Here is a good progressive idea "Retired should work for their pensions"

That was then this is now...

It's not my fault I was born in 1959 not 1989.

The main problem is that people keep voting Tory, or for tories masquerading as a Labour Party. If people voted for a proper socialist agenda then there is no reason at all why the majority shouldn't get a better share of the wealth of this nation.

 

Re: Well said Dave

Use quotes yer young whippersnapper!

In response to the last bit, interest rates at 15% is how hard it was.

BTW I should like to throw my hat into the ring for the 'biggest tw-at in the post' competition. I've had more experience !

 

Re: Well said Dave

Who's won this battle then? The old farts or the immature nob heads?

 

I don't pretend to be the sharpest knife in the box (I left school before the boom in university places made them available for everybody who wanted, it was years of night school for me) but I'm amazed to find I was thick enough to have gone through my working life never knowing I was from an age of takers. I honestly thought that I and my fellow workers were responsible for creating the wealth that the state spent on benefits. I was daft enough to think that by paying into the system I was helping to provide for my own old age and that the state's demographers were clever enough to work out that I and my generation would get old one day and claim the pensions we had been paying for all our working lives.
When I bought my first shithole of a house, the only one I could remotely afford, I didn't have to forego foreign holidays because I'd never been on one, and my kids didn't go on them either because all my money went on paying mortgages at ridiculous rates of interest for houses that were being priced out of my reach as house prices skyrocketed. I didn't vote for Mrs Thatcher to sell off the country's silver and I am disappointed that the present generation have not learned and have voted in another conservative government (seeing as generalisation seems to be the name of the game.)
I am pleased though that my kids had it better than my generation did and have had the chance to go to Uni, take foreign holidays, buy better houses and cars than I could only dream of.
I'm also very happy that I come from a generation that doesn't look to blame somebody else for everything that happens to them and thinks that f-cking anybody up the gary, roughly or not, is so wrong.

You will have worked out by now that I am (well) over 50.

 

Divide & Rule

 

Re: Well said Dave

Like that !

 

Proof the young uns are having it better..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ticking-lifes-list-years-earlier-parents.html

 

Just an observation, I see all the under 35's at least at my works as entitled, I want the job you have got and put no time in to get it, , May have university educations but lack common sense, I only have a high school education and worked down mine for 12 yrs , went to mining college had to work nights then go to class with no sleep, Then with the mines closing came to Canada, where with 2 young Kids had to prove myself in workforce put myself through College again to get a decent job,buy a house with negative equity for years (during the bust in the 90's) Then put 2 kids through University (Nurse the other Chartered Accountant)and we have it easy ???I am now 58 yrs of age and will be working until 65 + you bet I have done my bit.

 

Well I'm back

Already retired, but been working all day for nowt a yard. Looks like this as been well and truly aired whilst ive been away and so i don't feel the need to make further comment. Looks like Dads army won that one. Coming Mr Mainwaring, coming.

 

Re: Well I'm back

the tories have been after the benefits the soldiers that came home from ww2 demanded snd fought for, after lie upon lie the ruling classes spun after ww1.previous generations have improved on these benefits that the present generation are enjoying now. the irony of some of these snarling at pensioners etc is if we hadn't fought for these benefits they would not have got the education and the standard of living they are now enjoying. the wealth would still be filtering to the few (which is shamefully happening happening again) and wars would still be raging across europe. it appears to me lessons are learned but complacency erodes the result in just a couple of generations.

 

the entire country living off the never never is what shoved house prices up to where they are now,.Credit throughout the last 10 years is what(falsly) kept the country ticking over and thats why we are in the mess we're in now.Our manufacturing was obliterated by the tories,so we were left with no real means to generate wealth,that is why we now have cuts,because we cant generate wealth so we have to 'save' money instead.
as for it being fundamental that the 80's voted the tories in and now having the monk on,i've never heard as much crap in my life,do you think the industrial working class voted for the tories?,did they ****.. the tories like labour dont get in power by a majority of the peoples vote,they get in power by a system that has been f@cked abart with for decades to suit the powers that be.A government gets in with about 40% of the vote because of our first past the post system,something that the government would never allow a trade union to assume power with..Theres 60% of the 'monk' on population that never voted for the government in the 80's.so dont f@cking blame them for the mess.

 

Re: Well I'm back

Hmmmmm. Before this thread descends into the usual anti-Tory nonsense, it's probably worth noting here that the man who has suggested this is I think a crossbench peer who was close to and made a life peer by the Labour Party shortly before they were given the boot by the electorate for destroying the nations finances (ironically meaning ideas like this would be required to address the mess), so it can hardly be described as the work of the 'evil/nasty/baby-eating tories'.

On a personal note, I don't think much to the idea, and that's not because it's likely to impact on me as such, as I'm of the generation where I'm likely to have to work into my seventies before I get a sniff of pension.

 

Re: Well said Dave

You aren't taking into account with that quote what effect high interest rates have on mortgage payments - it is not the price of the house that makes it affordable it is the size of the mortgage payment.

I am not that old, so fit between these generation arguments. I got free university education, but will be working into my 70s before my pension gives me enough to live on.

My first house in 1991, was £25k, and, at 15% interest rates, the payments were about £180 a month if I recall on a salary at the time of £11k a year. My current payments, at whatever today's low rate is, are about £500 (i.e. less than 3 x as much) on a mortgage of £105K (i.e. more than 4 times as much). So the affordability factor has improved for me even though the price of the current house was much higher.

Not saying it is easy now for young kids - just saying it wasn't easy in the past either. If interest rates hit 15% now it would be like being run over like a steam train for a lot of people, but they are not.

 

Re: Well said Dave

So going back to the original thread before it descended into pointing fingers as to whether the older or younger generation are to blame!

I think this is a dreadful proposal that pensioners should have to work for their pension.

 

It was labour I believe started turning the uk into a giant call centre...l

 

True. But they needed to try and generate jobs somehow - it wasn't labour that closed all the manufacturing and heavy industry.

It's been done to death, so I won't say much, other than I'm 29, haven't got a degree (through choice rather than lacking the ability), worked full time since i was 18, I bought my house four years ago (3 bed ex council in donny) for 125,000. It's currently estimated to be worth 95,000 on zoopla.

The country is ****ed. I do blame the Tories.

My mp is red ed btw. Socialist? I wish

 

Re: Well said Dave

An ordinary semi in stockport, £250,000! fookin hell! was the the old footballers des-res area before cheshire or summat? ;-)

 

no really,labour came into power in '97,there were many call centres here before that.A lot of them occupying sites that were previously industry.

 

Well that won't last long being that loads have offshored their call centres.

But don't we need call centres then? Service industries need call centres. As we move further toward more business being done online and by phone, so they are necessary. And why do we have a predominance of service industries? Because manufacturing was decimated back in the 1980's. I remember being out with a few mates back in the late 80's and we got to discussing what each of us did - out of 7 of us there was only 1 that had a job linked to the manufacturing industry, the rest were linked to public services, retail or other service industry.

Anyway, now the higher paid jobs are being offshored, I lose my job next week thanks to a bailed out bank moving a lot of it's IT work offshore. I think both Labour and Conservative governments are to blame for what's happened, but the seed were sown back in the 80's.