Tuesday 6 October 2015

Forgetting who did what

I’ve long nursed a healthy dislike for the Taxpayers’ Alliance and all their works.  The very name suggests that they are somehow a cuddly little organisation looking after the best interests of all those who pay tax – which is most of us.  But they are not; they are an ideological campaign against the public sector, and for the interests of the wealthiest few.
There’s been plenty of evidence of that in the past, but yesterday’s report on their meeting at the Tories’ conference was a gem even for them.  They don’t just think what is unthinkable to most people – they say it out loud.  They’ve called on the government to cut pensions now, and not to worry too much about the fall-out because many of the pensioners will have died off before the next election so can’t retaliate at the ballot box.  (And they didn’t add this bit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were thinking it – the more the government cuts benefits for the elderly, the more of them will conveniently die off before they can vote.)
Mind you, there was one thing that he said that I can’t help but agree with.  Those who survive to vote in 2020 may well have forgotten by then which party cut their benefits – not because of age or feeble-mindedness, but because Labour and the Tories have been so similar for so long that it's become credible that anything done by one could have been done by the other.

2 comments:

Pete said...

I can't help wondering what you consider "Elderly" you are the same age as me *grins*

The serious point though is that the problems of youth unemployment are not just the result of the economy. It's because of people like me, baby boomers who do not retire. One of the results of cutting pensions will mean that people will be forced to continue working because retirement would cause such a big drop in living standards that it becomes near impossible.
Unintended consequences of poorly thought through policies would leave us with a working class who work until death with young people roaming the streets with idle hands and frustrated ambitions.

Hopefully this policy will never be accepted and us old folks can retire in peace and comfort.

Anonymous said...

The Taxpayers' Alliance is nothing more than a Tory Party front organisation. Unfortunately, journalists at the BBC and other media outlets seem ignorant of this fact and treat the TA as though it actually has some sort of mandate to speak on behalf of taxpayers (which given that no one can escape the various forms of indirect tax, is all of us). The views of the TA should be considered about as newsworthy as those of the Tooting Popular Front.