Paul Webster
647 posts


@OliverJBradshaw Yes, the world has changed, but older people are not going to give away what they have worked their whole lives for. You should campaign to build houses and look forward to a long retirement when AI replaces your jobs.
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This weekend, boomers have been calling my generation entitled, ungrateful, and straight up lazy for questioning the state pension triple lock. Apart from a barrage of playground insults, the same old arguments kept coming: “We paid in our time,” “It’s your turn now,” “Just move somewhere cheaper,” “16% of you lot are out of work,” and “Stop buying coffee and going out.”
Here’s the nasty truth they conveniently ignore.
You talk about a fair “pay-it-forward” deal. But back when you worked, there were roughly five workers per pensioner. Today it’s 3.6. By the time we retire, it’ll be closer to 2.5. You had far more people sharing the load. That contract got stretched thin on our backs.
You say you worked harder, faced 15% mortgages, had no luxuries, and Uni was basically free. Interest rates were brutal, sure. But you bought houses for 3-4 times your wages. Ours cost 8-10 times or more. Over-60s now hold 55% of the country’s entire housing wealth, nearly £3.84 trillion, mostly mortgage-free. Many of you enjoyed full mortgage interest tax relief (MIRAS) until 2000. We pay sky-high rents with zero tax relief while real wages have barely grown against inflation for 15 years.
My generation was sold a lie, study hard, get the degree, land the good job, buy the house, pay your National Insurance, and the system will look after you. I know friends and colleagues who followed that script to the letter, straight-A students, graduate schemes, full time work from day one. Now in their late twenties, they’re still renting, saddled with £50k+ in loans, watching every spare pound vanish into rent and bills, while being called “entitled” for noticing the numbers don’t add up.
“Just buy a house somewhere cheaper!” Sure, in towns where property is dirt cheap and jobs are non existent. Good careers don’t magically appear out of thin air. That advice is pure fantasy.
“Just cut back on coffee and nights out”? As if skipping a £4 latte can magically fund a house deposit when homes cost 8-10 times our wages. Our money has far less purchasing power than yours ever did. We spend nearly 30% of our income on housing (up from 20% twenty years ago), and under-30s households devote 70% of their budget to essentials versus just 56% for over-65s. We’re not splashing on luxuries, we don’t want to live like hermits just to scrape by, and nor should we have to.
You throw out the 16% youth unemployment rate for 16-24 year olds and call us bone idle. That’s not laziness, it’s a brutal job market. Job vacancies have tanked. We’re stuck in retail and hospitality roles that get cut first when times are tough, five times more likely to be on zero-hours contracts. Nearly a million of us (12.8%) are NEET simply because the jobs don't exist. Many of us are already paying National Insurance from the first insecure job we have, yet we’re still expected to bankroll your guaranteed above inflation rises. Work in Britain no long pays.
The state pension already costs £138 billion a year, the second biggest single expense after the NHS. The triple lock alone will add £15.5 billion extra every year by 2030, three times the original forecast. Pension spending is heading from ~5% of GDP toward 7.7% in the coming decades, with more than half the extra burden coming directly from the triple lock itself. Waste exists elsewhere and public-sector pensions are far too generous, but this locked in, exploding cost is the elephant in the room, and they all need reviewing.
I’m not pitting generations against each other or begrudging anyone a dignified retirement. But the system you defend hands one generation guaranteed rises no matter what the economy does, while the shrinking number of us paying the bill gets saddled with a heavier and heavier bag.
I’m not against pensioners. I’m against a policy that’s mathematically doomed and dumps the heaviest load on fewer and fewer contributors. The truly entitled position is demanding a blank cheque forever while slapping down facts as “division” or “whining” or pretending our small treats are the problem.
So go ahead, tell me exactly where I’m wrong. But this time skip the playground insults calling me and my generation entitled and lazy. I’m done being polite about a system that screws my generation while you demand a blank cheque.
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Majority of all the 4, 5 and 6 bedroom homes in my area are all occupied by boomers.
They spend all day from Spring to Autumn gardening. Some of them can barely bend down. I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t just sell up. Instead they complain about being unable to heat the property.
Any time a home comes up for sale, it’s because someone has died.
Then a lot of people don’t even want to buy them because they’ve not been decorated since 1985 and have no bath.
Lin Mei@linmeitalks
There are boomers sitting in large houses who don’t even want to free up equity or sell their house to help their own children get on the ladder. This is the level of selfishness we are dealing with. Thank god for parents like my mother She would sell her house in Tottenham tomorrow if it meant helping me…. And I would do anything to make her life comfortable- that’s what family is about. An eco system of giving. These days many boomers don’t want to help with grandchildren or finacial assistance and children don’t want to help their parents - so much selfishness between recent generations and it will get worse.
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@techtoby__ I'm launching a new political party named the "Envy Party" which will pursue the politics of envy. Feel free to join.
