Can we trust our Westminister politicians to support pensioners?

Then: `this strategy of propping up pensioners and the welfare state via high taxes is not sustainable’. And the worst of all? `many pensioners frankly don’t need the money’.

There’s a lot more bile coming from commentators post the Autumn Statement. It’s easy to get mad and I tried to be sensible and look at the different points of view but ended up with one solitary conclusion – pensioners are basically hated and should not expect rises in the state pension – ever.

At the end of our working lives we should just drop dead and hope someone pays for our burial. I have to find it in my heart to forgive one politician in particular for his wicked thoughts. Sir Charles Walker, a Tory backbencher who is stepping down at the next election declared in the Daily Telegraph: ‘I think we are almost insulating one favourite group as much as we can from the economic difficulties we are facing now, at the expense of every other group. Maintaining the triple lock is becoming increasing difficult to justify’.

As an oldie I recall nothing but hard work in my life, paying a mortgage, raising two children, never owing a new car because they were too expensive, few foreign holidays, and doing house repairs ourselves because workmen were also too expensive.

The taxman helped himself to what he wanted from our joint incomes and we didn’t complain. We paid for the additional private pensions we hoped would see us through retirement because the state one would never be enough.

We knew the money for the health service had to come out of the taxes of the people so we didn’t moan about that. We also knew that public sector workers enjoyed much better pensions than those of us in the private sector without it having to come out of their own pockets. During those years I did spend a short time working for the public sector. I left it as I missed journalism so much and went back to the private sector despite knowing I would never have the sort of pension public sector workers enjoy.

So I think I deserve to feel more than a bit cross when people say we oldies are getting too much largesse from the state. Of course there are many well off pensioners but I suggest many of them worked in the public sector.

There appears to be an attitude that pensioners don’t deserve a double figure rise in their state pensions because they have enjoyed too much largesse already.

I must add that many pensioners today work unpaid. Charities wouldn’t survive without them.