On the £10 Xmas Pension Bonus!

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The £10 Christmas pension bonus might have meant something back in the day, but today it just feels bit patronising.

The problem is - it's probably going to stay that way, because to increase it to something meaningful would be too expensive and to cut it would be very bad press!

Around 18.5 Million receive it every year, so that's £180.5 million as a one off in extra benefits per year, fuck all in the grand scheme of the benefits bill, to give the poorest pensioners and extra trip to Costa in the Xmas season.

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Britain: The Stingy Aunt....

The British government here is kind of like the stingey aunt or uncle at Christmas... It feels like it has to bring a present, but it picks something too cheap and a bit insulting. The people getting it don't get real help, and they also don't get the straight truth that there's no real gift coming.

There's a double pronged thing here: some pensioners are really struggling, and for them £10 is going to feel like an insult as it's nothing in the context of the expense of Christmas, but those better off will see this as something maybe a bit pointless, almost humorous - the more you need it, the more painful it is going to be, almost!

More generally, the Christmas bonus shows that UK social policy isn't keen on tackling tough questions about who gets what. Payments that go to everyone but aren't enough are safer politically than payments that go to specific people and actually make a difference.

Final Thoughts...

In the end, just doing something for show doesn’t help anyone. A welfare system based on these kinds of symbolic gestures suggests welfare is more about appearances than actual results.

uk life dave proofofbrain neoxian cent
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I did a bit of research last year about whether you could get a nice Christmas dinner for £10 and the answer was yes. If there were four of you clubbing together it was better and you could even stretch to a bottle of Prosecco (£5 in December 2024) and a box of After Eights after dinner mints between you.

Personally, I put it into crypto.

I think welfare is a hard nut to crack, especially when you put it alongside the costs of social care. The biggest surprise to me was things that were standard on the NHS are no longer available. Fifteen years ago I had prophylactic laser treatment on my left eye as a high risk patient after a gargantuan retinal detachment in my right eye - that won't be happening any more, you would have to have that preventative treatment done privately.

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That kind of backward mission creep is scary.... it means we all end up expecting less I think!

Benefits are a tough one, I still always go back to in my head that there are plenty resources and especially labour power to go around, it's all just distributed incorrectly.

Too many people fighting for quintuple their fair share. They need slapping down.

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there are plenty resources and especially labour power to go around, it's all just distributed incorrectly.

Absolutely.

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