You can set your watch by it. Every other day, the Express or Mail slaps a trembling old dear on the front page – tartan blanket, 40-watt bulb, sad mug of tea – as if rationing’s just come back and Churchill’s still warming up in the wings. “Forgotten generation betrayed again!” they cry. “Elderly forced to choose between heating and digestives!”
And for a moment, you’d think they gave a damn.
But turn the page and suddenly, anyone proposing a modest rise in National Insurance – which actually funds the very pensions they’ve just declared sacred – is labelled a Marxist saboteur. “Tax on work!” they howl. “Job killer!” “Punishment for aspiration!”
It’s political schizophrenia in broadsheet form. On the one hand: Saint Doris, who built Britain with her bare hands and deserves a medal and a winter fuel allowance. On the other: any attempt to fund her retirement properly is met with the sort of hysteria normally reserved for Brussels directives on bendy bananas.
Here’s the thing they never say out loud: today’s pensions aren’t funded by wartime heroism or quiet dignity. They’re funded by National Insurance. Not magic, not clapping, not flag-waving. Just the pay-as-you-go whip-round that working people contribute to every month – so that Doris can keep the immersion heater on and the cat fed.
And yet, the same press that bangs on about pension justice decries any increase in NI as an assault on the British way of life. They want pensions – just not the mechanism that pays for them. It’s like demanding a roast dinner and declaring gravy immoral.
It gets worse. These are the same publications that supported Brexit – which has done wonders for the economy in the same way woodworm does for antique furniture. A shrinking tax base, a smaller workforce, stagnant growth – and then surprise! The money for pensions starts to dry up. Cue yet more headlines about betrayal, this time blaming... well, anyone but themselves.
And don't even try to discuss reform. Suggest means-testing? You’re punishing savers. Raise the pension age? That’s a war on the elderly. Immigration to boost the workforce? “Too many foreigners.” Taxing wealth? “Class warfare.” The list goes on.
It’s not economics. It’s pantomime. A carefully choreographed drama where pensioners are wheeled on stage as noble victims, while all serious solutions are booed off with tabloid rage. Never mind the arithmetic – as long as there’s outrage to be mined and paper to be sold.
And the columnists leading this charade? Most are nowhere near the State Pension queue. Their retirements are stitched into consultancy fees, buy-to-let empires, and cushy directorships. But they still trot out teary monologues about Doris in Doncaster – not because they care, but because she’s a convenient symbol in the culture war against tax, reform, and reality.
So let’s drop the pretence. If you oppose National Insurance, then you oppose pensions. You can’t venerate the elderly while starving the system that supports them. And if you're counting on the Mail to save your pension, best of luck – their concern for Doris ends at the edge of a tax rise.
This isn’t about defending pensioners. It’s about defending a delusion – one where money grows on flags and public services are funded by nostalgia. Meanwhile, Doris is still cold, still skint, and still being used as bait in someone else’s political theatre.
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