OAPs left to live ‘hand to mouth’
Friday 22nd May 2009, 9:20AM BST.
LETTER: I hesitate to join in the public outcry regarding MPs’ expenses, and frankly I’m surprised that the recent disclosures have come as a shock to anyone.
However, considering the difficult economic circumstances many people are facing at the present time the public’s anger is quite understandable.
The contrast between those in a position to exploit the public purse and those who are struggling to “get by” could not be more stark.
My wife works for a charity that provides an essential service for the vulnerable elderly, and they rely almost exclusively on voluntary input and donations.
Like so many of our voluntary services they are politely ignored by our benevolent government, and are denied statutory funding. Without wishing to sound emotive, many of our old folk are literally living a “hand to mouth” existence.
Compare this to the obscene excesses of our “right honourable” elected representatives.
How do they sleep?
A J Willetts
Craven Arms
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I have never quite understood why it is that the government lavishes money and full attention on “youth” and things like youth unemployment, benefits for young single healthy mothers, etc., while there are many old people living, as A. J. Willetts says, a hand to mouth existence and unable to supplement their income by working.
I understand that political correctness doesn’t condone the criticism of the people on benefits, and no doubt this comment will provoke howls of protest, but to be honest, my opinion is that in general, the young and fit should be able to look after themselves and have ALL benefits stopped, allowing the payment of welfare money to be focussed solely upon the elderly and infirm.
We’re targeting the wrong age group.
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I disagree once a person has got to the age of 60 or above they should have put a nice nest egg away to live on.
If they have not that is not the fault of the Government or tax payers.
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The above writer is correct to a certain point but why should one section of society be 2nd to another ?. Lets be realistic it is not only some of the old living hand to mouth etc it is every where a recent survey stated families run out of money by the end of the 2nd week of a month . Getting abck to the old they are not all skint and hard up as some seem to think and dare i say did they all have full employment for most of their working lives??? if so perhaps they should have put some money away for their old age as clearly the state old age pension was never going to be enough . But all said and done no one is left to starve in the uk benefits are available for the realy genuine hard up people .
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As a pensioner, let me just compare one aspect of my position with that of an MP.
In 1996 I had been retired 2 years and I still had a £26,000 mortgage. I had £27,000 savings in a 1 year fixed rate bond paying me peanuts in monthly interest. My son advised me to pay off my mortgage. I did so and was immediately better off by about £20 a month. I therefore gained £20 a month but lost my monthly interest and the “capital” sum which I had invested.
Now, there is a Labour MP that had a mortgage on a London property that made mine look like pennies. He was paying out over £1,200 mortgage/interest monthly (and claiming it back) so he obviously had a large mortgage. He also paid his mortgage off BUT, he continued to claim mortgage/interest from the Fees Office. And then, he went one better, HE ALSO CLAIMED BACK THE AMOUNT OF INTEREST THAT HE HAD LOST BY USING HIS CAPITAL TO PAY OFF THE MORTGAGE. And Speaker Martin’s Fees Office approved it. I couldn’t do that, why could he.
Now, someone tell me that this is not criminal, someone tell me about the morality of MPs who have the life and death of pensioners in their hands and who sit back, bend every rule in the book for themselves and watch pensioners yearly rises immediately eaten up by increases in Council Tax, gas, electricity and water and everything else.
And for the Y Mab Darogans and Andrew Finches of this world, let’s wait until you retire, have £1 in the bank above the cut off point for “means testing” and see what you reactions will be then. Slightly different I would imagine. My wifes monthly pension increase this month was £11, guess how much our “essential” increases were per month. Over 2 1/2 times as much. And, if one has £1 above means tested level, THERE ARE NO BENEFITS ONE CAN CLAIM – right.
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One of the saddest factors in pensioner poverty is that many do not claim their full entitlement to Pensions Credit and other benefits to which the are fully enetitled due to their years of work and NI contributions, possibly because they misguidedly see it as charity.
If you know any pensioner living in poverty, please talk to them and ensure that they are claiming their full entitlement – entitlement being the absolutely correct word.
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In reply to AJ Willetts MP’s have no time to sleep they are too busy working out more scams as how they can can spend all their ill gotten gains and relieve us of more of our money.Can anyone answer the question Do MP’s buy items through the House of commons as they pay no tax or vat I heard this a few years ago but never have been able to verify it.
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Handy hint for misery pensioners: Give your savings to you kids, it will save them inheritance tax when you go, and you can claim everything under the sun. But get your kids to put it in a separate savings account with a cash card, and you get the cash card and PIN.
My Dad now receives more in benefits than he got from the interest by a long way – check it out you old timers!
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After reading the above comments I am struck by the diversity of views! …….. but consider this one! ………….
A pensioner who has worked his whole life in The UK and made payment in full to the social infrastructure leaves the UK to be nearer to family (Grandkids) ……. many to Commonwealth countries! …… as soon as He/She does this their entitlement UK pension is frozen and no entreaty to the very Criminals who you are castigating can change this ………. this is a mean spirited action perpetrated by the British Government to a class of people who sustained this country through a lifetime of effort! ……. many who wore this countries uniform in time of conflict.
This cannot be fobbed off with metaphors like “Who cares! ….. they can afford it!” ….. this is about what is Right and Just and Morally Correct …… the British Government can pour huge amounts into sustaining the comfort and needs of of Hundred’s of Thousands of economic refugee’s to these islands but cannot do what is right by the very people who helped build a country for these refugee’s to come to! ………………..
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Stuart, I can certainly see why you’re annoyed at the Labour MP who has ‘failed to notice’ that he had paid off his mortgage.
