Britons living abroad for more than 15 years to be given right to vote

[Andy from Kent]

13 hours ago, Crossy said:

I think most of us would much rather have our pension increases.

 

There, I've said it!

 

 

 

Sorry they'll probably claim your paperwork got lost..     

????

[Neeranam]

14 hours ago, Crossy said:

I think most of us would much rather have our pension increases.

 

There, I've said it!

 

I will be very happy in 12 years when I get the full pension. I only worked in the UK for 5 years but will get a full pension. I only had to pay 60,000 baht for 10 years of voluntary class 2 payments. yesterday, I paid 6,000 baht for the year. 

[Neeranam]

It will just be the United Kingdom of Wales and England soon, hopefully. 

Will Scots get to vote in the referendum for freedom?

[kimamey]

7 hours ago, Rimmer said:

I have not lived in England since 1978 and am I interested in voting there...........NOPE

 

If they really want to give us something, As Crossy says sort out the discrimination with the pensions.

If your location is correct you haven't been born yet, you'll be away a lot longer than 43 years  and your pension will cripple the country. Actually you're a hologram so you shouldn't get a vote or a pension. 

 

For the rest of us (although it doesn't affect me yet as I'm still partly resident in the UK) vote is important but from a practical point of view money will always be more important unless you're sufficiently covered by a private pension or some other income.

[kimamey]

17 minutes ago, Neeranam said:

I will be very happy in 12 years when I get the full pension. I only worked in the UK for 5 years but will get a full pension. I only had to pay 60,000 baht for 10 years of voluntary class 2 payments. yesterday, I paid 6,000 baht for the year. 

Maybe I'm not reading your post right but you need 35 years of contributions (from class 1 or 2 contributions or NI credits if you aren't working) to get the full pension. You need a minimum of 10 years to get any pension but between 10 and 35 years its a proportion of the full state pension

[Neeranam]

3 minutes ago, kimamey said:

Maybe I'm not reading your post right but you need 35 years of contributions (from class 1 or 2 contributions or NI credits if you aren't working) to get the full pension. You need a minimum of 10 years to get any pension but between 10 and 35 years its a proportion of the full state pension

I thought it was 30, it used to be.

Just checked the forecast - it says I will get 179 pounds a week.

I paid 10 years at once, paid about 5 years after that. Pay for another 12 years. I think I started paying when I was 16 and my years at Uni or unemployed also count. 

[kimamey]

3 minutes ago, Neeranam said:

I thought it was 30, it used to be.

Just checked the forecast - it says I will get 179 pounds a week.

I paid 10 years at once, paid about 5 years after that. Pay for another 12 years. I think I started paying when I was 16 and my years at Uni or unemployed also count. 

I think it used to be 39 but it's 35 now with a minimum of 10.

 

You would have received credits whilst unemployed assuming you signed on but I don't know about uni. If you make sure you get to the 35 years then yes you'll get it although if you aren't ordinarily resident in the UK then it won't increase which is what others have been complaining about. I've no idea if you have to be resident to make contributions though as it's not something I've ever needed to find out. I've tried looking but it's all based on whether you need to pay NI rather than can you.

[Neeranam]

2 minutes ago, kimamey said:

I've no idea if you have to be resident to make contributions though as it's not something I've ever needed to find out.

No, you don't. All the contributions I've made and will make in the future are as a non-resident. 

[Gandtee]

1 hour ago, Golden Triangle said:

Personally I have no idea, but on different sites independent of TVF that I have visited they do exist & work extremely hard for the likes of yourself and me, I'm not going to spoon feed you links, Google is your friend, use it, rather than bash someone giving input to a valid and serious problem.

Bash someone? A frivolous remark meant in jest. It would seem humour is sadly lacking, or not understood in the New Normal.

[kimamey]

If you're not resident I wonder who your MP would be. Maybe you'd be in your last constituency and there would have to be some change to the methods of contacting an MP as at the moment if you try to contact online you have to enter your address to confirm you are a constituent. Nothing that can't be sorted out.

[Golden Triangle]

19 minutes ago, Gandtee said:

Bash someone? A frivolous remark meant in jest. It would seem humour is sadly lacking, or not understood in the New Normal.

Well there's the rub you see, I used one of these ???? at the end of my post indicating slight humour attached, not perfect I agree but all you used a couple of times was ?

 

The trouble with trying to indicate humour in a very short post is very difficult, you haven't managed it, may I suggest judicious use of emojis in future to avoid confusion. Ta ????

[sharksy]

14 hours ago, WineOh said:

Nor could I at the moment.

 

BUT

 

Every citizen of every country should have the RIGHT to vote, or not to vote or to spoil their ballot paper by drawing a willy on it or whatever else they like.

