Taxpayers' Alliance: Cut pensioner benefits because they will be dead by 2020
As if the government’s programme of cuts were not draconian enough already, everyone’s favourite right-wing outlier the Taxpayers’ Alliance is urging the government to go further.
That is after all their job as an outlier – to pitch their tent on the hard-right in order to make the merely right-wing look reasonable.
All well and good; only they’ve gone and thrown taste out the window as well.
Ministers should waste no time in making unpopular cuts to pensioner benefits, TPA director Alex Wild has told a Conservative Party conference fringe event.
Hardly revelatory considering the TPA’s entire raison d’etre is cutting back the state – though a questionable electoral strategy considering older people are more likely to vote than the young.
But do not fear – Wild has the answer. According to the TPA director, it’s sensible to cut some pensioner benefits “as soon as possible” because by 2020 many of those hit by the cuts…will be dead.
“The first of which will sound a little bit morbid – some of the people… won’t be around to vote against you in the next election“, Wild told the conference fringe event.
And of course the government might also take advantage of the elderly losing their mental faculties. Wild continued: “So that’s just a practical point, and the other point is they might have forgotten by then.”
So the Tories should cut pensioner benefits because those on the receiving end of the cuts will likely be a) senile or b) dead.
Stay classy, TPA.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
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13 Responses to “Stay classy, Taxpayers’ Alliance”
P.Smith
Who is this Tory twit, never even heard of him until now… Obviously he has been told to say something controversial to get his name known…………with in a week or two he will be back in his little unknown hole in which he crept out of…and forgotten about. Hope his granny is proud of him, oh She will have forgotten he exists…..and so should everyone else
Will Rae
Shocking but not surprising from the Wingers Alliance, nobody should take them seriously.
dougmatelot
I would like to offer my services to this organisation. I am 75; live in Thailand, farm and cut rice; and have a wife and young family. I plan to live for at least another 25 years; but will call it a day if I feel I have become as stupid as Mr Wild!! (incidentally I sold computers at 30 and again I was a director of a computer company at 60; I also spent 10myears in the Royal Navy; this guy is an example of why the UK is plummeting down!!)
Paul Southworth
So you’re complaining that left-wingers aren’t outraged by these comments under an article on a left-wing website expressing outrage at these comments.
Royb
What?