Loosing winter fuel allowance

Your post seems to be still there Dee.

Are you having a senior moment...?

I can still see it Dee.

Sillynanny and Annieback I had also stated I needed it to having just a small pension and being a one only household.

I agree with others on here who have said that the WFA will probably be given to pensioners who receive PC, it seems the simplest way to 'means test' it. However, whilst my DH and I do not need the WFA and will not miss it, I am concerned for my elderly mother who since Dad died last year, has only her state pension to live on. She says she manages okay, but this will represent a cut of her available monies, I shall tell her that on no account is she to economise on fuel (I would help out if necessary, I can't have her being cold.) She doesn't qualify for PC. However as others have said, not everyone who qualifies for PC claims it, so it could well be a problem for a lot of people. The triple lock going isn't as big a problem as I see it, as there is still the double lock, so pensions will rise in line with the CPI or earnings levels, whichever is the greater.
I heard on TV that the government expect to raise one billion plus by restricting WFA by means testing, by government standards that's a small sum.

If you agree that the fuel allowance should go ( except for those either in receipt of pension credit etc or for those who's household is under a certain amount) or you don't agree and you think that all pensioners should receive it no matter how well off,......don't forget, this is a manifesto policy, and like all of them will have to be voted on in Parliament. Nothing from a manifesto from any party is a done deal.

Whilst we are by no means well off (quite the contrary actually) we are both still working and DH got his first winter fuel allowance last year. We both felt terribly guilty about getting it when there are so many young people far more deserving and in much greater need.

As has been said Means Testing is never a good way to ensure allowances are targeted at those who need them, and so expensive to administer that they will probably only break even, but I suspect that this is just the start where pensioners are concerned. Wait until this S and S Government really get going. They have been very vague about who the the "well off" pensioners are. I wonder if they will interpret it in a similar fashion to how they deem "affordable housing"?

Yes indeed Lazgirl, especially if Theresa gets in with a large majority. I'm sure that those of us with work/private pensions will find ourselves robbed of the state pension. I've paid so called full stamp from being 17, with a two year gap when I didn't work outside the home after my first child was born. It isn't a 'benefit', it's something I paid into in good faith. I didn't start paying into my work pension until I was over 30 so always paid over the usual amount to ensure I wouldn't be as poverty stricken in old age as I'd been in my late teens and twenties.
As has been said by many other so called lefties on gransnet, our welfare state is being demolished.

Easy solution - don't vote Tory! And while we're at it, why not means test over 60s for free prescriptions and subsidised travel too? HMRC must have a bright young spark who could extrapolate that info from all the info that we have to give them!

Corbyn has not promised the moon to everyone. He has promised to properly fund public services by incleasing income tax on over £80,000 and to bring a percentage of the utility companies back into public ownership to curb the excesses of private ownership! As for wanting the Winter Fuel Allowance to remain as it is, as has been said by others, this is because means testing results in many people who should receive it, not receiving it!

Heaven forbid we should have a fairer, more caring society though. After all the media have told you time and time again to laugh at Jeremy Corbyn, so that must be the way forward. I am usually a pretty chilled out person, but speaking as someone who has recently retired from the NHS, I am angry that so many people are prepared to vote for a party that is systematically destroying it because the media has done a hatchet job on Corbyn, who, unlike his Tory counterpart, is willing to take the advice of experts!

Do those who feel they shouldn't get (or others shouldn't get) their WFA return their pension as well?

There has been quite a few suggestions that the bulk of the Tories are spitting nails over Mays pensioner policies, but are keeping quiet because of the election. No principles there then.

Another nail in the coffin! Although I agree that some don't need it, it is part of a downhill slope I feel. I'm 1950s born and made redundant at 60 when it's impossible to get another job, however qualified, because of covert ageism. Have to wait another 6 years now (or maybe more at this rate) for state pension so after working 45 yrs I am left to rely on DH state pension (you only get 6m Jobseeker's Allowance). Then there is this threat of reducing pensions even further although we have less than many countries in Europe, the "dementia tax" etc so at the end you will be lucky to have enough to see you through from your hard earned and taxed income. There has to be a better way! I certainly won't be voting for Mrs May

It's the people who are just above the benefit level who will lose out These people tend to live in one room which they heat and the rest of the house is cold They rely on the heating allowance to keep warm Being cold can lead to all sorts of illness which could mean hospital admissions to an already overstretched NHS These politicians have very little insight into how the average person lives

I am entitled to Pension Credit, but DH gets ESA and we both get disability allowances, but DH prefers to stay on ESA, because it lets him feel that he's doing his bit But we will no doubt still get our WFA, which we rely on.

