U turn on winter fuel payments- is it a good move?

growstuff

nanna8

Many of our generation, born during or just after world War 2, knew what it was like to go hungry. Most of us didn’t have luxuries like carpets, fridges, washing machines or even telephones. As for a car, no way could we afford that. This current generation don’t know they are born. We deserve everything we have worked for plus a bit more.

That is the kind of comment (this generation don't know they are born) which antagonises younger people.

No, it annoys the Baby Boomer generation.
Those born before then are beginning to understand why young people resent that generation.

However, it is not helped by such organisations such as the Intergenerational Foundation which, imo causes strife, which was my original point.

Doodledog

MaizieD

Your response is entirely predictable, Allira. I've found that very few posters are able to admit how lucky we have been. They love playing the 'Three Yorkshire Men' game in their comfortable old age.

I don't think they like the young very much, either, apart from their pet ones, of course, their children and grandchildren.

I'm not playing a 'Three Yorkshire Men' game.

I don't like to say much about my own circumstances on here, as I prefer to try to think beyond that, but what I know for sure is that generalisations about what are, after all, just Marketing-inspired generalisations about 'generations' take no account of sex, social class or geographical location, and I find it offensive.

Even within the UK, a man born in the SE in 1964 to 'professional' parents will have had a very different life from that of a woman born in 1946 to a cleaner and a docker in the NW, and those disparities are repeated in various permutations over and over. There are far more differences than similarities within the 'boomer' generation than most, probably.

Since HE expanded and more people got the chance to get a degree (even at huge personal cost) things have equalised more, but in the 50s, 60s and 70s the vast majority of working class people left school as soon as they could and were expected to contribute to family expenses until they married and had a home of their own. Women's lives were much more different from men's than they are now.

It is fair to say that some 'boomers' (ie those who got free education and were able to buy cheap homes in the 60s and early 70s) will, if they live in the SE and other more expensive areas of the UK have had a 'better deal' than their children and grandchildren. But those 'boomers' who are a decade or more younger (particularly if they are working class), who struggled to get through university or even college, bought in the late 70s and 80s when unemployment was high and wages fell had a very different experience, particularly if they lived in areas decimated by Thatcher and (later) Cameron. The odds are that their own children and grandchildren will be similarly disadvantaged - in inverse proportion to the way the middle classes in the SE are advantaged.

Even those who bought houses and benefited from national salary grades (ie paid the same to live in the NE as someone on the same grade in the SE) often can't progress their careers as it is impossible to buy a family house in London for what they would get by selling a better one elsewhere. Opportunities and any semblance of meritocracy are denied based on that alone, and add in historical sexism and class bias, and it is ludicrous to suggest that everyone born between two dates 20 years apart can be considered as a 'lump'. They can't.

It's not pretending to have lived in a cardboard box to say so.

Another sensible post.

Suki1964

Crikey! I'm glad upon not your mother!
Your mother's situation is not typical.

Well done her for donating it to the RNLI.

Making derogatory remarks about older generations does you no favours, and does tend to prove the point that younger people are making.

My 'derogatory remarks' apply to those Gnetters who refuse to accept that the post war generation (AKA the Baby Boomers) have had far better life chances than any generation before or since. If that is the face such people present to younger generations I don't blame the young for being antagonistic.

I still say it's all about economics and that Thatcher, on the whole, left a disastrous legacy for the UK.

Silverbrooks

Thank you for your reasoned and reasonable posts too.

My 'derogatory remarks' apply to those Gnetters who refuse to accept that the post war generation (AKA the Baby Boomers) have had far better life chances than any generation before or since. If that is the face such people present to younger generations I don't blame the young for being antagonistic.

Which was my point too.

However, those born in the 1940s and early 50s did not "have it so good" as those who came later. Society changed quite dramatically in the 1960s as did, as I'm sure you know, the economy.

To be honest they are running scared! There was such anger and resentment when they stopped the WFA that they could do nothing else but reinstate it. They completely misread the situation like they do with pretty much everything else.

People are fed up with seeing them giving billions to other causes and ignoring British people who have worked, paid taxes etc all their lives.

We have 32,000 illegal immigrants put up in hotels at our expense and 70,000 in other forms of accommodation. It is costing us BILLIONS and if it wasn’t true would be laughable!

It is high time they put their own countryfolk first.

Primrose53

To be honest they are running scared! There was such anger and resentment when they stopped the WFA that they could do nothing else but reinstate it. They completely misread the situation like they do with pretty much everything else.

People are fed up with seeing them giving billions to other causes and ignoring British people who have worked, paid taxes etc all their lives.

We have 32,000 illegal immigrants put up in hotels at our expense and 70,000 in other forms of accommodation. It is costing us BILLIONS and if it wasn’t true would be laughable!

It is high time they put their own countryfolk first.

The government doesn't ignore British people. If you look about you, it is younger British people who are moaning about older people receiving a benefit. Illegal immigrants have nothing to do with it.

Allira

growstuff

nanna8

Many of our generation, born during or just after world War 2, knew what it was like to go hungry. Most of us didn’t have luxuries like carpets, fridges, washing machines or even telephones. As for a car, no way could we afford that. This current generation don’t know they are born. We deserve everything we have worked for plus a bit more.

