For Newsnight: should we end universal benefits for better off pensioners?

Ah! Now we are "cooking with gas". Hope you will have time to do the brasses,operating numerous search engines can be very time consuming.Nevertheless,less than an interest in all, is a betrayal of intellect, (just a passing look will do)
No need for those little electronic games to get your mind going, we seem to have developed an alternative, granted some wish to expose us/me, to the gamut of their emotions in the process.
My granddaughter had a cat she called Schrodinger, mainly because he was nowhere when wanted,and everywhere when not required, but he is definitely dead now.
The point reached now,admitting that the subject hardly ever crops up, is that, ignoring incitement to disaffection , we are getting some interesting (other) subjects mooted.Emotive words have been shown, because they are less technical,to be less accurate.
A little syllogism ,a lot of denigration, but a start.Nothing that erodes the rules of good taste can be moral, whatever name we give it.Anyone who purports to be more moral than others is a majority of one.
Defining benefits is a minefield, the inevitable "cut off" point causes more trouble than enough. Hopefully you will not need a benefit (other than a non-means tested universal one) Pity the one who has a penny more than the demarcation amount, and as a result is poorer by pounds than the person with initially, a penny less.

Amazingly we have got back to the main point of the thread. How did that happen?

Yes but the point is as far as I am concerned is that universal benefits mean exactly that - we all pay in according to ability and in my book we all get paid out . I think that if we all want to keep to all for everyone system though we will all have to bite the bullet and pay more according to ability -I've missed the point of the thread I think - I will stop now!

You'd still have to decide how much income above poverty level disqualifies a pensioner from receiving universal benefits, though - and obviously it would be way above that level.

Yes but if we are going to try to define a better off pensioner than we have to start somewhere and I thought that perhaps trying to define a poor one would be a good start. Once we have agreement as to what constitutes poverty then we could have a go at what constitutes a well off person. That would be much easier I would think

But the proposal isn't based on poverty, it's aimed at pensioners who have an income above a yet-to-be-decided level whom the government (and others) think don't need the perks they presently get.

Well there has been efforts at defining poverty in the past but I would think this changes over time really. But a minimum of access to heat, food (a good diet) , housing , education, health care, cultural norms etc would be a start in my book.

kittkylester Someone had a go at defining a better-off pensioner way back in the thread, before all the diversions. He or she is a pensioner who has more money than whoever is speaking. I don't know how those applying benefits plan to define it, they are bound to disappoint those who fall just over the line.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.

absent The Scottish Chaucerians are the perfect answer to those who think that the Scots tongue is just "an ignorant way of speaking English"

The language of those poets was very close to Chaucer's, and in Scotland has changed less over the centuries than the language has in "correct" south-east England.

I've just read through this thread and am now going for a lie down!

And, anyway, just how does one define a better off pensioner?

jeni I wonder if this thread is actually a perfect example of Brownian motion?

Elegran I love the Scottish Chaucerians. Apparently they are no longer included on London University's BA syllabus. Such a shame. (Old English is no longer compulsory either.)

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell

Sorry, wrong play.

Morning, fellow netters. Any fish in the sea? I thought I saw a shark around, but it turned out it was just a dugong with delusions of grandeur. I believe they went almost extinct, didn't they, as they were not bright enough to keep away out of the nets of the hungry fishermen.

It is the east and Juliet is the sun...

What the ....?

Morning has broken...

But lo what light from yonder window breaks?

  .. C Look, love, what envious streaks
  Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
  Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Well, no mountain tops here, but good morning!

In thunder, lightning or in rain....
When the hurly-burly's done,
When the battle's lost or won.

That'll be tomorrow then....

annobel Romeo and Juliet.

And when shall we all meet again?
I'm in Cardiff tomorrow?

Then palm to palm in holy pilgrims kiss!

Parting is such sweet soorow