In what are being described as 'controlled leaks' by Whiteminster, it is alleged that Jeremy Hunt and senior Treasury officials are in 'the later stages' of drawing up sweeping reforms to UK State Pension provision.
There is clearly a degree of self-fulfilling prophecy in all of this, but I can reveal with some certainty that the outline Pension plans are as follows:
*Some 25% of OAP pensions receivers will have their payments cancelled in total on the grounds that 'They have enough already, and don't need it'
*A staggering cut of 50% for further citizens who have personal private pensions beyond the State system
*A rise in the pension receipt age for all to 70, this being a necessity given "£31.8 billion higher than expected government expenditure on measures to control Covid19"
*An end to the Triple Lock, with an initial five years of frozen pensions at current levels.
To your left here is the front page of today's Mirror. In a flaccid attempt by the newspaper to blame it all on the Conservatives without asking any awkward questions, Britain's oldest tabloid suggests in the first line that there is no basis to the claim that Covid overspending is a culprit.
'They blame Covid' it says, and indeed the Tories are right to: almost all the £30+billion overspend is the direct result of Covid measures, lockdowns, payments to Pharma, pop-up hospitals never used, armies of direct salesmen flogging "vaccine" and hospitals clogged up with Covid cases, many of which could have been treated at home. More exactly, the opening line should read 'The Tories presided over the most incontinent spending spree in history'....but lest we forget, the Labour leadership emitted not so much as a squeak about it at the time. As long as the media continue to offer fake opposition, and HM Opposition insists that the problem lies in Conservative ideology, Joe Public will continue to believe that it's just business-as-usual politics.
The potshots get sillier as we read on....'They blame flu (really?) they blame GPs (so do I) they blame nurses (do they?)....except one line slipped in while the censor wasn't looking: 'They blame OAPs'. My sources say they're going to cane them not blame them, but the game for the time being is expectation management. Hunt has just over two months to complete a demonisation of the old in time for the next Budget on March 15th
The stagflation plus credit-squeeze policies being developed are very much monetarist central banking by nature (hence Truss's débacle - and yes, it is a bit silly to try and blame a woman who held power for less time than it takes a tomato to go rotten). But to cut benefits in the face of approaching hyperinflation and rising interest rates is a policy package aimed at destruction, not cure.
Fishy Sunak's expressed desire for longer maths courses at schools is in and of itself something of a schoolboy howler. There is in fact a growing sense across Westminster that the fourth PM in five years is pure window-dressing. One former Treasury aide claimed, "the information flow between the Treasury and Number Ten is virtually non-existent.
Stay tuned.
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