Pension payments. Such a quick Sunak u-turn, you may have missed it!

Of course they can pay pensions, DAR. This is all complete nonsense. Government cannot run out of money.

It they're really bothered about it winter fuel allowance should be counted as part of income and tax paid on it if the recipient has income in excess of the personal allowance. They'll get most of the rest back as it's spent, anyway.

I hope we get it, last year I was so scared of fuel hills that I kept my house cold and got pneumonia. Many pensioners cannot afford the current fuel costs and have to be cold. I suppose it gets rid of a few of us though!

Obviously Sunak is for turning,
For the fuel we are burning!

I’m a relatively new state pensioner. I received £500 in 2022 and will receive another £500 this year. If fuel prices stabilise or continue to come down (17% in July and, from today, another 7%), then I can see WFA reverting to £200 in 2024 anyway (for those under 80).

At the current amount, I see it as £83 per month for six months towards winter bills. It has actually had the effect (along with the £400 from the Energy Bill Support Scheme) of keeping my bills at the same level as they had been for the four years before last year’s cost of living crisis.

My energy use is very even. These were my January bills.

January 2020 £134
January 2021 £134
January 2022 £130
January 2023 £216 (after EBSS) less £83 = £133

January 2024 Est £166 (£216 * 83% * 93% = £166 - £83 = £83.)

If the WFA had reverted to £200 this year (i.e. £33 a month for six months) I estimate I'd be be paying net £133 after WFA so the same as before I started to receive state pension.

This is what it is supposed to do, isn't it? To help us with fuel costs after we retire after decades of paid work and take a drop in income. We are arguably home more, become less active and need more warmth as we age.

I agree, it would be unfair to stop it altogether.

But they and, I would guess, a large majority of the country don't think in that way about economics Maisie. They do believe a government can run out of money.

Whether you are right of wrong you have no right to impose your views on others. Convince them, yes. But I think there is still a long way to go until a majority believe it would work. MMT is irrelevant in this discussion unless you can convince the government and the voters.

Obviously the limit of our currency, if you just continue printing, is the limit of what is available and for sale in our own currency. Other countries will still set their considered value on it. It does seem MMT might be a method to turn us into something akin to North Korea.

Nanatoone

I hope we get it, last year I was so scared of fuel hills that I kept my house cold and got pneumonia. Many pensioners cannot afford the current fuel costs and have to be cold. I suppose it gets rid of a few of us though!

Nanatoone, they have back peddled on this very quickly. I think it's very, very unlikely they will do this with an election in the offing.

Whether you are right of wrong you have no right to impose your views on others. Convince them, yes. But I think there is still a long way to go until a majority believe it would work. MMT is irrelevant in this discussion unless you can convince the government and the voters.

I have as much right as anyone else to tell others my view.

Why people can't see that the Bank of England has been merrily creating money for the last 2 decades on the instructions of the government, some £900billion or so, during the GFC, when the pound plummeted after the Brexit vote and during the covid crisis, and that all commercial bank loans are money created under licence from the Bank of England, is a mystery to me, but it is a fact.

As for 'borrowing', that is people's and institutions' savings and investments. They'd be very surprised if their money were to be suddenly paid back to them to 'pay down the debt'. Probably quite displeased, too.

There is no reason, apart from ideology, why the pension triple lock needs to be removed, or winter fuel payments stopped.

MMT is not a 'theory', or a 'method', it is a description of how state finances actually work.

I have as much right as anyone else to tell others my view.

Of course we all give our opinions/views Maisie, hopefully backed by acceptable reason. My problem is that you don't frame it as a view, you frame it as a fact.

You talk of "rights'. Eleanor Roosevelt commented wisely on "rights".

One right you certainly have is to completely ignore what I say