Any other pensioners here?

If only UK pensioners and their employers had paid the sort of social taxes that actually fund those mythical generous EU pensions then there wouldn't be a problem. UK voters preferred 'low' taxes and rampant house prices instead.

If only all those EU countries had actually paid their 2% nato subs for the last 70+ years, instead of giving their voters lavish pensions (but NO unlimited 'free' NHS, like the UK) and relying on the USA for protection.

And the cost would be balanced by cutting the 'rate support grant' anyway, so council tax would probably go up and not down.

But your EV doesn't attract car 'tax' (yet) and you avoid paying fuel duty too, plus the 20% vat thereon.

I had been an agency worker from 1962 to 2003, had a bit of a heart do, so I had to retire. I didn't bother with a long term pension, but I try one in 1970, but it only lasted for a month. I subsequently forgot about it, until I was sent a cheque for £2500 in 2006.

Tax renewal on EVs has been £195 since April.

Only if you are charging the EV at home. Use a public charger and you pay

There are also life choices by people who had the same background, education and opportunities that result in vastly different pensions. Why should someone who made provision for their retirement be penalised for doing so? How do you differentiate between those truly disadvantaged in life and those who could, but didn't, make a modest provision for retirement? Currently the benefit system seems to make no distinction.

Not.

The deciding factor is the date on which the citizen reached pension age (whether or not retired).

So "depending on when you were born" was perfectly correct.

The actual amount of savings do as well for things like means tested pension credit

The amount of savings (over £10k) is taken into consideration when determining if someone is eligible for the pension credit top up. Every £500 of savings (above the 10K) is considered to be income of £1 a week.

There is a raft of other state benefits that are not taken into consideration as income to determine eligible for the top up.

Being granted pension credit may also give other state benefits.

Are you REALLY trying to claim that a reduction in pensioner income was not a reduction in pensioner income? :-)

He might have had that as an aim (who knows?), but the factual reality was that over the period of the very late 1980s through to the date when the WFA was instituted, the assistance available with heating costs (via the Social Fund) was dependent upon weather station measurements in the region where you lived and very winter, some people got payments while others didn't, with consequent annual "hilarity" on the letters page of the Guardian, etc. The WFA was at least partly a measure designed to obviate that yearly trial for the government.

But you probably didn't know that.

How does that answer my question?

Pension credit tops up a pension for a single person if the pension plus other income is less than £11.8K/year,

For the purposes of this means tested benefit savings of £1 million count as an income of around £103K/year (not counting any interest)

What doesn't count as income to claim pension credit is other means tested state benefits.

And Gordon Brown tax raid on pension pot dividends is the reason many pension are a lot worse than they would have been. Without this many pensioners would have been better off and the Government would now be benefitting from higher income tax revenues. :)

Really? I thought it was age related. Have you got a link please?

Indeed. That's why I gave figures for a *full* state pension, on the assumption that that was what Jeff was referring to.

Do you believe that there's sexism, racism, religious intolerance, disability (mental and physical) discrimination, ageism and homophobia (for example) in UK society? And those characteristics can work against, say, a job applicant or a child at school despite laws and policies in place to prevent discrimination?

If you do, then not everyone has the same opportunities.

If you don't, OK. Your mind is probably made up. If you fancy an alternative view, I'd recommend one of the most formative books I've read: The Rise of Meritocracy by Michael Young. Satirises it all very nicely.

Similar - but not quite as good! My mum pressurised me into taking out a pension 40 years ago. I paid into it for about a year, about £500. Worth £8000 now, were I to cash it in.

Ah yes, thanks, I had in my head you were referring to the state pension, which isn't means tested. Associated benefits are, of course.

Hey rob.

Which you like to be :

(a) as poor as your neighbour?

(b) poorer than your neighbour, but richer than you otherwise would be?

It is. Remember the basic tenets of Marxism:

Anyone who has more than you is privileged. You are poor because you are oppressed. So there is no point in working to better yourself. Only in working to take away their money