Report to the People
6th November 2004
Pensioned Off
Whereas
one of my married colleagues, according to the salacious Sunday press at least,
has been having a sordid affair with a tabloid journalist and enjoys attending
“alternative lifestyle friendly” social clubs down in Manchester, I have
been celebrating the birth of my third grandchild.
Talk
about being made to feel your age.
And,
just to rub it in, the deal I did with the whips (not the ones in Manchester,
the Holyrood business bosses) to get away from Parliament on Wednesday to see
mother, father and baby meant I had to speak in Thursday’s SNP debate on
pensions.
Sadly,
reminding me that I may be entering the autumn of my youth was about all this
debate achieved.
Even
the motion contradicted itself. It
demanded we tackle pensioner poverty by stopping spending extra money on our
poorest senior citizens. It argued
that money should be taken away from poor pensioners in places like Greenock and
Inverclyde and given to rich pensioners who don’t need it.
It
is unfair and wasteful to snatch money from pensioners on the breadline and hand
it to pensioners on the cruise lines.
Even
if we spent every penny which abolishing the Pension Credit would free up on the
basic state pension, our poorest pensioners would still be £30 a week worse
off.
Helping
the poorest pensioners might not be electorally expedient – they can’t
organise major publicity campaigns the way the better off can – but it is, in
my view at least, right.
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