Let’s see if you can live on £171 a week
Thursday 6th August 2009, 1:00PM BST.
DEPUTY Carla McNulty Bauer was yesterday challenged to spend a month living on a weekly pension of £171. 
It came after the Commerce and Employment minister claimed that the old age pension was too generous and increases should be reduced in the future.
Deputy McNulty Bauer declined to take up the challenge, but said she would look at how much she spent on necessities.
‘I think that it would be very useful,’ she said.
She had infuriated pensioners, their representatives and former States members including former States Insurance Authority president Bob Chilcott.
He said diminishing the pension would undo all the hard work done to reduce poverty.
‘She is living in another world,’ he said.
‘Myself and others have spent 40 years building up a decent rate for pensioners.’
He said it was the authority’s responsibility to ensure that pensioners would get back what they had put in over the years.
‘To say what she is saying, I don’t think is very responsible for a senior politician,’ said Mr Chilcott. ‘It would be a very good suggestion for her to live on a pension. She would find it very difficult.’
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So she decided not to take up the challenge, what a surprise!!
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If she did take up the challenge, it would be very dishonest of that I’m sure, without a close supervision.
‘If she did take up the challenge; and she should be made to; all her cupboards and such things should be removed, under supervision, then she should walk wherever she has to go or take a bus.
I would further suggest she does it in the winter.
Then when the month is over imaterial of the outcome she should leave the Island, because it has no meaning for her.
Even now her constituency(if one may call it that) should now send her to Coventry and have no further dealings with her.
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“Deputy McNulty Bauer declined to take up the challenge, but said she would look at how much she spent on necessities.” .Looks like she also thinks that old people should not expect a few luxuries in life too!
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I am not at all surprised to read that Deputy McNulty Bauer declined to take up the challenge.
As like all other deputies/politicians in Guernsey, and indeed all around the world, they are all feathering there nests with the high salary’s they are getting at present.
By the time they retire they will all have enough tucked away to last them the rest of the lives in luxury.
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No surprise there, of course she wouldn’t cope on such a measly amount. She probably hasn’t a clue what the average pensioner deems as necessities as she is so out of touch.
I’m glad I didn’t waste a vote on this woman.
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A person should be obligated to stick by their statements, or be made to retract them. By not taking up the challenge she has shown that she has little regard for the people of this island and has no leadership qualities, and should not be in a position of responsibility. A good leader should never tell somebody to do something that they are not prepared to do themselves. Even the Royal Princes, William & Harry had to sweep floors, wash dishes, live & eat with their men; even fighting alongside with them. Its a pity that greed come before people as it takes away respect for that person.
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£171..reduce by 20 cigarettes a day…per week £28..balance £143.
Three bottles of wine per week(cheap stuff) £12
Balance £131. Utilities per week £20 Balance £111…Travel (by bus)..£10 per week..balance £101
Food £91 per week..Balance £10…Press per week plus another newspaper..£5.60..Balance £4,40.
Contingencies…telephone your deputy McNulty..she will know what to do..she will commence by saying you should not smoke, drink or read newspapers and save all that money towards your doctor’s fees and the real joys of a wholesome life..I do wonder how some elected representatives find the gall….
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Carla Margaret Thatcher shows her true colours!
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Trust the states again to not know the true meaning of living on a budget. Carla should be made to live a month on the small amount and then see how she likes it. But like all other states member’s they promise the earth to get elected and once in forget their promises and look out for themselves. I live next to 2 elderly pensioners and they don’t drink or smoke and don’t go out often as they just cannot afford it……..
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vic gamble – Interesting budget you have there.
Don’t Guernsey pensioners get free bus travel?
That’s £10 saved straight away.
You’re right in encouraging smoking and drinking in the older population though, it’s a great way to decrease their life expectancy and hence help solve the pension crisis.
I have noticed one problem with your budget, it’s not actually doing anything to create future earnings. Mrs.P Senior has been putting £25 a month into bank shares since the New Year. She’s more than quadrupled her money and she will get dividend payments too. Her latest advice in fact is to get into landfill mining stocks but they sound a bit risky for me.
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We need a nickname for the lady
How about McNutty Bauer
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Mrs.Pinthepantry..you are right..it is not the budget of a budding economist..just a few figures thrown together to make a point…but the ten quid back on bus fares can be easily used to catch a taxi from the Town Church to…well the Town Church!