That is the kind of comment (this generation don't know they are born) which antagonises younger people.

No, it annoys the Baby Boomer generation.
Those born before then are beginning to understand why young people resent that generation.

However, it is not helped by such organisations such as the Intergenerational Foundation which, imo causes strife, which was my original point.

My children definitely aren't baby boomers and it does annoy them.

I just scroll on past the threads on GN when posters moan about the younger generation (and there are plenty of them).

Allira I've just seen that you've noticed the smugness too. I think we're singing from the same hymn sheet.

I am a pre-war baby, born in 1937 and apart from the war years have really had a good life.
My C born in 1965 and 1970 have had it even better.
Born to parents with their own home, uni education paid for, help from parents to buy houses on marriage and now expectations of a decent inheritance from a house bought in 1976 and now worth a decent amount.
I feel for young adults today.
Work until late 60’s and waiting many years to own a home.
I am sure my experience is the same as many.

Oh, FGS. I'm an early 50's baby and I am absolutely certain that I, and the rest of us, had it better than subsequent generations for precisely the reasons you cite about the 60's and 70's. Pre Thatcher...

I'm not necessarily speaking of material possessions, which seem to be the criterion by which some posters judge the era. I'm talking of comprehensive, wide ranging, free health care, free education up to and including tertiary level (not just university but technical colleges too). Cheap housing with an expectation that mortgages could be affordable by one income earner, plenty of jobs available (the economy, being Keynesian, was run to keep unemployment levels low), a push for more education (remember the school leaving age being raised to 16 1972 and the inception of the Open University?)

I know life was not a materially easy as it is now, but it improved over the decades and there was an optimism about one's future, a belief in its improvement, that is very much lacking now.

growstuff

Allira I've just seen that you've noticed the smugness too. I think we're singing from the same hymn sheet.

I think that, in some respects, I'm singing from the same hymn sheet as both of you, with respect to smug Baby Boomers, even though Allira took exception to what I was saying.

"I know life was not a materially easy as it is now, but it improved over the decades and there was an optimism about one's future, a belief in its improvement, that is very much lacking now"

I believe we can make improvements and it's possible just wish I could do more, but in little everyday ways we can Make a Difference. yesterday in a shoe store, chatting to a Muslim couple, had a laugh when the assistants were looking down their noses at them (why I cannot guess but still there was a frostiness with them not with me)

I say this particularly as the young woman, married to a bloke in the wheelchair was clearly new to the country as she had her lower face obscured by a scarf only, I managed to get some twinkly eyes back at me looking at pretty shoes part sign language.

Forgive me returning,Poppyred, but I did ask for some evidence to support your assertion that this change was due to Reform,other than your beliefs that "you'd be a fool to think otherwise " and " don't be fooled by them".
These are your thoughts, to which you are, of course, entitled, but with no back up in fact, that is all they are.
I might think differently, but I'm not sure that defines me as a fool.

Chocolatelovinggran

Forgive me returning,Poppyred, but I did ask for some evidence to support your assertion that this change was due to Reform,other than your beliefs that "you'd be a fool to think otherwise " and " don't be fooled by them".
These are your thoughts, to which you are, of course, entitled, but with no back up in fact, that is all they are.
I might think differently, but I'm not sure that defines me as a fool.

What do you think is the reason for the reinstatement ( more or less) of the WFA?
Interested to know, but please don’t say the government is being ever so ‘umble and wanting to be kind to pensioners.

Wyllow3

I say this particularly as the young woman, married to a bloke in the wheelchair was clearly new to the country as she had her lower face obscured by a scarf only, I managed to get some twinkly eyes back at me looking at pretty shoes part sign language.

What have your chatting to Muslims in a shop got to do with the subject on here?

Wrong thread?

So you could have a million pound pension pot but you only draw £24k a year from it because you top up with savings if you need to, would that million pound pension pot holder get it?

Oreo, I don't know what caused this decision, and I don't think that you do, either.
Giving your views - " I believe this.." is different from " people who disagree with my mindset are fools".

As a couple on a low income, we are relieved it’s coming back.

I think £35k threshold is way too high. The threshold should be £20k per household. What it doesn't take into account, I read, is the total of a double pensioner household. For example, if both pensioners earn £35k each, totalling 70k p.a., they will both get a proportion of the WFA. I hope I have interpreted this wrongly, because this is wrong and hopefully, HMRC will see this and not award such an household WFA.

^What do you think is the reason for the reinstatement ( more or less) of the WFA?
Interested to know, but please don’t say the government is being ever so ‘umble and wanting to be kind to pensioners^

Oreo how on earth can you ask someone a question and, in the same breath, tell them how they’re not allowed to answer it🤷‍♀️

Delene100

I think £35k threshold is way too high. The threshold should be £20k per household. What it doesn't take into account, I read, is the total of a double pensioner household. For example, if both pensioners earn £35k each, totalling 70k p.a., they will both get a proportion of the WFA. I hope I have interpreted this wrongly, because this is wrong and hopefully, HMRC will see this and not award such an household WFA.

1 Apr 2025 — The average retirement income for a single pensioner in the UK is £13,884 annually, while couples have £29,172 a year.
Unbiased.co.uk

I don't know what would be a fair threshold, because whatever it is, it is bound to attract criticism.