I bet you’ll be equally annoyed at the Tory MP who claimed £87,000 to maintian his country house, including paying for the upkeep of 500 trees, apparently to guard his shrubs from rabbits!
And you must be absolutely puce with rage at the Tory married couple, both MPs who have claimed for both their residences as ‘second homes’ between them.
Whilst the husband has announced his decision to step down at the next election (big of him!) the wife has not yet offered to do so, and when questioned on a radio programme about the issue put the phone down!
I’m surprised you forgot to mention them!
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Yes, Peter, I am certainly annoyed at every last one of them – who should all be sacked irrespective of which party they come from. Don’t let’s be silly though, what one Tory MP has done a Labour MP has done worse and what one Labour MP has done, a Tory has done worse and what either has done a Lib Dem has done almost as bad – what about the latest for Malcolm Bruce. Moral of this little quip – there is nothing to choose between them with the possible exception of the Independent MP for Kidderminster.
There was nothing “evil” about mentioning the Labour MP to which you refer, I did so to draw a comparison between him and myself which were of identical matters.
I am similarly very annoyed about the (I better not mention it but it begins with an “L”) MP who has admitted failing to pay £40,000 CGT on a house sale and has admitted that he may have to pay back £150,000.
The best solution in my view is to write this whole existing lot off, good or bad in all parties, sack the lot, just leave the Party Leaders and their Deputies to start a new regime with 645 new MPs. It can do no harm, Parliament is almost superfluous anyway with 75% of our laws now being made by the EU.
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My Father in law has just come back from holiday in Majorca he was telling me about a group of pensioners from Madrid who arrived at the hotel and became a big hit with everyone one there! apparently their holiday was courtesy of the Spanish Government! my Father in law was a local business man for many years in Shrewsbury payed his taxes etc and still does on his pension! can you imagine the UK government treating our pensioners to a free holiday?
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inflation in april .5% oap increase er 5.25%, i think the grey vote are doing very nicely like most others under labour
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As Bliar and the Clown stated, things can only get better! and boom & bust is a thing of the past!!
Conned again!
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Stuart,
I’m surprised that you’ve been taken in by the urban myth that 75% of our laws are made by the EU – it is of course the case that our laws are still made by our parliament.
Inevitably as part of Europe it’s only common sense that our laws will have much in common across borders, and that some of the thinking behind those laws will have originated elsewhere within Europe, but that really is not the same thing as having Europe make our laws.
Of course much of the power that is exerted these days over our lives is not by the faceless burueaucrats of Europe, but instead by the faceless CEOs and the private club of senior executives who run major multinational companies, none of whom are accountable to the general populace.
As it is, these people ship jobs around the world to the cheapest point of labour with realtively few obstacles, caring not one jot for their employees, but parties such as UKIP are keen to make this kind of human asset-stripping easier – they actually want less legislation (and by this, for starters, they mean an end to the minimum wage, and an end to working time restrictions) .
Leaving Europe would leave every employee in this country totally at the whim of these people and it would only be a matter of time before we became a sweatshop economy, with our foreign policy totally dictated by the US.
Given the economic mess that the bankers have left economies across the world in, are you really keen to vote for a party that wants them and other big businesses to be subject to less control?
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clivelive, you silly blogger, your comment is not even worth a response. Where did you come from and where have you been these last twelve years.
Peter, one thing is certain, I am not going to vote in the EU elections for any one of the big three, nor the Green’s and certainly not the BNP, neither am I going to waste my vote. UKIP is good for a “protest” vote, see how I qualify that. They won’t have long enough to make a jot of difference to the status quo.
When the General Election comes around – that is an entirely different matter. Then I suggest we follow our fancies as opposed to voting tactically.
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Peter and Stuart: Re European Community Law – pay attention as I will be asking questions later!
There are four main sources of EU Law, Treaties, Regulations, Directives and Decisions, with treaties being primary source of EC Law.
We are signed up to the following main Treaties:
Treaty of Rome
Single European Act
Treaty on European Union
Treaty of Amsterdam
Regulations apply to all Member States, are directly enforceable and the individual states do not have to pass any domestic legislation to give them effect. However in the UK we generally do. For example, there is no UK Law stating that it is illegal to sell a new car without ABS, it’s an EU Regulation that we must obey.
Directives are also binding on all Member States, but they set the law out in general terms only, leaving the precise implementation in the appropriate form to the individual states. For example, one the UK’s responses was the Consumer Protection Act 1987 in response to a directive on product reliability.
Decisions are binding on their entirety and must be obeyed.
I’m not sure where the ‘75%’ comes from, but today, just about everything I do will be influenced by EU Law – from putting the kettle on, to driving my car.
We must remember that all this EU Law stems for the desire to stop Europeans slaughtering themselves by the millions as they have done since time began. It started in 1951 with the Schuman Plan to pool coal and steel resources, as it was considered necessary because it was feared that Germany’s industrial power would lead to a resurgence of the nationalism which started the World War of 1914-1945, although their was a lull between 1918-1939 while they regrouped.
The first half of the last century was the bloodiest that Europe has ever seen, yet the last half was the least bloody. Perhaps if we stop and think about that, then we might see the EU in the same light as our fellow Europeans, who had so much devastation and suffering on their own land, to which the scars are still visible today.
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There is a lot of concern about those MPs that have their ‘snouts in the trough’, they are only amateurs compared with the MEPs, they have dived in and are swimming around in the trough!
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Y Mab Darogan
“I disagree once a person has got to the age of 60 or above they should have put a nice nest egg away to live on.”
So you don’t blame the Tories or New Labour for taking a 15 years or so pension holiday during the 80′s and 90′s then?
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I agree that you should put aside a nest egg before you retire. The welfare system is to protect the vunerable in society, not set everyone up nice and cosy.
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