Equality through shared deprivation

The triple lock - deeply begrudged
by the wealthy

The Merseyside Pensioners Association has condemned the proposals of the Lords Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision, a title borrowed straight form the George Orwell library of double-speak.

This body of unelected, well-heeled Lords calls for an end to the ‘triple lock’, which guarantees the state pension rises by the highest of inflation, wage growth or 2.5 per cent; an end of free television licences, and bus passes and winter fuel payments to be scrapped or scaled back; and for a national insurance surcharge.

Their Lordships justify these cuts with the phoney argument to ‘tilt the balance between the generations back towards younger groups’ because, they argue, the spending power of retired people has now overtaken many workers in their 20s and 30s, and that help should be stepped up for younger people in the jobs and housing markets.

There is no mention of the massive tax cuts for the rich, the wrecking of local council’s ability to build houses for rent, the low-wage zero hours jobs young people are faced with, and all the other inequalities in a society based on capitalism.

Far from OAPs being ‘privileged’, UK state pensions are the lowest in Western Europe, and thousands of OAPs die from hypothermia each year. We agree with John McDonnell’s description of the proposed national insurance surcharge as a ‘a tax on getting old’. This is a further cynical attempt to divide the generations while they figure out how to enrich their already fabulously rich friends and it gives further urgency to the election of a Corbyn-led government committed to the implementation of socialist policies.

Tony Mulhearn,
MPA Media Officer &
ARMS activist