Is Pensioner Poverty in the UK going to get worse under Labour?

 

It's well known that the UK state retirement pension is one of the least generous pension schemes within OECD countries.

Some critics do respond to this by saying that a lot of retired people in the UK, also have occupational or private pensions, and are therefore, less likely to be living in relative poverty. While this is true, many retired people in the UK don't have an occupational or private pension. According to the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP), this applies to 38% of UK state pensioners.

Relative poverty is defined as 60% of median household income. At the end of 2025, this figure was £22,500. The New State Pension of £241.30 p.w., or £12,547.60 per year, is less than half of the National Minimum Wage or around £6 an hour for a 40-hour working week. The Old State Retirement Pension is even less generous at £184.90 p.w. or £9,614.80 per year.

Some 62.1% of UK state retirement pensioners receive the Old State Retirement Pension, or around 13.2 million people. If your only income is the New State Retirement Pension or the Old State Retirement Pension, then you're living in relative poverty and in the UK, many pensioners are living in poverty.

With rising housing costs in Britain, the UK state retirement pension, wouldn't even cover the cost of renting a property in the private sector. Yet, the government and many other British politicians, are determined to make pensioners financially worse off because they say that UK state retirement pension is unaffordable and unsustainable in the long run.

The Labour government of Andy Burnham have announced that the triple lock that uprates UK state pensions, will end in 2030. Some reports have also suggested that Labour will increase the state retirement age to 68.

Spanish anarchism and the fight against fascism.

 

Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936)

In the minds of many people, the word "anarchy" or "anarchism" became a byword for chaos or terrorism.  

Anarchism took root in Spain in the 19th century and Spain is the only country, where they have ever tried to build an anarchist non-governmental society based on workers control, mutual aid and co-operation, and workers self-management. It was particularly strong in Andalusia and in Catalonia. 

In Catalonia, much of industry and agriculture was collectivized and run by the workers themselves, during the period of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In Barcelona, the anarchists took over the telephone exchange and turned the Ritz Hotel, into a worker's canteen. The Spanish anarchist Durruti, said that they were building libertarian communism in Spain, but it was organized on the principles of anarcho-syndicalism.

The Spanish communists had no time for workers control or Spanish anarchist collectives. The Spanish communist leader, Enrique Lister, is known to have attacked anarchist collective enterprises. The Spanish socialist used to say "vote communist and spare Spain from Marxism." 

In Spain, the anarchists, socialists, and Russian backed communists, did take a stand against Franco and the fascists, even though the Stalinists in Spain, betrayed the Spanish Revolution and sought to liquidate many individuals who were fighting against Franco. Much later, the Soviet Union was to play a heroic role in fighting Hitler and the Nazis, but that was only after Germany invaded Russia in violation of a pact with the Soviet Union. 

In Germany, there never was a communist danger to the fascist conquest of power. Historical determinism, played a key role in the failure of the communist movement to combat Hitler and fascism in Germany. For Marxists, fascism was seen as the last stand of the bourgeoisie, the "death rattle of a capitalist system on the point of extinction." Accordingly, the communists did not fight when the fascists seized power. Nobody expected the Social Democrats to fight and Stalin had denounced the German socialists, as social fascists. The communists were certain that the proletarian revolution was overdue and that the fascist interlude, necessary for its speeding up, could not last longer than a few months. As we know, they certainly got that wrong, and they paid the price for it. 

Dante said that there was no place in Heaven nor in Purgatory - not even a corner in Hell, for the souls that had stood aloof from strife. He called them the "wretches who never lived", "because they'd never felt the pangs of partisanship and wandered homeless on the skirts of limbo." 

We forget, that what we today call Switzerland, functioned as the Old Swiss Confederacy between (1291-1798). For five centuries, Switzerland functioned as a loose confederation of independent cantons coordinated via a diet called the 'Tagsatzung', with no permanent capital, executive, or any central government. 

French government imposes curfew after riots in Paris.

 

The street riots in France, may have started out as an issue about conditions in French schools, but it has escalated to include a range of grievances including the cost of living. It isn't just school students that are involved. There's widespread public frustration in France with high inflation and high prices.

The May 1968 crisis in France, started out as an anti-repression and education protest, but quickly grew into a nationwide general strike involving around 10 million workers. France is a revolutionary country and the French are more inclined to take direct action and are more politically savvy. They tend to vent their spleen on the forces of authority. 

The French see the British as more supine, because they allow the government to walk all over them. There are similar cost of living problems in Britain as there are in France, but the British tend to blame illegal migrants and foreigners for everything. 