 

The right to vote is something we are all entitled to, coming from a democratic country, regardless of how long we have been away. 

The right to vote is something totally different from voting in and of itself. 

A friend, counting in the local elections posted up on FB what some people had done.
Drawing a willy against the candidate does actually count as a vote FOR that candidate.  Same for the voter who wrote "TW@T" against the candidate!

[rickudon]

Yes, an uprated pension would be nice, but this is about voting. Unless new procedures are put in place, how will you exercise this right?

 

Fly back to the UK to cast your vote?

 

Get a postal vote? I did this here in Thailand for the first election i would have missed, the form arrived in Thailand 2 days after the election!

 

Only other option is a proxy vote - but it has to be done by someone in the same constituency as you. How many of us have someone still around in your old home town who you trust to vote for you?

[kimamey]

42 minutes ago, rickudon said:

Yes, an uprated pension would be nice, but this is about voting. Unless new procedures are put in place, how will you exercise this right?

 

Fly back to the UK to cast your vote?

 

Get a postal vote? I did this here in Thailand for the first election i would have missed, the form arrived in Thailand 2 days after the election!

 

Only other option is a proxy vote - but it has to be done by someone in the same constituency as you. How many of us have someone still around in your old home town who you trust to vote for you?

That is a problem but I think other countries manage it. Maybe send out postal votes earlier and possibly have them sent to the embassy for them to post out. They could even have votes delivered back to the embassy.

 

[Rampant Rabbit]

17 hours ago, WineOh said:

by drawing a willy on it

Gets  my  vote everytime,  note  good  to see  this  back  on tv 

 

[nausea]

What was the State Pension uprate this year. I have two pensions, my local government pension, uprated by the CPI, and my state pension, which is subject to the triple lock, and frozen.. The one (SP) is about one third of the other. If the SP increases ever becomes significant I may have to go home and re-establish residence.

[cleopatra2]

1 hour ago, nausea said:

What was the State Pension uprate this year. I have two pensions, my local government pension, uprated by the CPI, and my state pension, which is subject to the triple lock, and frozen.. The one (SP) is about one third of the other. If the SP increases ever becomes significant I may have to go home and re-establish residence.

The state pension uprated by 2.5%.

 

[DaLa]

I would be hard pressed to prove that either of the 2 main parties in the UK have made any substantial difference in my life. My life’s path has been dictated 99% by my decisions and actions and ultimately local government probably made a greater difference than central gov.

 

On that basis I voted on few occasions back ‘home’ and now that I reside here in LoS both local and central government in the UK have an even smaller impact on my life. Anyone that has been out of the UK for 15 years would be hard pressed to convince me that being able to vote for a particular party (and remember it’s the party not specific decisions) would affect them greatly if at all.

 

Meaningless and unnecessary proposal.

[OJAS]

13 hours ago, Neeranam said:

It will just be the United Kingdom of Wales and England soon, hopefully. 

Will Scots get to vote in the referendum for freedom?

 

They probably will if they are registered in a Scottish constituency (that being where they last lived before relocating to Thailand). But a vote for an inevitable power grab of devolved powers by a bunch of power-crazed eurocrats based in Brussels would definitely not be a vote for freedom in my book!

[Medicine Man]

21 hours ago, andersonat said:

 

 

On the Benefits-side of your statement, no, they don't.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But most people in the UK don't swallow the MSM nonsense anymore. The money they freely give illegals isn't technically called 'benefits' but you can't ignore it in the big scheme of things. The point I am making is that UK expat pensioners should not be denied cost of living rises if money is freely available to chancers who have not contributed. The UK is waking up to the fact that most are chancers having crossed through safe countries on their way to the land of milk and honey. So you don't think the pensioners should be considered above other cases on the UK money tree...

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3593872/17bn-true-cost-immigration-UK-year.html

[andersonat]

52 minutes ago, Medicine Man said:

But most people in the UK don't swallow the MSM nonsense anymore. The money they freely give illegals isn't technically called 'benefits' but you can't ignore it in the big scheme of things. The point I am making is that UK expat pensioners should not be denied cost of living rises if money is freely available to chancers who have not contributed. The UK is waking up to the fact that most are chancers having crossed through safe countries on their way to the land of milk and honey. So you don't think the pensioners should be considered above other cases on the UK money tree...

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3593872/17bn-true-cost-immigration-UK-year.html

 

 

1. I'm unclear on the meaning of your sentence "So you don't think the pensioners should be considered above other cases on the UK money tree."

 - I neither said nor suggested that. It seems to me that you might be trying to put words in my mouth. 

 

2. The news-story in the Mail (from 2016) refers principally to *legal* immigration into the UK [with a brief comment about Asylum-Seekers]. 

