Phil L

@IanJon407 @Arron_banks Yes agree with everything you mention, my point remains that I am sure many (mainly young) people are probably under the illusion that the state pension is somehow free of general taxation.

@PLutterloch @Arron_banks no and Miriam isn’t that young and certainly not left wing

If pensioners are wealthy the state gets 45% back in tax. Politicians are completely ignorant when it comes to finances!

@IanJon407 @Arron_banks Not talking about Miriam - the comment is related to the wider population

Next week he is going to Germany to negotiate the end of World War Two.

@NickCohen4 x.com/i/status/20417…

Starmer handling of this crisis has been the making of him

Starmer in the Middle East peace talks

@iAmJoshHunt Absolutely 💯 and no political party will grasp it, wage compression now a serious issue.

UK productivity has been essentially flat since 2008. That’s not a recession. That’s not a blip. That’s eighteen years of an economy that couldn’t figure out how to produce more with what it has. Every other problem we’re discussing, housing, pensions, public services, the tax burden, all of them would be manageable if productivity was growing. It isn’t. And nobody has a credible plan to fix it. That’s the confession at the heart of British economic policy. Everything else is just arguing about how to divide a pie that stopped growing years ago.

Crazy idea: Let's split a country in socialist and capitalist halves and check in on them in 75 years.

@KathyParr101 Undoubtedly a pitch rolling exercise in motion, shame they can't do the same with out of work benefits.

This is part of an orchestrated narrative, designed to denigrate pensions and the triple lock. It's a deliberate propaganda campaign which is all over Twitter and the MSM. Ignore the vicious little twerp.

@soniasodha I have no doubt the TL needs reform, problem is that we have an endless 5 year gvt cycle of over promising & under delivering, our entire economy is essentially bankrupt but still no-one tells us the truth. The reforms reqd to pensions etc will take 20 years + to show a benefit

It's time to retire the triple lock. It's unfair to expect a generation who face much higher housing & education costs than their grandparents to indefinitely fund the state pension to outpace wage growth. comment.press/triple-lock

@ReemAmirIbrahim This supposed logic could just as easily be applied to the 10 million people of working age claiming benefits ...why should I pay for them, get a job!

Why should young people have to pay for someone else’s retirement? If you live in a million pound house, and you can’t afford to retire, sell the house. Or don’t. I don’t care. You just can’t expect young people to pay for you!

@boot15_vu Great content on this pension discussion 👌

🚨 Pensions Thread wrap-up — thanks for the incredible engagement. This conversation has been one of the best I’ve seen on here. Hundreds of thoughtful replies, real context added, and a clear shift in understanding. Most people now get it: - The current system is unsustainable. - Governments have treated our National Insurance like a slush fund for decades while still enforcing the “you paid in” rules. - The public/private pension polarisation is stark and unfair. - And above all — the division is deliberate. Governments broke the intergenerational contract, spent the money elsewhere, then turned around and pitted old against young to justify cutting the scraps that are left. Enough. Direct your ire where it belongs: at the governments that sold us the contributory promise, raided the pot, ignored demographics, and now gaslight everyone with generational warfare. The public knows best what to do with its own money. That’s why the long-term fix has always been the same: honour the promises already made to those who paid in, cut the real waste first, then move to proper individual named accounts (Singapore CPF style) with real investment growth and iron-clad ring-fencing. No more mediocrity. No more accepting a race to the bottom. We’ve exposed the deception. Now let’s stop helping the people who caused it. Thanks again for the quality discussion — this one’s done for now. #StatePension #TripleLock #DeceptionByGovernment

As it appears to be pensioner bashing weekend and pensioners seem to be the ones wholly responsible for the dire economic state of the country, I thought I'd apprise you all of some facts and figures. Between April 2024 and March 2025, the cost of keeping asylum seekers in hotels was £2.1 billion. In 2023, £15.3 billion was spent on foreign aid. As of August 2025, there were 740,000 people aged between 16 and 24 years old receiving Universal Credit. The benefits bill for people aged between 16 and 64 in 2024/25 was £123 billion. In this decade (2020s), our annual net zero transition costs are estimated to be £125 billion. UK quangos cost the taxpayers between £376 - 391 billion per year (2023/4 figures). MPs' expenses (not salaries) are in the region of £130 - 150 million a year. The UK has committed to give the European Space Agency £1.84 billion for the period 2022/27. Since 2022, the UK has committed to give Ukraine £21.8 billion. The UK continues to give money to the EU under the Brexit divorce. As at March 2024, there is still £6.4 billion outstanding. 'Free breakfasts' in schools cost the UK taxpayers an estimated 1 billion per year. I'm sure I could go on. But it's just too depressing. The spending is out of all control, and rising. The interest on our national debt rises daily. And we're governed by socialists who love spending everyone's money but their own. As do all governments and councils. But, of course, it's all the fault of old age pensioners. Rolls eyes. A lot. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

@simonwatt85 And don't forget £300 million on the planning costs for a second Dartford Crossing before a spade was in the ground, the list goes on!

Any country that can spend £100m on a bat tunnel can afford the triple lock.

@BWoodzy99 Be careful what you wish for, you'll be "old" before you know it and once gone the state pension entitlement will never return.

Your taxes (including NI) didnt pay into a state pension they paid for day to day spending, you have no automatic right to one The current non-means tested triple lock pension is both unaffordable and immoral. Time to get a grip.

@CarolineLucas @BBCr4today Perhaps because your party has been hijacked by certain minorities and you have the audacity to use the word irresponsible!