The British government are continuing to increase the state retirement age and to cut the value of the state retirement pension. They also want to cut welfare to pay for warfare and to cut taxes for the rich. All this goes on in Britain with hardly a whimper of protests because people are obsessed and distracted by illegal migrants crossing the English Channel in rubber boats.  

If they can't get a decent well paid job, an affordable rented home, or a GP or dental appointment, the Brits tend to blame it all on illegal immigrants rather than government policy and the capitalist market system. Compared to France, there are still more people in trade unions in Britain, but the French are far more politically volatile and always have been. The French government have now imposed a curfew to deal with the riots.

A short history of gun control in Britain.

 

Before WWI, Britain had a quarter of a million licensed firearms and no way to count the unlicensed ones. 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 certainly had an effect on gun control along with WWI. Britain was flooded with military service revolvers brought to Britain by demobilized British soldiers. The 1870 Gun License Act made it a requirement to obtain a gun license if you wanted to carry a weapon outside one's property. The license was obtained at the post office. It was designed to raise money and not to restrict gun ownership. The 1903 Pistols Act required a license for any gun with a barrel shorter than 9" and banned gun ownership to anyone drunk or insane. 

It seems quite extraordinary that even though there were eight attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria during her reign (1837-1901), gun laws in Britain were very lax. Today, Britain has some of the strictest and stringent gun laws in the world, and yet, you have more chance being killed crossing the road, than you have being shot dead. 

Although in Victorian Liberal England, you were free to starve to death, there seems to have been a more laissez-faire attitude to daily life in general, and British governments seemed to feel no need to have a drugs policy or felt it necessary to have gun control. Many Victorians carried some form of weapon for self-defence. 

I can remember seeing Wilkinson sword sticks on sale in second hand shops and many people carried knives, but they didn't go around stabbing one another. Today, many British people like to be under the thumb of authority and are quite happy for the state to meddle in various aspects of their lives.

Death of Jeffrey Archer.

 

I always considered Jeffrey Archer a prat and an embarrassment.

As a child his mother nicknamed him 'Tuppence'. He led a scandalous life leading to a period of imprisonment for perjury, but he was no Oscar Wilde. Throughout his life there were allegations of lies, dodgy and beefed-up CVs, theft, bankruptcy and embezzlement of charity funds and plagiarism. A play that he wrote for the stage, was said to bear a striking resemblance to a play written by Agatha Christie. Dishonesty seemed to run in his family. His elderly father who died when he was 15, had convictions for fraud and bigamy.

He seems to have become a successful writer very quickly, which is very unusual. When friends told him that he should forget the idea of becoming an author, because he couldn't spell or write properly, he replied that he could tell stories. That was probably right because much of what he said about himself was a total invention. He supposed to have sold 300 million books, but I haven't read one them and have no intention of doing so. They say that he was often rude and demeaning to people who he thought were his social inferiors. Apparently, most of the sales staff at Harper Collins, detested him.

Ringo Star met him while visiting Oxford University. Archer had been fund raising for a charity and had managed to persuade the Beatles to come along to an event. Ringo asked Sheridan Morley who Archer was and he said none of us really know. Ringo told him that he thought Archer seemed a nice bloke, but he thought that he was the type of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it. 

Is slashing UK welfare benefits the answer to Britain's economic woes?

 

France and Germany are far more productive countries than Britain and also have higher levels of corporation tax and tax in general. Compared to Japan, Britain's national debt pales into insignificance, and Japan is a far richer and more technologically advanced country than Britain. Britain had a much higher national debt after WWII than it does today, but it didn't pay it off, by imposing austerity, it grew the economy. America is also massively in debt. 

Britain has been plagued with low investment and low productivity for decades. During the early 1970s, the Conservatives used to blame everything on Labour and socialism and not welfare spending. They were keen to join the Common Market and so was the Daily Mail. 

The Germans and French can produce more in four days than Britain can in five days. Their state pensions are far more generous than the British New State Pension which is about half the National Minimum Wage or £6 an hour for a 40 hour working week. The Old State Retirement Pension is even less generous. British workers often work longer before they retire than do French workers and have a longer working week. The French and Germans also have a more generous welfare state and so does Sweden and Norway, which have high levels of taxes and corporation tax. They're not what you would call poor countries. The Swedes and Norwegians probably enjoy a better standard of living than many British people. 

How much money have the British government saved by increasing the women's state retirement age from 60 to 67? How much money have they saved by increasing the male state retirement age from 65 to 67? How much money did they save by ending free TV licenses for the over 75s or linking free bus passes to the stage retirement age?  

