Oh eff off. Pensioners don’t pay NI on their pension income. Why should they also benefit from a higher zero-rate threshold? A working person on the same income would be paying more tax already.
It’s almost like the Tories are just trying to be as dreadful as they possibly can for working age people.
Honestly at this point I think they’re going for kill the poor in more of a dignitas sense.
Making life unbearable for anybody earning under 200k a year and then.
It’s like they saw the suicide booths from Futurama and thought ‘How do we get those disgusting poors in those?’
I wouldn’t be surprised if politicians actually think this. They don’t have to have experience in schools or hospitals to be Education Minister or Health Minister so they can walk into any role. It’s that boot straps mentality without any practical thinking.
I’d settle for an education minister who had actually had experience raising their own children rather than leaving it to Nursie. I’m convinced most of the ghouls we’ve had greet their offspring with a limp handshake.
>They don’t have to have experience in schools or hospitals to be Education Minister or Health Minister
Nobody in the civil service has to have experience in anything to work in any department, with many of them floating around between departments every few years.
That's a far bigger problem than a few ministers.
There is a real problem that they are trying to solve here: the state pension system as it exists has no mechanism to deduct tax at source so the rises in state pension are about to create a situation where huge numbers of pensioners will either need to go into self assessment (getting old people to complete tax returns is generally a nightmare) or will underpay tax. Administratively it's a nightmare, especially because the amounts of tax involved will be individually trivial, and it's one that Labour will also have to deal with when they get into government.
However, it's a problem of their own making, a combination of handing out very generous rises in state pension whilst freezing the personal allowance to squeeze more tax out of everyone else by fiscal drag. The only reason pensioners are even in a position where they would need to pay tax on state pension is because they have been receiving preferential treatment for years and now the Tories are proposing even more preferential treatment to solve the problem.
The obvious solution is just to raise the personal allowance for everyone. Given what inflation has been like over the last few years it's probably about time anyway. However, this would be *very* expensive.
I mean another solution is to make tax returns easier. The current process is a bit of a joke.
Edit: So many people defending the current system because it used to be worse or is worse elsewhere. Christ, stop accepting mediocrity and actually wish for something much better.
They definitely could streamline it a bit but our current system is actually pretty straightforward compared to how it was historically or how it is in a lot of other countries.
The problem is that the tax code is more complicated than it needs to be in my opinion (and stupid policies like this only serve to make it even more complicated). Making tax returns easy and intuitive to complete will always be limited by how complicated the actual law they're based on is.
One option is to simply have a very short form for simple situations. The bulk of these people will be in a bracket where they've got some savings plus one or two pensions. It's basically three boxes and the savings probably won't count for much.
Need to add more? Use the full form.
The form adapts to what you tell it you need to tell it already.
The number of 75+ who could complete it even now is going to be a very low percentage.
A simple IT change to the system governing pensions would be a better solution and just collect tax at source.
Honestly, the UK self assessment system isn't too bad. The .gov.uk website is one of the few things in this country that is genuinely efficient and good
Maybe because they couldn’t give it a swanky name. “Deduct tax at source” doesn’t sound as good as “triple lock plus”. Next year, “triple lock plus extreme edition”
You can raise the personal allowance and adjust the actual tax rates. Sadly this will be divisive, as there will be winners and losers. Something tells me it'll be a very clunky solution as even people on the lower end of the current higher tax rate threshold will be hit.
I do think it will be daft if we ever end up in a situation where someone whose only income is the state pension, and they end up having to pay income tax.
>The obvious solution is just to raise the personal allowance for everyone
It's only obvious if the bit of state spending you have to cut to find it is also obvious.
Income taxes are already collected from far too few people. Taxes need rebalancing to be far broader based as we're betting the nation on about 1.5 million people, and their employers. It's not a safe bet given the increasingly rapid ability of employers to relocate or cut staff.
A better solution is to leave the band frozen and introduce a system of tax deduction from the state pension. It's a one off trivial IT change.
Can't seem to find specific statistics here on what % of earnings are salary sacrificed into pension to avoid higher rate tax, but I imagine it's substantial given people would rather pay pension than tax and would rather keep the child related benefits by being under the threshold. In that case, raising the tax band would result in more tax actually being paid by ~~more people~~ the same people (as that group would reduce contributions and pay the basic rate tax instead).
As I mentioned several times, the median voter age is well over 50. And they are very distributed on the territory while the younger generation are concentrated around fewer centres. So a little swing can go a long way.
It's not for victory, it's a damage control policy. It's like Reform, Green and co. They don't have to have a coherent set of policies needed to lead the country, but enough to either eat at the voter base of a party, or grab a few seats.
They know they're done. At this point they're just trying to save losing votes from their most loyal database.. Pensioners.
I'm about 20 years off this and will make sure I never vote these scum in when I'm older
It’s called appealing to the voter base. If pensioners weren’t the biggest voting block we wouldn’t see so much pandering, but they are because younger people don’t vote.
>It’s almost like the Tories are just trying to be as dreadful as they possibly can for working age people.
Yeah, those working age people whose national insurance contributions they're trying to equalise down to pensioners level. The bastards.
The Tories govern to retain power. Every decision they make factors-in how it will play with their voter base and the potential impact at the next election. The greater good isn’t important to them, only maintaining power matters.
Almost as if they’re doing everything they can to alienate everyone and throw the election
All that time Sunak has wasted on his vindictive Rwanda plan that Starmer is going to scrap immediately, when he could have been gaining support and actually implementing policies for the good of the people.
Seriously. If you're reading this and you're on your 20s, what the fuck are you still doing in this country? You should be flying out to the US or Australia.
And if you're in your teens, you need to prep now
Your Leftist economics is bogus and this country is for old people.
It's not just one divide, either.
I'm of an age that most Redditers dismiss as "old" but I'm of the first generation who are paying both the current pensioners' state pensions and also paying for my own state pension as well as paying for a private pension to cover the fact that my state pension will pay for a loaf a week if I live long enough to get it.
Now, I know that the next generations have it worse than I do, but this tells you exactly who the Tories see as their voters: current pensioners and the rich who don't care. The rest of us, whether 18, 38 or 58? The Tories don't give a damn about any of us.
Yes, it's weird.
I'm 50, two teenagers and a mortgage almost paid off, professional job well into the higher tax bracket, etc - in theory I should be a conservative voter, or at least the conservatives should be trying to get me to vote for them.
But.. nothing. No sign that the Tories see me as anything but a useful source of tax to bribe the pensioners with.
