Taxpayers' Alliance: Cut Pensioner Benefits 'immediately'

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34439965


Cynical, with a capital C ! Some quotes from this load of smug charmers !!!

"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"

"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."

[Jackdaw33]

I can't argue with means testing, the problem is where to set the bar.

I travel every day from my home to the town centre, a distance of about half a mile each way. This involves a 10 minute walk to and from the stops. The fare there and back, had I not the pass, would be £3. If, as in the winter, when I cannot, walk a taxi for the same journey would cost me £5. if I had to pay bus fares then a taxi journey, two or three times a week, given that I could carry much more stuff back, works out much cheaper. this could lead to the subsidy, and eventually, the service, being withdrawn. I know this from bitter experience; when I moved 10 years ago there wer 8 buses qn hour from the stop right outsidee my houw3. NOW

[Jackdaw33]

Sorry about that. Pc went nipples up and I can't be arsed to finish it but hope you get my drift. Soon taxis Will be cheaper than buses, and then where will you be?

[Hypognosis]

@mikey4444

I would very much like to have posted a video clip of the Ripping Yarns sketch where the dinner guest passes the port to the right but it is not available on YouTube at the moment, which is a pity. Being a gentleman (?) he will know to take the required remedial action.

I like the way the article about the retraction basically repeats everything he said, to cause offence, in the first place and de-emphasises the amount of grovelling he did, to the extent that it is barely noticeable.

Anyway, rule one of Think Tanks ought to be "Try not to be too **nty".

[mikey4444]

Jack and others....we shouldn't have to explain why we need the bus pass. Most of us ( all of us perhaps ! ) have worked ruddy hard all our lives and we shouldn't be having these few pensioner benefits taken away. We shouldn't see any need to apologise either....why should we...for being old !

I meet lots of very poor OAPs in the course of my job, and for most of them, the removal of the bus pass would effectively make them prisoners in their own homes.

At the time of the Election, I was howled down by the right wing on here, for suggesting that the old adage of "under the Tories, the poor get poorer" was still true. But that is exactly the way things are moving. The Tories always look after their own.

But my main point of raising this thread was to demonstrate the essential nastiness of these suggesting from the Tax Payers Alliance, and the extreme cynicism of the comments from Mr Wild, their Research Director.

And I couldn't give a monkeys whether its called a Think Tank or a Pressure Group ! It contains an ex-Tory Minister and its meeting at the Tory Party Conference, so its quite clear which side of the political fence it has placed itself.

As regards Mr Wild's suggestion that people won't remember who Party removed these benefits in a few years time....I can perfectly recall who took the free milk away from school kids and its wasn't Kier Hardie !

[Svejk]

^That was Fatcha.
The Taxpayer's Alliance have been more critical of the Conservative Party than you have, mikey. Possibly for different reasons. But no way are they 'connected' to them.

[EDDIE51]

Gromit
The senior train card is only valid outside the 'peaks' when people are going to and from work, it gives a 30% reduction not free travel and costs £20.
The Christmas bonus was intended to increase in line with the increase in pensions and to be equal to 1 weeks extra pension a year but it has been frozen at £10.

[Davemano]

The bus concessions are only valid outside peak periods.