Tory hack, says we can pay nurses by robbing British pensioners.

 

Journalist, Ben Wilkinson of the Daily Tory-graph, says we can finance a decent pay rise for our nurses by taking it off the pensioners. He says the country cannot afford to retain the triple-lock on pensions.

The state pension in Britain ranks as one of the lowest pensions in Western Europe. We also retire much later than they do in other European countries like France (62), and Spain (65). The new state pension is currently £185.15 p.w. if you're a man born on an after 6 April 1951 or a woman born on or after 6 April 1953. This is less than the national minimum wage for a 40-hour working week. If you're a man born before 6 April 1951 or a woman born before 6 April 1953, you will receive the old basic state pension which is currently £145.85, even if you've paid national insurance contributions for over 40 years.

Wilkinson seems to think that the British state pension is far too generous. He says it would be better to link it to average earnings. He seems to forget that this year, the state pension was only increased by 3.1% because the government wouldn't increase the pension in line with average earnings which had risen to 8%, because they said the statistics on average earnings had been skewed by the Covid lockdown, when workers came off furlough and returned to work. So pensioners got a pay cut because pensions didn't rise in line with in inflation or average earnings. Retaining the triple-lock, was also a 2019 Conservative Party manifesto commitment.

One of the most generous pensions schemes in Britain is the governments own pension scheme for politicians. Liz Truss, the former UK Prime Minister, who almost trashed the British economy, was only 45-days in her job, but when she was ignominiously slung out of office by another Tory coup, she received a severance payment of £19,000 and a lifetime annual pension of £115,000 a year. They obviously don't believe in payment by results in the Palace of Westminster, because if they did, Truss would have got nowt! The House of Commons is more like a thieve's kitchen.