Further, stronger, faster

Bill Kristol-Balls

Has anyone explained how the £13 billion figure is arrived at yet?

Get that Nelson fella on the case, he's good with sums.

DavidDP

"However, honesty is not the best electoral policy"

Please tell Fraser Nelson. He needs a dose of reality.

Chris lancashire

I'd far rather he was giving a speech on how to curb the excesses of the public sector pension schemes. Like replacing over generous final salary schemes with money purchase. However, that would lose for sure several million public sector votes.

So let's leave that until after the election in the same way that Brown left his private sector pension grab until after he was first elected.

charles hercock

But what a bravura performance on Today.Be bold.

DavidDP

Also, an announcement like this does need something on tax rises for the better off.

Otherwise, we'll leave the conference with a policy platform just hitting regular workers hard for everything.

ron nowicki

Are commentators seriously saying that the Conservatives should hide the details of their fiscal policy from the voters? Or, to put it
more bluntly, should they lie about their intentions and then drop some financial bombs on voters once they are safely in office?
With comments suggesting that honesty is not the best policy, is it any wonder that we have a broken society?

THX1138

David B The Little Englanders on this blog won't like you referencing French Techno -:)

Maggie

Labour tell us we are coming out of the recession and the Conservatives tell us they will pay back Gordon's debts.
If either of these claims are true there shouldn't be any need to make people who are absolutely blameless for our economic woes work longer from 1916. Labour's intention to make everyone work longer from 2026 suggests they think even in 17 years time they think we'll still be in trouble.

DavidDP

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_sylvester/article6862316.ece

A very perceptive analysis. You should try and get her to write here.

Moraymint

"Their plan contrasts with the deluge of eyecatching but unworkable initiatives that were proclaimed at last week’s Labour conference ..."

... and during their previous 12 years in power. That's why the (dis)United Kingdom is now in the mother-of-all messes.

This is what happens when a political party is voted in to power having had no political vision or strategy other than to gain power for the sake of gaining power (the "Third Way" was never a strategy for governing a country effectively).

Now, as citizens, we're about to pay the price for falling victim to Blair's charms and Brown's weird philosophy of deceitful Marxism and bullying, spiteful, personal politics.

In return for Labour's disastrous 12 years in power, we peasants are going to be paying an awful lot (financially and in social terms) for a very long time.

The Labour Party's epitaph: "We were an insult to democracy".

TrevorsDen

Its not a new idea - the tories are facing the new reality of the increased structural deficit in the economy which the BoE put at 10% of GDP. This is not a cyclical deficit it is fundamental to the economy.

It is a labour inspired weakness that the Tories should expose.

Fatbloke on tour

The question that needs asked is when will Scratchy and Sniffy retire and under what circumstances?

Millionaires with family fortunes to fall back on, I don't think they will have much to worry about.

Consequently not a case of do as I do, marry into money more a case of do as I say so that my tax rates can go down.

Jim H

It seems like they've decided they don't want to win the election. The obvious targets for the conference are Quango's, withdrawing from Afghanistan, cutting pensions for top paid civil servants, putting the big banks into bankruptcy.
To target ordinary people first shows they'd rather not win next year. The electoral arithmetic suggests it would be difficult. So it looks more like we'll get a LabLib coalition next year, then a collapse into the arms of the IMF, then another election before a Tory win.
People just aren't ready for a 40% cut in state spending yet.

DavidDP

I think, Fatbloke, that asking irrelevant and pointless questions can only help the Conservatives, so by all means get the Labour party to ask them.

Mitch

Why should 'ordinary' people pay for the mistakes of the government and the banks?

Will bankers and city traders be prevented from retiring before 66, after they've made a fortune using the money we gave them?

Theresa

What about the equality question? Women can't have it both ways and in particular neither can Harriet Harman. A lot of men will be supportive of this proposal and a lot of older people want to work longer anyway

JONNY

Who exactly is the "Scratchy" character you keep on going on about, FATBLOKE?

Maybe you're confusing him with "Picky"
- our excellent PM delicately probing the deeper cavities of his nostrils in search of glutinous delights.
Or maybe "Chewy" - the same person's daily diet of parsimonious nail parings?

Stephen Grant

So all will be revealed by Georgie Boy today.Can anyone take him seriously?The trouble is the voters are very cautious about the Tories and believe that they havent changed at all.The damage was done years ago under Mrs.Thatcher and the Tories have never realy been trusted since.The voters don't like Brown(who does?)but there isn't much else to choose from and clearly the LibDems are not even in the running so are the UK public at long last begining to realise that the existing political set up has run its course.We need a new way to run our country which isnt dependent upon redundant political parties.

Dean

It is becoming clearer day-by-day what sort of government Cameron plans to lead, now that he is confident of victory rather than engaged in image-building. It is a well known fact that most wealthy people retire whenever they choose - some as early as 50. So how can it be a social priority, in one of the world's richest develped countries, to raise the state retirement age to 66?

As usual, Tory rule means managing down people's expectations of the quality of life they will enjoy. Much longer working hours, followed by a short retirement.

You can't defend this policy by appealing to longer average life expectancy. The averages conceal very wide divergence in longevity. The fact is that the risk of death by cancer, heart disease or stroke increases dramatically from about 50 onwards, and medical advances over the years have done little to change this. So raising the retirement age in practice condemns the vast majority of working people to a life dominated by work, with little or no prospect of a long and healthy retirement.

Fatbloke on tour

Jonny

Part of SpectatorLand and you don't know who "Scratchy" is?

It relates to Davie Boy's appetite for penicillin when you are a number to the doctor and not a patient.

Although knowing him he probably got it on a private prescription from his familiy's doctor in the name of the butler.

Still, upper middle class tottie?
It ain't what it used to be.
Discretion and cleanliness?
Not any more.

Maggie

Suggesting everyone will have to work till they drop is scaremongering. In practice most people retire when they want to and not when the government says they can. Some married women retire early thanks to the generosity of their husbands; some people retire early thanks to downsizing and ingenious juggling of funds; some people retire early and go part-time with a non -challenging pocket money job; lots of people in their 50s/60s think a smaller income is preferable to the hassle of full time employment and I've no doubt people who've spent a lifetime doing hard physical work retire early by going on the dole or on the sick.
People can always find a way.

Norman Dee

Trouble is Dean and Fatboy, that the kind of socialist /communist whinging you do is unanswerable because we can't all be rich and we can't all be poor. The communists tried it and what happened ? everyone was equal except those who were more than equal, so you clewed up with another elite level of people which is what you will always get under any kind of socialism. we can't all be factory sweepers some people have to gather money to pay the sweeper because on his own he has very little to sell. So some people are going to be rich and retire before others, thereby creating a job for someone else earlier that if he or she worked to 60 or 65 or whatever it is. Get over it, even the most basic tribal systems had leaders, and better hunters who would take the best part of the animal before putting the rest into the community.

smurf

@Fatbloke:

Any evidence for that? - beyond McBride's imaginings, of course

No? Thought not.

But others make some good points: there needs to be a consistent and clear overall plan and platform - it's looking too piecemeal at the moment and leaves them open to the mendacious and distortive challenges of the govt and their fellow travellers.

Nick

DEFAULT - DEFAULT - DEFAULT

The government is defaulting on its debts.

That's the bottom line.

People should ask politicians what have they done with the money given too them.

What's the investment performance of the NI contributions?

Where are the liabilities in the accounts? (They aren't)

If people's NI had gone into the FTSE, someone retiring today would have an income of 20K per year, post crash.

Instead they get 5K a year from the government.

The reason is compound interest. A little bit of interest makes a huge difference over 40 years.

Cuffleyburgers

A good move in a much needed direction.

It is also necessary to switch the basis of public sector pensions from defined benefit to defined contribution.

Fatbloke - I don't know why you bother, really. It's not funny, it's not clever or informed, you aren't convincing anybody. I guess you must be a cabinet minister because you would clearly be unemployable in the private sector... You're milliband minor aren't you?

Dean

I have noticed that the more extreme right wingers who contribute to Coffee House have only one response to people on the centre right who question the wisdom of socially divisive policies that worsen the lot of the poor. They simply accuse us of being 'socialists' or 'communists', as if they were still fighting the Cold War under the leadership of Senator Joe McCarthy. It really is quite pathetic.

Yes, let's leave it all to the market to sort out the weak from the strong....same old Tories.

Verity

Number Plate, in his woesome, illiterate ignorance, refers once again to "the little Englanders on this blog". I don't think he understands the term, and its context, which is around the 1930s and 1940s. Seventy or 80 years ago, before mass foreign travel and mass foreign home ownership.

You're 70 or 80 years out of date, Number Plate. Times have changed. To save future embarrassment, you might want to think up an other phrase of intolerant hatred for people who don't agree with you.

If only you could get a job offer and a Green Card, eh? Get away from all these ghastly, provincial Brits who have second homes in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece ... Pied à terres in Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Berlin.

Nicholas

Dean: "They simply accuse us of being 'socialists' or 'communists', as if they were still fighting the Cold War under the leadership of Senator Joe McCarthy. It really is quite pathetic."

If only it were that simple. Unfortunately the "end" of the Cold War in Europe was just the start of the cultural revolution in Britain where all the conniving communists crept out of the woodwork and got busy with Common Purpose and all the other Gramski long marches. I wish we had experienced our communist revolution back in the middle of the 20th Century and learned the hard way, like the East Europeans, that communism and socialism are just two words for the same nasty bollocks. Unfortunately we are still suffering from the delusional social engineering and other "projects" of the rose-tinted left, sliding ever closer to the grey, frightened world of the commissar, block monitor, denouncement and five o'clock knock (although in Britains "modern", refined version it's more often the five o'clock smash the door in).

The problem with the soft left (or Red Tories) is that once they are on the socialism escalator upping the ante is inevitable. Trampling on individual freedoms for the "common good" just gets easier and the more extreme protagonists bolder in their barmy ideas (q.v. Cowan's drinking licences).

So in my book anyone who holds socialists to account and calls them out for the foolishly deluded and dangerous prigs they inevitably are is doing a great public service.

Cuffleyburgers

Nicolas - right as ever.

And another thing dean old bean and fatty - I really don't think anybody on these threads espouses policies deliberately to hurt the poor. Most often policies are proposed which will undoubtedly improve the lot of all the people of Great Britain, and most particularly the poor. We look at ways to make the NHS more efficient, and to improve education in the public sector, the thinking being that high taxes for inefficiently managed services is in nobody's interest, and well educated people will be socially mobile, and benefit the economy at large as well as themselves and their immediate family. These are aims you could hardly object to.

I suspect you object so vociferously and abusively because you are part of the provider monopolies responsible for most of the damage in the public sector in terms of low productivity and high costs, and which rightly will be hit by the kind of sensible reforms which the tories are more likely than labour to introduce.

That's the truth you secretly know but don't like to admit to yourselves.

By the way what's happened to your friend dirtyeuro? Last time I head of him on these blogs, he was looking in need of popping anti-depressives on an industrial scale...

Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaa

Geoff M

While it might be necessary to raise the age at which the State Pension is received [as distinct from the compulsory retirement age; most on here seem to be confusing the two], it is grossly unfair to do it within the timescale being floated, ie 5-6 years. People need time to adjust their financial plans in order to attempt to make up the shortfall, so the timescale must be a minimum of 10 years, ie 2020.
Failure to be fair on this will give Labour an open goal to shoot at in the 2015 election, one year before the proposed implementation in 2016.