Winter fuel allowance result

I would be happy to release my four bedrooms, largish garden house for a family but want to stay in the village and there is nothing suitable which would include a proper spare bedroom so that my children could stay as they do now. And in this desirable village, apart from a small development of flats, small houses are enlarged and so would be very little smaller or cheaper to run than this one. And I certainly don’t want to incur the exorbitant charges of the retirement apartments even if there were any in the area. So it’s not as simple as some posters would like to suggest.

For the downsize brigade I would love to but inless I could find an ex Council house in a large block it is almost impossible to find say 2 bed bungalow in an area anywhere near me that woukd be less than what I could sell my 4 bed detached for. Massive demand for these houses, builders don't include them in plans and LA don't even consider them in social housing plans. It's not as easy as some folk think to downsize.

⬇️

Dickens

Oreo

Bamm

Couldn't the help given during those long lockdowns during the pandemic then the Ukraine war have quite a lot to do with this so called ' black hole'?

All that seems to have been forgotten doesn’t it? In any case I’m already sick of hearing Starmer use the expression ‘black hole ‘ it’s being done to death.DP says he wishes anyone else saying it should be dropped into it, with or without parachute.

In any case I’m already sick of hearing Starmer use the expression ‘black hole ‘ it’s being done to death.DP says he wishes anyone else saying it should be dropped into it, with or without parachute.

😂😂

Does Starmer have any idea what a black hole is?
If he tries to fill it, anything he puts near it will disappear without trace.

Professor Brian Cox - where are you? You're needed!

4allweknow

For the downsize brigade I would love to but inless I could find an ex Council house in a large block it is almost impossible to find say 2 bed bungalow in an area anywhere near me that woukd be less than what I could sell my 4 bed detached for. Massive demand for these houses, builders don't include them in plans and LA don't even consider them in social housing plans. It's not as easy as some folk think to downsize.

👏👏👏

I know, I've tried for years!

We could move away from friends and family, of course, but that's not so easy at our age.

GrannySomerset

I would be happy to release my four bedrooms, largish garden house for a family but want to stay in the village and there is nothing suitable which would include a proper spare bedroom so that my children could stay as they do now. And in this desirable village, apart from a small development of flats, small houses are enlarged and so would be very little smaller or cheaper to run than this one. And I certainly don’t want to incur the exorbitant charges of the retirement apartments even if there were any in the area. So it’s not as simple as some posters would like to suggest.

So it’s not as simple as some posters would like to suggest.

It isn't.

Staying in the same area / village or town, isn't just a matter of nostalgia, either.

If you have established yourself with a GP surgery, dentist, nearby hospital and other social services, friends, local shops, etc, then moving away if you are, say, in your 80s, is a huge undertaking. And, if you have to move from a large property, the expense of getting rid of all the accumulated 'stuff' can be expensive and very time consuming. Not something that people who might have disabilities / ill-health want to undertake - particularly if, like me, there is no family in the UK to help.

There are days when simply just getting through them is exhausting.

I would like to see MP's made to give up their fuel allowance.

All this talk of people having no moral right to occupy a home that is too large for them, whether privately owned or social housing, is all sounding a bit communist to me. I think I need to lie down.

I think I need to lie down.

Me too. In one of our darkened spare bedrooms.

(Which are all ready for family to come and stay.)

Allira enjoy before someone comes and evicts you.

Can somebody explain the ins and outs of Rachel Reeves, heating allowance to me?

nightowl

Allira enjoy before someone comes and evicts you.

Probably a DD or one of the DGC!

"What are you doing in my bedroom, Granny?" 🤔

nightowl

All this talk of people having no moral right to occupy a home that is too large for them, whether privately owned or social housing, is all sounding a bit communist to me. I think I need to lie down.

Indeed.

We'll own a home that suits needs. Thank you very much.

sharon103

gentleshores

The House of Lords debates from today are on Parliament TV at 7.30pm tonight. So I will be watching to see how Baroness Altmann got on with her motion to annul the Gov decision on winter fuel payments.

Thanks for that gentleshores. I'll have a look at that.

The motion failed. So we're stuck with it.

gentleshores

sharon103

gentleshores

The House of Lords debates from today are on Parliament TV at 7.30pm tonight. So I will be watching to see how Baroness Altmann got on with her motion to annul the Gov decision on winter fuel payments.

Thanks for that gentleshores. I'll have a look at that.

The motion failed. So we're stuck with it.

Oh dear. So disappointed
What a load of hard hearted people.
I watched some of it and saw the part with Baroness Sherlock.
Thank you gentleshores.

nightowl

All this talk of people having no moral right to occupy a home that is too large for them, whether privately owned or social housing, is all sounding a bit communist to me. I think I need to lie down.

Quite!

When you think about all those properties - investment properties, like those huge blocks of unoccupied apartments in London bought up by rich Saudis, Russians, etc, where cleaners regularly walk past the homeless to dust and clean the empty rooms - it does make you question the morality of it all - doesn't it.

That's a rhetorical question. Because no-one does do they - we just accept this huge, obscene, wealth of the 1% or whatever the percentage is, whilst single people, families, struggle to find a place to live; and argue about who should forfeit their modest house that someone else has decided they should give up.

Why are we not building more affordable homes for people to buy and council houses for people to rent instead of relying on pensioners to either die or ship-out!

