Political failure to recognise pension flaws leading to unsustainable divide - say Silver Voices

 
NATIONAL SCANDAL 

Silver Voices is the only independent, individual membership organisation for senior citizens in the UK. The group's latest news, highlighted below, shows that our UK politicians are increasingly failing elderly people. 

TRIPLE LOCK INCREASES CONFIRMED BUT DANGERS LURK

The calculations for the Triple Lock increases to the state pensions from next April are now clear. The earnings figure of 4.8% will be taken, because this year it is higher than either inflation (3.8%) or the 2.5% safety net. The Government will formally endorse these figures in the November Budget (there is no indication that they will not do so). Following Government approval, the new figures from April 2026 should therefore be:

 New state pension top rate: £241.30 per week (£12,547.60 pa)

 Old state pension top rate: £184.90 per week (£9614.80 pa)

The continuing failure of politicians to recognise the unfair and growing gap between the pensions of the large majority of older people who retired before April 2016, and more recent retirees, is leading to an unsustainable divide (the income gap is now a huge £56 per week). The old state pension is now only three quarters of the new state pension and Silver Voices will continue to campaign to get this scandal addressed.  

The top new state pension rate is now only £22 below the frozen lower tax threshold of £12570, which gives added weight to our priority campaign for the Budget to stop the state pension from being taxed by unfreezing the personal allowance for pensioners.

We should also remember the plight of about half a million older people who retired abroad, after paying their national insurance throughout their working lives, who have had their state pensions frozen because the Government has failed to conclude reciprocal agreements with the countries concerned. These triple lock increases will not apply to them, compounding the unfairness. Another glaring anomaly which must be resolved.

 Savage Policy Exchange Agenda Condemned by Silver Voices

We cannot rest on our laurels in retaining the Triple Lock up to now as very powerful forces are developing an explicit anti-pensioner agenda. A report by the Policy Exchange think tank was published last week, laying this agenda bare. This organisation is an extreme free-market group which refuses to disclose its sources of funding, but is reportedly backed by global corporations. It does not believe in public services or benefits at all, but is influential in Whitehall thinking. Their Report ‘Beyond Our Means’ calls for an immediate £115 billion cut in public spending, including:

Scrapping the Triple Lock and freezing the state pension for three years, then increasing it only on the basis of CPI (inflation)

Increasing the state pension age to 70 by 2040

Reverting to the original Government policy on scrapping the winter fuel payment

Scrapping the free bus pass (except for those on pension credit)

Means-testing free eye tests and free prescriptions

Charging a £20 fee for GP visits

This is not the end of Policy Exchange’s ambitions on behalf of global capitalism. They want to scrap the universal provision of state pensions completely, and they also call for all public services (including the NHS) to be increasingly funded through insurances and fixed payments. If you can stomach it, the full report is available on the following link:

 https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/beyond-our-means/ 

The Silver Voices Director had an opinion piece in the Daily Express published, condemning this Report, which you can read on the following link. It is a pity that none of the main political parties or old age charities have done likewise.

 https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2124303/triple-lock-attack-think-tanks

 29 October 2025

https://silvervoices.co.uk/join-us/ 

Flaggers' Faceoff with Antifa in Southport

 

There was quite a lot of abstract shouting, banging of drums and traditional childish insults on Lord Street today, yet on the whole things seemed to go off peacefully. 

Here are some sights and sounds of the afternoon's action... 

In Pictures: Yesterday's (18 October) Birkdale Arts & Crafts Market

 

Here we have a few images from yesterday's well-attended market at St. Peter's Church in Birkdale.

More: 

https://southport-crafts-and-events.jimdosite.com/ 

Family Heritage Quest leads to Tudor and Norman links

Through the ages we look and wonder about where we came from and what secrets the past may hold.



Above: My 14th great grandfather Sir William Petre. 

Above: My paternal grandmother was Rhoda Regan (formerly Howard). She lived in Birkdale, Southport, and went on to marry my grandfather, Patrick. 

Above: my grandad, Patrick (Parky) Regan.  He died of wounds in the First World War.

Deeper into the mists of time...

Thanks to my pal, Jess, and her sterling ancestry work I have managed to discover family links connected to Rhoda's line, that stretch back centuries.

Sir William Petre (c. 1505 – 1572) was Secretary of State to three consecutive Tudor monarchs, namely Kings Henry VIII, Edward VI and Queen Mary I.



Sir William also deputised for the Secretary of State to Elizabeth I. He rose quickly in the royal service and was knighted in 1543. 

William was the eldest son of John Petre of Tor Newton in the parish of Torbryan, Devon, by his wife Alice Colling, daughter of John Colling of Woodland, Devon.

The family had been established at Tor Newton from at least the reign of King Richard II (1377–1399). 

The following concerns my 11th great grandfather. 

Gervase Clifton, 1st Baron Clifton (c. 1579–14 October 1618) was an English nobleman.

Clifton was a son of Sir John Clifton of Barrington Court, Somerset and was educated at St Alban's Hall, Oxford. 

In 1591, he became a Knight of the Shire of Huntingdonshire, settled in Leighton Bromswold and married Katherine, a daughter of Sir Henry Darcy (a previous Knight of the Shire) that year and was knighted by 1597. From 1597-98 and also in 1601, Clifton was MP for Huntingdonshire and was raised to the Peerage by writ of summons in 1608 as Baron Clifton, of Leighton Bromswold, County Huntingdon.

Above: Arms of Clifton of Clifton, Nottinghamshire. 

Gervase was a descendant of the Nottinghamshire family and shared a common ancestor with the Clifton baronets Sir Gervase Clifton (d.1508), Knight of the Bath (1494), of Clifton Hall, Nottingham, High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests in 1502. 

From the latter's eldest son Robert Clifton were descended the Clifton baronets whilst from one of his younger sons, Gervase Clifton of the Customs House, London, was descended in the third generation the 1st Baron Clifton.

Norman links

Gervase Clifton, 1st Baron Clifton, had no direct link to William the Conqueror, However, his family's lineage apparently can be tracked back to the Norman Conquest. 

The 1st Baron Clifton was part of a branch of the Clifton family, whose origins were in fact historically linked to Alvaredus de Clifton, a Norman knight who served under William the Conqueror. 

The family assumed the name of 'Clifton' from the village when they purchased the lands in 1272 from the de Rhodes family.  

One branch of the family likewise assumed the name 'Wilford'.  The family home became Clifton Hall on the summit of the Clifton heights overlooking the a large bend in the River Trent.

More reseach in needed here... 

https://www.clifton-village.org.uk/cliftonhist/cliftonf.html