Tom Watson has put his grubby statist fingers to keyboard in order slam the government’s pension plans:

“People will tell you that ‘it’s your money, you should decide how to spend it’.  The whole point is that it just isn’t that simple.  Yes, you paid in.  But so did the taxpayer.  And the government has every right, therefore, to ask that you spend it in the manner it was intended when we were stumping up the cash.”

Just imagine how Tommy would be whining and moaning if that exact argument was made about controlling how people who are on benefits spend their money. The natural extension of this is to regulate anyone in receipt of state-handouts.

What happens to people spending child benefit on fags and booze?

Or JSA on flatscreen TVs?

Or disability benefits on Fixed Odd Betting Terminals?

When Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke suggested plans to regulate how money is spent Labour and their supporters accused him breaching the Human Rights Act, and called the idea “undignified”, “intrusive” and “damaging”. Yet Watson claims the “government has every right, therefore, to ask that you spend it in the manner it was intended?”