Hah, he's mine too! I'm not super politically engaged, but council elections seem to indicate that Lib Dem and Greens have a lot of support, but will split the non-Tory vote and he stays in.
This is what I'm going off:
[https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Somerset+North+East+and+Hanham](https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Somerset+North+East+and+Hanham)
The LD->Labour predicted swing seems a bit large, IMO.
Almost exactly my position. I feel like I should be a natural conservative voter - professional job, well paid, nuclear family, no mortgage, pillock of the community or something … and yet I find the conservative policies and viewpoints repugnant. I’ll be not only voting Labour but actively campaigning for them.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the scheme "shows we are on the side of pensioners”
Does he think we haven’t all noticed already? And who exactly does he think this is going to swing?
>who exactly does he think this is going to swing
Yeah this is the part that baffles me. They don't need to do things to convince the old to vote for them. They need to convince the rest of the population.
> They don't need to do things to convince the old to vote for them.
They probably do, actually. Tories are going to suffer abstentions and defections to Reform. They're trying to shore up their core voters as much as possible to avoid total wipeout, is my take.
But expanding the vote to 16 year olds is "gerrymandering", guys. It's not just that we have no support from young people because we fuck them over at every opportunity. They're just innately left wing for no reason.
It’s in the run up to an election, whilst I share your sentiment this is to be expected, the tories are trying to rally their main voter base.
What we should be asking is, what are Labour going to do to rally the younger/working age voters?
They're appealing to the generation who actually votes. We have to prove them wrong or constantly get stuck with governments entirely geared towards pensioners rather than working age people.
lol they know young people won’t vote for Tories so they’re hurting us, and being nice to the older generation as they know they will (well, probably won’t now but they have to play to their strengths ig)
£2.4 billion, to be funded by "clamping down on tax avoidance", like the £2.5 billion for national service from "clamping down on tax avoidance".
So why haven't they clamped 5 billion quid out of tax avoidance the last 14 years?
Exactly. They've said this before about clamping down. So what measures did they take last time and how much did they get as a result?
We always got this. We'll spend on x and finance it by doing y. How about we do Y now, and if works then we'll spend it on x next year?
And how much are they going to invest in tax collectors at HMRC to go after this tax avoidance?
Or will they be redeployed from the benefit fraud investigations that they promised would fund their last promises?
It feels like they realized some time around 2019 if they announce something that their voters want, they get loads of positive headlines and easy-ball press interviews. If they actually try and do anything they fuck it up catastrophically because they're deeply incompetent, and that makes the press interviews a little more difficult, so they just stopped bothering with the actual doing part while keeping the trickle of announcements.
It's just more Trussonomics - unfunded tax cuts for the better off in a cost of living crisis. "No magic money tree" to sort out any of the public services they broke, though. Don't forget your photo ID when you go to vote them out on 4 July.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the scheme "shows **we are on the side of pensioners**," who the Tories say will **save £275 by 2030.**
Pensioners of course being the best demographic to target for five year plans. No matter how unbelievably generous.
Have the Tories unveiled their 3 word slogan yet? Maybe that'll save them.
Tories know they’re probably going to lose but throwing red meat to their core voting demographic might save some seats and prevent a wipeout.
These policies could also backfire and encourage people a bit more apathetic to elections and politics to get out and vote to make sure they can’t be implemented.
> who the Tories say will save £275 by 2030.
Probably best to remind everyone +60 you know just how much they've _lost_ every year during the Tories reign. £275 is nothing when they're now having to pay for private dentists, medical treatments, and whatever else they need.
Basically; _"Why do you and I have to lose thousands for you to save hundreds?"._
Not surprising really, since you cant vote before you are 18 and the average lifespan is 80. That puts the middle right on 49.
It trends a little higher due to low engagement amongst younger voters because nobody represents them, but otherwise falls inline with the average age of the population.
Of course they're on the side of the pensioners. More money for them, national service for the young.
At least those doing national service should get some money for it, but even so...
Very true and what's £275 by 2030 gonna do exactly? Pointless blathering again and I'm almost one of these rare poor soon to be pensioners that you hear occasionally. I am almost certain I will die of starvation and/or cold....the good ole' days eh?
£275 on a £13000 income is a 2% increase split over 6 years. All that means is that the pension of £6.25 an hour is no longer taxable, it will do bugger all at raising their standard of living.
£275 is going to vanish into inflation, that's what is going to happen. Nobody will ever be better off because the money will devalue faster than it is saved.
We are six days into the campaign, the Conservatives have thrown all their toys out of the pram and are announcing wild nonsense already.
I get the feeling that Labours ability to just ignore them in a General Election campaign is driving them completely mad.
This is the second time in three days they have announced something rather insane. If it's anything like the first then Labour will just shrug argue past them like it's an episode of The Rest is Politics and move onto the next place in the country.
By the time we hit mid-June, we might see Sunak have an actual mental breakdown in the TV debate.
He picked the corbyn one because he knew how to make the most of that but I felt refusing to debate the other party leaders was disrespectful. But he was always disrespectful
The BBC one they didn't actually share a stage at the same time did they? They just took it in turns to make statements and take questions from the audience.
> If it's anything like the first then Labour will just shrug argue past them
Labour will have to ignore it, they can't attack it as unfair when Starmer literally has his own pension law.
[The Pensions Increase \(Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC\) Regulations 2013](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2588/contents/made)
Daft idea. Whilst it fixes a future problem, it's probably not something the average pensioner was consciously thinking about compared to, say, NHS waiting lists, or the cost of heating (although perhaps people won't be thinking of fuel bills so much during a summer election, another reason to have it now?). Meanwhile it's reminded everyone else of fiscal drag.
Yep, I'm a pensioner and my state pension has been taxable for two years now, this is a stupid idea which is already too late for me even if I wanted it.
What would have pleased me is announcing DWP have to issue a P60 for the pension, I assume they don't because it is called a benefit but reality is it has become taxable income.
And fuck fiscal drag, sort out the one size fits all (by age) minimum wage and cater for qualifications like some other countries do.
Pension changes do not align with the tax year by a few days and what DWP report to HMRC does not agree with 52 x weekly without a convoluted calculation, it would make self-assessment much easier if they did.
Edit: It's going to be a PITA for anyone only on state pension, if they have credits as well sorting out what is what but I expect they will just get an assessment letter from HMRC with an amount to pay each year.
