One of the great joys of becoming an octogenarian is that on reaching your 80th birthday you receive a special gift from her majesty's government. It's an increase in the state pension of 25p per week (five shillings in old money), an amount that has remained unchanged since last century and possibly the century before.
No doubt when the princely sum was introduced it could pay for a night on the town with change left over for a fish and chip supper but sadly today it won't even buy a second class postage stamp (50p). I did think of saving two weeks' increase for a postcard to send to her majesty, at whichever of her seven palaces she happened to be residing, thanking her for her largesse. But I'm having second thoughts on reading that her government plans to scrap the gift as part of its "reforms" of the state pensions system.
You can only marvel at the malice motivating this ludicrously mean-spirited action. It is the ultimate expression of what Pope Francis recently described as the tyranny of free market capitalism. In his first major speech on global finance, the Pope warned that the growing worship of money was making life a misery for millions, many of them old, frail and powerless.
He may have had in mind the millions of UK pensioners systematically persecuted by sociopaths running her majesty's financial institutions and energy suppliers. For them the cult of money has become pathological -- more important even than blood. They can keep their 25p. Who needs a birthday present from vampires?
