Massive problem in our democracy

[BillyStubbsTears]

Highlighted by these stunning graphics.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1208720838683512832

Seriously worrying split in our society. Massively exacerbated by Brexit.

[wilts rover]

I mentioned this previously - the biggest single determining factor in how people voted was age.

Labour didn't loose the working class - more people who are actually in work voted Labour than Tory. What they lost were the pensioners who overwhelmingly voted Tory.

So the people at work now are paying taxes and living under a government they didn't vote for. As you say seriously worrying.

[Bentley Bullet]

I mentioned this previously - the biggest single determining factor in how people voted was age.

Labour didn't loose the working class - more people who are actually in work voted Labour than Tory. What they lost were the pensioners who overwhelmingly voted Tory.

So the people at work now are paying taxes and living under a government they didn't vote for. As you say seriously worrying.

How do you know?

[drfchound]

Hey wilts, lots of us pensioners are still paying tax too.

[tommy toes]

Aye and this pensioner pays tax and didn't vote for the lying get.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I mentioned this previously - the biggest single determining factor in how people voted was age.

Labour didn't loose the working class - more people who are actually in work voted Labour than Tory. What they lost were the pensioners who overwhelmingly voted Tory.

So the people at work now are paying taxes and living under a government they didn't vote for. As you say seriously worrying.

How do you know?

https://mobile.twitter.com/CallumCant1/status/1206256432955449344

So, according to the huge exit poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft, when you break the electorate down by employment status, the one and only group that voted more heavily for the Tories than for Labour was economically inactive retired people. They voted massively for the Tories.

Every other group, full time employed, part time employed, self employed, students, unemployed, sick etc, voted either for Labour or equally between the two.

It was the pensioners what won it. You pensioners own this result.

[Dagenham Rover]

Hey wilts, lots of us pensioners are still paying tax too.

 my Dad was 90 odd and paying a big chunk of tax and I do not mean on a large income  but yes it was a private pit pension (he was medically retired in 1981 and no longer with us but he paid tax till he passed )   Ruining there future!!!! bullshit we have  paid for their future  and our pension!  and are still are    I have a  beneficiaries pension from when my wife passed away last year  a council one tbf she was a lolipop lady for nearly 15 years   the pension is aprox £15.00 a month guess what its taxed   and don't get me started on  PIP Bowel cancer fed through a tube and lost BOTH legs  and these idiots still insist she has to come to the office as opposed to a home visit  from them

I really didn't think the stories I heard were true until I had to deal with them I really could go on but there you go

[drfchound]

As much as I hate paying tax I understand that I have to do so on amounts over my personal allowance.
It doesn’t matter how little anyone’s pension is in addition to their state pension, they have to pay income tax on it if they go over their PA.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hey wilts, lots of us pensioners are still paying tax too.

 my Dad was 90 odd and paying a big chunk of tax and I do not mean on a large income  but yes it was a private pit pension (he was medically retired in 1981 and no longer with us but he paid tax till he passed )   Ruining there future!!!! bullshit we have  paid for their future  and our pension!  and are still are    I have a  beneficiaries pension from when my wife passed away last year  a council one tbf she was a lolipop lady for nearly 15 years   the pension is aprox £15.00 a month guess what its taxed

Dagenham.

Apologies if this sounds patronising but I don't know how to not make it sound like that, so here goes.

You don't earn ANY guaranteed rights by paying into a system for a pension. None at all. You certainly don't pay for a future guarantee.

What you do, by paying in, is two things.

1) You pay for the pensions of folk who have already retired while you are working.

2) Assuming society remains stable, you buy the right to some future share of the economic output of younger people who are still working when you retire. Either a promise from Govt to pay you a State Pension paid by the taxes of those who work when you have retired, or a promise from pension funds to pay you a pension from their stock market returns (which come from the work of those still working when you have retired).

The supreme irony of the past decade is that pensioners have consistently voted for things that have made and will make the immediate economic performance worse. Primarily Austerity and Brexit. But the Tories have protected pensioners income while screwing down the wages of those who are working. So you get you pensions, but it's at the expense of the rewards that in normal times would be coming to you get people.

That's not meant in any way to be an insulting post. It's just a statement of facts.

[BillyStubbsTears]

PS

Anyone who doesn't believe me that you don't "earn" a guaranteed pension, you earn the right to draw some proportion of the future economic performance of the country, think of it like this.

Imagine you worked for 50 years, paying pension subs. Then on the day you retired, there was a massive asteroid hit the UK and effectively the economy was destroyed.

Do you reckon you'd draw a pension?

[SydneyRover]

Highlighted by these stunning graphics.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1208720838683512832

Seriously worrying split in our society. Massively exacerbated by Brexit.

So even with the numbers of the pensioner cohort tapering off there was enough of them to swing the vote?

