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That's quite a rant - not sure where to start. Let's get one thing out of the way - this is not politics of envy, it's the exact opposite. As someone who's reaching retirement age in four months, I too have a lot of benefits to look forward to. My concern is whether those benefits are entirely...

As you know, I was a long-standing advocate for a multi-party approach to Brexit, I'm still amazed that something like that was handled by one party. What's interesting to me is that France is looking to tackle this by raising the pension age - it was a key part of Macron's election campaign...

Well yes. I did say in my very first post that this would require a multi-party approach. The sort of hard choices that are being talked about are simply not possible in a FPTP system - particularly one where the elderly demographic have such influence.

China did the complete opposite - restricted people to one child. It's a policy that the Chinese now admit was misguided.

:lolol: Maybe. But we did have a big issue in this country in the discrepancy between young and old voters: under 30s don't tend to vote; under 60s do in droves. Parties (particularly the Tories) are aware of this - hence the friendly policies towards the elderly. That's why, for example, the...

It's not population growth per se that's the issue, it's the growth of an elderly population that needs more support and greater sums spent on pensions. But you do offer an option I didn't think of - the reduction (or removal) of state pensions. That would certainly need a multi-party approach...

It is one metric but it's the metric you used: you were the one who said that the hours worked in a week was increasing and that's patently not true. I agree that the fall is well within the margin of statistical error but you certainly can't say we're working more. I do agree however that we...

This isn't true: we currently work, on average 36.5 hours per week (the only time it's been lower than that is during the pandemic). Thirty years ago, we were working 38.2 hours per week. With a growing number of companies looking at four day weeks, I suspect this number will fall further...

Indeed. And if what Swanny says is true and there'll be fewer and fewer jobs, we'll have the perfect storm of a smaller working-age population, with high levels of unemployment paying for more pensioners, living longer. That's completely unsustainable

Don't know what it's like in Sweden but current job seeker's allowance in the UK is £77, current basic state pension is £141 (but is generally higher) - that's 64 good reasons right there

Well, that's true. And it's not really a big issue at the moment ... but it will begin to be in 20 years time and it will be a full-blown crisis in 40 years if something isn't done. I suspect that it will be a combination of measures: higher retirement age, some relaxation of immigration...

I don't think anyone is saying that the UK is alone in this: Japan has it even worse and, as that map shows, Italy and Spain have real problems. The falling birthrate is one of the reasons that Merkel took in so many immigrants a couple of years ago ... and why Germany is at the forefront of...

That was a bit of kite-flying, I can't see that happening: not yet, at least. But it's beginning to be clear that something needs to be done - the UK's on an unsustainable path that needs to be halted. The low birth rate has been masked by high levels of immigration but if those are cut, we're...

No but that's not what you said. You said that countries in the EU couldn't reduce VAT on energy bills. I pointed out Spain (and I see Portugal and Austria too) has done exactly that

Completely untrue. Spain reduced VAT last year and is continuing with the cut

Looking forward to that. I got a letter from my bank saying that because the interest rate was going up by 0.15%, my mortgage payment would change. It did: it went down by 27p Another increase and it could go down some more :lolol: