Those who have f*cked up the system for us, once again leave young people to struggle for as long as we shall live.

The Department for Work and Pensions is bringing back the pensions commissions to reassess pension provisions and savings in the UK. 

Governments are legally required to conduct a pension review every six years, and now, fears are that the state pension age will once again rise sooner than anticipated. 

Currently set at 66, and rising to 67 by 2028, the current pension model is broken. Under the triple lock system, the state pension increases every year in line with either inflation, wage increases or 2.5%. However, the Triple Lock model is hugely costly for governments, who refuse to tax billionaires, thus making everyone else pay for it. 

The Currently Triple Lock has worked for our current older generations, it works to up the main state pensions to a higher level than they would have been had they just increased with earnings or price inflation, adding around £24 to £26 a week extra to the basic pension and £11 to £22 extra to the new flat-rate pension.

But the system is broken – and won’t work for us. We shouldn’t accept it. 

To keep public spending on the state pension below six per cent of national income, while retaining the triple lock, the state pension age would have to rise to 74 by 2068-69. 

There is currently an entire generation training for jobs which will no longer exist due to AI, even jobs in finance have reduced by a quarter in the past year. The UK Parliament found that nearly 15% of 16-24 year olds are unemployed – not necessarily by fault – but by the lack of graduate jobs. 

The social contract is broken, and has left young people struggling. But this is no fault of immigrants, or whichever groups they try to scapegoat – this is the fault of the billionaires. This system is set up to fail for us, because it works for them. They want us to work until we die.

In addition, people living in the deprived areas of the country have lower life expectancy and lower healthy life expectancy than people in less deprived areas, meaning many will never live to reach this state pension age. In 2022, the male life expectancy in Blackpool, a deprived area, was 73.4 years old, in comparison to Kensington and Chelsea which is 86.3. (ONS) 

We watch prices in UK supermarkets rise monthly, face austerity cuts to all public services including our NHS, and see our governments contributing to genocides abroad. 

This is no mistake. Inequality fills the pockets of the rich whilst the rest of us suffer. Now not even in our old age can we rest.