I believe that most (adult) Legal-Immigrants to the UK have jobs. 

 

 

 

[Guderian]

There are two points here. One is that pensions for expat Brits in many countries remain frozen, in spite of much complaining, simply because they have no stick with which to beat the government. You can write all the letters to the Sun that you like, and moan all you want on Facebook, but until your actions actually affect or hurt the government in some way it's not going to pay a blind bit of difference to you. And the way to do that is to have a vote and threaten to refuse to cast it for a party that refuses to treat expat pensioners fairly. I once read that the UK has the third largest diaspora in the world, yet only around 30,000 of the 13 million+ British nationals living abroad have bothered to register as Overseas Voters. Of course, many of them will have been living abroad for more than 15 years so couldn't register now even if they wanted to. Hopefully, that will soon change.

 

The other point is that there was an APPG into Frozen British Pensions in 2019, which found that the current policy is wrong and should be rectified as soon as possible. Here's a potted summary:

 

"The report argues that the policy is illogical and favours UK pensioners in some countries over others...

While the inquiry has exposed the reality of this policy for hundreds of thousands of UK pensioners overseas, we are encouraged by the responsiveness of international governments who show a real desire to end this injustice.

As a result of this inquiry, the APPG recommends that the UK Government end the ‘frozen’ pension policy and seek to provide UK pensioners living in ‘frozen’ countries with their full uprated UK state pension as soon as possible."

 

The UK government, however, recently ignored the (very strong) recommendations in the report when dealing with Canada, which is disappointing, but few of you can do anything constructive about it as you don't have an MP to complain to, and he or she is the ONLY person that HMG will listen to on your behalf. For better or worse, that's how our democracy works. So when the new bill is passed please get registered to vote ASAP and then immediately inundate your MP with complaints about our frozen pensions. I know that some people have become so cynical that they'll claim it's not worth it, but ignore them, they have nothing useful to offer, and if enough of us pursue this route we have a good chance of changing this deeply unfair system.

 

If you're interested, you can download a PDF file with the APPG report on Frozen British Pensions and its appendices: from the links at the bottom of this page:

 

http://frozenbritishpensions.org/2020-appg-inquiry/

 

 

 

 

[sharksy]

8 hours ago, DaLa said:

I would be hard pressed to prove that either of the 2 main parties in the UK have made any substantial difference in my life. My life’s path has been dictated 99% by my decisions and actions and ultimately local government probably made a greater difference than central gov.

 

On that basis I voted on few occasions back ‘home’ and now that I reside here in LoS both local and central government in the UK have an even smaller impact on my life. Anyone that has been out of the UK for 15 years would be hard pressed to convince me that being able to vote for a particular party (and remember it’s the party not specific decisions) would affect them greatly if at all.

 

Meaningless and unnecessary proposal.

I think this has a lot to do with how wealthy you are.  Wealthy people would not want a Labour, especially Corbyn type of government, whereby the poorer people probably would probably want the extra benefits labour would give.
The WASPI women for example, would no doubt vote for whichever party would give them their pensions earlier.

[salavan]

All we need now is someone worth voting for

[mikebell]

On 5/13/2021 at 8:30 AM, Artisi said:

You cheap tart ????

Mine has been frozen for nearly 14 years, my vote would be expensive.  If I fled to Spain would it become unfrozen?

[Red Forever]

On 5/13/2021 at 2:16 PM, nausea said:

Well, if you had the right to vote in your country of residence, I guess it would make some sense, why should a person have two votes. Failing that, I don't see the problem. The pensions frozen thing is a different problem entirely. it's economic. You want your pensioners spending their money at home, not swanning off to some destination that gives them geographic arbitrage. It is public money, after all, the State Pension, that is.

The State Pension is not "public money". It's our contributions being returned to us.

Why do you think 30 yrs contributions are required to qualify for full pension?

[Red Forever]

On 5/13/2021 at 6:06 PM, Moonlover said:

I admire Harry Shindler's pluck and determination, but it's too late for me. The only thing I was interested in was Brexit and that's done and dusted. The rest I couldn't care less about.

Bet you were dancing in the street at the news on June 24th 2016 that the £ had plummeted by 25%.

[Henryford]

Great news but how do i choose between dozy Doris or Krazy Keir?

[nausea]

47 minutes ago, Red Forever said:

The State Pension is not "public money". It's our contributions being returned to us.

Why do you think 30 yrs contributions are required to qualify for full pension?

I get your point, but the reality is the State Pension is paid for by national insurance contributions, which come from the wages of people working today. Your past contributions reflect entitlement rights, not funding, which comes from the public purse. And entitlement rights can be shifted, irrespective of contribitions, which we we see with the ever increasing pension age, as indeed can benefit - the triple lock springs to mind.