Can someone tell me please!

How not giving bus passes to the likes of Sir Alan Sugar, and Peter Stringfellow, will save the government money?
This is what Nick Clegg said yesterday, is he stupid, does he really think those people, or any millionaires use the bus pass?
What he really meant was, taking the bus pass off the pensioners would save them money.
Does he think we are idiots, he lost some more votes yesterday for sure. that's if he had any to come, whih I doubt.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

I don't think Clegg could get any sillier than he is at the moment. Does'nt have a single sensible policy to speak of. Sugar, Stringfellow, et.al. , would rather be dead, than seen on a bus. His p***taking video just about sums him up, a "sorry" mess indeed.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

I doubt whether Alan Sugar or Pete Stringfellow applied for bus passes and I also doubt whether Clegg would have even checked who has one and who hasn't anyway. If this is so and the pass isn't taken advantage of, then obviously it costs the country nothing.
Taking the bus pass off pensioners I think would lose votes Wrinkley and also the buses would be just about empty in many areas, (certainly they would be on our bus route) so the bus companies would cease to operate the service and bus drivers would lose their jobs.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

Instead of penalising the elderly who have paid into the system all their lives they should remove all child benefit and automatic council houses because a lot of those people are nothing but scroungers.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

With that I mostly agree but with only one thing I don't.

We have paid into NOTHING.

All payments are used in the current tax year. There is no pot, the only thing that rolls into the following tax year is an ever increasing public debt.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

But it could be argued that the elderly have "earned the privilege" Generally, this country aims to look after our elderly doesn't it? Because most people who are now elderly pulled their weight and paid up for others when they were young and working I don't think it unreasonable to say they deserve the bus pass (as well as other things).

Re: Can someone tell me please!

If there is no pot where do pension payments come from then. The answer is there must be a pot so bus passes can come from the same source as pensions which we have paid for with our NI contributions. In fact because I have not yet reached state pension age I can go onto a site which gives me the date I will be eligible and also includes the bus pass so they are linked and there is a pot.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

No, there IS NO POT!

Instead as Aerolor wrote there is an earned entitlement but the funds for such entitlements comes out of current years taxation.

All the payments that we made in the past went into the Treasury in order to go towards current years expenditure.

What is, or should be questioned is if the present system is still fit for porpose and if indeed pensions etc. should be ended and everyone the get means tested assistance to support their needs.

Times change, circumstances change, what was once appropriate may no longer be, and for that matter may not be affordable.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

Call it what you like if you pay in you are entitled to a pension and a bus pass end of story. If not I want all my NI contributions refunded. I have never recieved a penny in any sort of benefit but I am entitled to my pension and bus pass because of what I have paid into during the years.

Re: Can someone tell me please!

That is the way it is Doglover. Private pensions where you draw an anuity (or sometimes still have a final salary scheme privately) are a different thing, because there is a "pot" built up by an individual there and it is managed by private organisations who take a gamble on how long people will live after drawing their private pensions - they make a profit out of the private pension schemes (at least that's the intention and they move the goalposts accordingly).

I have always thought it the wrong way round that the pensions we draw today, along with other benefits, the nhs, etc.etc. are being paid for by the workers of today. I maybe naive, but I think it would have been better if funds had been built up and invested sensibly years in advance of being drawn. These things are too important to be left to chance and hope that we will always be able to pay them from those who are working.