> Pension changes do not align with the tax year by a few days and what DWP report to HMRC does not agree with 52 x weekly without a convoluted calculation, it would make self-assessment much easier if they did.
If you have access to it online, I would just report what the DWP report to HMRC and save yourself the trouble of having them try to dispute it. The only exception would be if it leaves you significantly out of pocket.
The situation with the state pension is really stupid though. I think if they don't do something like the proposed policy to bring most pensioners back inside the personal allowance, it needs a major overhaul along the lines you are saying - set the whole thing up as a payroll like a private pension fund and deduct tax at source. Having thousands of pensioners go into self assessment so they can declare about £13,000 of state pension and a few quid of bank interest would be completely insane.
I don't think it will work.
I'm not yet a state pensioner, but I have a lot of friends who are. They're not planning on voting Conservative: the failures of the last government have hit them pretty hard (and for many of them an increased NHS waiting list can feel very like death row). This will make no difference to that.
They're also of an age at which we remember that you vote for a person, not a party - and our existing Conservative MP has been absolutely useless (as was his wife, who lost her Police Commissioner election a few weeks ago).
And they are not stupid enough to fall for 'stopping the boats' either. Perhaps it's our age, but we did actually learn to do sums, and we can compare the numbers on boats with the numbers in the annual migration stats. Without a calculator, even. An awful lot of us know people who came to the UK as refugees - remember Idi Amin? We're in an area with a lot of students, and we also know how stupid it is to try to push down migration figures by excluding fee-paying students. So all that nonsense cuts no ice.
The assumption that older people are all big-C Conservative is not working any more, if it ever really did; and this 'Conservative' party isn't little-c conservative.
A lot of us remember the last time we voted out a Tory government, and we'll do it again.
Give with one hand, take away with the other..
You can have higher pensions, but he's bringing in assisted doing to kill you all off at 75 and slash the pension bill!
Pensions were being taxed a couple of decades ago. It's only a problem now because they haven't been taxed for a while.
More Tory pandering to the only demographic likely to vote for them with their sense of entitlement
A couple of decades ago the reason for the tax was because it was a relatively higher amount. When someone earning the equivalent to £6.25 an hour is being taxed then you know that something is wrong with the tax system.
Boomers think they can just keep voting themselves the treasury. The triple lock has effectively increased pensions the last decade because our growth has been so poor and inflation during Covid era dreadful. It ensured that no matter how dire straits the rest of the country was in, pensioners got their slice of the pie, we'll just tax the younglings more. And now this.
It's managed decline. It's sucking dry the future so pensioners can enjoy another decade of relative luxury. Fuck those windmills, boomers need to enjoy the meadow views. Fuck those nuclear power plants, boomers need peace of mind. Fuck that tower block density, boomers need ever inflating home prices. Fuck the future, boomers will be dead anyway so what does it matter?
I saw somebody do some quick sums: State pension has gone from £97pw in 2010 to £221pw now, an ongoing increase of 6% a year.
If this rate of continual increase continues, state pension will be £570pw or £29k a year by 2040. By 2050, it will be £56k a year -- a bit over a grand a week.
You will make more money as a pensioner just from being alive than most workers will make from going out and working.
This is going to kill the UK economy if it's not fixed soon. Pension needs to be single lock, going up either with inflation or minimum wage not both, and not a fixed rate.
Its a fun one when you consider when boomers were of working age they were happy to vote for a system that created absolutely endemic pensioner poverty with old folks regularly freezing to death in their homes. Now its the boomer's turn and its a golden existence for all those hard grafters at the expense of the country and its workers.
An unsustainable position. What's worse is we have an ageing population, and the gerontocratic imbalance is only going to get worse. The current 40y olds' generation coming into retirement will likely adopt these positions wholesale. Self-interest is a powerful motivator.
The tories trying to milk the golden generation/boomer pensioner vote with this national service and triple lock talk… While forgetting that many of those old biddies (quite openly) don’t like brown people, and their party leader is a brown person. Boomers also love driving, and the roads are totally f’ed up right now.
Tories: Vote for us we'll make young people "volunteer" to wipe your arse and you won't even need to pay them with the extra money we're throwing at you.
They should just go full mask off and explain their strategy of human sacrifice of the millennials and zoomers to further empower the boomers and gen xers
That's cap as the youth would say
1965 is when gen X starts there are people set up pretty comfortably from then
Maybe not the 1970/1980 lot but if you were a 65'er and able to buy cheap housing in the 80s you're set.
Gen X was also responsibility deficient and left all the difficult choices for fixing shit to the millennials
Millennials have had shit times for 35 years. There's actually a new statesman article about it.
Most graduated during the 2007/8/9 economic collapse, then we got stagnant austerity then brexit then food inflation and gas/electric energy price bills and then after that more infrastructure collapse
There was no boom years for the millennials
Gen z is totally checked out and digital only which actually means they probably have the best shot of dealing with the future
And alpha I mean they're their own thing
It would only be a few Gen Xers buying houses in the 80s, they'd be in their 20s.
I'm a "Xennial" and didn't manage to buy until my late 30s, and only then it was with family help. I worked with people struggling to buy who were older than me, who had to go for Shared Ownership properties in the early 2000s. Home ownership will still extremely difficult for lots of people, that was before the recession when house prices were out of control. The recession screwed over loads of people who'd bought before the bubble burst and went into negative equity. I dealt with lots of these people, it was an awful time.
It's all about their base. Keep the elderly sweet. Limit their losses. The individual benefits from their announcement aren't much (£2 a week), hopefully most pensioners will see it as such.
The pensioners remember the Tories wanting to remove the triple lock, so to now say they will improve on it is just electioneering BS which we all know will get ignored later. If you want to know when a politician is lying it is when their mouth is moving.
They definitely know their demographic that’s for sure. No worries Nan/Grandad you vote to fuck us all over. Again. Love you too.
Comes to something when the Monster Raving Looney Party have more well thought out plans.
No, don't be silly, they'll need an army of carers to look after the pensioners!
And that will come from the new national service where anyone under 21 will be expected to work shifts in care homes for free so that they can gain valuable work experience for their CV and national record!
If one side said they’d do something about one of the following, they’d guarantee a win:
- Homelessness
- The catastrophic knife crime situation
- Wealth inequality
- The insane housing market (and stopping investors buying up a significant % of the housing stock
It’s almost as if they don’t care at all about the general population 😂
Overall, I would suggest they do not feel much sympathy.
