Michael
My husband and I didnt fritter our money,we thought that was the best thing to do at the time,some of my friends had a good lifestyle,and a life too for that matter,now they are looked after and we suffer for it !this is why they are apathetic !
All I can say is I will never trust a politician again !

Teri,do they have to sell their houses to pay for all this too,thats is if you didnt fritter it away and had a house or savings.Wish I could turn the clock back !

Phoenix, When Tony Blair was in opposition and the Tories were in Government, Tony Blair said that he did not want his children growing up in a country where elderly people were forced to sell their homes to pay for residential care, what im saying is that Thatcher stared all this off.

Regarding outsiders.  Britain has long held it's hand of friendship out to other countries, it is why we are refered to as "Great Britain".

Personally I do believe that charity should begin at home, but what politically party is going to stop our benevolent's
to everyone else ?

Sorry Michael but you asked for it
I am bitter that i have paid into all that they say i should pay into to make my old age better,and they conned me !and my dear husband who never got anything.
I would have been better off if i had not paid in and got all the benefits.Do you know that some of my friends are just £2 over the limit for benefits,and they really struggle,to make ends meet.They say to the DHSS keep it !!! but they wont do that. I  am  better off  without it and thats true they would be,their rates would be paid at a saving of £1300.00.

Most of the welfare claimants are of working age,but choose to have babies instead which is a meal ticket for them,but  I do understand that some men walk away knowing that the family will be taken care of by the tax payer.All this and the genuine person (who pays it)_is forgotten !

Asked for what Mac ?, You have said nothing that I have'nt heard a million times in my 20 year search for "rights for the elderly".

Everthing you describe began "as a matter of policy" under the Thatcher/Major years, there is no getting away from this, it just did, and New Labour have embraced it.

Our Social welfare system is devisery, it is meant to be devisery, it is meant to devide people, the young from the old, the old from the young.  It is an arrogant system.

It is what the late and former, whom I refere to, as a decent one nation Conservative, Ted Heath, used to say was " the unacceptable face of capitalism", that of the pure greed that is running this country, but in my view most people just have not seen it coming because we are not a political interested, or motivated nation.




 

Phoenix, Blair came in on the Thatcher ticket, and there New Labour have stayed under Gordon Brown.

I joined the Labour party in the early 1990's for the first time, I joined as an activist to help bring a Labour Government to power and uphold state pensions for the elderly by restoring the link with earnings, but in 1997 when Blair and Brown embraced Thatcherite economics, I withdrew my membership and Labour where I live, folded, the rest is history.