In 2011, I commented on the fact that the basic state pension is acknowledged to be well below the level of income needed to reach a minimu...

Nicola Sturgeon Ahead of the General Election, which is said to be more focused than ever on the votes of pensioners, I am again re-posti...

I am reposting this piece from August 2010, in the light of the recent Daily Mail investigation by Tony Hazell that the government will not...

In view of the current debate about the possible cutting of benefits to pensioners, I thought it worthwhile re-posting this piece from 2010....

After some years or decades of ‘withering on the vine’ it was announced first that state pensions would be means-tested, and then that the ‘...

The number of older people who will be forced to pay their own care bills will double over the next 20 years to more than a quarter of a mil...

State-funded pensions will cost £5 trillion, today's Daily Mail informs us. Laid bare for first time, £180,000 burden facing every Brit...

I have a book entitled The Great Pensions Swindle * which, 40 years ago, made some useful points about the likely unreliability of state pen...

I see that those on pension credit (the means-tested supplement to the basic state pension), along with others receiving benefits, are to be...

A recent article from the Daily Mail on the Government's plans for pensions tax relief: Higher earners should lose higher rate tax reli...

There are complaints that George Osborne’s ‘Austerity Budget’ fails to provide sufficient protection for ‘the most vulnerable’ sections of t...

As I have previously said on this blog, the state now appears to feel free to change legislation in ways that are effectively retrospective,...

Andrew Dilnot will propose a cap of between £35,000 and £50,000 on the amount people have to pay towards their care in their last years – wi...

The state pension was cut (made means-tested) in 2003. Those who were already receiving it, such as myself, or who were within sight of qual...

‘The Mail accepts that, with people living longer, we must pay more towards the cost of our old age.’ ( Daily Mail , editorial, 5 July 2011)...

It is said that the Dilnot report will recommend that people of pensionable age should not have their assets reduced by more than a third by...

In about 1970 they ‘upgraded’ the state pension system; the real motive for this being that they wanted an excuse to get in more money for t...

The tiny amount of public spending committed to the elderly – 5.8 per cent of national income compared to 11.7 per cent in Italy – is a key ...

It appears that they have it in mind to tax property, which is bad for us as we still have no income from society for anything we do (or cou...

A new non-means-tested pension scheme, to start about 2015, is supposed to provide support greater than the current basic state pension and ...