Agreed.
Winter fuel payments were only introduce in 1997 under Blair.
So it's not as if pensioners have always had these payments.
The Conservative government increased the extra winter fuel payments during covid for the inflation pressures of the energy prices.
Vox pop of the pensioner woman on the TV news last night who said "the government should be considering pensioners and the winter fuel payment more we've been working all our lives and now they take the payment away".
If you've been working all your life then you should have enough money to pay your fuel bills and should not be relying on the government to give you extra money to pay it!
Nobody said that you should expect the government to fund your life when you get to an older age what have you been doing with the money all your time you've been working why haven't you saved any money why haven't you got any money to pay the bills that you knew you would have to pay in future especially if you've been working all your life as you say. The government provides a pension scheme that you pay into while you've been working and you're expected to pay your bills when you retire using your pension the pensions of being triple logged gone up beyond inflation and CPI for the last 20 odd years under the conservatives and the labour have cut made them winter fuel payment means test is which doesn't seem that bad considering a vast majority of pensioners can afford their energy payments because they paid in works and got pensions and private pensions over the last 40 years!
I can’t agree Phaedrus. Not one bit.
There are many people who have earned just enough to get by, and not much else.
Maybe this would surprise you, but as a young man, and one only just married, we had no spare money at all. I kid you not when I say that a tin of cherry pie filling, so we could make a pie was a once a month (sometimes not even that) treat. As a family we used to only ever buy things second hand. And I don’t mean cars - we never had one. I mean cups, saucers, etc.
As we got older, most of the savings we made as adults and we have not ever claimed a penny from the state, have gone on things to do with ageing - disability aids and so on. If you have those savings, the state insists you use them before it will help.
The government provides a state pension. It provides nothing else for us. Nothing.
I’ve worked all my life and have nothing but a state pension and a small personal pension. When I say small, I mean around £100 a month. And I can’t have the state pension until I’m 67, which I don’t think my MS will allow me to reach, sadly.
The next thing is that to give a payment for years means people will rely on it to arbitrarily remove it is cruel. Nothing less.
The government could have chosen to remove the allowance from higher rate taxpayers. Instead it chose to remove it from single people with only a state pension. That, to me, is wicked.
But let’s leave it at that. Shopping tv is why we are here, and it’s a lot more fun than me worrying whether my 94 year old mum will actually freeze this winter.
But would be great to hear him singing “you're the one that I want “ ooh ooh ooh to Our Bet whilst swinging her around the multiple air fryers and packs of batteries in the kitchen
