Seniors living on pensions in Britain care more about pension benefit than Brexit, though the second phase of Brexit talks will definitely affect the economy.
Joan at the age of 80 is the oldest volunteer with the Time and Talents community center in London. She said the rising food prices worry her more than Brexit.
“I’ve just moved into a sheltered housing complex and a lot of the people there are still mobile because in the sheltered housing you still got to look after yourself. Food prices have increased, but that’s all I’ve noticed. But the next year it will be even worse, I don’t know. But every one keeps on and on about Brexit. Quite frankly, it’s getting to be a joke,” said Joan.
The British government encourages people to work full-time to take care of their parents who cannot live on their own. However, Em, a carer taking care of her mother, said the money given by the government can barely make ends meet.
She said her mother with Alzheimer’s disease gets less than 900 pounds a month and she gets 62 pounds a week, but her rent is 140 pounds a week. So basically she had to depend on her mother’s pension to live.
Em said she worried more about the money she got every month than Brexit.
Alex, CEO of Time and Talents, said there are 300 to 400 elderly people like Em’s mother in his community and they will hold events now and then to let the seniors have fun. Though the 120-year-old community center sustained this year with sponsorship, he was not sure whether it could survive.
“In terms of Brexit, the first to remember about Brexit is it hasn’t happened yet. So the actual big changes in the economy that we are going to see do worry us. But I would imagine that we will see even greater tightening of the belt for the government and I think that over the next few years, we will probably find that we have even less money from the local government or the central government. I think it probably costs us about maybe 20 pounds a week or something to look after those older people. And that depends, some people cost very little, some people cost maybe three pounds, they cost a sandwich. We never know from one year to the next whether we’re going to get enough money to carry on and that’s the big problem is that it is very instable,” said Alex.
In the past years, funds allocated by the local government have decreased from 60 percent to 17 percent.
Though the British government tried to boost public confidence on Brexit talks, to the retired ones real life is a bigger problem than Brexit.
