Q & A

+I feel a certain sense of inevitability about this. Following the BBC’s decision (under the cosh from the Tories) to limit free over-75s TV licenses to those on means tested benefits, I have received a missive from Cycling UK (formerly the Cycling Touring Club, CTC) that from next year it is withdrawing its over-65s concessionary membership rate. I expect other organisations of which I am a member to follow suit, as the wellspring of resentment against ‘rich pensioners’ gathers momentum. It may be argued that age related concessions used to be offered because pensioners were poor—nothing to do with the possibility that after decades of normal contributions a little relaxation was in order as people entered the autumn (sniff) of their lives. It is now becoming the common theme (if it isn’t already) that pensioners are a bunch of freeloaders, who got their degrees for nowt, paid off their mortgages, went on cruises and generally need to be punished for being the architects of a world headed into one crisis after another. When it suited the commentary, ‘baby boomers’ were the blessed generation who having survived post-war rationing helped develop the liberal economies which hailed the ‘end of history.’ Well, that’s all buggered, and a younger generation wants payback. As regards the Cycling UK proposal to cease offering pensioners an automatic discount, I shall vote against it. The increase takes membership from £30 to £48. They should cherish their older members. We’re a dying breed.
 
+I have discovered today what Labour currently stands for: Inquiries. Absent any significant policies of our own, since anything that is branded ‘JC’ had to be ditched, our stance now is to call for inquiries into anything and everything Johnson’s shite government fails to deliver. Today it was the failure to deliver 50 million PPE masks. Why do we need an inquiry? We know the answer already. It is time, five or six months into this pandemic for Starmer and Co to say how things would have been dealt with differently by Labour. It is not inspiring sitting behind somebody who only knows how to ask questions, and not provide answers.