Bullying the elderly

Labour delegates left Brighton this week with the clear impression that their leader will depart some time in the next four years, and possibly sooner, to begin his long-awaited retirement. Mr Blair will launch himself at the annual beanos of American corporations. His speeches, doubtless on themes such as ‘Me and Dubya’ or the ‘Special Relationship’, will earn him millions, and no one will begrudge him his loot, least of all Gordon Brown. It might be worth remembering, though, that ordinary pensioners have not done as well under this government, and that for them the outlook is grim. The most telling figures on pensioner poverty produced this week did not come from the Chancellor but from 73-year-old Sylvia Hardy, jailed for a week for refusing to pay £53.71 of her council tax bill. Miss Hardy had not refused to pay her council tax full-stop. She has willingly been paying Exeter City Council £55 a month, a sum she calculates would have been the bill due on her flat had her council tax, like her pension, increased in line with the government’s inflation index over the past four years. What she refuses to pay is the extra £16 a month by which her council tax bill has risen over and above the rate of inflation. Since 2001 her council tax bill has risen 38 per cent but her pension, which is supposed to be linked to the cost of living, by just 6.8 per cent. Millions of pensioners, like Miss Hardy, are already handing more than one sixth of their state pension straight back to the public purse. Their lives are becoming impossible.