I’m not dead just yet (From Oxford Mail)
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I’m not dead just yet
10:00am Friday 30th March 2012 in Letters
HAVING retired, after 46-plus years, I was looking forward – naively perhaps – to a more relaxed period in which I would have a greater say in my daily ‘routine’ – a word I hate.
What I have discovered is a tendency for others – usually still working – to assume I’m either dead already or have too much time on my hands that can only be filled by their ingenious suggestions.
There is an assumption in some quarters that if I have a minor accident it must be treated now as ‘life-threatening’, considering that I am now numerically closer to death than birth.
Thankfully, my friends abroad treat me differently, considering old age only to be something you reach when you are no longer capable of self-sustaining daily life and in need of full-time nursing, prior to a respectful death of course – unlike here.
I have already made it known that I don’t plan to depart this world until I have at least received more in pension than I paid in and have informed them that although my bus pass suggests I may “expire in June 2013”, I’m not in that much of a hurry. In fact, having viewed the local political scene in recent years, I may even stick my oar in and annoy even more people than I have up to date... I can hear my poor wife groaning already.
If I’m going to be a grumpy old man I might as well give it 100 per cent effort.
MICK HEAVEY, Oxford Road, Old Marston, Oxford
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Comments (1)
4:18pm Sat 31 Mar 12
morgeo says...
Perhaps you would like to be grumpy along with us. I am one of 1,000,000 pensioners who have retired abroad. Many have done so to be with their family. Why should I be grumpy ? Well, there are 500,000 pensioners, approx half, who get no increase in their pension ever just because of where they live, whilst the other half all enjoy the annual uprating which should be every pensioners right. So why is it not so. When the government pass the uprating in parliament there is a regulation that freezes us out. Yes, they hide this in the uprating which could not be more obscene. All pensioners paid their mandatory NI payments throughout their working years and all should be drawing the full pension without exception.
There is no rational or moral justification for this discrimination and yet it seems that David Cameron thinks this is acceptable as he certainly knows about it and has done nothing about it. So much for the "fairness" that he professes to seek for the pensioners. He need look no further but rectify this anomoly and save many pensioners from a certain future in poverty especially if they have no other pension to support them. Having served my country for many years in uniform and been proud to do so I am now ashamed of the British government and now the country that I retired to has put it's hand into the pockets of it's taxpayers to give me some financial support. My house is up for sale as I cannot maintain it. My state pension has about 1/3rd of puchasing power it had when I retired in 1997. The NI fund has a surplus of about 45 Billion pounds ( yes you read that right ) and they say they cannot afford to pay us which is an obvious lie as they borrow from it and you cannot borrow from an empty account. It would cost about 1/2 a billion to pay us all which is 1/90th of the fund. We are being ignored by the government Ministers who are in a position to rectify this situation at a stroke. David Cameron, you have the opportunity to stop this blatant robbery now and it has been going on for far too long. There is no logic to it where they freeze a pensioner in the Falkland Islands and yet pay the annual uprating to one in the Philippines. If he has any sense of fairness, justice and compassion for us then let him show it and do what he knows is the right thing.