Comments on: The Tories steal a march … http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/thersa/the-tories-steal-a-march/ Politics, brains, social action and the day to day life of the RSA’s chief executive Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:30:59 +0000 hourly 1 By: Brian Hughes http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/thersa/the-tories-steal-a-march/comment-page-1/#comment-3385 Brian Hughes Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:07:25 +0000 http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/?p=2361#comment-3385 The paper you link to repeats the misleading half-truth that the UK has "one of the least generous state pension plans in Europe". When this is trotted out the other half of the truth - that we have the most highly developed private and occupational pension systems in Europe - is rarely mentioned. Thus we get to the nonsense that "the State Pension must rise for everyone". Yes even for those 2m of us lucky enough to enjoy pension incomes which are higher than the median for wage-earners (and which, in many cases, push pesioners into the high-rate tax band) must get more, more, more to go with our free bus-passes, swimming classes, prescriptions etc etc. So money that could make a real difference to the quality of life of those pensioners who really are wholly dependant on the state (about the same number as those over the 25K pa mark) is instead sprinkled more thinly to us all. Why is this allowed to happen? Partly because, since it was so harshly applied in the 1920s, means testing has become ingrained in left-wing phyches as a Really Bad Thing (despite any new evidence to the contrary) but mostly because the articulate folk who work in the media or who organise Pensioners' Forums and suchlike are all in, or expecting to be in, the cheerful top tenth sector and really know little and/or couldn't give a fig for those in the bottom one.... The paper you link to repeats the misleading half-truth that the UK has “one of the least generous state pension plans in Europe”. When this is trotted out the other half of the truth – that we have the most highly developed private and occupational pension systems in Europe – is rarely mentioned.

Thus we get to the nonsense that “the State Pension must rise for everyone”. Yes even for those 2m of us lucky enough to enjoy pension incomes which are higher than the median for wage-earners (and which, in many cases, push pesioners into the high-rate tax band) must get more, more, more to go with our free bus-passes, swimming classes, prescriptions etc etc.

So money that could make a real difference to the quality of life of those pensioners who really are wholly dependant on the state (about the same number as those over the 25K pa mark) is instead sprinkled more thinly to us all.

Why is this allowed to happen? Partly because, since it was so harshly applied in the 1920s, means testing has become ingrained in left-wing phyches as a Really Bad Thing (despite any new evidence to the contrary) but mostly because the articulate folk who work in the media or who organise Pensioners’ Forums and suchlike are all in, or expecting to be in, the cheerful top tenth sector and really know little and/or couldn’t give a fig for those in the bottom one….

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