This Government has come up with some ludicrous ideas in its short tenure at the helm but surely nothing tops Iain Duncan Smith’s bizarre notion that wealthy pensioners might voluntarily return benefits they do not require? "It is up to them, if they don’t want it, to hand it back," Smith told The Sunday Telegraph while urging its readers to return their bus passes and winter fuel allowances and pay for their TV licences. I find this idea - and the blatant lack of thought that has gone into it - utterly staggering.
First of all there is the process to consider: Take, for example, the winter fuel payment. This benefit, available to all British pensioners across the EC, is administered by the pensions side of the already woefully understaffed Department for Work and Pensions, whose staff will, presumably, be expected to process its return, taking them yet further away from what one might be forgiven for believing is their real job; that of actually serving the multitudes of pensioners in genuine need. Forms will need to be drafted and printed. Pensioners will not be able to simply stick a cheque in an envelope, address it to G Osborne and send it to 11 Downing Street. With no research to indicate even roughly how many pensioners would be willing to return their payments there is a very real possibility that the administration will cost more than the figure recouped.
Then there is the small matter regarding exactly who will feel wealthy enough to repay their money. A large number of people who were in their 30s in the 1980s, and prospered handsomely under Thatcher’s money-grabbing culture of greed and self-fulfillment, will now be retired. Many of them are grateful to Thatcher for their wealth, showing their appreciation all over the BBC recently when she finally departed this mortal coil and repaying her by becoming lifelong Tories. They see nothing wrong with the values that made them their money and that they still hold dear - and why should they? Can we really expect these people, who were repeatedly told that there is no such thing as society, to suddenly develop a social conscience, or be able to make the marginally self-sacrificial decision that they have accumulated enough wealth already? Can they really be expected to discard their take, take, take attitudes and senses of entitlement, thus undoing everything that Mother Thatcher taught them and that put them in the comfortable positions they now superciliously occupy?
There is not enough money in the national coffers; of that there is no doubt. But for a Tory politician it is better to break this inevitably vote-losing news slowly, over 20 years, to today’s 40-somethings so that we can at least mentally prepare ourselves for our inevitable poverty in retirement, rather than lose the votes of wealthy pensioners now by taking away benefits they feel entitled to and have looked forward to, but do not actually need. And of course, this news must be broken in such a manner that it appears they still believe we will, one day, actually be able to retire.
Iain Duncan Smith told The Sunday Telegraph there is "no indication of change" to the current system. While Nigel Farage nips like an irksome Chihuahua at the heels of the Tories, could it be that IDS is fully aware of the consequences of telling today’s pensioners they will not be entitled to the same benefits their parents enjoyed?
I am not suggesting there are no pensioners in Britain who would be willing to return their OAP benefits on the basis that they do not need them. Indeed, I know at least two retirees who already give their winter fuel allowance to charity and have done for several years, one of them after trying, to no avail, to refuse it in the first place. I would like to think there are many more like them. But neither of these people have ever voted for the Conservative Party in their lives and - I can say with absolute certainty - will never do so.
David Cameron loves nothing more than following up the standard Tory rhetoric of robbing from the poor to protect the rich with soundbites to the media about ‘difficult decisions’. Oddly he never outright says; "look, let's be clear here; we really didn’t want to do this but we had no choice," but he likes to imply they have agonised over something that everyone knows is basic Tory policy. To make these pensioner benefits means tested would undoubtedly lose the Conservatives valuable votes. So instead, Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of a party that scoffed at Greece’s ‘voluntary tax’ system, is effectively asking those who did not vote for him - socialists no less - to take responsibility for his Government’s right-wing failings by voluntarily returning their pensioner benefits to save this coalition from actually having to make a difficult decision for the first time in their administration. Like I said; staggering.
First of all there is the process to consider: Take, for example, the winter fuel payment. This benefit, available to all British pensioners across the EC, is administered by the pensions side of the already woefully understaffed Department for Work and Pensions, whose staff will, presumably, be expected to process its return, taking them yet further away from what one might be forgiven for believing is their real job; that of actually serving the multitudes of pensioners in genuine need. Forms will need to be drafted and printed. Pensioners will not be able to simply stick a cheque in an envelope, address it to G Osborne and send it to 11 Downing Street. With no research to indicate even roughly how many pensioners would be willing to return their payments there is a very real possibility that the administration will cost more than the figure recouped.
Then there is the small matter regarding exactly who will feel wealthy enough to repay their money. A large number of people who were in their 30s in the 1980s, and prospered handsomely under Thatcher’s money-grabbing culture of greed and self-fulfillment, will now be retired. Many of them are grateful to Thatcher for their wealth, showing their appreciation all over the BBC recently when she finally departed this mortal coil and repaying her by becoming lifelong Tories. They see nothing wrong with the values that made them their money and that they still hold dear - and why should they? Can we really expect these people, who were repeatedly told that there is no such thing as society, to suddenly develop a social conscience, or be able to make the marginally self-sacrificial decision that they have accumulated enough wealth already? Can they really be expected to discard their take, take, take attitudes and senses of entitlement, thus undoing everything that Mother Thatcher taught them and that put them in the comfortable positions they now superciliously occupy?
There is not enough money in the national coffers; of that there is no doubt. But for a Tory politician it is better to break this inevitably vote-losing news slowly, over 20 years, to today’s 40-somethings so that we can at least mentally prepare ourselves for our inevitable poverty in retirement, rather than lose the votes of wealthy pensioners now by taking away benefits they feel entitled to and have looked forward to, but do not actually need. And of course, this news must be broken in such a manner that it appears they still believe we will, one day, actually be able to retire.
Iain Duncan Smith told The Sunday Telegraph there is "no indication of change" to the current system. While Nigel Farage nips like an irksome Chihuahua at the heels of the Tories, could it be that IDS is fully aware of the consequences of telling today’s pensioners they will not be entitled to the same benefits their parents enjoyed?
I am not suggesting there are no pensioners in Britain who would be willing to return their OAP benefits on the basis that they do not need them. Indeed, I know at least two retirees who already give their winter fuel allowance to charity and have done for several years, one of them after trying, to no avail, to refuse it in the first place. I would like to think there are many more like them. But neither of these people have ever voted for the Conservative Party in their lives and - I can say with absolute certainty - will never do so.
David Cameron loves nothing more than following up the standard Tory rhetoric of robbing from the poor to protect the rich with soundbites to the media about ‘difficult decisions’. Oddly he never outright says; "look, let's be clear here; we really didn’t want to do this but we had no choice," but he likes to imply they have agonised over something that everyone knows is basic Tory policy. To make these pensioner benefits means tested would undoubtedly lose the Conservatives valuable votes. So instead, Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of a party that scoffed at Greece’s ‘voluntary tax’ system, is effectively asking those who did not vote for him - socialists no less - to take responsibility for his Government’s right-wing failings by voluntarily returning their pensioner benefits to save this coalition from actually having to make a difficult decision for the first time in their administration. Like I said; staggering.
