Vote Tory and you are voting to work until you are 66!

[fishy_taste]

What skews this point of view is that it is not actually about whether you want to work up to this age or that, it's about when you can claim the state pension. Sadly, it seems, employers take it that when you reach 65 or 60 or whatever age is legally set, you have to retire.

 

You don't.

 

It merely sets the age at which you can claim your state pension. Of course, you can work less hours and claim part of your pension, much like many benefits.

 

Or, you could have sorted out a private pension which are governed by entirely different criteria.

 

So, vote Labour or Tory or Lib-Dem and the age you can start to claim your state pension will be 65 or 66 or whatever.

 

Of course, if you want to continue to work, full or part time, and your employer isn't 'forcing' you to retire, then the pension age issue is, well, not an issue.

 

Really, Titanic, are you basing your vote on a superfluous issue such as the pension age?

[JFKvsNixon]

No prejudices at all, I don't like this for the reasons stated.

 

I am aware that people are living longer and this needs to be funded, presumably the logic of this policy is that the saving comes from not paying the state pension out for a year which will equate to around £5,500 per person affected.

 

However, this is only a saving if no-one would have replaced the person retiring and if the employer has to fill the vacancy then we are paying for someone to be unemployed for another year which costs considerably more than the cost of the pension.

 

So I'm not in denial of the problem, it just looks like they have taken this in isolation without considering the knock-on affects of it.

 

Do you have any idea how much this country has to pay for it's pensions? To put it into perspective the central government next year will pay £122.4 billion pounds on pensions. It will pay £132.1 billion on defence, education and benefits put together.

 

Does that not put the looming pension crisis into some sort perspective, the problem is only going to get much larger.

[Magilla]

One of the interesting aspects of last night’s debate was confirmation from the Tories that we will all have to wait until we are 66 before we can claim our pension.

 

Personally I find this policy ridiculous and poorly thought out.

 

Surely at a time of high unemployment it makes sense to give the 65 year olds their pension and to pass their jobs on to the many unemployed people.

 

So if you don’t want to work an extra year then vote Labour or Liberal.

 

Labour have already stated that they intend to increase the retirement age, they have promised not to increase it beyond 68!

[Tony]

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