That’s even worse!
After his posting to BAOR was up, my dad was posted to what was then still called The War Office. The Army had not come up with suitable accommodation so we had to live in one room in a boarding house in Saarffend - for 6 months! What a dump, out of season, in 1961-2.
Then it was from the ‘gor blimey’ to the ‘sublime’ - a detached house on the edge of the Knole estate at Sevenoaks.
But he’s guffawing with a posh boy guff! Not too far removed from Bozos guff.
I think that’s part of the appeal to his target audience. A bit of a ‘toff’ who is down with the lads.
Whatever - the UK state pension was - until 2017 - and as pointed out by Angela above- always classified as a pension. Then it did change - and now UK state pensioners get hit with the nasty comments about claiming ‘benefits’ - and that our state pension is a Benefit - when in fact we were always told that the NI stamp was our payment towards our state pension and that We Had Paid For Our Pension During Our Working Lives - now it seems that in government speak (double-talk) it is now a benefit to which we have not contributed - and lumps us in with all those who claim for benefits.
Nasty psychological trick isn’t it ?
But to refer the thread heading - isn’t what Mr F is suggesting will ONLY apply to eu citizens resident in the UK - and have maybe not contributed in any way by paying taxes or NI……?
I don’t see how it can apply to UK citizens who may be living out of the UK - because as UK citizens we have the right to our pensions - which are not ‘claimed for’ as other benefits have to be claimed. We would still have the right to our UK pensions, but not other benefits as some benefits are only available - rightly - to those living in the UK. Surely ?
You have to claim your pension! It doesn’t appear automatically.
Yeah you’re right he did that better than Boris.
Once again, the UK State Pension is, and always has been, classed as a benefit. Specifically it is a contributory benefit to which you are only eligible if you have enough qualifying years of NI contributions.
Also when you contribute, you are not building up any sort of “pension pot” (except in a moral sense). This year’s contributions by working people pay this year’s pensions to retirees.
It saddens me that so many do not understand gotten the system works.
In which case they won’t be getting a UK pension, or at any rate what they get will be pro rata based on qualifying years of NI contributions. Just like everyone else.
You can be pretty sure that if UK government speak now, after previously aa good as not doing so, is suddenly and muktiply makinga point of referring to the Old Age Pension as a ‘benefit’, then this means that UK Government has a plan to reduce ‘benefits’ or the number who can receive them, and wants the Old Age Pension to be pre-established as no longer a ‘right’ for those who had earned it, but a ‘benefit’. So they can chop it.
Technically you are correct Billy. But that is absolutely not the commitment by the government that was sold to workers.
Non of my kids generation expect to get any pension from the state, at retirement.
Many years ago, on the R4 ‘Money Programme’ featuring a phone-in with a Treasury minister, a Brit living in S.A. complained about increases in pensions not being applied to the pensions of those living in S.A./N.Z./CDN and other places, whereas UK pensioners in what was then - happily - the EU did receive increases.
The minister’s reply - I will never forget it - was
“We make the rules. Those are the rules. Tough”
They make the rules. And they can change the rules any time they are minded to do so.
That is how it works now, I think Concorde.
Even if your pension income is low enough to qualify for Pension Credit, which is where the help is (due to Pension Credit and specifically not the Old Age Pension itself, being a ‘gateway’ benefit ie ir opens access to further benefits’) so far as I inderstand it you are not allowed to apply for Pension Credit unless you are resident in the UK.
The most obvious thing would be to means test the state pension based on other pension income - given the push to workplace pensions for instance.
I confess that would certainly piss me off if they tried that during my retirement.
But I can’t deny it would be a logical move if the government want to get the pension bill down.
However the UK pension is low compared with much of Europe (though I think you need to compare the typical total pension and contribution including workplace elements for the comparison to be meaningful).
The populace will need a lot of buttering up to accept means tested pensions, perhaps you are right that making the pension status as being a benefit more obvious, is a step in that direction.
Can you imagine what would have happened if the French Government hsd pulled the dirty trick the UK Government did on UK women ? Suddenly extremely shortly before pension age, added 5 years to the working time needed to qualify for the State Pension ? At an age when few women could re-plan and obtain work for the suddenly opening gap?
And then a few years later also without even a letter to women this time, added a further year making it 6 extra years? Meaning suddenly with as good as no warning, many women were in hardship. A whole cohort suddenly found they needed to find work for 6 years longer. At an age when in the eyes of employers they were unemployable? At no notice, or very close to that?
I simply cannot imagine the meltdown in France if the French government had pulled that trick. There would be no working speed traps left anymore. As every single one of them would have been sprayed over with black paint. And as women don’t often drive tractors, used ST’s chucked out of car windows up and down every motorway.
EU citizen who has a fully contributed NI history living in the UK here. I will be more than a little grumpy if my state pension becomes a benefit denied me because I have an Austrian passport and was born in Vienna.
If by suddenly you mean “more than 20 years prior”.
The increase in the number of years contributions for a full pension was much less well publicised and I think those affected by that have a legitimate complaint.
You and I have exchanged on that before Billy and I know what notice was given and not given and when, and if, to many.
To point out the b1..ding obvious you are not female so would not have received notice. Definitely it was genuinely not picked up from public sources by many. More than one level of review/ appeal/legal challenge/ official scrutiny has comnented that proper timely notice should have been given to individuals and that it was not adequately given.
JaneJones - I’m not sure about ‘having to claim’ one’s UK state pension; from memory I really don’t remember having to complete any forms to claim.
As for today’s younger workers having to ‘pay’ our pensions - well that was because when the state pension was introduced after WW2 - it was never properly funded from the word go. I do remember explaining to my father, ex-Police Officer, when he retired that actually it was my taxes that were being used to pay for his pension - he went ballistic. Hurt, angry, furious that I could ‘even possibly think such a thing’ - he said 'he’d ‘contributed all his working life, that he’d built up this pot of money which was being used now to pay his pension’. !!! He was so ‘hurt’ to think my taxes were paying for what he thought he’d be owed from the government, that I never mentioned it again.
But I knew………
As for the frozen pensions to certain commonwealth countries - well, you need to go back to Heath’s time, and our ‘entry’ into the ‘common market’. Quite apart from giving away the UK’s rights to fishing waters - the ‘common market’ bods insisted we cut all our ties with commonwealth and former commonwealth countries - and the pensions were frozen at that time to uk citizens living in those commonwealth countries. The whole forced ‘cut ties with commonwealth’ caused incredible hardship to New Zealand farmers - butter and lamb, and anyone remember lovely grapefruit marmlade/jam that was imported from South Africa ? Suddenly disappeared from shops and never seen again. One needs to go back, right to the time of Heath - and I believe to ‘unfreeze’ these pensions might need Treaty changes signed at the time. But it ‘was’ definitely part of the terms of our entry into the common market. I never trusted Heath; nor the opposition labour government - but strangely enough I supported Tony Wedgewood Benn at the time who was opposed to much of the TC’s imposed on us when joining the common market.
But sometimes to unpick ‘stuff’ - one needs to remember one’s history - or read unbiased history reference books.
I can remember - because I was around at the time, and very interested in politics - and worked in a rather left wing environment - me !!
Yes. Let’s not cover too much old ground unnecessarily.
Indeed I am male - which makes it even more relevant that I knew that the pension age was being equalised, then increased, well before the implementation.
If I, not a member of the target group, knew about it, it cannot have been difficult to find the info.