Thursday, 26 November 2015
God bless George Osborne!
No, I don't mean 'bless him unreservedly' - for hasn't his decision some years back to upgrade Civil Service Pensions in line with the Consumer Prices Index rather than the more generous Retail Prices Index led to a general lessening of annual government pension increases each year? That's not looking after your staff. And in fact this year, because the CPI went 'minus' in the year to September 2015 - the period my April 2016 inflationary increase would have been based on - I won't get any Civil Service Pension increase at all! And it's four-fifths of my income! How will I manage? Booooo.
And he keeps on threatening to do unwelcome things to the incomes of other people, so I hear. Even if, when push comes to shove, he changes his mind at the last moment, with a debonair insouciance that is wonderful to behold. But by then the damage is done. How many folk around the country had heart attacks worrying about what it all might mean to them? Booooo.
Gosh, we could all have ended up on the game. I mean, you have to get cash from somewhere. We'd all have caught the very death of colds, standing around at street corners in tight bras, mini-skirts and fishnets, trying to entice punters. Colds or worse. Then what would the NHS have done? Booooo.
Still, Mr Osborne - what a clever young man, bright as a button you know - has kept faith with the State Pensioners of this country, and has retained the 'Triple Lock' under which we (that is myself, plus all the rest) will now get a whopping 2.9% pension increase next April. That's important money. Hurrah!
No wonder Senior Citizens are reckoned to look like this:
And today I got a letter saying that I'd been awarded the Winter Fuel Payment. For the first time. Hurrah!
As a single householder, I get £200. Mmm, that's neat. And it'll be paid sometime before Christmas. Hurrah!
There's more. In yesterday's Autumn Spending Review that sweet and kind Mr Osborne - such a reasonable man really - did nothing to take that £200 away from me by some sneak sleight of hand. So if he turns up at my front door, I shall now bob and curtsey and cry, 'God bless, you, young sir!' and generally fawn on him, and keep bobbing and curtseying, until his entourage moves off to another Sussex village.
Hurrah for George! Three cheers! Long may he reign! (Tsk. I'd forgotten. He isn't actually in 10 Downing Street...yet...)
Hmm, two hundred nicker to play with. Shall I turn up the central heating to roasting levels now? No, not yet. Not yet! Let my visitors shiver a bit more, get a little bluer...they'll appreciate the difference all the more keenly.