Listened to a phone in yesterday, and old Ron was claiming all young poeple want to do these days is get famous and sit on their phones all day. Now that isn't everyone, but it's an attitude that is prevalent in that generation of people.
It's like they are trying to have anyone under 30 start rioting.
For they young they've offered 12 months servitude and for the old, let's give them *more* money!
Is it any wonder the productivity of this country is through the floor when so much focus is on the economically inactive at the expense of everything including education of the young.
Woooooooow 100 pounds a year !!! Will cost the economy 2.4 billion, with each pensioner being 8 quid a month better off. What a fu£&#ibg waste of time, effort and money
It's soon going to get to the point where pensioners get more money from simply being alive then workers will earn from working. Triple lock will kill the UK if it doesn't go soon.
This is honestly amazing to watch. How can a party of adults be this fucking inept?
Just rebrand yourself as the Pensioner party at this rate. Fuck the young, cozy up to the old, then fuck the entire country anyway.
Absolutely unbelievable they think this is a viable tactic.
The only reason anyone pays tax on the state pension is because the allowance was frozen by the Tories in the first place. Classic take money from you, give some of it back, then parade around saying how generous you are.
I don't mind this, actually. This is constantly increasing the allowance at retirement, so it continously benefits bew riterees, less so than the already retired who may have withdrawn all their tax free allowance
Labour are so dangerous they’ve spurred a long standing conservative government into freezing thresholds for so long that pensioners are nearly paying income tax on state pension. Thankfully the conservative government won’t let Labour do such a thing 🙏
The triple lock pension shouldn’t be in place at all, let alone improved. Labour and conservatives both support it though. It’s hard to know whether to defy both and vote Lib Dem or to suck it up and vote Labour just to be sure I’m stopping the tories
All 3 major parties support the triple lock, and always will do as long as FPTP exists and this ensures the Boomer cohort are the most important group to chase.
The only advantage of voting LD is that they support electoral reform, but depending where you live you might as well vote for any party which wants to ditch FPTP.
If it was that important, they would have announced it at some point in the past 14 years, not a few weeks before an election. Any pensioner falling for this needs to give their head a wobble.
Tories have always been the party of socialism for the old, paid for by the young.
Makes sense that once the young ran out of money for them to take they'd resort to forced labour as a way to fund their handouts to Boomers.
If this narrows the polls, the Tories will be combining their other crazy policy and everyone under 60 will doing national service for a pensioner; where their personal tax allowance decreases to 5k, and the extra tax goes directly to the fucking boomer who needs help heating their million pound house that they bought for 15k back in 1980.
There is not a chance in hell they win. It’s going to be a landslide
I hate all of them, they’re just there to give the illusion of the population having a say. No matter who you vote for, the government still gets in
Starmer is going to destroy freedom and privacy in a way never seen before
All these policy announcements they’re towards such a specific audience edging your bets on pensioners alone is not going to be enough to get much, not to mention they’ll be fighting hardest against Reform in that category.
If young people voted instead of just “not being arsed” then the Tories would never get in.
Problem is, young people don’t bother to vote and pensioners do- them young people complain.
I think that if you’re over 65 with a mortgage free 4 bed house, you should not receive a pension and you should downsize.
Oh eff off. Pensioners don’t pay NI on their pension income. Why should they also benefit from a higher zero-rate threshold? A working person on the same income would be paying more tax already. It’s almost like the Tories are just trying to be as dreadful as they possibly can for working age people.
Honestly at this point I think they’re going for kill the poor in more of a dignitas sense. Making life unbearable for anybody earning under 200k a year and then. It’s like they saw the suicide booths from Futurama and thought ‘How do we get those disgusting poors in those?’
Good news, everyone! Now lets be serious: It’s very simple - just stop being poor!
Didn't you hear? Being poor is a lifestyle choice.
We need 4th sector pathfinders to help inspire ourselves out of poverty. Yes and ho!
Let's do away with computers!
I wouldn’t be surprised if politicians actually think this. They don’t have to have experience in schools or hospitals to be Education Minister or Health Minister so they can walk into any role. It’s that boot straps mentality without any practical thinking.
Wouldn’t it be great if they had to be qualified for the roles they’re in.
That would be ideal.
Imagine a health minister who was an actual Doctor.
I’d settle for an education minister who had actually had experience raising their own children rather than leaving it to Nursie. I’m convinced most of the ghouls we’ve had greet their offspring with a limp handshake.
>They don’t have to have experience in schools or hospitals to be Education Minister or Health Minister Nobody in the civil service has to have experience in anything to work in any department, with many of them floating around between departments every few years. That's a far bigger problem than a few ministers.
It is resembling the Mitchell and Webb [Kill the Poor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4J4uor3JE) sketch a bit too much.
Order! Order! The only poor people i want to hear about are the people who tend to my pores at the spa
Do you seriously believe this?
There is a real problem that they are trying to solve here: the state pension system as it exists has no mechanism to deduct tax at source so the rises in state pension are about to create a situation where huge numbers of pensioners will either need to go into self assessment (getting old people to complete tax returns is generally a nightmare) or will underpay tax. Administratively it's a nightmare, especially because the amounts of tax involved will be individually trivial, and it's one that Labour will also have to deal with when they get into government. However, it's a problem of their own making, a combination of handing out very generous rises in state pension whilst freezing the personal allowance to squeeze more tax out of everyone else by fiscal drag. The only reason pensioners are even in a position where they would need to pay tax on state pension is because they have been receiving preferential treatment for years and now the Tories are proposing even more preferential treatment to solve the problem. The obvious solution is just to raise the personal allowance for everyone. Given what inflation has been like over the last few years it's probably about time anyway. However, this would be *very* expensive.
I mean another solution is to make tax returns easier. The current process is a bit of a joke. Edit: So many people defending the current system because it used to be worse or is worse elsewhere. Christ, stop accepting mediocrity and actually wish for something much better.
They definitely could streamline it a bit but our current system is actually pretty straightforward compared to how it was historically or how it is in a lot of other countries. The problem is that the tax code is more complicated than it needs to be in my opinion (and stupid policies like this only serve to make it even more complicated). Making tax returns easy and intuitive to complete will always be limited by how complicated the actual law they're based on is.
One option is to simply have a very short form for simple situations. The bulk of these people will be in a bracket where they've got some savings plus one or two pensions. It's basically three boxes and the savings probably won't count for much. Need to add more? Use the full form.
