The video below was filmed in 1985.
Pensioners no longer queue outside the post office to get their State Pension. If they have a bank account.
In the UK a State Pension is something that you pay for every single day of your working life via National Insurance Contributions. Which totally fecks up the old age of women who took time off work to raise a family…like me!
I had a heart-breaking phone call with the mother-in-law a few days ago. She and he are Struggling but not yet poverty-stricken.
What saved them was the fact that Grandad joined H.M.Forces as a Royal Engineer aged 16. He rose from Sapper to Major and retired at 55. He then spent 10 years working for the M.O.D. as a R.O. Retired Officer.
His Army pension is pretty healthy. Especially when compared to his son who joined H.M. Forces aged 17, served 22 years, and retired as a Staff Sergeant because he had so little respect for the officers he worked with.
:o)
Anyways. My in-laws are worried about this winter coming. They are both in their 80’s but they own a gorgeous new-build (25 years ago it was new) that is fully insulated and double-glazed with a fabby central heating system.
Both of them have undergone open heart surgery in the past four years and Nan has had breast cancer with all the horrible treatment that involves.
No matter what passed between us over the past 2 years with the C-crap, I’d not want them to visit our house this winter.
We have one wood burner. No oil in the Rayburn/Aga. A buggered boiler, ergo no central heating. Victorian sash windows that CANNOT be double-glazed or messed with because we live in a Grade 2* Listed Building.
Our house is close to freezing in the deep mid-winter.
I swear that’s why we never get ill. All that fresh air coming through the closed doors and windows. LOL :o)
Not much has changed. Has it ?!