Today has seen a flurry of Twitter activity in response to the suggestion by the right-wing quango, The Tax Payers Alliance (TPA), that the government should remove pensioner benefits.
Justifiably many people are angry.
Personally, I'm just bemused and surprised at the reactions because what the TPA has suggested is already happening and despite mine and others efforts to publicise it, nobody has taken the blind bit of notice.
Why?
Well it's simple really. The already affected OAPs are those of us living in other EU countries, whose entitlement to the pension cash benefit known as "winter fuel payment" was finally removed by the implementation of Statutory Instrument 3270 just two weeks ago on 21 September.
Derided as renegades, or rich... or both, we "British migrants" are the non-entities that the UK Government can effectively "rip the piss" out of and nobody bats an eyelid.
Well, maybe if the TPA's suggestion is taken up by the (dis)honorable Iain Duncan Smith - and in all likelihood he's already been planning this for a long time anyway - then it'll be more than an eyelid that's batted.
This could be the straw that breaks the camels back and bring Cameron and his cronies to their knees when their loyal band of merry pensioners give them the finger in 2020!
In the meantime, I'm not normally the sort to say "I told you so" - but on this occasion I will.
Since George Osborne announced the removal of winter fuel payment for OAPs living in the EU in the coalition's Autumn Statement of 2013, and the signing of SI 3270 in December by then-Pensions Minister, LibDem Steve Webb, I have trumpeted the call to arms from every rooftop.
But nobody listened. Nobody cared. A classic case of "it'll never happen to me".
Well pensioners of the UK, looks like you might be in the cross-hairs of IDS now.
We know how it feels, We know how to deal with it (and, trust me, we are). We hope you can too.
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