Rant over.

Dickens

nightowl

All this talk of people having no moral right to occupy a home that is too large for them, whether privately owned or social housing, is all sounding a bit communist to me. I think I need to lie down.

Quite!

When you think about all those properties - investment properties, like those huge blocks of unoccupied apartments in London bought up by rich Saudis, Russians, etc, where cleaners regularly walk past the homeless to dust and clean the empty rooms - it does make you question the morality of it all - doesn't it.

That's a rhetorical question. Because no-one does do they - we just accept this huge, obscene, wealth of the 1% or whatever the percentage is, whilst single people, families, struggle to find a place to live; and argue about who should forfeit their modest house that someone else has decided they should give up.

Why are we not building more affordable homes for people to buy and council houses for people to rent instead of relying on pensioners to either die or ship-out!

Rant over.

Exactly.

The original comment was about the vote for removing the Winter Fuel Allowance. I imagine that those who abstained rather than vote against hoped to avoid action against them. Aren't they meant to toe the party line?
As for removing the WFA from all pensioners: having seen Rachel Reeves banging on about making things better for workers, I can only assume that she feels that those who were once workers and are now pensioners, are expendable.

Rant over
Please carry on as much as you like, Dickens, it's just plain common sense!

Not surprised by vote. They have no idea what it's like to sit shivering in your home in winter months on their salaries.

Write to your MP especially if they are Labour. Yesterday the Telegraph said Rachel Reeves had received more that £4000 for fuel/energy last year and over £3000 the year before plus MPs are on >£90k pa. Also, I read a couple of years ago that a London based MP was renting his owned house out and renting another therefore receiving the rent allowance MPs have for renting in the capital and, presumably, the fuel/energy allowance as well. I wrote to my MP (Labour) yesterday and currently awaiting a reply. I will never vote Labour again.

NannaPat1

I can only assume that she feels that those who were once workers and are now pensioners, are expendable.

I think she’s a convenient mouthpiece for Starmer. He thinks that by making a woman say it, people will be more accepting.

While there’s still information about the expenses and allowances MPs get, whilst removing money from those without the power to fight back, only those desperate to defend him will be happy.

Food for thought.

The arbitrary nature of the fiscal rules is reflected in the fact that, since 1997, they have been significantly changed nine times. If chancellors find the targets too difficult to meet, they change them, making them little more than a tactic in political messaging. There are, therefore, a host of choices involved in Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ decision to choose austerity based on a fictional ‘black hole’. There is a great deal of scepticism about the fiscal rules among economists, and not just left-heterodox ones: a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and the Treasury’s commercial secretary under George Osborne, has since argued that the government should ​‘drop such petty and arbitrary fiscal rules that magically claim the deficit in five years’ time will be lower’. Austerity, in any case, does nothing to bring about a falling ratio of debt to GDP: the debt-to-GDP ratio was substantially higher at the end of Tory George Osborne’s period as Chancellor than at the start. The current fiscal rules have been proven to be self-defeating.

(from COUNTERFIRE "Labour chooses austerity: the black hole is an illusion")

Mollygo

I think that you are right. I should have written '......Keir Starmer and the Labour Party feel that those who were once workers and are now pensioners, are expendable.'

Nannapat1

Mollygo

I think that you are right. I should have written '......Keir Starmer and the Labour Party feel that those who were once workers and are now pensioners, are expendable.'

Well we were the first in the firing-line.

But of course there is the two-child benefit cap which is going to remain.

I don't know if its just rumour but I believe that single-occupancy council tax reduction is on the cards - as well as an increase in the council tax itself, which will of course, hit hardest those on lower incomes.

The pattern emerging is clear.

Starmer and Reeves, as Dominic Alexander (historian and activist) says:

Another move, suggested by a number of commentators, including the Guardian’s Larry Elliott, is to cease paying as much interest on the banks’ deposits at the Bank of England. The interest paid by the BoE on these savings is used as a mechanism to engineer interest rates in the wider economy. However, the same could be achieved by only paying interest on a fraction of these savings held by the BoE. Both the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank do this, so there is no reason why the BoE could not do the same. If it paid interest on just a third of the amount in these deposits, the whole £22bn ‘black hole’ would simply disappear, and the national debt would be reduced by £400bn at the same time.

However, the Keynesians who advocate it miss one important aspect: instituting it involves a confrontation with major capitalist institutions, who would, of course, kick up a fuss about their consequent loss of profits. As a skirmish in the class struggle, it would be an easy one to win, since there is not a lot of public sympathy for banks and their profits. Any Labour government confidently committed to advancing the public good could make the argument that banking profits are much less important than the wellbeing of society, and of prostrate public services which are crying out for investment. It would be easy to make a centre-left argument that borrowing to invest in public services is necessary for economic recovery after fourteen years of austerity, and that the borrowing would be repaid through a healthier economy a few years down the line. However, even such a moderate, social-democratic class argument is clearly beyond the capacity of Starmer and Reeves.

In other words, Starmer and Reeves are committed to the usual Tory ideology of asking those with the least to tighten their belts another notch. And then they'll go for the middle-income demographic. What they won't do, is go further up the tree. They won't attempt to change the status quo which has resulted in the very wide wealth gap, stagnating wages, devastated public services, under-investment, and an overall sluggish economy. Basically, we're going into austerity again.