It’s roughly seven months until George Osborne’s Autumn Statement, so no better time to consider which political issues will come to the boil ahead of it. Fuel costs, I’m sure, will be one if them; because they never really go away, and the 3p rise in fuel duty will have just been implemented in August. But I’d say the safest bet is the finances of the elderly. If the furore over the frozen income tax allowance for pensioners didn’t put that voting bloc at the forefront of Osborne’s mind, then the demographics behind UKIP’s poll jump will surely do the trick. He will be under severe pressure to act.
Actually, I’m not mentioning this at random, but because a group of MPs is today calling on Osborne to do just that — act. The Treasury Select Committee says that the Chancellor should use his Autumn Statement to ‘compensate’ those elderly folk and savers who are being ‘penalised’ by Quantitative Easing.
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