𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham has said he WILL end the triple lock. And that vow is tantamount to electoral suicide. It’s also a spiteful, morally-corrupt, kamikaze act by a Prime Minister who doesn’t have the guts to cut the benefits of the feckless and the lazy but chooses instead to cut the legs out from under society’s most vulnerable people. And THAT’S what will see him and his socialist shysters kicked out at the next election. And rightly so.

How in God’s name can any decent government target the elderly in order to make savings? How can Burnham want to drag millions of pensioners back to the bad old days when those who relied solely on the state pension couldn’t afford to heat their homes and ended up in hospital with strokes, hypothermia and respiratory illness brought on by freezing indoor temperatures? Has he forgotten that, before 2010, the UK’s state pension was one of the worst in the developed world? And that in 2010, after three decades of price-only indexing, the state pension had plummeted to just 16% of average earnings?

And THAT’S the part of the triple lock he intends to cut – the link to average earnings which is what plunged the elderly into abject poverty. Does this so-called ‘Man of the People’ not remember the ultimate insult to pensioners from his old boss, Gordon Brown, who in response to pensioners starving and dying gave them a bumper 75p a week pension rise?

The bloody cheek of it. The inhumanity of it! But THAT’S what Labour thought about the elderly back then and nothing’s changed. “I accept I may have to pay the political price,” Burnham said in his conference speech. “But someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off,”

So why isn’t he ripping the plaster off with benefit scroungers? Why isn’t he breaking through the pain barrier with the people scamming free cars and free houses because they don’t fancy working? Why is he forcing pain on the people who are the least able to take it?

OK, I know the triple lock is expensive. But it makes my blood boil when this Government says we can’t afford it. But if it can afford to spend £407billion on the benefits budget which supports millions who simply refuse to work; if it can afford to spend £4billion a year housing illegal immigrants; if it can afford to pay for the lifestyles of foreign criminals and terrorists who come here illegally, it can damn well afford pensioners the basic human dignity of eating AND staying warm.

Burnham says this cut to the triple lock (to a double lock so pensions would rise by inflation or a minimum of 2.5%) will fund his social care plans. No, it won’t. John Redwood reckons it will raise no more than £2billion which won’t even touch the sides but it could literally be the difference between life and death to many pensioners.

I’d like to see Andy Burnham or any of his jumped-up cabinet colleagues who pretend to be working class (Angela Rayner, I’m talking about you) live on £12,400 a year – about £240 a week. That piddling amount wouldn’t cover their weekly expenses for fancy restaurants and expensive wines.

No civilised society in trying to raise money should be doing it on the backs of pensioners. No decent Government panders to the idle and the feckless while allowing pensioners to freeze and go without food. But then this Labour Party rally does hate pensioners.

First, it was Reeves cutting the Winter Fuel payments. Now Burnham’s mob are after them again. Is it because they think pensioners can’t fight back? Well, newsflash, they CAN fight back with their vote – and come the election they will.

The millions of young people languishing on mental health benefits and those who refuse to do the jobs they believe to be beneath them historically don’t vote. But pensioners DO vote and come the election they will kick these socialist traitors out on their backside. They won’t even wait until the general election; they’ll hammer them in the local elections first.

But they shouldn’t have to do that. This government talks about the state pension like its bestowing largesse on the elderly. They talk like it’s a gift that now has to be taken back. No, the state pension is an entitlement for those who have spent their lifetime paying into the system. So why, when they’re at their weakest and no longer able to work, should they spend the years they have left scrabbling around trying to make ends meet?

It should be this government’s shame that in terms of GDP we currently spend the lowest on pensioners in all the G7 countries apart from Canada, who we share bottom place with.

The Retirement Living standards Index sets the basic cost of living at around £13,400 a year for a single person. Yet there are many single pensioners in the UK who are existing (not living) on £9,615 because they are on the older Basic State Pension system rather than the newer, higher flat rate. Imagine that – living on £177 a week? It’s called living in poverty.

And I sick to the back teeth of hearing how all pensioners are rich. The hell they are! Nearly 25% of ALL pensioners exist on the state pension and nothing else. Millions more have tiny pensions which just about allows them to eat and keep warm but very little else.

But is that what a decent old age in Britain now looks like – you have enough to stay alive but not enough to have an actual life where you meet with friends, have coffee out, have the odd holiday, buy the odd new dress? Is that too much for an elderly person to ask of a Labour government?

Burnham keeps telling us he has to make hard decisions – well he shouldn’t damn well be making them on the backs of vulnerable pensioners. This is a man whose whole political persona is based on him being a decent, caring guy who understands the struggles of people with little or no money. Well, if that’s who he really is, how can he even countenance cutting the triple lock?

It’s a move that will save him a piddling amount of money that will never in a million years achieve his social care aims. And does he not realise how terrifying and unsettling all this chat about scrapping the triple lock is for the elderly who are already dreading what might be a hard winter? Does he not realise how that kind of fear impacts the lives, the health and the well-being of old people living alone?

Clearly not. Burnham has shown he has no idea what it’s like to be poor and afraid. He’s also forgotten how insulting and degrading it is for the elderly to be talked about like they’re an expensive inconvenience to a society that no longer values them and sees them as a burden! And THAT should be his shame although I suspect in his newly elevated position – Burnham has forgotten the meaning of the word!