Cut Pensioners allowances immediately Liam Fox

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Member for

13 years

Posts: 2,841

I am a pensioner and admit I am not on the breadline neither am I well off. If this happens how many will die of hypothermia or malnutrition or end up in hospital blocking beds in an already overloaded NHS?

Taxpayers' Alliance: Cut pensioner benefits 'immediately'
By Brian Wheeler
Political reporter BBC
2 hours ago
From the section UK Politics
Taxpayers' Alliance meeting

Alex Wild, from the Taxpayers' Alliance, said he made "practical points"
Ministers should waste no time to make unpopular cuts to pensioner benefits, a think tank director has said.
Many of those hit by a cut to the winter fuel allowance might "not be around" at the next election, said Alex Wild of the Taxpayers' Alliance.
And others would forget which party had done it, he added.
At the group's meeting at the Conservative conference in Manchester, former defence secretary Liam Fox said spending cuts must be "for keeps".
Mr Wild said the Tories could not wait until a year before the next election to make the necessary cuts to the winter fuel allowance, free bus passes, the Christmas bonus and other pensioner benefits.
The cuts should be made "as soon as possible after an election for two reasons", said Mr Wild.
"The first of which will sound a little bit morbid - some of the people... won't be around to vote against you in the next election. So that's just a practical point, and the other point is they might have forgotten by then."
He added: "If you did it now, chances are that in 2020 someone who has had their winter fuel cut might be thinking, 'Oh I can't remember, was it this government or was it the last one? I'm not quite sure.'
"So on a purely practical basis I would say do it immediately. That might be one of those things I regret saying in later life but that would be my practical advice to the government."
'Day of reckoning'
Mr Fox told the meeting that the government had to act now to make further cuts to pensioner benefits and welfare.
He said "we can never go back" to the "historically high" levels of public spending seen in recent years and the government's public spending cuts must be "for keeps".
"This is the time to fix the roof" he said.
"We have a broken opposition. We have just won a general election and we need now to take the tough decisions we believe are right."
Now that Labour was not such a "great threat", this was a "great opportunity for us to do some of the more difficult things, however unpalatable they will be in the short term are what we need to do for the country", said the right-wing backbencher.
He added: "We need to do what we all know deep in our hearts to be right."
Liam Fox

Now read this about this clown who is also a Doctor.

Tory MP Liam Fox claims 3p on expenses for 100-metre car journey
Former defence secretary made journey within North Somerset constituency last year
Liam Fox
Liam Fox, who made another 15 claims under £1 for car travel in 2012-13.
Sunday 6 October 2013 15.28 BST Last modified on Friday 20 June 2014 11.21 BST
The former defence secretary Liam Fox successfully claimed 3p of taxpayers' cash for a car journey of fewer than 100 metres, expenses documents show.

The Conservative MP made the claim after travelling 0.06 miles, or approximately 96.5 metres, within his North Somerset constituency from a concrete firm to a constituency surgery in Yatton in October 2012. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) notes the claim was paid last December.

Fox also had another 15 claims of under £1 for car travel approved in 2012-13.

These included 24p for a 0.54-mile journey from a constituency surgery to a school competition in Clevedon and 44p for a 0.98-mile journey from a meet-your-MP event at Winford Manor to Winford school. MPs can claim 45p a mile.

Ipsa paperwork shows Fox claimed £3,866.31 in travel expenses, which include rail fares, in 2012-13.

Fox, who worked as a GP before becoming an MP, told the Sunday People: "I don't do my expenses. My office does them. But they are all done according to the rules for travel distances."

The Tory was last year ordered to repay £3,000 of expenses for allowing his friend Adam Werritty to live rent-free at his taxpayer-funded second home for a year.

Fox, who resigned in October 2011 over his relationship with Werritty, was also criticised for allowing their Atlantic Bridge thinktank to be run from his parliamentary offices.

If that goes through and pensioners desert nice Mr Cameron or his successor that would be over 10 million votes down the pan for the Tories!

Original post

Member for

17 years 5 months

Posts: 8,980

I am not a pensioner, and I am dead set against this, the likes of the winter fuel allowance is there to keep them alive, it's not as if it is some kind of bonus, personally I would prefer to see the likes of child benefit capped at one or two children max, want more? pay for them yourself.. Leave the old folks alone, remember we all will hopefully end up as one and may be reliant on this.
If they paid decent state pensions, they wouldn't need this. Stop the winter allowance and you wouldn't get a bed in a hospital over the winter, it would be full of hypothermic pensioners.

Member for

12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

I'm suddenly a former supporter of the Taxpayer's Alliance.

Member for

14 years 5 months

Posts: 3,447

Forgive me, but this is BL**DY FUNNY!

Surely you realise that you will be better off in real terms, but as you didn't go to Eton you won't understand why? Furthermore it is for your own good - you will learn responsibility. Trebles all round! Vote Conservative!

