rural pensioners

I owe my parents everything. I was astounded therefore to see how divisive this article reveals the recession is making society about the benefits “enjoyed ” by their generation. It reveals:

“One in five retired households has an annual income above £42,000 a year, according to official figures, which also reveal a widening gap between pensioner “haves” and the working “have nots”.

The Office for National Statistics said that pensioners had enjoyed significantly faster increases in income than working households over the past 30 years.

Between 1977 and 2010-11, the incomes of pensioners rose by two and a half times in real terms, outstripping the growth in the economy. Over the same period working people saw their income grow just two times.

Pensioner incomes grew “almost every year”, added the ONS, while the incomes of workers stagnated during recessions.

Charity Age UK said 1.7 million pensioners still lived in serious poverty and rejected suggestions that payments had risen disproportionately.”

I once reported how the Caradon Benefits Campaign had made the towns of that former Cornish district more sustainable by ensuring that principally the elderly drew down all the benefits they were eligible for which they spent locally. Not a option going forward in the world of Lord Bichard and the other people quoted below if their proposed attitude shift to the elderly comes to pass. The article goes on to report:

“Fresh controversy over the cost to society of the growing number of elderly people erupted on Wednesday when the former head of the Benefits Agency, Lord Bichard, told a Lords select committee that the retired should be encouraged to work for their pensions – providing care for the very old, for example – or face losing some of their cash.

The peer, a member of the Lords committee on public service and demographic change, suggested the move would stop older people being a “burden on the state”.

“If you are old and you are not contributing in some way or another, maybe there is some penalty attached to that,” he said.

The committee also heard from James Sefton, a professor at Imperial College, London, and former adviser to the Treasury, who said young people were effectively subsidising the older generation. “I think they should be angry. I think the deal they are getting is poor,” he told the peers.”

…..and don’t forget what parts of England have the most skewed demographies.