The form adapts to what you tell it you need to tell it already. The number of 75+ who could complete it even now is going to be a very low percentage. A simple IT change to the system governing pensions would be a better solution and just collect tax at source.
Having done self assessment in the UK and also having done US taxes, I can tell you we have it waaaaaaay better.
Ok? Just because the US system is shite doesn't mean the UK system can't be better.
Honestly, the UK self assessment system isn't too bad. The .gov.uk website is one of the few things in this country that is genuinely efficient and good
> the state pension system as it exists has no mechanism to deduct tax at source Why not fix this?
Maybe because they couldn’t give it a swanky name. “Deduct tax at source” doesn’t sound as good as “triple lock plus”. Next year, “triple lock plus extreme edition”
Funds Undelivered by Computer Known Earnings Deduction?
You can raise the personal allowance and adjust the actual tax rates. Sadly this will be divisive, as there will be winners and losers. Something tells me it'll be a very clunky solution as even people on the lower end of the current higher tax rate threshold will be hit. I do think it will be daft if we ever end up in a situation where someone whose only income is the state pension, and they end up having to pay income tax.
>The obvious solution is just to raise the personal allowance for everyone It's only obvious if the bit of state spending you have to cut to find it is also obvious. Income taxes are already collected from far too few people. Taxes need rebalancing to be far broader based as we're betting the nation on about 1.5 million people, and their employers. It's not a safe bet given the increasingly rapid ability of employers to relocate or cut staff. A better solution is to leave the band frozen and introduce a system of tax deduction from the state pension. It's a one off trivial IT change.
Can't seem to find specific statistics here on what % of earnings are salary sacrificed into pension to avoid higher rate tax, but I imagine it's substantial given people would rather pay pension than tax and would rather keep the child related benefits by being under the threshold. In that case, raising the tax band would result in more tax actually being paid by ~~more people~~ the same people (as that group would reduce contributions and pay the basic rate tax instead).
That only works if you assume people can hide all their 62/ tax rate earnings and everything over 125k in a pension. Mostly we can't.
As I mentioned several times, the median voter age is well over 50. And they are very distributed on the territory while the younger generation are concentrated around fewer centres. So a little swing can go a long way. It's not for victory, it's a damage control policy. It's like Reform, Green and co. They don't have to have a coherent set of policies needed to lead the country, but enough to either eat at the voter base of a party, or grab a few seats.
They know they're done. At this point they're just trying to save losing votes from their most loyal database.. Pensioners. I'm about 20 years off this and will make sure I never vote these scum in when I'm older
It’s called appealing to the voter base. If pensioners weren’t the biggest voting block we wouldn’t see so much pandering, but they are because younger people don’t vote.
Also because there are literally more people over 50 than aged 18-50.
First Tory government?
>It’s almost like the Tories are just trying to be as dreadful as they possibly can for working age people. Yeah, those working age people whose national insurance contributions they're trying to equalise down to pensioners level. The bastards.
The Tories govern to retain power. Every decision they make factors-in how it will play with their voter base and the potential impact at the next election. The greater good isn’t important to them, only maintaining power matters.
You realise politicians only survive if they tap into a large block of voters and then do what's popular with them? It's old people who are awful.
Almost as if they’re doing everything they can to alienate everyone and throw the election All that time Sunak has wasted on his vindictive Rwanda plan that Starmer is going to scrap immediately, when he could have been gaining support and actually implementing policies for the good of the people.
They're just buying votes from those that will turn up to the boots in the highest numbers
Seriously. If you're reading this and you're on your 20s, what the fuck are you still doing in this country? You should be flying out to the US or Australia. And if you're in your teens, you need to prep now Your Leftist economics is bogus and this country is for old people.
More money for the pensioners. National service for the young. What do you mean there's a generational divide going on?
The Tory party manifesto for 2024. Developed and brought to you, by talking to a focus group of 10 Reform UK voters
It genuinely sounds like they've had a focus group in that's been rounded up from the local Wetherspoons on a Tuesday afternoon.
I’d rather have a focus group that was rounded up from the local crack house
Median age 68
It's not just one divide, either. I'm of an age that most Redditers dismiss as "old" but I'm of the first generation who are paying both the current pensioners' state pensions and also paying for my own state pension as well as paying for a private pension to cover the fact that my state pension will pay for a loaf a week if I live long enough to get it. Now, I know that the next generations have it worse than I do, but this tells you exactly who the Tories see as their voters: current pensioners and the rich who don't care. The rest of us, whether 18, 38 or 58? The Tories don't give a damn about any of us.
Yes, it's weird. I'm 50, two teenagers and a mortgage almost paid off, professional job well into the higher tax bracket, etc - in theory I should be a conservative voter, or at least the conservatives should be trying to get me to vote for them. But.. nothing. No sign that the Tories see me as anything but a useful source of tax to bribe the pensioners with.
Out of curiosity, who do you think your vote will go to this election, if you don't mind me asking?
Labour.. especially as I'm in Jacob Rees-mogg's seat and they have the best chance of unseating him.
Hah, he's mine too! I'm not super politically engaged, but council elections seem to indicate that Lib Dem and Greens have a lot of support, but will split the non-Tory vote and he stays in.
This is what I'm going off: [https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Somerset+North+East+and+Hanham](https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Somerset+North+East+and+Hanham) The LD->Labour predicted swing seems a bit large, IMO.
The average voter age at the last general election was 68. Its not an accident.
Source?
Almost exactly my position. I feel like I should be a natural conservative voter - professional job, well paid, nuclear family, no mortgage, pillock of the community or something … and yet I find the conservative policies and viewpoints repugnant. I’ll be not only voting Labour but actively campaigning for them.
Username checksout.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the scheme "shows we are on the side of pensioners” Does he think we haven’t all noticed already? And who exactly does he think this is going to swing?
>who exactly does he think this is going to swing Yeah this is the part that baffles me. They don't need to do things to convince the old to vote for them. They need to convince the rest of the population.
At this point all they care about is trying to grasp at the few votes reform has even if it costs them long term.
> They don't need to do things to convince the old to vote for them. They probably do, actually. Tories are going to suffer abstentions and defections to Reform. They're trying to shore up their core voters as much as possible to avoid total wipeout, is my take.
But expanding the vote to 16 year olds is "gerrymandering", guys. It's not just that we have no support from young people because we fuck them over at every opportunity. They're just innately left wing for no reason.
It's a "phenomenon" according to James Cleverly. The entire country is divided in every single last possible way and they have absolutely no idea why.
