The state pension is not a random government favour, it’s the back end of a 35–40 year compulsory “contract” where people are forced to hand over National Insurance on the clear promise of a basic pension at the end.
Politicians and think tanks helped design an unfunded, pay‑as‑you‑go system where today’s workers pay today’s pensioners, then have the gall to call it “unsustainable” as if the public dreamt it up.
If a private firm sold you a retirement product on fixed terms, took your money for four decades, then announced at 66 that you “didn’t really need it” and would henceforth be means‑tested or frozen, they would be in court for mis‑selling and fraud.
The crisis here is not pensioners “leeching off the young”, it’s a political class that built a Ponzi‑style NI system, diverted the proceeds for other spending, and now wants to default on the people who kept their side of the bargain.
You do not blame the victims of a defective product for believing the brochure; you go after the people who wrote it.
Tok comedian Pat Smith hilariously points out how bloody stupid our country is.
Comedy has always been a mirror to society.
The only clowns left are the circus masquerading as politicians.
#UK#Labour#Tories
If Keir Starmer had said before the election that he would remove the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners, enforce mandatory digital ID, record numbers of small boat crossings in the English Channel, hammer the disabled with welfare cuts, add inheritance tax to family farms and family businesses causing thousands of them to close, his deputy prime minister dodging £40,000 in tax, his Chancellor getting busted over a house rental license, council tax & energy price increases, raise university tuition fees, plaster mass-scale solar panels on thousands of acres of prime farmland despite huge local community objections, hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius at a cost of £35bn, spaff £30bn of taxpayers’ money on carbon capture machines, give £3bn a year of taxpayers’ money to Ukraine, betray WASPI women, hang out with BlackRock, 50,000 small boat crossings in one year, create a new £100bn economic black hole, increase the overall tax burden to record levels, destroy business growth with national insurance rises resulting in over 200,000 job losses, get exposed for receiving over £100,000 worth of freebies - he almost certainly wouldn’t have won.
He duped the electorate. An utterly shameless display of snake oil political salesmanship. And still he lectures all of us in that gratingly sanctimonious manner of his that gives off a pompous and hypocritical impression that everyone else is somehow the problem here.
He’s the author of his own tanking approval ratings. The most unpopular Prime Minister in living memory. But tragically, we are all paying the price.
I still can’t get over how great Conservative Kemi Badenoch was today.
She ripped apart Keir Starmer at #PMQs, who was left stuttering and unable to answer her questions.
Then she tore to shreds the budget and Rachel Reeves’s incompetence.
A clinical and brilliant performance.
“It's disgraceful“.
The Telegraph's Poppy Coburn reacts to the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from their Aston Villa away fixture on safety grounds.
#Newsnight
🚨KEIR STARMER JUST ADMITTED DIGITAL I.D WILL BE USED TO MAKE PAYMENTS AND ACCESS MONEY
We are turning into a communist state
He's just said the quiet bit out loud
THIS MUST BE STOPPED
🚨🇬🇧 DIGITAL ID SYSTEM ALREADY HACKED — TWICE
A government test team revealed the new Digital ID system was hacked earlier this year — so ministers disbanded the team and covered it up.
Then it was hacked again, and no one even noticed until the hackers themselves came forward.
🔴 Two breaches in a trial phase
🔴 No public disclosure
🔴 Full rollout still planned
Imagine Russia or China getting hold of every worker’s personal details in one swoop.