The poor die young – in Leeds as in the rest of the UK. The injustice of the Coalition’s pension proposals.

On Thursday George Osborne announced some of the most far-reaching changes to pensions ever.
At their heart are changes to the pension age. That will rise to 66 by 2020 , and to 67 by 2028.
But there’s more to it than that. In future, the age at which people will receive a state pension will go up – in line with rising life expectancy.
So it’s predicted that those born in the 1990s, people now in their 20s, will work until the age of 70.
This sliding scale for retirement age, tying it to average life expectancies, is a major change. It’s one which demands scrutiny.

The first thought is that, once again, this Coalition government is cynically hitting the young. They are already paying the price of Osborne and Clegg’s austerity measures – in unemployment, increased tuition fees, removal of education maintenance allowances. There’s a generation being effectively…