But don't worry, trusty Munguin readers, as my Twitter friend @dtaylor5633 points out, Cameron and Blair McDougal's broad shoulders will have this covered.
They told us that our pensions, state or private, would be safe in their United Kingdom. Indeed, there were people who knocked on old people's doors and told them their state pension would stop on Independence Day.
So much so that even the unionist Department of Work and Pensions were forced to issue a statement reassuring people that it was not so.
Likewise with private pensions, we were told that they wouldn't be able to cope with the financial uncertainty of an independent Scotland. That our investments would only be safe if we stayed together and pooled and shared, the UKOK way, in our good old, stable, United Kingdom.
So, the question is, were they lying about this, as they were about so much else, or are the likes of Cameron and McDonut on it?
I think they knew fine well, all, this stuff was going to happen; and used it for "Project Fear" anyway.
ReplyDeleteMy conclusion too, although they are so crap at their jobs, I sometimes wonder if they foresee anything.
DeleteMoney markets can go up as well as down. They accused us (wrongly) of basing our economy on oil. They base theirs on financial services, and we iknow what happens when they go bottom up.
And apparently the number of pensioners and the length of time the pesky buggers live after 65 is another problem for the pension companies (and, of course, the state).
Sheesh... had they not heard of the baby boom and the vast number of people who would be getting to pension age in the period up to 2025 or so? And did they not notice that bit by bit the average life expectancy had been rising and rising?
Nope, it escaped them in the passing dust of white powder...
tris
ReplyDeleteAnd pray do tell what proposals do the snpBAD to ensure all Scots
have a fair and equitable pension.......Without one hopes increasing
Personal taxation.
Obviously thev snpBAD Oil genie is firmly shut up in his bottle it will
be many a year before or if ever the snpBAD attempt that pack of lies
Again.
If Indepedence day had ( thank god I his infinite wisdom it didn't. ) been
achieved by snpBAD there would not of been any pension nhs the whole
Panaboly of a civilised nation would of been washed away .
Still like all nats you would all be happier eating good Scottish mud than
Have UK gold........
Actually, that's not the point Niko.
DeleteBrown, Darling, McDoeball and many others told us our pensions would be crap in Scotland. The DWP would stop paying them. I met a woman who told me that she was for independence BUT she was told by a Labour bloke at the door, that her pension would be stopped. She would have nothing to live on.
I later saw a Tweet from a Labour bloke saying that he had left the party because of that kind of thing. He'd been a councillor for years.
Now the DWP made it plain that state pensions would continue to be paid, just as they are to pensioners who have moved to Cyprus or Spain or France.
No one seriously denied that when there is a change there is a wobble. There will be if the UK comes out of the EU, but unless you think Scots are genetically too stupid to run pensions businesses, and that the Uk is too corrupt to follow the norms in cases of countries splitting, there would have been no long term problem.
What's with the oil? The story was always that we could manage fine without it and that it would be a wonderful bonus.
Denmark manages to pay good wages and have a wonderful social contract and it doesn't have any oil. Do you think that Scots are just stupider than Danes?
I'm wondering about the UK gold. As far as I remember Brown sold it off at the bottom of the market. Smart.
Ask all the people eating out of foodbanks what they thinking about U KOK Gold.
Thanks to you we have full fat Cameron.
DeleteI think the £1.6+ trillion debt, those financial whiz kids at Westminster are running up, is a wee bitty worse; eh Niko?
DeleteI actually can;t imagine anything worse. A cruel heartless government we didn't vote for, dishing out misery to anyone who isn't "them".
DeleteAt war in Syria; at war in Libya; helping the Saudis to slaughter innocent children in Yemen.
And all the while being run, largely, by George Osborne, whose grasp on economics is not dissimilar to my grasp on astro physics.
Yes, Jim, I think Mr Swinney balanced the books. Any debt Scotland has is our share of Osborne's
The last time I saw any UK gold dearest Niko was that pile of Shite they left on my doorstep. You are elderly enough to be a Granddad so you have convinced me in my thinking that age seldom conveys wisdom merely years. Now Niko you are old enough to be either in reciept ot your pension or about to think of your Grand kids, left in the hands of either Tory or Red Tory they will never see one. So much for your staying with the big fat shoulders and heads of the Union.
