OT: Petition to double UK pensioner's tax free allowance

That was the week that was.

John Cleese + Ronnie Barker + Ronnie Corbett

The state pension (BENEFIT!!) is worth £267,000 for a man and £287,000 for a female. PLUS, unlimited free NHS, where the 12 million pensioners are the main beneficiaries.

There are 1.7 million people OVER 85 in the UK and 16,600 over 100.

It costs an average £30,000 per year to provide 'free' NHS to the

Plus unlimited free NHS which NO OTHER EU country offers its own citizens.

Compared to the social taxes that were levied since 1947, the UK state pension (plus all its myriad of top-ups and handouts) and free NHS is actually more generous than most countries.

Why did 2.5 million people flock in between 2021 and 2024 (and now coming up to the 5 year limit after which they can claim indefinite leave to remain, and ship in their extended family) ?

IS is because we are such a poor country ?

If foreign buyers of UK gilts stop buying our debt(*) then we will actually become seriously poor.

(*) circa £100 billion /year (or more).

Foreigners are paying for UK pensioners 'free' NHS

I get that. My riposte is that what they say about it is only a part of the story. If they insisted on being regarded as middle class, that's the bit I would be suspicious about. Being brought up in straitened circumstances, with all the effects it has on one's expectations from life. Living in a working class family in a working class environment in a working class location is not, in my submission, something that is easy to cast off. Sure, we can try. But we never fully succeed.

I'm surprised by those two exclusions! ;-)

I agree that I lumped too many changes together there. The abolition of the child tax allowance occurred in 1975 as part of the trade-off when Family Allowance was replaced by Child Benefit.

I see that the (over 65) age allowance (an income tax allowance addition) was abolished by Osborn in 2012 when the general personal allowance was increased significantly. That represented a (slight) worsening of the position of those over 65 compared with those under retirement age.

Hmmm... you do in relative terms!

And for some people, relative affluence/poverty seems to be all they're interested in.

Quite so.

...not completely...

My understanding is that comprehensive schools are themselves stratified by geography, hence the concept of "bussing" (whether in the UK or elsewhere).

Actually coal miners were traditionally among the highest paid of all workers. Contrary to myth, the 1930s Jarrow Crusade was not about people being hungry or unemployed; it was about people asserting their right to be paid more than other people.

Of course.

Firstly the NHS came into being half way through 1948 (I know that because it didn't exist when I was born near Easter 1948). Before that it only had to service state pensions, and life expectancy was much lower in the late 1940s. Like anything named "insurance", some people made claims and some didn't. In 1909 the pension was means tested (their "yearly means" not exceeding £31 10s), was only provided after age 70 and was 5 shillings (old money, 25p today) for a single person and 7s 6d (37.5p) for married couples per week. It wasn't much but much better than the nothing which had been available before.

When the NHS was starting up it was pre-funded by confiscating all the bank accounts of the doctor's surgeries and the previously private hospitals as the NHS took them over. To start with NI was ring fenced for specific purposes so it didn't make any difference whether it was cash or numbers on a balance sheet, it was a known specific balance and there was a known "float" of expenditure each year. The thresholds and rates of deduction could be tweaked to match future spending estimates. It was working perfectly well until it was stolen by a Chancellor of the Exchequer. It has been a hot political potato ever since.

Some years ago, a newspaper columnist applied the idea of equalising wealth, across the whole world. His arithmetic showed that there were many more poor people than rich people, and if all the money taken from the rich to bring their level down to the whole world average, the benefit to the poorest would be an additional 2p.

He also pointed out that rich people invested, and those investments (apart from paying a dividend to the investor) kept the businesses viable, and taking away the money that would have been invested would crash the world's economy.

Whether you believe the figures or not, there is an element of truth in the idea.

It was shipbuilders where the PTB had decided no more ships would ever be built there.

Sounds like nonsense. A quick AI suggests that average wealth ('ownership') would variously double (UK) or quadruple (India).

But redistribution (well, my version) isn't about adding it all up and dividing it out equally - that's where averaging distorts. And it's too far in the realms of pipe dream, given the embededness of the lower/mid-middle classes. It's about the very wealthiest redistributing to the very poorest. On simple maths, if the top 10% redistributed to the poorest 20% in the UK, each poor household would be left with £1m. If half the top 10%'s wealth was redistributed, £500,000.

The wealthiest 1% of households alone held 10% of all wealth — the same share as the poorest 50% of households combined. Even a partial transfer from the top tier would represent a life-changing sum for those at the bottom.

That mode of thinking seems to be completely obvlivious to the many crashes and resets. Looking at the way the markets (especially mortgages) reconconfigure it's almost as if 2008 never happened.

Anyway, Investment can happen on a community/coop basis quite happily.

A grain, yes.

On 16/02/2026 14:33, Andrew wrote: property or pensions without losing wealth?

A few too many zeros there

Government figures estimate an an average of around £7k a year for those over 85 rising to £15k for extreme old age. Yes, the figure is around

Average life expectancy in the UK is between 80 and 83 years.

Isn't all about how you define wealth and ownership. Say, my wealth was a billion but it was all invested in a company that employed 10000 workers. You take my billion and redistribute it. Now unless all those to whom you have re-distributed still invest in that company rather the just spending it on necessities or the odd luxury you possibly have just put 10,000 workers out of a job.

In most cases wealth is not just a big pile of cash that can easily be disturbed without consequences to other parts of the economy. Consider if you owned your own house and had a decent (private) pension then you wealth on paper could be £0.5million. How much of that could be redistributed without you struggling to find accommodation and pay your grocery bills?

Note I'm not trying to defend the super rich but wealth on paper does not necessarily equate to disposable income which could be distributed through a fair tax system that couldn't be avoided through various (legal) loopholes. By cashing in the paper wealth and distrusting it you could actually be destroying the wealth making machine. You would need that wealth making machine to continue for future re-distribution. There are examples from recent history where wealthy farmers have been thrown off the land and it given to the workers. Net result, the poor workers, now land owners, are no better off and the productivity of the newly established small holdings dropping rapidly to the detriment of the whole country.

And how much are they paying for the "Free NHS" for the rest of the population and for all the benefits that are not pension related for the population of working age.

Look at purchasing an index linked annuity giving £12,000 a year.

As I said before, there's no way anyone who pays rent can live on the state pension.

The PP was describing what would happen if wealth (however defined) were equalised globally. Not per nation state within its own boundaries only.