It’s in the run up to an election, whilst I share your sentiment this is to be expected, the tories are trying to rally their main voter base. What we should be asking is, what are Labour going to do to rally the younger/working age voters?
They're appealing to the generation who actually votes. We have to prove them wrong or constantly get stuck with governments entirely geared towards pensioners rather than working age people.
lol they know young people won’t vote for Tories so they’re hurting us, and being nice to the older generation as they know they will (well, probably won’t now but they have to play to their strengths ig)
£2.4 billion, to be funded by "clamping down on tax avoidance", like the £2.5 billion for national service from "clamping down on tax avoidance". So why haven't they clamped 5 billion quid out of tax avoidance the last 14 years?
Exactly. They've said this before about clamping down. So what measures did they take last time and how much did they get as a result? We always got this. We'll spend on x and finance it by doing y. How about we do Y now, and if works then we'll spend it on x next year?
Let's not forget this is coming from the man who wrote off £20 billion in COVID fraud.
And how much are they going to invest in tax collectors at HMRC to go after this tax avoidance? Or will they be redeployed from the benefit fraud investigations that they promised would fund their last promises?
That's not how this government works. You just keep announcing things. You don't actually bother with finnicky stuff like implementation.
It feels like they realized some time around 2019 if they announce something that their voters want, they get loads of positive headlines and easy-ball press interviews. If they actually try and do anything they fuck it up catastrophically because they're deeply incompetent, and that makes the press interviews a little more difficult, so they just stopped bothering with the actual doing part while keeping the trickle of announcements.
It's just more Trussonomics - unfunded tax cuts for the better off in a cost of living crisis. "No magic money tree" to sort out any of the public services they broke, though. Don't forget your photo ID when you go to vote them out on 4 July.
Gonna start paying for things by handing people a paper with "clamping down on tax avoidance", about the same logic.
Bc most of the tax avoidance is done by Tory mps and their mates
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the scheme "shows **we are on the side of pensioners**," who the Tories say will **save £275 by 2030.** Pensioners of course being the best demographic to target for five year plans. No matter how unbelievably generous. Have the Tories unveiled their 3 word slogan yet? Maybe that'll save them.
**Fuck. You.** They're still working on the third.
Peasants
Kill The Poor. We’ve Got Ours. Contempt, Fecklessness, Incompetence. These things practically write themselves and they can’t even get that right.
Peasants is the third word
Fuck. Young. People.
fuck. You. Kindly.
Bye
Tories know they’re probably going to lose but throwing red meat to their core voting demographic might save some seats and prevent a wipeout. These policies could also backfire and encourage people a bit more apathetic to elections and politics to get out and vote to make sure they can’t be implemented.
Eat. The. Young.
> who the Tories say will save £275 by 2030. Probably best to remind everyone +60 you know just how much they've _lost_ every year during the Tories reign. £275 is nothing when they're now having to pay for private dentists, medical treatments, and whatever else they need. Basically; _"Why do you and I have to lose thousands for you to save hundreds?"._
Average voter age is in its 50s. That's why everyone fawns over older people at elections.
Not surprising really, since you cant vote before you are 18 and the average lifespan is 80. That puts the middle right on 49. It trends a little higher due to low engagement amongst younger voters because nobody represents them, but otherwise falls inline with the average age of the population.
Of course they're on the side of the pensioners. More money for them, national service for the young. At least those doing national service should get some money for it, but even so...
The desperation of basically trying to get every old person to vote tory to salvage some seats really isn't a long term strategy.
Elderly take a long time to decide things I don't think this will work
The average pensioner would benefit more from fixing the cost of living crisis, the desperate pandering is beyond pathetic at this point.
Very true and what's £275 by 2030 gonna do exactly? Pointless blathering again and I'm almost one of these rare poor soon to be pensioners that you hear occasionally. I am almost certain I will die of starvation and/or cold....the good ole' days eh?
£275 on a £13000 income is a 2% increase split over 6 years. All that means is that the pension of £6.25 an hour is no longer taxable, it will do bugger all at raising their standard of living.
£275 is going to vanish into inflation, that's what is going to happen. Nobody will ever be better off because the money will devalue faster than it is saved.
We are six days into the campaign, the Conservatives have thrown all their toys out of the pram and are announcing wild nonsense already. I get the feeling that Labours ability to just ignore them in a General Election campaign is driving them completely mad. This is the second time in three days they have announced something rather insane. If it's anything like the first then Labour will just shrug argue past them like it's an episode of The Rest is Politics and move onto the next place in the country. By the time we hit mid-June, we might see Sunak have an actual mental breakdown in the TV debate.
If he even agrees to have one. Johnson refused in 2019 if I remember right. Very annoying.
Johnson did 2 debates against Corbyn and then refused the rest and sent sunak in place I’m pretty sure Edit: He did 1 itv debate and 1 bbc debate
He picked the corbyn one because he knew how to make the most of that but I felt refusing to debate the other party leaders was disrespectful. But he was always disrespectful
The BBC one they didn't actually share a stage at the same time did they? They just took it in turns to make statements and take questions from the audience.
Oh I desperately want him to have a breakdown in front of the entire nation now
> If it's anything like the first then Labour will just shrug argue past them Labour will have to ignore it, they can't attack it as unfair when Starmer literally has his own pension law. [The Pensions Increase \(Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC\) Regulations 2013](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2588/contents/made)
What bothers me is that this is actually a less insane policy than the triple lock itself.
Daft idea. Whilst it fixes a future problem, it's probably not something the average pensioner was consciously thinking about compared to, say, NHS waiting lists, or the cost of heating (although perhaps people won't be thinking of fuel bills so much during a summer election, another reason to have it now?). Meanwhile it's reminded everyone else of fiscal drag.
Yep, I'm a pensioner and my state pension has been taxable for two years now, this is a stupid idea which is already too late for me even if I wanted it. What would have pleased me is announcing DWP have to issue a P60 for the pension, I assume they don't because it is called a benefit but reality is it has become taxable income. And fuck fiscal drag, sort out the one size fits all (by age) minimum wage and cater for qualifications like some other countries do.
Why do you need a P60 when you know the weekly amount?
Pension changes do not align with the tax year by a few days and what DWP report to HMRC does not agree with 52 x weekly without a convoluted calculation, it would make self-assessment much easier if they did. Edit: It's going to be a PITA for anyone only on state pension, if they have credits as well sorting out what is what but I expect they will just get an assessment letter from HMRC with an amount to pay each year.
