Tories plan benefit cuts for pensioners

It was click bait! Paddyanne fell hook line and sinker for the bait and clicked on old news without checking the facts.

Aaahh! well that explains it. I imagine it's an easy trap to fall into. Especially if you dont have the time to investigate!

Thank you Kamiso for reading my post and taking the time to reply

Callistemon ... Thanks for coming back to me on this.
I did read your post 08/10 22.19 but expected some others to agree and confirm, or not as the case may be!
When no one posted, I wanted to re confirm I understood.
I can be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes

To be honest I should have just relied on your post as you are very rarely incorrect.

Gosh, doesnt it take a lot of effort to explain in writing what takes a few seconds in RL?

Liam Fox is still an MP, but seems to be looking for a way out.

Is Alex Wild still in his job with the Taxpayers' Alliance? He sounded, in that speech, to be very callous.
Who funds the Taxpayers' Alliance?

I suppose there have to be some benefits to marrying an older man.

I'm just off to check whether or not my old man got the extra £50 last winter.

Elegran
Do the pensioners spend all their time in different rooms, or sit together most of the time in the same one (the one with the TV in it)
A couple I know downsized to a small bungalow and she warned us against it - "You can't get away from each other!"
Although they were a close couple, I know what she meant.

We haven’t needed to downsize yet, and we do spend a lot of time in separate rooms. I still work, off and on, and I take various courses, so I need peace and quiet when I’m busy. My husband plays musical instruments and has music on between times, so we do need our own space.

Also, I am a lot colder than he is, and like the fire on a lot earlier than he would. The existing arrangement means that we tend to be in rooms with different temperatures during the day, and sit together in the evening.

Neither of us is old enough to qualify for the allowance (or state pension), but I’d say we definitely use more fuel between two than either of us would as singles. There are two lots of baths, more washing (although not twice as many loads) and so on, too.

I don’t know why there has to be a separate allowance anyway, apart from the fact that it causes conversations like this and the chance for calls to withdraw it, as there are for anything given to older people. Why not include it in a decent pension and stop begrudging pensioners the money they have worked for all their lives?

Before anyone says that we can’t afford to pay people a decent pension - we are the sixth richest country in the world! We can afford it. It’s a question of priorities and political will.

Why not include it in a decent pension and stop begrudging pensioners the money they have worked for all their lives?

Precisely.

But then they'd have to pay increases on it and wouldn't be able to take it away again on a whim.

*Who funds the Taxpayers' Alliance

The TPA are very secretive about their funding. But be absolutely sure that they have nothing to do with 'ordinary' taxpayers like us. Their 'constituency' is the very wealthy who resent having to pay any tax at all.

Only certain 80 year olds receive £300, depending on your birth date. Not all receive that amount.

I rarely hear of pensioners visiting food banks as they're mainly those with families as well as those working for buttons trying to feed their families as well as pay the bills.

MaizieD

*Who funds the Taxpayers' Alliance

The TPA are very secretive about their funding. But be absolutely sure that they have nothing to do with 'ordinary' taxpayers like us. Their 'constituency' is the very wealthy who resent having to pay any tax at all.

I assumed that might be the case, MaizieD.

Perhaps pensioners aren't cost-effective either, therefore indispensable.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning, EllanVannin.

The fact that we need food banks in the UK at all is a national disgrace, but the fact that they are mainly used by families says nothing about whether pensioners should be looked after in old age.

The very existence of a heating allowance shows that the basic state pension is not enough to heat homes, which should be a basic right of those who have worked and paid tax for decades. In a civilised country this should not happen - a contributory pension should not be a benefit, but a reflection of the contributions made to society during one's working life.

I do not understand the rush to get rid of the triple lock. All it does is stop pensioners spending power from diminishing over the years. If inflation continues to rise, as no doubt it will, those of us who paid full insurance contributions throughout our working lives to protect our retirement, will be very disadvantaged. The triple lock is, after all, largely based on average pay.

EllanVannin
Pensioners will only have themselves to feed, one or two in a household. However, the term 'heat or eat' usually applies to pensioners who may not be able to move around and keep warm like younger people.
Heating could be their biggest outlay.

Families using food banks may well have 4 or 5 or more mouths to feed so food could be the most expensive household expenditure.

There were no food banks many years ago, but whether they were needed or not is a moot point as probably many children went hungry then and there was no help.
No, they shouldn't be needed but neither should older people suffer in unheated homes because they can't afford to heat them on an inadequate pension.

Pensioners who don't need it can always refuse the heating allowance or donate the equivalent to charity.

Means testing would possibly cost more.

I see the MPs are being awarded a pay rise of £3300 across the board.

Most people have to prove they have earned a pay rise, but that is clearly not the case with our lot. Even if they have committed what would be a sackable offence in other employment they will still trouser the money.

For those who are complaining that the UK pension is the lowest in Europe you will find that in Europe they pay a lot more into their pensions when they are working. My DH paid 80% of his salary in tax and social security in the Netherlands and on top of that we paid health insurance.

I do, however, agree that those who are not in need should not get free bus passes etc. Also the tax limits should be raised for the better off. Of course that is not a vote winner.

My DH paid 80% of his salary in tax and social security in the Netherlands and on top of that we paid health insurance.

So almost 100% went in tax, social security and health insurance!

I know we pay a lot less tax than many countries but NI has gone up.

Bus passes:
Do they cost anything if you do not use the service?

I haven't used it for some time and don't intend to for quite some time.

I think they should be made to prove that they 'need' the increase. If they have other money, whether they have saved it, earned it or won it on a horse, they should have their bank accounts scrutinised and a clerk in the benefits office should have access to their finances before they are awarded a penny.

Any birthday gifts or presents from parents to make life easier for them should be assumed to be income, and their value deducted from any money they are awarded.

They don't need to use food banks, or their spouses earn money in their own right? No pay rise for them.

When, and only when, they have had to spend enough of their assets to satisfy a punitive mindset and bring them onto virtual poverty level, can they be given a few quid (shared with their partner, if they have one), and there should be no difference made between MPs who have worked all their lives and those who have been fortunate enough not to have to do so, so have not contributed to the public purse.

Only fair, really.

@Doodledog

?

Callistemon How often your pass is used contributes to the amount that the bus company receives in the next year, after all uses by everyone have ben recorded.
Bus passes are financed by payments from the local authority to the bus companies which are used by the passengers with passes. The amount is calculated from the records of how many times passes have been put through the machines on the buses. There are official tools for the calculations at www.gov.uk/government/publications/concessionary-bus-travel-reimbursement-calculator

Thanks Elegran.

Doodledog

I'm considering starting a support group for those of us who had the temerity to go and live in a country other than UK. Many of us spent all our working lives in UK and continue to pay tax there but are continually criticised for our choices. Free membership

Can I be an associate member, sodapop? We were told in the mid 70s that what we paid into the German system when working there would be transferred over. Now that my state pension’s approaching I see there’s a gaping 2 year hole where contributions for those years should be. I’ve been trying in vain to get a response about it from the DWP for 12 weeks now, but Google’s warned me that people are being told they’ve to provide their own proof of what they paid nearly 50 years ago.

Weirdly, I did have documents from then, stored in our old coal cellar. Until last year when I opened the drawer to find that they’d been shredded and made into a cosy rodents’ nest. ?

Hear hear to those who wish the £10 bonus should be stopped.
Give the money to those who really need it.
In a fortnight's time I have been told that I will get an extra 25p added to my old age pension.
I won"t spend it all at once.

While we could afford to pay fares, dh and I would be very sorry to lose our Freedom passes. If we didn’t have them, I suspect