Sorry, but you've got to admit, the irony is off the scale.

Are you familiar with the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller? It begins 'First they came...'

Member for

19 years 2 months

Posts: 585

And if I may quote from the film "The Battle of Britain"
keith Park says.......
"This is just the beginning.........they won't stop now....."

Member for

13 years

Posts: 2,841

I am now going to vote Labour now. At least if we have a nuclear war all us old folks will die warm!

Member for

17 years 5 months

Posts: 8,980

That will never happen here as long as I have a hole in my ass.

I cannot understand why everything is so expensive, if £3 a month will give that little African kid out in the back of beyond water, how comes Seven Trent charges me a fortune for the same from 20 miles down the road.

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14 years 5 months

Posts: 3,447

Tony

That's like saying 'I will continue slamming my head against this girder.. now if only I knew why I have this headache'.

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17 years 5 months

Posts: 8,980

If Corbin got in power it's not my head I'd be worried about, I would be more concerned about my butt, somehow I would feel I was being well and truly shafted.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

We are all still suffering from the Brown/Blair legacy. Times are hard and everyone is having to tighten belts and do what they can to survive.

Is there any reason why pensioners, who were as guilty as any for voting the Labour Party in (Remember "Things can only get better"?) should be protected from the hardships?

Moggy

Member for

13 years

Posts: 2,841

Moggy, The pension is what it is as a bare minimum for people to subsist on. How do you expect for them to live on less?

Hardship? when you ditch your Jag for a Fiat 500 I might take you seriously.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

Moggy, The pension is what it is as a bare minimum for people to subsist on. How do you expect for them to live on less?

The same could be said of people on earnings support which is being savagely cut back.

Moggy

PS: My ageing Jaguar cost about 1/3 the price of a Fiat 500. Why should I need to spend so much more to make you take me seriously?

Member for

9 years 6 months

Posts: 1,613

I'm pretty sure that Liam Fox suggested that some means testing wouldn't go amiss, in terms of benefits paid to pensioners, much as it is for most other people. Liam Fox didn't 1) imply that such cuts were imminent or that 2) such means testing is imminent. Quite ironic that pensioners are quite happy to see cuts meted out until it affects them personally. As was rightly pointed out on LBC yesterday, you don't need a winter fuel allowance if you can afford a mansion and you rightly don't need a free bus pass if you are chauffeur driven everywhere. This is common sense.

Member for

12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

Nonsensical arguments as usual. How many pensioners live in mansions ? How many pensioners are chauffeured every where ?

Pensioners live on fixed incomes. For reasons of either physical incapacity or, penal taxation, pensioners cannot work to improve their income.

Other groupings in the population who are experiencing Govt. cuts are generally those groupings who are of working age and able to improve their financial circumstance provided they possess the impetus to find work. And that's probably the key statement.

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11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

Perhaps "wealthy or comfortably-off individuals of pensionable age" would have been a better phrase. There are undoubtedly a great many of them....but not at this address!!:apologetic:

Member for

13 years

Posts: 2,841

Nor mine Charlie. I have benefits because of chronic illness and my wife the same. They are means tested and if you get faced with a 32 page form you will know what I am talking about. Probably designed to put the feeble minded off claiming!

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12 years 8 months

Posts: 851

Nearly half of the UK's benefits bill is spent on the State Pension-roughly £80 bn. Other age related benefits such as winter fuel allowance cost about £3 bn. They can't cut the pensions bill as they have said it will rise under the 'triple lock' at least at the rate of inflation. Since they have to make £12 bn welfare cuts, where else are they going to 'ask' pensionable age citizens to 'contribute' to austerity? By all the measures, pensioners whether on State Pension Benefit or contributory workplace pensions have done least badly through the recession.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying this ring fencing of pensions is wrong, far from it, but as Call Me Dave once said, we are all in this together.

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12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

Yes, but some are better equipped to withstand the effects of "all in this together"

£12 billion welfare cuts ?

We could easily meet that if we removed 12 billion from foreign aid.

Member for

12 years 8 months

Posts: 851

Yes, but some are better equipped to withstand the effects of "all in this together"

£12 billion welfare cuts ?

We could easily meet that if we removed 12 billion from foreign aid.

Who is better equipped, the people living in B&B accommodation, those on incapacity benefit, who?

Foreign Aid is a seperate strand of govt. spending. Please stop linking It to everything, it gets very boring.

Member for

19 years 2 months

Posts: 585

If we are still suffering from anything Moggie.....
Its Thatcher destroying industry, the financial structure, our housing stock, selling all our asserts etc..etc..etc

Member for

15 years 10 months

Posts: 686

If we are still suffering from anything Moggie.....
Its Thatcher destroying industry, the financial structure, our housing stock, selling all our asserts etc..etc..etc

Agree totally, Thatcher truly started the rot in many ways, certainly turned me away from any Tory inclinations for ever.