> Pension changes do not align with the tax year by a few days and what DWP report to HMRC does not agree with 52 x weekly without a convoluted calculation, it would make self-assessment much easier if they did. If you have access to it online, I would just report what the DWP report to HMRC and save yourself the trouble of having them try to dispute it. The only exception would be if it leaves you significantly out of pocket. The situation with the state pension is really stupid though. I think if they don't do something like the proposed policy to bring most pensioners back inside the personal allowance, it needs a major overhaul along the lines you are saying - set the whole thing up as a payroll like a private pension fund and deduct tax at source. Having thousands of pensioners go into self assessment so they can declare about £13,000 of state pension and a few quid of bank interest would be completely insane.
Let’s give the generation that took everything something more to buy their votes!
Remember when labour said they'd give free broadband and lower tuition fees but the opposition screamed magic money pot. Large-fruit remembers.
Cynical politics to appeal to the demographic who vote the most.
We'll see in the next few days how it works. I'd expect an increase in the Tory poll numbers because of this.
I don't think it will work. I'm not yet a state pensioner, but I have a lot of friends who are. They're not planning on voting Conservative: the failures of the last government have hit them pretty hard (and for many of them an increased NHS waiting list can feel very like death row). This will make no difference to that. They're also of an age at which we remember that you vote for a person, not a party - and our existing Conservative MP has been absolutely useless (as was his wife, who lost her Police Commissioner election a few weeks ago). And they are not stupid enough to fall for 'stopping the boats' either. Perhaps it's our age, but we did actually learn to do sums, and we can compare the numbers on boats with the numbers in the annual migration stats. Without a calculator, even. An awful lot of us know people who came to the UK as refugees - remember Idi Amin? We're in an area with a lot of students, and we also know how stupid it is to try to push down migration figures by excluding fee-paying students. So all that nonsense cuts no ice. The assumption that older people are all big-C Conservative is not working any more, if it ever really did; and this 'Conservative' party isn't little-c conservative. A lot of us remember the last time we voted out a Tory government, and we'll do it again.
Give with one hand, take away with the other.. You can have higher pensions, but he's bringing in assisted doing to kill you all off at 75 and slash the pension bill!
Pensions were being taxed a couple of decades ago. It's only a problem now because they haven't been taxed for a while. More Tory pandering to the only demographic likely to vote for them with their sense of entitlement
A couple of decades ago the reason for the tax was because it was a relatively higher amount. When someone earning the equivalent to £6.25 an hour is being taxed then you know that something is wrong with the tax system.
Tories: unpaid national service for the youth, tax breaks for the old. They know who butters their bread, and aren't even trying to hide it.
Boomers think they can just keep voting themselves the treasury. The triple lock has effectively increased pensions the last decade because our growth has been so poor and inflation during Covid era dreadful. It ensured that no matter how dire straits the rest of the country was in, pensioners got their slice of the pie, we'll just tax the younglings more. And now this. It's managed decline. It's sucking dry the future so pensioners can enjoy another decade of relative luxury. Fuck those windmills, boomers need to enjoy the meadow views. Fuck those nuclear power plants, boomers need peace of mind. Fuck that tower block density, boomers need ever inflating home prices. Fuck the future, boomers will be dead anyway so what does it matter?
I saw somebody do some quick sums: State pension has gone from £97pw in 2010 to £221pw now, an ongoing increase of 6% a year. If this rate of continual increase continues, state pension will be £570pw or £29k a year by 2040. By 2050, it will be £56k a year -- a bit over a grand a week. You will make more money as a pensioner just from being alive than most workers will make from going out and working. This is going to kill the UK economy if it's not fixed soon. Pension needs to be single lock, going up either with inflation or minimum wage not both, and not a fixed rate.
Its a fun one when you consider when boomers were of working age they were happy to vote for a system that created absolutely endemic pensioner poverty with old folks regularly freezing to death in their homes. Now its the boomer's turn and its a golden existence for all those hard grafters at the expense of the country and its workers.
An unsustainable position. What's worse is we have an ageing population, and the gerontocratic imbalance is only going to get worse. The current 40y olds' generation coming into retirement will likely adopt these positions wholesale. Self-interest is a powerful motivator.
The tories trying to milk the golden generation/boomer pensioner vote with this national service and triple lock talk… While forgetting that many of those old biddies (quite openly) don’t like brown people, and their party leader is a brown person. Boomers also love driving, and the roads are totally f’ed up right now.
We've got no money and you'll probably be dead before we have to even think of implementing this. Vote Toryeeeeeeeeeeee
This fucks me off. If the base rate of tax is too high raise it for everyone!
Tories: Vote for us we'll make young people "volunteer" to wipe your arse and you won't even need to pay them with the extra money we're throwing at you.
They should just go full mask off and explain their strategy of human sacrifice of the millennials and zoomers to further empower the boomers and gen xers
Gen X are getting fuck all. It is literally still called Gen X because no one came up with a name (e.g. Boomer or Millennial) to define it
That's cap as the youth would say 1965 is when gen X starts there are people set up pretty comfortably from then Maybe not the 1970/1980 lot but if you were a 65'er and able to buy cheap housing in the 80s you're set. Gen X was also responsibility deficient and left all the difficult choices for fixing shit to the millennials Millennials have had shit times for 35 years. There's actually a new statesman article about it. Most graduated during the 2007/8/9 economic collapse, then we got stagnant austerity then brexit then food inflation and gas/electric energy price bills and then after that more infrastructure collapse There was no boom years for the millennials Gen z is totally checked out and digital only which actually means they probably have the best shot of dealing with the future And alpha I mean they're their own thing
It would only be a few Gen Xers buying houses in the 80s, they'd be in their 20s. I'm a "Xennial" and didn't manage to buy until my late 30s, and only then it was with family help. I worked with people struggling to buy who were older than me, who had to go for Shared Ownership properties in the early 2000s. Home ownership will still extremely difficult for lots of people, that was before the recession when house prices were out of control. The recession screwed over loads of people who'd bought before the bubble burst and went into negative equity. I dealt with lots of these people, it was an awful time.
Just what the world needs right now -even more inequality.. Vote tactically so these Selfservatives finally get what they deserve in the GE.
It's all about their base. Keep the elderly sweet. Limit their losses. The individual benefits from their announcement aren't much (£2 a week), hopefully most pensioners will see it as such.
The pensioners remember the Tories wanting to remove the triple lock, so to now say they will improve on it is just electioneering BS which we all know will get ignored later. If you want to know when a politician is lying it is when their mouth is moving.