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@shivmalik Why is that a Boomers issue? We didn't pay that. It's you lot that decided that 10% deposit and a maximum 3 times income mortgage could be loosened off. Anyway, when we die, it will all go to Rachel as inheritance tax.
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@sophielouisecc My father, who died 5 years ago at the age of 96, retired from Social Services at 60, and received half salary, inflation proofed, for 36 years. When he died he was receiving £40,000 pension plus old age pension.
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@catturd2 Your bombers are taking off from UK bases to bomb Iraq. Is your intention to be a local isolated power?
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- Pull out of NATO.
- Close all bases and remove all military personal from the UK, Germany, Spain, and France.
- Never protect these countries again.
- Stop all trade with these countries. ZERO.
- Refuse to share any military technologies and don't allow to them to buy any military equipment. Ever.
- Don't share any intelligence with them. NONE.
- Tell them they have to provide 100% of weapons and money to Ukraine.
- Cut them off completely.
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@HeatherBo63 I think that they are setting the scene for it to be abolished by the time that they retire themselves. It's turkeys voting for Christmas.
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Don't want to get into a bun fight here but why am I reading posts from younger people complaining about people getting a state pension?
Errrr, this is how it has always been. When we're young, we work hard for years and then we reach an age where we receive a pension and it's the next generation's turn.
What is it with a lot of younger people nowadays (god, I sound like my dad!), they want it all and would be happy if we just kicked the bucket when we retire.
I receive my state pension in November this year and I'm bloomin' well not going to feel guilty about it. I would never have complained about this when I was younger and working full time. Never even considered it.
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Formula 1 has prepared 6 measures for the meeting that will take place next week, in order to solve the issues saw in the first 3 race
- Increse the power of super clipping (frmo 250kW to 350kW)
- Reduce energy consumption so that it does not run out so quickly
- Reduce the maximum recharge per lap to 6MJ
- Unrestricted use of active aerodynamics, meaning it can be activated at any point on the circuit
- Increase the ICE/MGU-K ratio (at the earliest from 2027 onwards)
- Simplify the rules to give the drivers more control
📰 @wearetherace

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@ukilaw Because Trump has spent the last year playing "mean girl" against those countries.
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The riddle I’ll never be able to solve:
How did the UK, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Canada and Australia collectively decide that confronting the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, soon-to-be nuclear Ayatollah, sitting astride the global energy chokepoint, is simply “not their war”?
How did the memory, experience, philosophy and logic of a millennium of Western civilisation simply vanish?
Is TDS really that deadly a mental disease?
Can anyone help decipher this puzzle?
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@WorldByWolf Only the top few percent went to University. They then moved into Professional and Managerial roles. Now every average person goes to University, expects a job beyond their ability, and have a voice on the Internet to moan about it.
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Boomers had the single best standard of living across their entire lives than any generation in history. Free university, affordable housing, the NICE economic years, and now the triple lock on pensions.
They are, in aggregate, the single most selfish generation ever. I can’t afford to own my own house, I have massive university debts, I live in a time of high youth unemployment and stagnant economic growth, and @RobertJenrick now has the temerity to suggest I want to pay more in tax to fund gold plaited pensions for the richest generation ever.
I know exactly how Reform came to the decision to keep the triple lock. Farage is actually instinctively against it but he’s seen the polling that shows getting rid of the triple lock would lead to a flood of voters going to the Tories or Labour.
I hope Restore Britain actually have the guts to level with people and say we can’t afford to maintain the triple lock and instead commit to some combination of raising the retirement age, capping the rate of increase, introducing a degree of means testing, and actually in the long term getting the government out of the pensions business and shifting that responsibility onto employers and employees.
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@MarkGriffin59 You have tax relief on it when you make contributions, and growth of the investment is tax free. You pay tax when you draw your pension out. It is spreading your income, and the tax on it, across your life time. This is fair.
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@PhillipsPOBrien So he's not winning and he's flailing around for people to blame.
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@Arrogance_0024 Because Bush correctly went through the United Nations. He also, incorrectly, gave evidence of WMDs to justify the war. He shouted "wolf", and the next time no-one came to his aid.
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@wibblyteapot Well I got up an hour earlier than the day before, so gained an hour of life.
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Peter Hitchens is called a "fanatic" for wanting to address the clock change
The state takes away one hour from everyone's lives, in the middle of the night, hoping no-one will notice
one hour of jet lag, the next day
body clock messed up
Life is short, and every second counts
people diddled into starting work one hour early, on the Monday morning, and people think that is normal
I call that... insane
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@PaulEmbery And the Indian Restaurants filled up when the pubs closed. Now they are shut by 10.30.
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When I was growing up, pubs would often be rammed until closing time (not so much during the week, but certainly at weekends). The bell for “last orders” would usually spark a rush to the bar. These days, even the most popular pubs seem to start emptying out around 8.00-9.00pm, including on Fridays and Saturdays. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? Is there a reason for it?
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