morge

Well, the case at the ECHR is now history and might have been successful had the court accepted all of the evidence which was offered at the referral after the initial hearing. As it is, they would not accept it as it had not been previously entered.
As for supporting a party infavour of change , you make a good point and yes that would work given enough support and I suppose UKIP seem to be that party. Forget the main parties now who have had plenty of time to make a change. We have had good responses from them.
The biggest problem is apathy. If all pensioners wrote a letter to the government and literally swamped the mail box things could change and in addition we now have had both Australian and Canadian ministers writing articles in the UK newspapers about the freezing. This has an eefect on the economy of any frozen country due to the loss of money that the pensioners would be getting and spending apart from the obvious discrimination and deprivation that such a policy has especially in the Commonwealth countries where they have signed agreements to stop discrimination and reduce poverty. More and more Commonwealth countries are going to be questioning the government on this. I note that there are questions in the Lords now about the effect in the Caribbean wher some are and some are'nt frozen. and we have written to the members involved to inform them that the answers were in fact not valid and to ask again. We will see.
The dedicated group that I belong to are doing all we can to educate both the public and the politicians, many of whom are ignorant of the real facts and I have been doing so on this site in the Canadian forum since 2007 abd not giving up yet.

morge

Thanks very much. Now that is being positive !

lesleys

Here's how they do it

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-meth...les/index.html

I assume there's some sort of bell curve distribution pattern around the expected age of death. The width of that curve shows how many die before then and how many live longer. It's many decades since I studied statistics so that's as technical as it's going to get.

You should realise that the older you actually are the greater the age you can expect to die. eg a newborn male today has a life expectancy of about 79, a 65 yo male has an expectancy of about 83.

Zen10

No - the biggest problem is the British Government doesn't want to unfreeze British pensions in Australia.

bra_boy

A lot people in the UK would be surprised to learn that their country is supporting people who no longer live in the UK, and do not pay UK income and VAT taxes. If this issue is debated in the open, it might generate enough outrage that politicians are forced to cut the pension entirely to non-UK residents.

Zen10

Paying UK income and VAT, or not, has nothing to do with it. No one pays for their own pension. The people you're talking about worked hard and paid for the pensions of those older than them, and the young today are working for theirs in return. They are entitled to it, unfrozen.

They're not going to get it, but they're entitled to it. They earnt it. Where they live is irrelevant. You could just as easily extend that logic to immigrants and say they're not entitled to it either.

lapin_windstar

Apparently it's not the war that's being fought by the British in Afghanistan that costs the UK money, it's a handful of (imaginary) pension fiddlers.

Eh? Says who?

Wol

Says the British government..

Another amusing little quirk is that if you live, say in Australia and therefore have a frozen pension and visit the UK Europe etc where the pension isn't frozen, it's uprated for the time you are there.

But if you visit the USA - where, if you live there the pension *isn't* frozen - it isn't uprated during the visit.

Go figure, as the Americans say.

Zen10

Ha ha I did not know that about the "defrosting" while in Europe. Fact is, more than half of non-UK based pensioners are in Australia. From this fact I deduce it will be the last place on earth they unfreeze pensions!

lesleys

The system is shot through with anomalies -

There are 150 countries where pensions are frozen. Of the 540,000 pensioners living in those countries, almost 90% of them - 485,000 - live in Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.

Bizarrely, when these people return to the UK or if they travel to a country that gets up-rated, they temporarily receive a higher pension over this period of time, if they notify the UK pension authorities. So a UK pensioner living in Canada and going on holiday to Jamaica for two weeks, can get a higher pension for that fortnight.

Similarly, two people who came to the UK from the Caribbean to work could find themselves in very different positions if they returned home. Those in Jamaica would get a full pension, those from Trinidad would not.



http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/p...-overseas.html


What some people fail to realise is that's it's not just the basic UK state pension which is frozen. It was compulsory to contribute to a company or private pension if you earned enough. If your company didnot provide a pension you had to contribute to the government scheme (SERPS) in addition to normal NI contributions. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a private pension. This also gets frozen, so you lose out on your 'top-up' pension as well.

Wol

>>What some people fail to realise is that's it's not just the basic UK state pension which is frozen. It was compulsory to contribute to a company or private pension if you earned enough. If your company didnot provide a pension you had to contribute to the government scheme (SERPS) in addition to normal NI contributions. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a private pension. This also gets frozen, so you lose out on your 'top-up' pension as well.<<

Absolutely correct - as I found out.

I have tried to get sensible information as to whether the temporary uprating should be applied to the frozen part of my company pension on a visit, and the company scheme and the pensions people each say it's the other's problem!

lapin_windstar

where's all the stuff about the rich retiring to the US and Caribbean and the poor retiring to Australia?

bra_boy

"Paying UK income and VAT, or not, has nothing to do with it. No one pays for their own pension. The people you're talking about worked hard and paid for the pensions of those older than them, and the young today are working for theirs in return. They are entitled to it, unfrozen."

Let me put it another way - the UK govt has no responsibility for the welfare of people residing overseas. The fact that they pay out anything is a source of amazement to me.

Zen10

It's not as simple as that. Half of all overseas UK pensioners are in Australia, and they are mainly regular folks. Government cannot afford to unfreeze their pensions. It is a coincidence, is it not, that places where the rich spend more time - US, and specifically certain Caribbean islands, do not have frozen pensions.

lapin_windstar

1) How did you get to the conclusion that the rich retire in the US and Caribbean, and the poor/the masses retire in Australia, Canada and NZ? False premise #1.

2) It is not true that all Caribbean countries are unfrozen: T&T, St Lucia, Dominica, St Vincent & Grenadines, St Kitts & Nevis, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Monserrat, US VI, BVI, Netherlands Antilles, Dominican Republic, Turks & Caicos, Barbuda are all frozen. False premise #2. (Source: http://www.pension100.co.uk/expatpen...frozen2007.htm - correct me if those are wrong).

3) It is not true that all wealthy countries are unfrozen: Monaco, Andorra, San Marino and the richer places in 2) are all frozen. False premise #3.

4) Frankly, I think you're way overstating the importance of the unfrozen margin of the state pension to the top hat-wearing, monocle-overpeering clique of Old Etonians that now runs the UK to imagine they care enough to create an elaborate scheme for the purpose of benefitting themselves. To anyone that has the wealth and power to covertly influence policymaking to that minute a degree wouldn't be worrying about those size sums.