Will AI Take Our Jobs? (Ep 2)
19 December 2025
471. Rory Stewart: How the Government Tried to Silence Me on Lockdowns
-
Podcast
-
21 November 2025
Why did Boris Johnson and the British government not only fail to listen, but actively try to suppress early warnings about the pandemic? How did groupthink and optimism bias cripple the UK's response? And is Britain's government structurally too slow to handle future threats like AI and Putin's increasing aggression in Europe?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more.
__________
The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away free TRIP Plus membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups š TRIP Plus gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit ā fuseenergy.com/politicsā ā”
Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ā¼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ā
Ā
To save your company time and money, open a Revolut Business account today via get.revolut.com/z4lF/therestispolitics, and add money to your account by 31st of December 2025 to get a Ā£200 welcome bonus or equivalent in your local currency.
__________
Social Producer: Emma Jackson
Video Editor: Josh Smith
Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne
Producer: Evan Green, India Dunkley
Senior Producer: Callum Hill
Exec Producer: Tom Whiter
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hello Alastair,
I listened to your podcast about the budget yesterday and was very disappointed to hear you say that the triple lock is unsustainable and Rory sadly agreed with you.
When 1 in 6 retired women and 1 in 12 retired men live solely on the state pension, how could you possibly think that less than Ā£13,000pa. is enough to live on?
Anyone with a private pension on top of their state pension pays income tax at the same rate as the working population, so 20% of the triple lock is clawed back in tax.
Everyone with a state pension has worked and contributed to the state pension scheme through National Insurance contributions and your entitlement to state pension and the amount you get is worked out from how many contributions you have paid, so you need to have worked for 35 years and paid full NI contributions to get the full pension (Iām sure you know that many women for various reasons donāt get a full pension)
I worked as a nurse in the NHS for 32years. With my state pension and my private pension my income is not even what I would get if I was paid minimum wage.
To say a scheme is unsustainable gives credence to the lie that we live in a poor country, I think youāre looking at this the wrong way. We should be saying how do we design an economic system that supports the triple lock so that pensioners do not fall behind and into poverty. Our state pension is one of the lowest in Europe and the constant rhetoric of āthe triple lock is unsustainable, pensioners are well offā etc. etc. is just another way of dividing society and demonising a group of people, some of whom are very vulnerable.
As we age our needs change and pensioners are now required to pay for much of the care they need in their later years. It is unaffordable for many, who live very unhappy lives at a time when society should be there for them. An adequate and stable income is very important at this time. With the mobile society we now live in, many elderly people donāt have family close by to help and a lot of the help that is needed has to be paid for.
Please stop scapegoating pensioners, most of whom have worked all their lives and contributed to society in many ways. Young people will be pensioners one day and Iām sure they would like to look forward to their later years and not be worried that society might not see them as worthy. We are a community and should be thinking how we can make life better for everyone, not demonising the old so the young can have more. Thereās enough to go around, itās just that a few multibillionaires have most of it!
Yours truly
Diane