulation of the past 40 years of 'us' underpaying tax. Yes, we should attack waste, and scroungers, and buracracy, but that's going forwards - adding to the £3Tn. Who is going to pay for the 3Tn that we have already overspent?

So now, having spent all that money, you want to take your football and play somewhere else. It's too late for that.

[STEMO]

I don't want to take my football anywhere. I want to live(here) long enough to see aforementioned cretins, and associated snowflakes, get what's coming. Then, hopefully, some kind of Putinesque government that runs the country for the people that are left. And support them.

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

There have been few, if any options to vote in Politicians who wouldnt spend huge amounts of money the country didnt have, so we can hardly be blamed for that.
They have continually broken election promises on spending once elected, so not much we could have done about that.
For example, a very large chunk of the £3t came from the Tories hosing the country with money during Covid, but Labour and the Libdems were criticising them for not spending enough, so we cant really be blamed for that either.
Cutting spending drastically needs to happen, but it loses votes, especially for left wing parties, so it is unlikely to happen.
Maybe we should start with confiscating all the assets of those who have been MP,s for the last 40 years.
It wouldnt make much of a dent in the £3t, but it would stop future Govts. from maxing out the credit card " on our behalf". 

We need less spending, less taxation to encourage economic growth, when the economic growth appears, use it to pay down debt rather than bribing lazy bastids to vote for them. 

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

I don't want to take my football anywhere. I want to live(here) long enough to see aforementioned cretins, and associated snowflakes, get what's coming. Then, hopefully, some kind of Putinesque government that runs the country for the people that are left. And support them.

Put simply - we need to raise Thatcher from the dead. 

The country was in an even worse state than it is now when she came to power.
She took the tough unpopular decisions, put it back on its feet and created the conditions for the economy to boom.
Her legacy was soon squandered after her time was up.
Brown and Blair put us on the road we are on now, and all of their successors have carried on their work.
Iirc, Brown raised the national debt to somewhere around £1t, despite enjoying the biggest boom the financial sector had ever seen.

[Varche]

There have been few, if any options to vote in Politicians who wouldnt spend huge amounts of money the country didnt have, so we can hardly be blamed for that.
They have continually broken election promises on spending once elected, so not much we could have done about that.
For example, a very large chunk of the £3t came from the Tories hosing the country with money during Covid, but Labour and the Libdems were criticising them for not spending enough, so we cant really be blamed for that either.
Cutting spending drastically needs to happen, but it loses votes, especially for left wing parties, so it is unlikely to happen.
Maybe we should start with confiscating all the assets of those who have been MP,s for the last 40 years.
It wouldnt make much of a dent in the £3t, but it would stop future Govts. from maxing out the credit card " on our behalf". 

We need less spending, less taxation to encourage economic growth, when the economic growth appears, use it to pay down debt rather than bribing lazy bastids to vote for them. 

Britain already is a low taxation country! You need more taxation. Other European countries manage growth with higher taxation.

So Maybe new taxes are required.Here are some off the cuff, probably need a bit of work to implement.

Doom scrolling

Anyone found using the words coffin dodger ( sent on a pay for it course to agree on a target for death and then pay an annual tax till their expiration.

Tax on the drugs industry . Far far more draconian than it is now.


The problem of people being paid by the state just because they would rather stay at home and doom scroll or watch Netflix definitely need addressing.

[STEMO]

Are you glad you started this separate 'pensions' thread, Jaime? 

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Im staggered that anyone could describe the UK as a low taxation country. We are currently taxed at the highest level in modern times.
Its my understanding that other major European countries are in an even worse economic mess than we are.
Its always been a basic rule of economics that high taxation and high growth are very uncomfortable bedfellows.