Retired people could work for pensions..

coastline

Lord Bichard, a former benefits chief, said "imaginative" ideas were needed to meet the cost of an ageing society.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20044862

Mr._Pricklepants

Lord Bichard can kiss my !!!!.

J_i_m

If I ever get to retire, I would not want to have to work and for my pension for which I'd contributed towards my whole working life all over again.

GeorgeHowell

This might have some merit if all of those on welfare who were at all fit had to work for their money too. But while the latter remains a no-no then the former certainly has to.

CLAPTON

presumably he needs the punblicity?
does he have a book coming out?
or is he touting for a new job?

Loughton_Monkey

coastline wrote: »

Lord Bichard, a former benefits chief, said "imaginative" ideas were needed to meet the cost of an ageing society.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20044862

One "imaginative" idea would be to charge tax on peers' daily allowance.

I think this whole idea should be consigned to the waste paper bin. This guy used to be CEO of Brent Council, which probably places him a few inches to the left of Red Ken, Wedgwood Benn, and Karl Marx.

One assumes he has donated his entire salary from his own post-retirement activities? These include chiarmanship of the Design Council, the Soham Murders inquiry, RSe Consulting, the Legal Services Commission, and his directorship of the Institute.

I've been retired, now, for almost 7 years, not having claimed a penny from the State. I am 2 years off State Pension age. I pay a lot of tax. The only 'drain' I am is the heating allowance and my free bus pass (extremely rarely used), which I would happily forego, but don't as I tend never to look a gift horse in the mouth!

We don't need to be too "imaginative" to solve this. We just need "Common Sense", which seems a rare commodity these days. We need three simple actions.

1. Re-balance the obvious "excesses" in the current benefits system on the principal of ensuring that nobody (apart from severely disabled) earns income larger than they would reasonably expect if they worked (less tax). Arguably, the Universal Credits are there to do this, but I doubt their strength.

2. Ring-fence a few essential areas - perhaps NHS, Police etc.

3. The 'clever' bit. Take the resulting remaining expenditure and compare it with what we can afford if we are to meet a specific target to balance the books. Divide one by the other, to get a factor of (say) 85%. QED reduce everything by 15%. It shares the pain equally amongst everyone. Yes, we will all 'gripe', but then we can truly say we're all in it together.

As we would all know, every single day, in every walk of life, in every single town, there are large numbers of people who 'suffer' a drop in income of 15%. Despite being unpleasant, the vast majority of ordinary sensible people just reduce their budgets accordingly and live with it until such time as opportunities arise to do better.

pqrdef

We know what this means. You don't get to retire until the vet declares you unfit for work.

StevieJ

CLAPTON wrote: »

presumably he needs the punblicity?
does he have a book coming out?
or is he touting for a new job?

He doesn't need a job he apparently receives around £120k p.a. from his public sector pension

Sapphire

StevieJ wrote: »

He doesn't need a job he apparently receives around £120k p.a. from his public sector pension

Yes, but obviously that is not enough. :eek:

kabayiri

I could manage a part time role as a Lord, parking my derriere on leather bound benches and sprouting sh1te for the day.

Just to be clear, do the expenses include an allowance for Werners Originals?

Sapphire

A pension is not a 'benefit', just as (for example) taxpayers' paying for people to churn out sprogs on the NHS is not.

Bear in mind that a large proportion of those who you are calling 'benefit scabs' have paid income tax, national insurance, VAT, council tax and so on for 50 years – which is much more than can be said for people in their twenties, thirties and forties.

Also bear in mind that many pensioners already do valuable work in the community without having to be forced into it. Many also look after their grandchildren and/or parents, and put up their adult children, some of whom cannot stand on their own two feet and have been spoiled so much that they think they 'deserve' everything for nothing – bringing their children up with a massive sense of entitlement is something some pensioners are guilty of, unfortunately.

I would imagine that a large number of pensioners have had hard lives and are too exhausted and/or ill to work further (remember that they were growing up during the fifties, sixties and seventies, when times were much harder than they are now).

Think before you post inane and ill-thought-out comments.