First Entry.
Well, what can I say?
European Court of Human Rights gets it wrong - 6 votes to one!
Any fool can see that if half the people get benefits and the other half don't and they have all paid into it in the same way and under the same rules, there is a significant element of unfairness!
Only one judge saw that and was committed to writin his dissening view.
1 comment:
Joan Bakewell, saviour of the Oldies?
If Joan Bakewell can publicise the battle being fought by 50% of the British state pensioners living abroad, 500,000 0f them, she will truly be a saint! Not many people are even slightly interested in the subject. Out of sight, out of mind? I have just returned from almost 20 years in Australia and my pension which was frozen for 13 of these years (because I was living in Australia and not Europe or the USA) has, surprise surprise, been re-instated with its annual indexing, free bus passes and, WOW, a Guardian Angel for old men and women!
So, I am OK because my pension is no longer frozen, but the other British pensioners I left behind in Australia (like those in Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and many other illogically chosen places) are still putting up with frozen pensions. Each British pensioner living in a "frozen" country has a different pension because it depends on the date when they either arrived in the country or the date on which they first retired. This means that neighbours, both British, and both having paid ALL their compulsory National Insurance contributions during their working lives, could have either £10 per week, if very old, or £97 per week if they have only just retired and only just emigrated. There are all the amounts in between as well !! The government is claiming to be FAIR and I find this rather surprising, don't you?
My dear Joan (I am 73, so perhaps I may use your first name?) is there anything you can do to stop this discrimination? Judges say it isn't discrimination! It is so illogical that it deserves to be ridiculed daily by cartoonists but there are too many other subjects to ridicule. What has happened to my dear country while I have been away?
State pensioners, represented by Annette Carson and others have taken their case to the High Court, to the House of Lords and, very recently, to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. They have lost all these case and in the meantime several old battlers, pensioners fighting for their rights, have died fighting. The most recent court case (not a court hearing but seven judges sitting in private, "in chamber" it is called I think), was heard in October 2008, with the decision announced on, of all dates, 4th November 2008. Who can expect publicity when so much is going on in the World, in the USA and Scotland? Well, we got no publicity here in the UK! If we did I didn't see it. In Strasbourg, six judges voted against the pensioners but the seventh, Lech Garlicki from Poland, bless him, supported them with an admirable understanding of their plight. It is worth reading his judgement as it shows he actually studied the case. The other six decided to follow previous cases like lemmings. If I am allowed to enter a url, you will find his judgement at the end - two pages of this: www.pension-parity-uk.com/thejudgment. Anyone interested can also look at: www.pension-parity-uk.com and find more facts on that website, which is organised by pensioners from many frozen countries.
I have written many letters and I might as well have put them in bottles and flung them into Sydney Harbour! Now I am back perhaps a bottle in the Thames outside Westminster would have as much effect. Why was it necessary for the private pensioners who lost their pensions to jump around nude before anyone did anything for them?
Before anyone says "Well, if they will go to live abroad what do they expect?" you might like to know that the other 50% of British pensioners living abroad, in all European Union countries, the USA, and other illogically chosen places, receive the same pensions as they would have received had they stayed in the UK. There are also around 500,000 of them.
So, I say again: If Joan Bakewell can do something to persuade the government (whoever they may be) to cancel this freezing nonsense, she will truly be a saint!
Is there any chance that she will see our emails or should I print this out and fling it into the nearest river?
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