DeleteTris I notice that one of the insurers on TV touting for business from elderly people actually is Scottish, we used to do a lot of that. I also laughed at your comment about Georgie and economics, I used to make similar about Gordon, why have a ahem History Graduate in charge of money, other than he is your rival/friend, delete as appropriate. Helena
True. And since the days of Thatcher, chancellors are so powerful. They always were of course, but more and more so.
DeleteTony Blair almost left domestic affairs completely to Brown, while he got on with making a mess of half the world with his interfering.
Dr Brown PhD thesis was, I think, a history of the Labour party. What more to say?
Oh and be warned I went out and purchased a new better and more
ReplyDeleteUsable laptop ready for the next holyrood election.......
Hopefully the spellchecker is working as well lol
Has it got a paragraph reminder?
DeleteGet an updated Liebour checker while you're at it.
DeleteThey are pricey. Imagine how hard they have to work... Wear out really quick too. Average life 2 weeks or a million lies, whichever comes first.
DeleteLovely one from Mara about getting to see a doctor in 48 hours (which you can get now if it's anything like serious). When pressed on the matter it turns out that you can see a practitioner, whatever that is, and not a doctor.
Mara says it was the press that got it wrong, but it's funny that she didn't bother to correct them when they made the mistake.
Hope you did not do what I did, HP does not work with Windows 10 and neither company seems accepts responsibility. Helena
DeleteThis is typical, head up their arse, westminster non existent cash flow management. These are the clowns who think we would make a worse job of managing our finances than they do. These are the halfwits who decided not to create an oil fund, the Muppets who in their wisdom collect NI and spend it, instead of creating a pension fund, the utter bastards who create tax refunds for their buddies by cutting services, who without a hint of embarrassment, employ 3000 investigators for benefit fraud but only 300 to investigate tax avoidance/ evasion and non collection costing the UK hundreds of billions of pounds over the last ten years. You could not make this up, and I didn't.
ReplyDeleteNo. I know you didn't.
DeleteThe UK is a country made for rich people by rich people. Monarchs, Old Etonians, and yes, sadly even old Fettisonians.
None of them done a proper day's work in their lives. None has to.
All of them sure of their place in the lords.
Of course they don;t employ many people to check up on tax fraud. They might check up on THEM.
And yes, becasue they are a bunch on inbred muppets it never occurred to them that poor people would live to collect pensions, so they took their money and spent it on other stuff, like palaces, and champagne and wine cellars full of the best.
And as for the oil find. Well no. Other countries need that, but they had wars to fight and brown people to kill when the president wanted them to go to war.
And they also needed nuclear weapons, becasue, you know, if you don;t have them, like 95% of the world's countries, then you are sitting ducks, and should never count on waking up tomorrow.
And the sad thing is that people believe their crap.
And they talk about the Scots being too stupid to run their own affairs... Sheesh
I totally agree with what you say. This 'pension fund' that they have created is one more scam, in a long line of scams. Really don't understand why people can't see through them. They task money away from pensioners & the disabled, but can find plenty of money to give themselves a bloody pay rise & money is no problem when it comes to buying bombs to drop in foreign countries that have damn all to do with us
DeleteHi Martian!
DeleteI note MPs pensions aren't in danger...
And I don't suppose any of the royal family, no matter how little they do, will die in penury.
I wonder how many people their weapons have killed today.
And they wonder why people from the Middle East hate us? Bloody hell, they ARE thick.
Hi Martian!
DeleteI note MPs pensions aren't in danger...
And I don't suppose any of the royal family, no matter how little they do, will die in penury.
I wonder how many people their weapons have killed today.
And they wonder why people from the Middle East hate us? Bloody hell, they ARE thick.
All the truths came out after they got the result they wanted. There was nothing positive in their campaign, how the hell are we a family of nations? They have bought their miserable Inion time, that's all.
ReplyDeleteAre we unique in all the peoples of The World in that we are incapable of governing ourselves? Hardly a vote winner.
I meant Union. Somebody else needs a new laptop!
DeleteYes, a pack of lies.
DeleteAnd now that some of them are having the same treatment as we got (in the EU referendum) they don't as Jonesie would say, like it up 'em.
Tough, I say.
One fact I read earlier today and if I have understood it correctly it would appear if you did not work you will not get a pension based on your husbands contributions as is the case at present It would also appear if the writer is correct no benefits like a widows pension will be paid either I haven't seen this anywhere else but the writer identified herself as a 60year old who would not be entitled to a pension until she was 66yrs
ReplyDeleteAnyone able to throw any light on this?
NO, I've not seen that either.
DeleteI'd not put anything past them.
I'm guessing now that the number of people who never worked will be very small. I have always understood that a woman was entitled to a widow's pension when her husband died, but strangely not the reverse.
And that a woman would get a pension based on her husband's contributions.
But they have been messing with pensions so much recently, and fighting the Council of Europe (an organisation set up by the UK after the 2nd world war), and the UN, (of which the UK was a founder member) for paying indecently low pensions and benefits.
I'd not be surprised of they stopped pensions altogether.
Certainly women no longer pet pensions at 60. The age is rising to 66, along with men's (which are rising form 65), then the age will be increased to 67.
Frankly I'd be surprised if they didn't go up to 68, 69 and 70 in teh near future.
We didn't put the money away; we fought wars instead and protected our status as America's lickspittle.
Oh to be Norwegian, where they had the sense to do that.
I'd be interested to hear if there anyone has more information.
It's already up to 68 Tris- my younger cousin has that for a retiral date. Mine is currently 67 due to transitional protection BUT there is another review reporting in May and it has been "suggested" that for anyone retiring after April 2028 like me, the age will increase again perhaps to 70. DEEP joy.
DeleteBut the Yoons tell us there would be no pensions in an independent Scotland...
I believe that the Widows pension fell at the last budget, they are doing away with it, I bet many older women will eventually find themselves a whole lot poorer. My Mother in Law was dependent on it when my Father in Law died aged 63. He never got his pension that he paid for over forty years plus. Mum in law never paid the full stamp and thus was waiting on him retiring. I did but I know many my age and younger who did not. Helena
DeleteThanks PP and Helena.
DeleteI think they will probably means test the pension in the end, so many people who have paid for it all their lives will not get it.
It won't be a popular move, and I think it will take a government with a bigger than 12 majority, but I think it will go that way.
Maybe gradually, but I see it coming.
They just don't have the money. Ironic that, when they told us that WE wouldn't have the money.
I'm having a laugh listening to all these English ministers on the radio every tell us that the Health Service and Education, Defence and will collapse if the UK gets out of the EU.
In the meantime Boris lies through his teeth about EU regulations.
No one has anything positive to say.
What does that remind me of? Déjà vu all over again, as they say!
I start off indifferent to the EU (although I'll vote to stay in, because Mrs Thatcher's "socialism by the back door" sticks in my mind, and I believe that the EU probably protects us from the worst of Tory and UKIP extremism) but incompetent fools like Jeremy Hunt and Nikki Morgan advocating for it are doing a good job of making me think twice.
If I were Cameron I'd call these idiots off.
Our greatest fear was realised when Scotland did not vote for separation ,we are still stuck with the Barnet Formula and are without our own parliament
ReplyDeleteTemporarily only, Anon! :)
DeleteCourage!
We were not asked to vote for separation. We were asked whether our country should be independent. We would still be joined to our neighbour. We would have hoped to be on good terms with them. We would share several institutions, and we would both ( for now ) have been members of the EU.
DeleteSeparation is a negative word used by people who did not think independence was in our national interest or perhaps their personal interest. That is not what I voted yes to.
S. A.
Tris
ReplyDeleteThe wealthy don't need pensions and the MP's who do need them get a golden one at the end of the day and at 65 years. Most of us knew the pension scares were rubbish, we told people it was rubbish but Labour and Brownstuff told them they would lose them with independence, we were well and truly screwed over and it will happen again and again if we don't wake up very soon. Even last night Dugdull was still talking all the Better Together shit to the extent that she would ignore the will of the voters, they have no shame and the sooner Labour die the better in Scotland, I don't give a shit what they do in England. I want all the traditional unionist parties to die now, we need and deserve better, we need a new and more diverse debate. The Greens are starting to improve in my mind, not great but getting there. More members would give them more chance of success and I am seriously leaning there way for one of my votes.
Bruce
We certainly have a need for some decent people in the unionist parties.