I think many of us in Britain are quite appalled at the way in which British governments squander public money. During the COVID lockdown, the former Conservative government of Boris Johnson, dished out willy-nilly, tens of millions in government contracts to VIP Tories for faulty PPE equipment that was never used. How many millions have they recovered from PPE Medpro who were awarded £200 million in government contracts? The Conservative peer Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Douglas Barrowman, were involved in this scandal. When they were ordered by a court to repay money, PPE Modpro, simply declared insolvency.

How many billions did the Johnson government squander on its abortive Rwanda scheme? No illegal migrant was ever sent there. How much public money are the British government spending to house and financially support illegal migrants who have come to Britain who haven't been granted asylum?  

It wasn't long ago that the Labour Chancellor, Rachel 'freeze' Reeves, told us that Britain couldn't afford the pensioners winter fuel allowance and she needed to save £5bn by means testing it. They then found £11bn to help foreign developing countries to cope with climate change. The Ukrainians are always being bunged money by the British government. The Ukrainians have every right to defend themselves, but it doesn't mean that the British have to pay for it or die for it. They're now talking up a war with Russia and telling us that we must do our duty to protect our country and that young people might have to die for their country. I'm sure they'll be happy to hear that.

Nowadays, many British people don't feel that they've got a country or one that's worth defending. They feel alienated and abandoned. And how are we going to pay for a war, if Britain's got no money and is massively in debt?

Margaret Thatcher and Irish economics.

 

Maggie Thatcher

The people in Britain are fed a lot of bullshit when it comes to economics, which most of them barely understand. How many times have we heard the saying there's no magic money tree or that Britain has run out of money?

Margaret Thatcher used what was called the "Household Myth" to compare the national economy with a domestic household or small business. She used to say that governments were no different than households or small businesses, in that they can't spend more than they can earn, or borrow. It was complete rubbish. The pound is a fiat currency and is not linked to precious metals or a currency regime like the Euro. You can run out of money, but there's a big difference between businesses, households, individuals and the national economy. The British government can print money or to be more precise, it orders the Bank of England to print it. If you tried to do it, you get locked up. Therefore, it can't run out money, or fail to pay its debts. 

If the British government wants to go to war, it will always find the money to do so, and it doesn't need to build up a war chest to pay for it. So why do politicians keep talking about there's no magic money tree or saying the country is running out of money as though there's only so much money in the pot? They do so because they're conning people and telling lies.

To a great extent money is an illusion. In itself it’s really a worthless piece of paper. What gives it value, is that it is endorsed by the head of state, and the government, as coin of the realm. It's merely a unit of account, a store of value and a means of exchange. 

Adam Smith, who wrote the book 'The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' in 1776, was convinced of the unimportance of money as such for the wealth of nations. He argued that there was no virtue in its accumulation as a commodity, but he believed that the real riches of a country lay in its raw materials, its people and their skills, all of which money merely measures as value. Money was not the wheels of trade but the oil that rendered the wheels smoother and easy. 

Smith points out that the Tartars were generally ignorant about the use of money. When the King of France sent an ambassador called Plano Carpino to meet one of the sons of Genghis Khan, he was asked if the Kingdom of France had plenty of sheep and oxen because that's how they measured wealth and determined whether a country was worth conquering. The Spanish conquistadors when they invaded Peru went there looking for gold and silver which they considered wealth but completely overlooked that the countries real wealth, lay in its natural resources, like fruits and vegetables. The humble potato has managed to feed a multitude since it arrived in Britain and Ireland. Gold and silver fed nobody but it drove up inflation.

Why is customer service in Britain so abysmal?

 

Kemi Badenoch

Welcome to the Tory nanny state. 

Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, wants to stop the unemployed having a fag and a pint and wants to cut their benefits, if they don't get back into work within six months. Kemi calls this "tough love." I think people receiving state benefits, have been keeping the tobacco industry going for years. The higher you go up the income groups, the less likely they are to smoke cigarettes. 

Customer service in Britain is abysmal, appallingly bad, and the Americans would never stand for it. What I see in Britain today, is a lot of under-employment. I often leave food in supermarkets because they won't pay people to man the checkouts and I am loath to use self-service tills. It's a sort of protest against piss poor customer service. What supermarkets are aiming for is a completely automated supermarket that doesn't employ any floor staff. It will be a shop lifters paradise. 

Yesterday, I spent most of the morning failing to make contact by telephone with a human being at British Gas so I could query an electric bill. I found it impossible to get past the android or robot who was asking me totally irrelevant questions. I tried using their chat line and got no response. Unless I can get to speak somebody about this electric bill to query it, British Gas won't be getting paid. Capitalism is so inefficient.