(Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Have your say on these MetroTalk topics and more in the comments.
Pension or Ponzi scheme?
In hitting back at a Metro reader’s suggestion that state pensions should be limited to those who need it, your correspondents (MetroTalk, Wed) all repeat the myth that your National Insurance pays for your pension.
In fact, it pays for the pensions of the previous generation, just as working people now are paying for the current pensioners.
There is no central pot of money for your pension – it is more akin to a Ponzi scheme.
The reason the pension age is going up and we have to have high levels of immigration is down to the UK’s low birth rate and higher life spans – we are not producing enough new workers to pay for tomorrow’s pensioners.
If you want higher pensions, you pay more tax and/or have a private scheme. Lewis Gibson, Birmingham
METRO TALK – HAVE YOUR SAY
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I am a pensioner and not eligible for pension credit but I am nonetheless fed up with people describing pensioners’ incomes as ‘fixed’.
Under the ‘triple lock’, the pension rises by whichever is highest out of inflation, 2.5 per cent or earnings growth.
So it is guaranteed to rise by at least 2.5 per cent every year (often more) so pensioners’ incomes must rise each April.
They can earn more (and many do) by taking part-time work, rather like wage earners might be able to work overtime.
Alan McDonald Smith (MetroTalk, Wed) says pensioners ‘built and paid for the country we live in today’. In that case, pensioners are at least partly to blame for the present economic situation. Cliff Baker, Barnsley
I wonder if the government has thought of leading by example on this business of pensioners and their winter fuel allowance being axed unless you receive pension credit?
That is, remove the pension of failed prime ministers, past (and present, the way it’s going). It could also remove their fuel allowances, reduce their inflation-busting pay rises, subsidised food and drink and expenses, and stop them having multiple jobs.
Our tax money is being squandered – they have become the present-day aristocracy. Martin, London
The government could save money by removing the pension of former prime ministers like Liz Truss, suggests one reader (Picture: Aaron Schwartz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Instead of the government removing the winter fuel payments from pensioners, why don’t they try tracking down the missing billions that vanished on dodgy PPE deals during the Covid pandemic?
Or is that asking too much of them? David Smith, Oldham
Al in Charlton (MetroTalk, Thu) says he can no longer vote for Labour due to Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘purge’ of left-wing MPs and his treatment of Diane Abbott.
Al conveniently forgets the proposed purges of any moderate MP during the Jeremy Corbyn years. If it was OK then, why not now? Jon Dixon, Hove
Landlords and antisocial neighbours
Raj (MetroTalk, Thu) rejects a Metro reader’s idea that landlords such as himself should be legally responsible for their tenants’ behaviour.
This would, he says, ‘place landlords in the shoes of law enforcement agencies’.
Everyone has a duty of care to the wider community and so, by being a landlord, you are neither expected to do so more than others, nor are you exempted from it.
Clearly Raj is in it for the money as he says if you had to throw out a bad tenant causing issues to neighbours, ‘who pays?’. Well, I’m afraid that’s the risk you take as a landlord but you also know full well there are vast numbers of tenants waiting to find a place, so you’ll have no shortage of demand. Paul, London
Wrong-headed sentencing
Can someone please explain to me why BBC news presenter Huw Edwards has got off without being sent to prison for having child abuse photos, while several climate activists from Just Stop Oil were sentenced to up to five years in prison for such heinous crimes as ‘throwing powder’ and ‘planning to sit on a road’?
Regardless of your views on Just Stop Oil, the right to protest is sacrosanct – these jail terms have been condemned by the United Nations as ‘not acceptable in a democracy’.
Huw Edwards dodged prison despite admitting accessing indecent images of children (Picture: Lucy North/PA Wire)
What does it say about our country when we’re throwing protesters in jail and letting sex offenders such as Edwards get off scot-free with a six-month suspended jail sentence? Helen Shaw, Liverpool
Putin’s mistake
Somebody tell Vladimir Putin that the West is not at war with Russia. It’s just a ‘special operation’ to help Ukraine against an illegal invasion. Martin, Bolton
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