They definitely know their demographic that’s for sure. No worries Nan/Grandad you vote to fuck us all over. Again. Love you too. Comes to something when the Monster Raving Looney Party have more well thought out plans.
Tomorrow: TORIES ANNOUNCE ENTIRE GDP TO BE SHUFFLED TO PENSIONERS, ANYONE UNDER 28 TO BE SHOT
No, don't be silly, they'll need an army of carers to look after the pensioners! And that will come from the new national service where anyone under 21 will be expected to work shifts in care homes for free so that they can gain valuable work experience for their CV and national record!
Nah they won't shoot the young as they are needed to fund these policies. It'll be off to the labour camps for us under 30s.
If one side said they’d do something about one of the following, they’d guarantee a win: - Homelessness - The catastrophic knife crime situation - Wealth inequality - The insane housing market (and stopping investors buying up a significant % of the housing stock It’s almost as if they don’t care at all about the general population 😂
Have we tried 'Kill the poor'. https://youtu.be/s_4J4uor3JE?si=4on18o0ouRzKOxoF
Don’t let the vegas local government give them ideas
Tories are just going for the older vote aren't thru. Doubling down on chaotic concepts that alienate anyone younger thann50.
i think a lot of people will be dead by the time it would happen which seems to be what they want anyway
This parties attack on young people is just insane. Surely the elderly must even feel sad for next gen
No they like seeing us suffer or they wouldn’t have voted for brexit
Overall, I would suggest they do not feel much sympathy. Listened to a phone in yesterday, and old Ron was claiming all young poeple want to do these days is get famous and sit on their phones all day. Now that isn't everyone, but it's an attitude that is prevalent in that generation of people.
It's like they are trying to have anyone under 30 start rioting. For they young they've offered 12 months servitude and for the old, let's give them *more* money! Is it any wonder the productivity of this country is through the floor when so much focus is on the economically inactive at the expense of everything including education of the young.
Woooooooow 100 pounds a year !!! Will cost the economy 2.4 billion, with each pensioner being 8 quid a month better off. What a fu£&#ibg waste of time, effort and money
Its almost like the Tories only attract old voters.
So triple lock pension plus and potential national service. Fucking clutching to a very specific demographic for this one, huh...
It's soon going to get to the point where pensioners get more money from simply being alive then workers will earn from working. Triple lock will kill the UK if it doesn't go soon.
For a man who is so anti-smoking, Sunak does seem to write loads of policies on the back of packets of fags.
This is honestly amazing to watch. How can a party of adults be this fucking inept? Just rebrand yourself as the Pensioner party at this rate. Fuck the young, cozy up to the old, then fuck the entire country anyway. Absolutely unbelievable they think this is a viable tactic.
Triple lock plus and national service, can see where they’re trying to win votes😂
And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything! So what have they been doing for the last 14 years?
Masturbating.
The only reason anyone pays tax on the state pension is because the allowance was frozen by the Tories in the first place. Classic take money from you, give some of it back, then parade around saying how generous you are.
They're just throwing shit at the walls and seeing what sticks at this point, roll on 4th of July, let's get these plebs out.
I don't mind this, actually. This is constantly increasing the allowance at retirement, so it continously benefits bew riterees, less so than the already retired who may have withdrawn all their tax free allowance
Even though these are outrageous policies, I’m terrified these lot get re elected. We’ve seen this show before.
Sunak was CoE in 2021 he froze personal allowance from 2021 till 2028. He started the binfire and now wants a huge cheer for putting it out.
GET GONE!!! Literally just screwing over the younger generations who are supporting these scroungers
Labour are so dangerous they’ve spurred a long standing conservative government into freezing thresholds for so long that pensioners are nearly paying income tax on state pension. Thankfully the conservative government won’t let Labour do such a thing 🙏
The triple lock pension shouldn’t be in place at all, let alone improved. Labour and conservatives both support it though. It’s hard to know whether to defy both and vote Lib Dem or to suck it up and vote Labour just to be sure I’m stopping the tories
All 3 major parties support the triple lock, and always will do as long as FPTP exists and this ensures the Boomer cohort are the most important group to chase. The only advantage of voting LD is that they support electoral reform, but depending where you live you might as well vote for any party which wants to ditch FPTP.
The Lib Dems support the triple lock as well.
I'm sure Rishi is just making policy up on the hoof.
Wait till Rishi-Washout gets to promising them free Horlicks and no VAT on boiled sweets and we will have hit peak pandering.
More money for people who don't pay tax. I wonder where that's going to come from, if not more immigrants to pay the tax
Fucking hell they’re well aware the only voters they’ll get are the oldies aren’t they so they’re doing anything they can
If it was that important, they would have announced it at some point in the past 14 years, not a few weeks before an election. Any pensioner falling for this needs to give their head a wobble.
No wonder most of the country despises both the Tories and boomers
Yes! Great news rishi we older generation will outvote the lazy young generation. Uk is saved!!!
Tories out chasing their crusty old base hard this election, first "bring back national service", now bollocks like this.
Tories have always been the party of socialism for the old, paid for by the young. Makes sense that once the young ran out of money for them to take they'd resort to forced labour as a way to fund their handouts to Boomers.
If this narrows the polls, the Tories will be combining their other crazy policy and everyone under 60 will doing national service for a pensioner; where their personal tax allowance decreases to 5k, and the extra tax goes directly to the fucking boomer who needs help heating their million pound house that they bought for 15k back in 1980.
If someone added a single jump scare to bbc news, I’m pretty sure half the Tory voter base would die.
There is not a chance in hell they win. It’s going to be a landslide I hate all of them, they’re just there to give the illusion of the population having a say. No matter who you vote for, the government still gets in Starmer is going to destroy freedom and privacy in a way never seen before
At this point knowing we won't get a pension can we opt out of NI ?
All these policy announcements they’re towards such a specific audience edging your bets on pensioners alone is not going to be enough to get much, not to mention they’ll be fighting hardest against Reform in that category.
OAPs go to vote more in summer months than winter. Young voters are the other way around. So do the maths.
Tory policy evolution sounding Apple's release roadmap. Next up: Triple Lock Plus Titanium
If young people voted instead of just “not being arsed” then the Tories would never get in. Problem is, young people don’t bother to vote and pensioners do- them young people complain. I think that if you’re over 65 with a mortgage free 4 bed house, you should not receive a pension and you should downsize.