MSE News: UK inflation hits five-year high of 3%

Consumerist

colsten wrote: »

. .. If this is unclear, please ask on the Pensions board.

The only thing which is unclear to me is why MSE Callum has decided to completely ignore the vast majority of pensioners in favour of the few.

bowlhead99

Consumerist wrote: »

The only thing which is unclear to me is why MSE Callum has decided to completely ignore the vast majority of pensioners in favour of the few.

People drawing state pension might be on any amount of weekly pension, perhaps lower than £122 a week or considerably more than £200 a week, depending on how much they contributed, whether they were contracted out or not, when they retired etc.

An article like this, which quite plainly and accurately says that state pension is linked to a triple lock system and that the current inflation rates of 3% means that the rise for pensioners will be 3%, cannot possibly be expected to give all the possible amounts of weekly state pension you might currently be receiving based on your personal circumstances, retirement date and contribution history. If it did, it would be the most boring article on earth and people would be complaining for that reason instead.

It seems to me quite reasonable that when giving examples of what it means for pensioners, it picks a figure to which people can relate: for example, the amount per week you would get if you retired on a 'normal' full basic state pension as of now without any increase or decrease from transitional arrangements. Being £159.55.

In the context of 50 million people who might read the article and be curious about the impact of current economic conditions on state pensions - i.e. those people currently drawing state pension plus all the people hoping or expecting to draw state pension in the future - the amount of people who happen to be left with only the 'basic old state pension' with zero top up from SERPS or S2P (and no employer pension on the side from contracting out) is probably not 'the vast majority'.

Malthusian

The basic State Pension of £122.30 is also of very limited relevance to anyone as if that was all you had, with no SERPS or private pensions or income from savings, your income would be topped up to fractionally below the New State Pension (£159.35 for a single person) by Pension Credit.

Consumerist is right that to describe the "basic SP" as being £159.55 is wrong, as there is something specifically called the basic SP and that's not it. However, it would be of little relevance to quote just the basic State Pension as no-one receives just the basic SP.

HornetSaver wrote:

Because that worked a treat in 2017...

Indeed it did. Despite the Tories already having won two in a row and it being Labour's turn, despite a completely useless figurehead, and despite a massive swing towards Labour, the ever-dependable votes of elderly people still allowed them to emerge with a draw. The Tories even did their best to lose the grey vote with the "dementia tax" own goal, and they still got enough of them to fend off the kids who thought that voting for Labour would get their student loans written off.

Glen_Clark

I stopped taking their inflation statistics seriously when I realised they don't include inconvenient things like house prices

Consumerist

bowlhead99 wrote: »

People drawing state pension might be on any amount of weekly pension, perhaps lower than £122 a week or considerably more than £200 a week, depending on how much they contributed, whether they were contracted out or not, when they retired etc. . . .

My point was only that MSE callum has completely ignored the vast majority of current pensioners in favour of the relatively few who are on the new pension system, irrespective of how relevant the Basic SP is to their actual SP income.