Pensioners, it’s your turn to cough up

The welfare state is grotesquely unfair. There are people who receive thousands of pounds from the taxpayer with little government oversight, even when they have no genuine need for the cash. They spend it on things like cars, flat screen TVs and other luxury ephemera. And there is a sense of entitlement among these scroungers, a feeling that they are somehow owed the fruits of other people’s labour. These people are of course pensioners.

‘But, but, but,’ I hear them gargle through Wine Society crémant, ‘I’ve paid into the system all my life, I’ve earnt my pension!’ No you haven’t. You very unwisely handed over your taxes to successive governments who spaffed it on Millennium Domes and Ethiopian Spice Girls. You didn’t pay into a savings account, you paid into the kitty card. That money has been spent. You knew this. Ministers like to imply there is a big pot called ‘pensions: don’t touch!’ but never explicitly say so, because it isn’t true.