Oaps United.                                     

The title states what we the elders of this country should do "unite" to help ourselves as nobody else seems to bother with our concerns about the decline in our standard of living. We are given a small increase in our pensions and that's usually to cover the imminent announcement of some form of increase, petrol, rates, travel, and food. Some of us do write to M.P.s and other body's and some times a few words are spoken in the House of Commons, to address our concerns but that seems as far as most are prepared to take it. The last ten (10) years have seen some of our benefits eroded through price increases   with insuffient increases in the money we get to offset the cost.

We read about the management and managers of hospitals who fail to do what they are paid to do, yet get paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for their failures and   as compensation for resigning, the cost in human lives is unthinkable, yet we are held to as low an income as possible. Even the members of the House of Commons and Lords who are there to represent us,   can individually spend more on travel and expenses in a year than ten or more pensioners use to sustain their meager living standard.

  I live in the county of Kent not far from Rochester where there once lived a person of some renown, who's name is linked with poverty and a way of life, the name? Dickens, yes we are gradually returning to the Dickonian times, who know's they might bring back the work houses.

I am not suggesting that we link arms and march on Parliament, that would be nothing short of folly, but to organize and form a united body, (they call us the grey army) so like an army lets be of one purpose, of  one mind, to regain that which is ours by right, equality and respect. We have the numbers to make a big difference in the way we are treated and to make the M.P.s do their job and represent us.

  We are the largest group of all professions with the knowledge and experience, that comes with time served at our disposal, there is no other group as large as us, or able to match us in this single aim, so lets use it to get what we need, use our numbers and votes to be recognized as a real part of this society who will be heard.

  A fund will have to be set up to cover all the cost that we will incur as we grow and challenge the powers to be. We feel that £1:00 (One Pound) each a week should be enough to cover the cost and with sufficient numbers it should never increase. We will approach company's with a view to getting discounts and sponsorship and remember a lot of the work can be done by those of us who wish to get involved. The more there are of us the better the benefits.

We hope to set up a Nationwide Network of   people in most large cities to represent local needs on a local platform.

Charity's. Are a good thing to have such as Age Concern and the many others, but their hands are tied, as a charity they have to follow the rules, it needs an independent group who are not tied by rules to fill the gap, anyway why should we have to rely charity to get that which is our's by right.?

Building The Site.

The site will be improved over time as to it's needs, but we will follow priority's   in   it's   development, we will develop links with other like sites that we find to be helpful to our aims. We will start to develop a voting system to ensure that a democratic rule is established at the offset and to this end everyone who joins will have a coded I.D.

We know that some of you might not have a computer but the likely hood is that a member of your family might have one that can be used,I bring this up as most of the mail, if not all will be via. email, this does not mean that we will not use the post. We will approach outlets to try and obtain reclaimed pc's if possible.