Siren voices have again demanded abolition of the old folks’ “triple lock” pension benefit.
But with a General Election drawing daily closer, both major parties are now promising to keep it.
With 12.5 million pensioner voters, they know that it would be political suicide to do anything else.
Mel Stride, the Works and Pensions Secretary, says the lock will “almost certainly” figure in next year’s Conservative manifesto, and Sir Keir Starmer ’s office says Labour is similarly committed.
This welcome news should silence Tory pundits who reject as unsustainable the deal of an annual rise in the state pension by 2.5%, average earnings or inflation, whichever is the greater.
With inflation raging, they insist the country can’t afford a likely increase of 7% – that’s £750 – next spring, on top of 10% paid this April, making the pension £11,300 a year. However, us oldies shouldn’t get too excited.
A minister’s “most likely” is not a cast-iron, bankable guarantee. The Tories broke their word in 2021, pleading “rogue” pandemic pay rise levels.
And in the long term, the situation is uncertain.
A Government review has recommended capping the cost of state pensions, now standing at 4.8% of GDP, at 6%.
If the triple lock continues for decades, this goal would be unattainable without “fast rises in the pension age” and people born after 1980 working past the age of 70.
The pensions system may one day have to be revisited, and reset, to take account of an ageing and more healthy population. But that day is not yet.
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Was it worth it? That’s the question NHS nurses must be asking themselves, after calling off their long campaign of industrial action.
To my mind, the answer has to be “Yes”. The alternative was to kow-tow to Tory politicians intent on trashing them and their union.
Eight days of strikes cost them a lot of money, but it showed that they are willing to fight for what they believe in, that the RCN is a proper union not just a royal college, and that the public is overwhelmingly on their side.
Old Routers’ Law of Strikes says that there is no guarantee of success if you have a go, only a guarantee of failure if you don’t. I’ve been on the winning side, and on the losing side, but I’ve never regretted joining the action.
The Tories just don’t understand our mindset. Let’s see if they grasp the looming reality of strikes by hospital doctors and consultants next month.
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Miraculum, miraculum! Latin is now the fourth most popular language taught in primary schools.
Experts say it helps with grammar, vocabulary and spelling in English.
I did Latin, but unfortunately I couldn’t practise speaking it with anybody as the Romans left Britain in 383AD, and their empire died out a century later.
They didn’t teach me in vino veritas, but I learned to carpe diem by myself.
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Like Sir Keir Starmer, I had a student job selling ice creams. Only his was on the French Riviera, while I worked the Test match crowds at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, in June 1964.
At least my pitch was legal, but I did get a rollocking for taking a sneaky short cut across the front of the white screen.
I was never cut out to be Mr Whippy.