Genuine enquiry, how does labour get to talk to older voters that naturally become more conservative as they age and their assets grow?


Added: https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/uk-demographics/#broad-age

[drfchound]

PS

Anyone who doesn't believe me that you don't "earn" a guaranteed pension, you earn the right to draw some proportion of the future economic performance of the country, think of it like this.

Imagine you worked for 50 years, paying pension subs. Then on the day you retired, there was a massive asteroid hit the UK and effectively the economy was destroyed.

Do you reckon you'd draw a pension?

I reckon you would be more likely to need to be able to draw a gun to be able to guarantee your future Billy.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Aye Hound, but you see my point? You only get a pension if the economy keeps producing and society stays stable.

[Dagenham Rover]

Number 1 sums it up,  But I'm not getting into a debate about it I know the absolute shite we wen't through, She must have an electric wheelchair from one side,  arhh you must have a ramp to certain standards for the electric  wheelchair  oh dear you are working and its your house  tough shit we'll teach her how to push herself out of the manual chair if theres an emergency. My £2500 later we got the ramp  oh hang on whose budget is is the electric wheelchair coming out of................... ok not exactly pension related but I have lost total faith in the system  it does not work  when normal hard working people need it ....................yes ok that takes us somewhere else   

[Bentley Bullet]

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/news/108646/tories-now-more-popular-working-class

[idler]

Please don’t lump all pensioners together. I’ve been paying tax for over 50 years and I’m happy to still be contributing as it means I am still getting a decent income.
I worked hard and put money into my works pension to plan for this.
Me and the wife have never once voted for a Conservative candidate and never will. Do we know what proportion of pensioners actually voted Tory?

[Bentley Bullet]

All of them apparently. Pensioners own the vote!

[wilts rover]

The age related graphs are on Billy's link idler.

It's 84% of over 65's from memory.

[idler]

Thanks Wilts. I didn’t read it all as I was in a hurry before going out. That figure is both disappointing and disturbing to me as a pensioner. I wonder what the future holds for them now that Boris has the result that he wanted.

[BillyStubbsTears]

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/news/108646/tories-now-more-popular-working-class

I think you missed the key word in the third paragraph BB.

Anyway. Situation normal. You ask for some evidence. Evidence is provided. You ignore it and post something else.

[Bentley Bullet]

....So, ban pensioners from voting, and Corbyn would be successful. Sorted!

[BillyStubbsTears]

Idler.

I wasn't saying ALL pensioners are Tory voters. I was saying they are the only "workforce" demographic group to have mostly voted for the Tories. Not one single other workforce group did. I find that quite astonishing.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And so it goes on...

[Bentley Bullet]

I was actually asking Wilts. It's YOU who's going on!

I just find it incredible how several opinion polls were put on here pre-election showing how much Labour is catching-up and how close the results gonna be, only to find it totally wrong! Maybe pensioners weren't asked!!

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB
Opinion polls generally are structured to have a 95% chance of getting their results right to within +/-3%. Pretty much every poll was within that range.

Now, those Lord Ashcroft figures are from a much, much bigger poll, and will probably have a 95% chance of being within +/-2%.

With that in mind, look at those numbers.

68% of Labour's and 49% of the Tories' support came from people who are self-employed and full & part-time employed, students and job-seekers

19% of Labour's support and 42% of the Tories' came from the retired.

Even accepting that polls aren't perfect, those numbers are stark. There's no question that Labour is predominantly the part of the current and future economically productive. And the Tories are much more the party of the retired.

I'm not making any value judgement about that. It's just a fact.

What I WOULD say is that this is very, very unhealthy for our democracy. The parties are not reaching across classes, ages and and educational backgrounds. They are becoming factionalized.

That is just one of the very damaging things that the entire Brexit process has done to us. We were NOT remotely like that before 2016. Those who pushed for the Referendum were very much wanting this division though, because it gives them opportunities to weaken the UK. Why do you think Putin and his cronies have been so invested in this?

[Ldr]

BST I'd throw the opinion that an issue is people still like to categorise people into classes,

[BillyStubbsTears]

Ldr.

I think it's unarguable that some people work full time, some people work part time, some are self employed, some are students, some are on the dole and some are retired. So I'm not sure I see your point.

[Ldr]

People are people. There are certain stereotypes that come with pigeonholing into labels. Demographic is not class. The class structure is an outmoded concept and needs to be moved on from

[BillyStubbsTears]

Ok. I'll take that one. But that doesn't have much to do with the substantive point of this thread, which is that a majority of the current and soon-to-be economically active voted for Labour and yet the Tories won a landslide. I'm not aware of that ever happening before in our history.

Just stop and think what that means. The people who will be doing the earning for the country have had a Government that they do not want imposed on them by the people who will be doing the taking out of the economy. That's a serious fault line.

[Ldr]

Your implying that some peoples votes should carry more weight than others, that's dangerous territory to be wanting