Did @BBCr4today really just do a whole package about drilling in the N Sea without once even mentioning #climate change? And not having anyone challenging the one-sided claims of former BP boss? So irresponsible #bbcr4today

@boot15_vu 💯 every word

🚨 Pensions Follow Up: Thanks for the outstanding engagement on the state pension thread — hundreds of thoughtful replies, and some excellent extra context. This conversation is cutting through the gaslighting. Key examples people have highlighted: • Keir Starmer’s 2013 Platinum-Plated DPP pension — Parliament quietly passed bespoke regulations giving his scheme full inflation protection and exemption from the lifetime allowance cap that applies to everyone else. • Public-sector gold-plated final-salary schemes (and MPs/civil service pensions) — generous defined-benefit deals funded by the same NI system, while millions in the private sector had little or nothing until auto-enrolment kicked in. • Broader broken promises — earnings link severed in the past, qualifying years still strictly enforced while the National Insurance Fund was treated as a slush fund, elite schemes quietly protected with better uprating, and the triple lock now painted as “unaffordable generosity” after decades of short-termism. • Recent analyses (e.g. Fidelity Nov 2025) rank the UK last in the G7 on pure state pension replacement rate (just 22% of pre-retirement earnings vs Italy 76% or France 58%). This is often spun as proof the system is “too generous” — but it actually highlights how the UK deliberately built a minimal state floor and pushed the rest onto private saving. Higher public pensions elsewhere come with much heavier payroll taxes during working life. • The forgotten social contract & demographic shift — We all remember the one-earner family model that worked in decades past (women raising families as society expected). Now both parents often scrape a living, struggling with housing and costs to afford kids. Meanwhile, Blair-era open-door policies accelerated mass immigration and expanded welfare access. Today, significant Universal Credit spending goes to migrant households (including unemployed foreign nationals — over £10bn in an 18-month period recently), and higher fertility in some migrant groups contrasts with native birth rates at record lows. This hasn’t fixed the worker/retiree ratio as promised — it’s added pressure on the very system pensioners paid into. All of this flows from the same root: governments sold National Insurance as a contributory scheme — “pay your stamps for your pension,” just like road tax was meant for the roads. They ditched the ring-fencing (1937 for roads, gradually for NI), turned it pay-as-you-go, spent surpluses on NHS/welfare/whatever suited the day, ignored collapsing birth rates and demographic reality (mass immigration didn’t fix the worker/retiree ratio), then rebranded the whole thing as a “transfer from poor young to rich old.” How we fix it going forward — practical steps: Short term — honour existing promises: - Maintain the triple lock for current retirees and those near retirement who paid in under the old expectations. - Cut wasteful spending first: illegal migration accommodation, Net Zero subsidies, foreign aid that doesn’t deliver, and welfare bloat that drains the NI Fund. Long term — build a system that actually works: - Phase in individual named accounts modelled on Singapore’s CPF: NI contributions go into personal pots with guaranteed returns and real investment growth, not spent immediately. - Expand and strengthen auto-enrolment so every worker builds a decent private/workplace pension alongside the state safety net. - Legally ring-fence the National Insurance Fund properly — no more treating it as general taxation. Stop pitting generations against each other. The young are paying into the same flawed system their parents did. Honour the contract for those who upheld their side, then reform so we don’t repeat the failure. What other examples of this broken promise (or practical fixes) have you seen? Keep the ideas coming — this is the discussion we actually need. #StatePension #TripleLock #DeceptionByGovernment

@DrHoenderkamp * Fiercely

@DrHoenderkamp We need to be a little more "French" in our outlook to pensions, that is to say lets not race to the bottom but fircely fight & protect for valuable benefits, once taken they'll never be returned, remember youngsters...you get old faster than you think.

I'm tired of hearing ' you don't pay in to' the state pension because if that's true, why do they assess your NI contributing years and then decide how much you get depending on contributions? (PS, I know it isn't a pot - but you do pay in to get it)

@boot15_vu Excellent post 👏

🚨The state pension & triple lock is the hot topic of the day — but almost no one is discussing what actually happened and why we’re in this mess. Instead, governments are dividing older and younger generations with perverse gaslighting. Here’s the truth: National Insurance was explicitly sold for generations as a contributory scheme. You paid your “stamps” to build entitlement to your state pension — exactly like road tax was introduced and meant to fund the Road Fund for building and maintaining roads. Both started with a clear promise: pay in for a specific purpose. Then governments quietly broke the ring-fencing/promise. Road hypothecation ended in 1937. NI became mostly pay-as-you-go — today’s workers funding today’s pensioners, with surpluses spent on the priorities of the day (NHS, welfare, whatever suited the government). Why are we here now? • Collapsing birth rates since the 1960s + longer lifespans. • Mass immigration that failed to fix the worker-to-retiree ratio as promised. • Decades of political short-termism: treating the National Insurance Fund like a slush fund instead of properly ring-fencing or investing it for the future. See Singapore for the gold standard. Now the gaslighting ramps up: “No one paid into a pot.” “It’s just a transfer from poorer young to wealthier old.” “The triple lock is unaffordable.” This is classic deception by government. They collected contributions under one set of expectations, spent the money elsewhere, then rebranded the promise when demographics caught up. Pensioners who worked 40-50 years and upheld their side of the intergenerational contract are suddenly the villains. It’s perverse. Instead of admitting “we broke the funding model,” politicians pit generations against each other. The young aren’t subsidising the old out of nowhere — they’re paying into the same broken system their elders did. Honour the existing promises to those who already paid in. Cut the real waste first (illegal migration costs, foreign aid, Net Zero subsidies, welfare bloat). Then reform properly for the future: move towards individual accounts with actual investment and returns — like Singapore’s CPF. Stop the divisive nonsense. Fix the root causes instead of rewriting history and turning the country against itself. Feel free to engage👇🏽 #TripleLock #StatePension