What did we expect?
Labour’s savings grab won’t just hit the wealthy. As we saw with the shock withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Payment, millions on low incomes will be swept up in the assault.
There’s no stopping it with Starmer warning that tax rises are inevitable: “There is a Budget coming in October, and it’s going to be painful.”
A new threat emerges almost daily, as an army of left-wing think tanks and trade unionists urge Reeves to impose ever harsher levies on older, supposedly wealthy, Britons.
The Fabian Society, to name just one, wants Labour to launch a triple pensions tax raid. This would see Reeves slash tax relief on pension contributions, curb the hugely popular 25% tax-free pension lump sum, and make any unused pension subject to inheritance tax on death.
It has even called for Labour to slap national insurance on private pension income, something retirees don’t pay today.
This nasty, spiteful theft is precisely what we expected. Maybe not quite so blatant and not quite so soon, but, yes, this is what they do. They will impoverish all of us to feed the voracious state.
Strangely enough, nobody is calling for a curb on public sector pensions, even though they’re far more generous in practice.
Again, of course. ‘I’m alright Jack’ applies here. The public sector isn’t there to serve us, you fool, it is there to provide sinecures for the faithful and we are expected to fund it.
I’m pretty sure that a significant number of people who voted for these people are older types who have always voted Labour because that’s what they’ve always done and ‘up the workers’ and so on. Maybe, this sharp taste of what they wanted will concentrate their minds next time around. When Reeves and company have raided their pension pot, they will consider the possibility that they didn’t vote for the party of the workers, but the party of brigands, thieves and layabouts.
Some years ago, I was informed that any pension increases would be subject to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) instead of the, at the time, Retail Price Index (RPI), meaning a smaller increase. When I contacted my MP, a numpty who shall remain nameless, I enquired if this change would also apply to MP’s pension increases. I’m still waiting for an answer.
…and many of the people who voted for Labour were the envious young who have comparatively little. Not realising that they too will probably be older one day although it will be far harder to be ‘comfortable’ if all your income and savings are taxed to feed the State.
What makes you think there will be “next time around”, elections?
They’ll also means test state pensions at some stage.
Thatcher’s painting was a nice smoke screen.
Yes, they are looking at excluding some people from pensions entirely. Although I am aware that NI is a Ponzi scheme, having paid into it throughout our working lives, we have a reasonable expectation that the contract will be honoured. Clearly we are dealing with dishonourable people – or, as I prefer, criminal scum.
This is true, but as a ponzi scheme the state pension is nothing compared to featherbedded public sector pensions (recipients of which presumably get a state pension as well?).
The silence on the obscenity of this – this absolute pensions apartheid – is totally and absolutely deafening.
My state pension will kick in September 26, so I’m reasonably sure it will at least begin – but what happens to it after that?
Mine began last May. I am still doing some part time work and have a couple of small private pensions, so I’m ‘rich’ and ripe for the plucking.
As am I.
My private pensions are not stellar, but I have been mortgage and debt free for almost 20 years (a crime in itself – wrongbehaviour!)
I have a lot of money saved and in investments (more than my pension funds) and I will have the option of earning (which I’ll likely carry on doing).
Just think what a life of exploitation, racism, “white privilege”, misogyny and downright theft I must have led. And I intend continuing!!!!
What I have has not been granted to me by my “betters”. Therefore….
I’m reluctant to criticise people for the way they voted at the last election – the incumbents were so dire they had to go and the inevitable result was our current shower. The villain here isn’t the electorate (who show almost no enthusiasm for labour or Starmfuhrer) but the Tories who are responsible for creating this situation.
Labour probably think getting the nasty stuff out of the way early will allow time for ‘benefits’ to filter through and also that the electorate will have forgotten the pain by the next election. My guess is they will become addicted to power and spiral into the normal labour mistake of big government, big taxes and authoritarianism seasoned with a good dose of stupid and crazy.
Not something l relish but fertile ground for those trying to create a viable opposition – especially as the next election will show labour as determined to take personal transport and effective heating etc away from the masses.
Labour have a track record. Anyone who voted for them thinking that they in any way will look after the working classes, despite all the evidence to the contrary, not only needs their head read, they need a dose of Labour in power – good and hard and they are getting it. Unfortunately, so are the rest of us.
I’m in a quandry myself.
Have deferred my state pension for a few years now, state pension forecast is quite good because i never opted out of SERPS, but, because we have some savings and own a reasonable home would Labour means test the SERPS extra pension i’ve already paid for.
Some will maybe say for God’s sake retire, but several reasons why i carry on, two of which are.
I still enjoy my job.
On an old contract which the new management won’t offer to anyone else when i kick the bucket, so the longer i stay the more it pisses off that new management which is a bonus…the fact the quality of new applicants isn’t shall we say ideal partly because new contracts arn’t as good as the old ones simply doesn’t compute upstairs.
@Judd You do not need to retire (i.e. stop paid employment) to claim your state pension (SERPS or otherwise).
Agreed, but i’m already into higher rate, have paid in untold amounts over my 54 years of graft.
Would prefer to defer until ready to pack up on my own terms.