Tories plan benefit cuts for pensioners

....that we’d just use the car a lot more. Around here, and I dare say in other areas with very good public transport, I think they do keep a lot of cars off the roads.

As for prescriptions, I don’t think they should be free regardless of income and assets. I know he was probably an extreme case, but someone we knew would stockpile masses of free items - more than once I counted over 60 in his bathroom - and more than once they were all thrown away by an ex nurse friend of his. This is someone who left 2 houses paid for when he died, and over £1m in cash.

The thing is, he was very tight with money and I know that if he’d had to pay even £2 or £3 per item, he’d never have stockpiled so many prescriptions he didn’t need.
I doubt very much that he was the only one.

A Swedish friend told me that everyone pays - albeit a small amount - for prescriptions in Sweden, with an annual cap on costs for those who need a lot.

Lanclassl, how would you decide who 'really needs' the bonus? Should people have to prove that they have nothing before they get it, and how would you have them do this at a cost of less than the £10 you'd be saving? Which possessions would you count as evidence that they didn't 'need' the bonus? A TV? A car? A house? Or is it ok to have spent your money on things like that, but not if you have kept it in the bank?

Regarding travel passes, I think there should be a national system, rather than a postcode lottery. I think that public transport should be free, or heavily subsidised anyway, to discourage single person car use and cut pollution, but it would definitely be fairer if all pensioners got the same concessions - after all, we all paid the same taxes.

Where I live, public transport is very expensive, and a lot of bus routes have been cut, so people living in one village who has a doctor or a friend in another will often have no way of getting there without a car. It is encouraging people to sell up (often to second home owners) and move to somewhere more accessible, which is cruel after they have been part of a community for many years. In fact, a lot of communities are breaking up as a result. If there were travel passes for all, people would use the buses and get about more, which would help the economy and save money on treating depression etc.

sodapop I'll join.

What a pain Maggiemaybe you must be so frustrated by it all. Associate membership granted

You are very welcome Dinahmo I get fed up with the criticisms levelled at us by others often with little or no understanding of our situation,

You have every sympathy from me, sodapop.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation that's been changed (and I don't know much about the expat situation, so am not commenting on that either way) I feel that people who acted in good faith when they acted, and have since had the rug pulled from under them have grounds for complaint.

The older we get, the more important it becomes that changes in policy are eased in, as we have less time or opportunity to make up anything we are losing.