DeleteI didn't watch their bun fight last night. There is nothing any of them could convince me of.
However a friend watched it and said that there really weren't any winners.
There were however losers.
Rennie of course is some sort of bad joke. He shouldn't be there. The idea of him holding any kind of power is just too idiotic for words.
Dugdale is so badly advised. I'm sure she's a decent nice woman, but, really. Not up to the job. As a potential first minister she is actually frighteningly inept.
Ruth Davidson, for all her awful policies like making people pay for education when we are crying out for educated people or reintroducing charges for prescriptions for folk between 19 and 65, is the best of a totally chronic bunch. It's beyond credibility that she would ever be a first minister in Scotland, but odious policies aside, she's maybe smart enough to be. The rest aren't.
On the independence side, Paddy (my mate says) was impressive. Of course he too will never be FM, but he was impressive last night. He seems to have grown in stature. I wish they were more solid on independence.
Nicola is Nicola. She is competent and utterly committed to Scotland. You can't ask for much more. I'm relieved she and not any of the others is first minister.
Anyone receiving a state pension in Scotland is paid from Scottish taxation and revenue streams. That applies to all monies supplied through the Barnett formula. No matter how badly skewed the Gers figures are in painting Scotland's finances, it is clear that the money supplied to the SG, spent by the SG is from revenue created by Scotland. We receive no money from English tax payers. However, even though, Scotland can afford to fund these pensions, because we are still in this union, our pensioners will be treated exactly the same as the rest of the UK.
ReplyDeleteBut even if we left, people have paid into this pension scheme, and these individuals would be entitled to (and indeed the DWP agreed) get their pension paid.
DeleteThose who had paid in a percentage of their contritions would be, when they reached retirement age to that percentage of their pension. For the period when they worked and paid contributions to an independent Scottish government, they would be entitled to a pension from Edinburgh.
I think Ruth is not a very nice person,One of the reasons I think back to is the lie she told on the day of the ref. about there being people being intimidated at the polling in Annan I think it was. D&G police attended and said no such thing happened. There are a number of instances she has been caught out telling lies. I cannot understand why she should feel the need to do this but I find it off puting to say the least
ReplyDeleteYou can always watch a thief, a liar not so easy
Yes, that was stupid. It wasn't likely to influence the result.
DeleteIt seems that some of them have this compulsion to tell a story that makes independence parties or voters seem bad.
Maybe they are just desperately passionate about their united kingdom and that passion drives them to lie for it.
I will say it because no-one else will. Straddling a tank's gun barrel as a publicity shot is completely naff.....
ReplyDeleteYes, it is. I know John Major and Margaret Thatcher were seen to do something of the sort.
DeleteTanks kill people.
OK you can say soldiers kill people, so why would you ever be photographed with anything one, or thing military. It's a good question. I suppose the answer is that we need the military for defence, and there may be times when we would be grateful for them...besides they do a great deal more than kill people.
Tanks are so 'in your face' killing machines that a photograph like that is as you say, naff, tasteless.
I can't abide Ruth Davidson, she can't conceal her batred for the Yes sde. I agree about the aff tank stunt, how is it a good idea to mimic Thatcber?
ReplyDeleteOne thing to bear in mind abojt Davidson is that she is only biding her time at Holyrood, she will be heading for an English constituency at the first available oppurtunity. That is what she wanted to do before she was parachuted in to her current job by Cameron to prevent Murdo Fraser setting up a seperate party (a move supported by most of the Scottish membership). I suppose like all Unionists her first love is for England, (this goes all the way back to James VI).
I think Ruth will have a career in politics. Of the opposition she is the most competent leader, but as you point out she is Cameron's choice. Daviddaughter, rather than Davidson.
DeleteOf course she may have hitched her horse to the wrong wagon if Boris's side wins the referendum.
Murdo's party might have made some headway. But I can't see anything much happening while they are really just "The English Tories".
I think most people living in Scotland have a distinctive Scottishness about them. I've a good friend who is a staunch unionist, and yet who is absolutely Scottish. The Tories here are seen as an English party, probably because they are so thinly spread in Scotland, and only represented in London by Muddle.
I think you are right. If they had elected Fraser they might have had a chance of being thought a Scottish party.