Rachel Reeves has announced that winter fuel payments will only be paid to those on Pension Credit.nsion Credit

I feel as if I've fallen down a rabbit hole, GrannyGravy

Where is MaizieD to come and explain it all?
I need a Dummies Guide to the Economy because I'm missing something somewhere.

somerset council are talking about council tax rises including doing away with the likes of single person discount. Tough times ahead

I’m pretty sure that a lot of people on here have said over the years that it’s wrong that the winter fuel payment is given to everyone and many people don’t need it. Hopefully there will be an advertising campaign pointing out that many people don’t realise they are eligible for pension credit?

Callistemon213

I feel as if I've fallen down a rabbit hole, GrannyGravy

Where is MaizieD to come and explain it all?
I need a Dummies Guide to the Economy because I'm missing something somewhere.

Callistemon213 MaizieD had a very busy weekend - dressage event with her daughter. Then out in the evening ….

Not dressing her daughter you understand …..

Oh, ok, thanks.

I bought the Dummies Guide to economics and I am still a dummy ….

I do wonder if it would be possible for the government to differentiate between pensioners like me, who own their house outright and can manage on a state pension, and others who are paying rent and mortgage repayments? It must make a huge difference!

Also although I have chronic health conditions, I am able to keep warm in winter by wearing extra clothes/electric blankets/hot water bottles. I know people who cannot and therefore are dependent on heating, and I'm sure there are many on Gransnet in the same boat.

😁

cloughdancer excellent points 👍

ronib

I bought the Dummies Guide to economics and I am still a dummy ….

Same here ronib

crazyH

I personally think that the Winter Fuel Payment should be paid to those on a low income. I agree with Rachel Reeves, and with the OP

Yes course you do, you can probably afford it. I will now lose mine as I get the new state pension, minus a small amount, because I get a occ pen. I am not a wealthy pensioner but I jog along. The WFA allowance was welcome.
There are alot of Jack's on here, wealthy and can afford to lose it. I have osteo arthritis although I get around OK, it is worse in the cold so I put my heating on. The allowance helps.
My sympathy goes to the people that are just above the limit for pension credit.

‘It was a grand promise - a Boris Johnson classic - “We’re going to build 40 new hospitals over the next decade”. The image was clear for all: 40 brand new, shiny, state-of-the-art hospitals - treating patients, caring for our loved ones, saving lives - signed, sealed and delivered by 2030.

Then the promise started to unravel - another Boris Johnson classic. Well the hospitals wouldn’t all be ‘new’, they might just be refurbishments. And when we say ‘a hospital’, we don’t actually mean a whole hospital, it might just be a new building. Oh, and when we say ‘over the next decade’, we don’t actually mean there’ll be a new hospital by 2030.

This broken failure, this failure to deliver, has continued with three Conservative Prime Ministers, six Conservative Health Secretaries. The National Audit Office has warned that the Government will not meet its manifesto pledge. Only 10 out of the 40 new hospitals have received full planning permission and several projects have no planning permission at all. The Government has not even allocated enough funding to ensure all the hospitals in the New Hospitals Programme will be built.’

Isn’t she just cancelling a lot of hospitals that were never going to be built anyway? At a time when existing hospitals were in urgent need of repair.

This is a benefits calculator.
Maybe it's of use to some people?

www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/benefits-entitlements/benefits-calculator/

Age UK has easy explanations about most of this.

rafichagran

crazyH

I personally think that the Winter Fuel Payment should be paid to those on a low income. I agree with Rachel Reeves, and with the OP

Yes course you do, you can probably afford it. I will now lose mine as I get the new state pension, minus a small amount, because I get a occ pen. I am not a wealthy pensioner but I jog along. The WFA allowance was welcome.
There are alot of Jack's on here, wealthy and can afford to lose it. I have osteo arthritis although I get around OK, it is worse in the cold so I put my heating on. The allowance helps.
My sympathy goes to the people that are just above the limit for pension credit.

The problem is that many of those who will lose the Fuel Allowance will be those who are only just above the limit to receive it, are often older people on the Old State Pension plus a small occupational pension and may be more immobile (not necessarily ill), spending more time at home and worrying themselves about how to keep themselves warm.

I am ashamed of them
I'm ashamed I voted for them.

Lots of us said 'be careful what you wish for'.
Seems that we did actually know what we were talking about!

MayBee70

I’m pretty sure that a lot of people on here have said over the years that it’s wrong that the winter fuel payment is given to everyone and many people don’t need it. Hopefully there will be an advertising campaign pointing out that many people don’t realise they are eligible for pension credit?

RR also said that the Government were going to work with Charities and Local Authorities to identify people who were not claiming the benefits they were entitled to. Quite right.
It would seem that the Labour government are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t.
Do the people who are complaining really want winter fuel thousands to given to folks that don’t really need it?

Has anyone read the IFS report?
This explains it.

ifs.org.uk/articles/ifs-response-rachel-reeves-spending-audit

Rachel Reeves is within her rights to feel somewhat aggrieved. It was always clear and obvious that the spending plans she inherited were incompatible with Labour’s ambitions for public services, and that more cash would be required eventually. But the extent of the in-year funding pressures does genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside, which only adds to the scale of the problem …

Nonetheless, some of the specifics are indeed shocking, and raise some difficult questions for the last government. If the scale of these overspends and spending pressures was apparent in the spring – and in lots of cases, there’s no reason to suppose otherwise – then it is hard to understand why they weren’t made clear or dealt with in the spring budget. Jeremy Hunt’s £10bn cut to national insurance looks ever less defensible. On asylum costs, the decision to effectively stop processing claimants, and to budget virtually nothing for the resultant costs of housing them, looks like very poor policy making. The new chancellor is right to be cross.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Well, the previous chancellor has already admitted that he was promising tax cuts that he couldn’t afford.

Nicenanny3

Labour showing their true colours. Yet come over on a dinghy having paid not a penny in and get free accommodation lovely and warm as well I would guess in winter, free food, pocket money, extra money if you are pregnant, extra money for each child etc etc. Wonderbar.

Whats a wonderbra got to do with anything?

I think they've set the bar too low.

I think they’re worse, at least in the last year we received help with our fuel bills etc. Imo this Labour government are going to look after the young with an eye to future voters!!

Freya5

Well well, true colours here. Not surprised one iota.
Glad I didn't vote for this lot.
Yet they can send 84 billion pounds to Africa, and Middle East,oil rich nations.

Precisely Freya👏👏

Primrose53

Freya5

Well well, true colours here. Not surprised one iota.
Glad I didn't vote for this lot.
Yet they can send 84 billion pounds to Africa, and Middle East,oil rich nations.

Precisely Freya👏👏

Yes but they’ve taking it out of the savings by not sending anymore payments to Rwanda, for nothing other than the Tory MPs jolly to see where Rwanda was.

I,ve been saying for years that Labour were just tories in red rosettes.Seems I was right,austerity is an ideal not a necessity as most of us know after the last 14 years of Tory rule