I have no objections. I have often thought it quite daft that people like me and Dh receive it.
We both fill in self assessment tax forms, so it would be relatively simple for anyone like us - not that we're rolling in money - to have the payment added to their tax.

One thing I do wish they'd really crack down on hard -successive governments have been unbelievably lax - is landlords who don't declare their rental income. Anecdotally I have heard of so many cases, and only recently I heard of one doctor telling another doctor that she was mad to be declaring her rental income, since, 'We never have!'

As a LL myself, with just one property on which I do pay everything due, I realise how easy it must be not to. The SA form doesn't even ask for addresses - just how many properties and how much the rent is. It must be so easy to lie and get away with it, maybe for years. And I'm sure plenty do, and have.

We live in France, which the lovely IDS declared a hot country, (well, it was only minus 10 for a while this winter !) so, despite having paid all our taxes NI, etc etc in the UK until retirement, the WFA was taken away from us as well as the thousands of other living in EU 'hot' countries ! I did invite IDS to come and sit on the patio for a G & T ...in his shorts in January ...he wouldn't have needed ice as it would soon have formed in his drink !

There are lots of people in the UK who think anyone not living there should not be entitled to any benefit whatever from the UK .....BUT they never seem to add up the additional costs TO the UK if we all have to return following the break up ! We don't all live in Chateau with a pool and acres of land ,,,,we live in a small bungalow ....we have only a small UK pension to live on, which we would not be able to return to the UK and live on ........and not even be able to afford a caravan to live in !

It annoys me when people say ;You made your bed, you lie on it ' ....fair enough, BUT if my bed is uncomfortable I would get out and re make it !

It is a disaster for poorer pensioners ..there is nothing in the Tory manifesto that has any benefit whatever .to the elderly ...its all very well to say the cap is now set at 100,000 but I have family who live in houses in the UK which are not even worth 100,000 ......a relative has only a basic state pension, and because of the cost of living, although working full time all his life, would severely miss his WFA ,,,,and why oh why have not the Tories said on what income level will the WFA be removed > No costings are available ...its all rhetoric ,,,,,and its amazing how Teresa May party )formerly known as the Conservative party) has turned so wildly pro Brexit after her declaring she would wish to Remain !!!! the lady is obviously for turning !

Finally, it is a tragedy that so many politicians, newspapers, TV 'interviews' et al are turning generation upon generation ...its good to blame the OAP's ,,,,,,,but when we were at work our NI and pension contributions were used to pay the pension of the previous generation .....Insurance was not really appropriate a word !

Maybe she will bring back the National Assistance Board who declared, if you had two children and only one surviving adult in a family, you only needed three chairs and one bed ....the rest being taken before you received any alms ..

See you in the workhouse !

Oh thank you roses silly me , I hadn't understood that. FFS we're having an election, the promises in the manifesto are there to persuade us to vote for them - and if they get a majority, they'll enact what's in the manifesto. Why did the NI plan get scrapped? Or do you think that nothing in a manifesto means anything? So why bother then?

Focusing on the "specific" category, the pledges were compared with the new government's agenda. She found that between 1987 and 2005, 88% of these pledges were fulfilled. But over that period, only about 16% of pledges made were specific.

This is from the BBC Reality Check using research by Dr Judith Bara at Queen Mary University of London.

Please notice that we are looking at 88% of specific pledges being kept in the recent past. The Theresa May Team's (as they are asking us to call them) pledges are very specific. With this distance from a 50/50 chance of her carrying them out I don't think I will risk RARs casual view of what is likely to happen, thank you.

Another angry post Rigby you do seem to specialise in them.
Yes, obviously they are there to pursuade voters, but the pledges don't always come to pass. They are often amended or abandoned.

In the case of the fuel allowance which is not needed by many I hope that it will be kept as a pledge, and only those on low incomes who actually need it as opposed to just liking it will continue to receive it.

Do you really believe all Corbyn's manifesto promises would come to fruition if the Labour Party was (somehow) voted in Rigby? You don't think any might be quietly dropped, or decided against for unforeseen reasons...?

It happens all the time after a GE.

I am not clear then if we can't take much or indeed any notice of manifestos what we base our vote on.

You have to take them all with a pinch of sale, whitewave. Don't you do that already?

'salt'