Britain’s gold-plated public sector pensions bill is on course to hit a record £60bn next year, yet is almost entirely ignored in favour of calls to cut the state pension on which many low income retired people depend.

The post Public Sector Pensions Bill to Hit Record £60 Billion appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

MPs say ‘chaos’ at Capita-run scheme could mean some claims miss tax-free time limit on lump sum payments

Bereaved families could face “unconscionable” tax bills because of “chaos” in the civil service pension scheme, the government has been warned.

Some lump sum pension payments to families are only tax-free if made within two years of a scheme being told of the member’s death.

Downing Street delivered a rare rebuke to a senior member of Donald Trump’s administration

Asked why the Lib Dems were opposed to a third runway at Heathrow when they professed to be in favour of growth, Cooper said she did not accept that a third runway would produce all the benefits its supporters claimed.

She explained:

On Heathrow, it is clear from looking at all of the economic analysis of airport growth over the last few years that many of the promises made by all sorts of different airport companies simply haven’t come to bear.

The promise of higher wage jobs hasn’t been substantiated. Often it’s lower paid jobs, and often not as many as they’ve claimed.

He argued there was no evidence to suggest the result of the Brexit vote had been swayed as a result of the effort

• Andy Burnham promises ‘serious dialogue’ over UK’s relationship with EU

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, has said he does not agree with his colleague Suella Braverman’s assertion that black people cannot be English.

Asked about her views in an interview on Sky News, Yusuf said:

In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.

Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me.

I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.

To say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.

I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.

You need 35 years of National Insurance contributions to get the full state pension. Ah, says David Craig, but the unemployed get 'pension credit', which pays exactly the same and comes with piles of freebies thrown in.

The post Want the Highest State Pension? Don’t Bother Working Too Much appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Just under 3,000 newly-retired pensioners who worked in the public sector have been given an unpleasant shock: the pensions they have been receiving for the last four months were ‘inflated’

The post Almost 3,000 newly-retired pensioners told “sorry, we paid you too much” appeared first on Portugal Resident.

Andy Burnham plans to pass a law scrapping the triple lock before the next election despite Labour pledging in its 2024 manifesto to keep it intact and the PM himself previously saying it would stay until 2030.

The post Burnham to Start Dismantling Triple Lock Before Election appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Scrapping the triple lock might not raise any money at all, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned, threatening Andy Burnham’s plan for a 'National Care Service' and raising the prospect of huge tax hikes.

The post Scrapping Triple Lock Could Save Nothing, Warns IFS appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Andy Burnham has announced that he will axe the pensions triple lock in 2030 to pay for free social care as well as unveiling an elections shake-up to shut out the Right from power.

The post Burnham Axes Triple Lock and Unveils Elections Shake-Up to Shut Out the Right appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.