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How about Black Mc Nutty Bauer, I say black because she gives pensioners the blues, making them see red and too yellow for her to resign from the Green and pleasant Island,
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When you have had a huge salary from specsavers, when you own your own large house, when you have no idea what living on minimum wage would mean, why would you take up the challenge to live on a pension. Words are cheap living in Guernsey isn’t.Time to make sure that this is remembered by all come election day or maybe she should just retire now for not being brave enough to face a challenge.
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Mal B Smith – well said, could not agree more. Mcnutty Bauer is a foreigner who was not even here whilst our hard working pensioners were working towards there retirement. These happen to be our grand parents/parents she is talking about and i take great offence! GET HER OUT OF OFFICE now, its our contributions thats paying for her to be where she is and lets face it should she even be there? She is far from local so how can she have our Islands best interests at heart? My gran is living on just her sole pension since my grandad died, however she still has the same house and rates etc to pay on half the income!
The Island should protest against these idiots being left in office, they are ruining everything they have to deal with. By the time there term of office is up we will be in debt for the rest of our lives. They are all in it for themselves!!!!!
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Hypocrisy take a look at their pension scheme.
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I live on less than this a week. I am lucky that I have low rent thanks to States Housing and I just HAVE to budget. I enjoy the free things that Guernsey has to offer, the beach, the park, just about anything outdoors but i totally agree with most of the other comments left, this stupid woman should lose her job, surely if she managed for a month on this tiny amount per week she could back up the rubbish she’s spouting, but she knows as well as i do that it’s incredibly hard and unpleasant.
I count myself lucky to live in an island where we get help if we are unable to support ourselves entirely but we MUST look after our pensioners and remember what they mean to us. Let’s face it, without the bravery of their generation, we’d all be speaking Deutsch!
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Politicians live in a different world to us, They always tell you they are trying to do their best for you but tend just to line their pockets, they have no idea what the real people earn, in the UK they had a program on tv and spoke to many Politicians asking them questions like how much is a pint of milk or a loaf of bread, 1 Politician said a loaf of bread was £5.20 and milk is £3 they are so far up their own a**es.
If anything pensioners should get more, they helped to build what Guernsey have today.
This women is a outsider who has no idea about Island life
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Not only that, Serge, but the Press have jumped all over the UK’s Audit Quango boss, Steve Bundred as a font of all knowledge when he said drastic cuts are possible to all manner of public spending. This is someone that in 5 years has earned £1M.
If you’re earning that much from the tax payers’ pocket and you talk about making life harder for the poor and the vulnerable, then you really ought to be more careful in your choice of words. What makes it worse for Bundred is that he is in a non political role. Providing services and the means they are funded is a political issue. This man is a taxpayer servant, not someone to influence policy. Anyway, why did it take him 5 years to come to that conclusion?
He may have saved Camden council a bill, but he sacked 3000 workers to do it, which just transfers the economic burden away from the local authority into the central benefit budget.
Politicians (and their unaccountable functionaries) cannot possibly tell the poor they should be more ‘efficient’ when all the inefficiencies lie with the consultants, managers and their bosses.
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Surely Carla is barking up the wrong tree here! Old age pensioners have given their time, money and work effort to the Island. They deserve a pension. We should be targeting the work-shy and the young teenage mums (who deliberately get pregnant) who seem to think that we should all work so that they can sit around all day doing nothing. Have you looked at the number of spongers claiming benefit? The figures can be found in the State’s accounts. How can they justify collecting their benefit every week when the poor pensioners are being the next victim. I do not believe for a minute that all the people who claim benefit are genuine cases. WHY don’t the States clamp down on them.
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Coventry was mentioned in a previous comment. Coventry has thousands of people with a take home pay of less than £150 per week, this money is to pay rent rates, electricity , gas and water rates, not to mention food and travel to work costs, clothing and other sundry expenses, not to mention the high cost and taxation on most goods and fuel. There are couple with children having to exist on £150 per week. Most pensioners over here are in reciept of less than £90 per week per couple.
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I bet you wish that you had never made the comments you did Mc Nutty Bauer about pensioners, to late now though. You will be one of those people one day, but oh I forgot you dont have to worry about money do you. you will probably never be in that position will you? people that have worked virtually all there lives you want to take there money away. what about people that dont work and theres nothing wrong with them, yet they still get money every week that we the working people still pay to keep them why? As soon as they can go to work they just have another baby, so they dont have to work and we just keep paying for it, so focus your attention on that to save money.
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Roger, to be fair, the cost of living is higher over here so the pension should be higher. People generally, however, have got used to the luxury afforded by a successful finance industry and nobody wants to reign in the expenditure. Worrying really. Please also understand that the posting on this site represents the views of a tiny minority. We don’t all think foreigners should be booted out of Gsy for raising a topic for debate! That’s a bigot’s view and not common.
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According to the UK pension department the basic state pension is £152 per couple.
In addition, there are numerous extras that can be claimed.
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Reading this saddens me, my grandmother has just turned 65 in july and is now recieving a pension. she still has a teenager to support who is in collage at the moment to further hes education so still relies on support from my grandmother, she still has rent to pay and bills to pay, she has to get food each week, she has a phone so she can stay in contact with relitives but other then that she cant afford anything more. you cant say to save save money on busses because she walks everywhere, drink because she doesnt drink, smoking, she doesnt do that either, she barely scrapes through each week, i try to help her out when i can but i have a partner and 2 children of my own and am barely keeping myself, you say about putting money away and saving, i agree but not all people can afford to do that, i have been trying to save for 6 years but everytime i get something behind me it goes out on something unexpected. I realy do pity the poor elderly that have to live with this low income each week, you could never understand it untill you have been there. I pay more then my fair share in taxes and would like to see it go towards the elderly pension as well as having to pay for all this rubbish i never use. have a little think about it before rushing in, what do the people want?
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Hi Level headed darling!
Your Grandmother sounds lovely, reminds me of our dear old Mrs P Snr. however she should realise one important thing, that she doesn’t HAVE to support a teenager at college. Apparently it is still possible to join the workforce, be a productive member of society, pay your own way and not be a burden on society or your family from the age of 16 onwards. That degree in underwater yak wrestling that they are striving for just isn’t worth it!
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Miss Taylor is right, McNutty and others need to focus their attention on those who are perfectly capable of working but choose to live on benefits instead. It’s high time these benefits were cut. You only have to walk past the Social Security on a Thursday morning to see the lazy scroungers out there, waiting for OUR MONEY, wearing “labels” and clutiching the latest mobile phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
And the single mothers could work too instead of having babies to avoid doing so. These people have been getting away with choosing this lifestyle for too long. Generations of hard working Guernsey people had no choice but to get out there and work regardless of how poor the wages were or whether they had children. There simply was no choice. McNutty wouldn’t know anything about this of course as she is not a local person.
Why is nothing being done to cut benefits to make them less attractive? Are the States scared of the scroungers for some reason?
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I’m sorry Mrs P but I take that as a personal slight. Firstly, it’s a BA (Hons) in Aquatic Yak Psychology and secondly, it’s a prerequisite if I ever want to fulfill my dream of becoming a Nepalese Goatherd.
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How about you Dave Jones? You’re quite a vocal person.
Care to comment?
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Cheesedoff belowe is a copy of an E-mail i sent to all states members a week or so ago.
Dear All
I have just returned from a few days away and was unaware of the details of Carla’s comments until yesterday, I have to say I am in agreement with Mary and Janine, many of our pensioners are struggling badly and the constant rises in utility bills, many orchestrated by the States owned monopolies have done little to help their plight.
We have also seen a 30% rise in food bills over the last 3 years, milk being one commodity that is essential to their well being, also the massive rise in fuel bills, coal especially, along with heating oil, TRP and subsequently refuse rates. It is absolutely essential that pensions keep pace with living costs, the majority of these people have given a big chunk of their hardworking lives to Guernsey and they deserve better from their government. There is no doubt that Dep Mary Lowe when Minister of Social Security did much to make sure that pensions kept pace with living costs, by keeping payment levels slightly above RPI that policy has certainly gone some way to helping pensioners through a difficult period of rising costs. Also these constant references to what happens in the UK are not relevant to Guernsey, we have always done things much better here than the UK, which as you will observe is currently the basket case of Europe.
Yours
DJ
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DJ
Not quite what I was hoping for but thank you at least for responding…..
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Cheesed Off
At least Dave Jones is one of the few deputies who have expressed an opinion on the stupid comment of the fragrant Carla.
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