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

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.

Silverbrooks your figures look close to those coming from the Joseph Rowntree trust.

Chocolatelovinggran Labour had absolutely no intention of reversing their decision until they saw how quickly Reform has become ‘the friend of the people’ and very popular in the polls. Don’t be fooled by any of them…….

Oreo, Sharon, Poppyred, I understand that you think that this is due to Reform, but I repeat my question posted earlier, how can you reference that?
I am looking for more than " it's stupid to think otherwise ".

sharon103

Oreo

Poppyred

Responded to the voice of Reform more like. 😂

Being frightened of Reform, as both major Parties now are.That’s a big part of this WFA decision and it’s stupid to think otherwise.

Yes.

Yes, but does that actually matter? We've got it, and the people who will now get it dont care about the politicking -except it might well make them more friendly to Labour who have given it back.

As long as they actually find out and aren't taken in by the critics.

There is a council election in the UK on Thursday - could be interesting as Labour will be out with the message knocking on every door in targeted places.

Indeed. Journalist Jonathan Lis has summed the WFP up wtte that once you take something away you have to justify why you are giving it back and your explanation will never satisfy everybody. A Pandora's box Labour should never have opened.

Coincidentally, this has just landed from Retirement Living Standards, the amount of annual expenditure required for a minimum, moderate or comfortable retirement (spending not gross income).

www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/

Single

Minimum £13,400, Moderate £31,700, Comfortable £43,900

Two people

Minimum £21,600, Moderate £43,900, Comfortable £60,600

It doesn't mention utility including energy costs.

I would sit on your side of the table, Silverbrooks.

Inequality has naff all to do with generation - it has to do with class and geography (and often sex), and it suits those on one side of that dichotomy to pretend otherwise.

Why people are daft enough to believe it in the face of the evidence of their own eyes is a mystery to me. But here we are.

I’m a boomer born 1955. Labour Party member but tactical LibDem voter when necessary. I didn’t vote for Thatcher, have never voted Tory.

My mother worked, was a council tenant and vehemently opposed to the sale of council houses. She refused to engage in what she insisted would come back and bite society years on. How right she was. She just kept on paying her rent until she died.

When my late DH and I started out together, the chances of renting a council home in London were zero for a couple with no children, so we bought a tiny flat and lived on beans on toast so we could afford the mortgage.

Yes, the house I live in now is worth more now than we paid for it 42 years ago. We paid more for it than the previous owner did. That’s the law of supply and demand and general inflation. We didn’t buy it to profit. We bought it as a home. How I loathe the expression property ladder as if it’s something mandatory to climb and profit from.

We know that housing supply never meets demand and the reasons for that are many. We don’t build enough for a start. More houses are owned by private landlords than ever before. Record numbers of homes are owned by overseas investors. Record numbers of people own holiday homes. Record numbers of homes stand empty. I am not part of any of that.

Action on Empty Homes say there are over 1 million empty homes in England while over 325,000 people are in need of a home.

Instead of generational finger-pointing we should look at why that is and what can be done to bring those homes into use.

www.actiononemptyhomes.org/

When housing supply meets demand, the heat will go out of the market and prices will come down.

I only care about the value of my home to the extent that the proceeds might be needed to pay for my care at some point. I didn't vote to privatise the care system so it became the plaything of venture capitalists. I have no family. Anything that’s left after care costs is willed to conservation and humanitarian charities. In that way, the value in my home will benefit many.

I’m just an ordinary person born into a working class family. I went to school until age 16; went to work and studied at the same time; worked for 50 years full time, about half of that in public service. I retired four years ago at 66. I still work as a volunteer for an arts charity and for an educational charity teaching English to asylum seekers.

I would welcome the opportunity to sit down with a younger person to discuss why they think I'm the enemy.

Suki. It isn’t costing the UK taxpayer anything. That isn’t how public spending works.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/08/01/there-is-no-such-thing-as-taxpayers-money-2/

But if you want to take that viewpoint, we are all taxpayers, even your mother.

I do wish people would stop talking about taxpaying as a concept which only applies to younger people. Taxation doesn’t stop at 66.

Her WFP assuming her income is under £35,000 will be just 82p a week. If she worked for 30+ years, she has paid her dues and deserves it.

700,000 pensioner households still have income below the Pension Credit limit but haven’t claimed. You may not have met them but they are out there; that is people with an income of less than £11,809 a year, about half the net income of someone earning mimimum wage. I have met many who won’t claim so reinstating the WFP to most pensiooner households will provide a safety net and put a stop to expensive means testing.

Oreo

Poppyred

Responded to the voice of Reform more like. 😂

Being frightened of Reform, as both major Parties now are.That’s a big part of this WFA decision and it’s stupid to think otherwise.

Yes.

bought houses, that should say.

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.

It's obvious Reeves has backtracked because of the backlash on the doorstep, local elections and by-election. Nothing to with warm feelings for pensioners and the excuse of an improving financial situation is a blatant lie. They are worried about the voters. Starmer should get rid of her - she's a liability.

Usedtobeblonde

Just for clarity , does anyone know or has seen if the £3700, which is the figure I have read, is gross or net income.
I.e, before or after tax?

This is exactly what I was wondering.

Think its a BAD move personally

we are in our 60's, I have a PP, he doesn't . Mother is in her late 80's and has had every benefit going from being in the right place/right time

She is loaded, full state pension, 30+ years council pension PLUS full police pension - even though her DH only had 20 years service and has been dead 12 years

I personally dont know of any pensioner who is struggling to the extent its heat or eat. I accept there are the few who have slipped through the net, but unless its actually means tested, its costing the ````uk tax payer way too much

Now me and he, being of the age where our pension ages are being shifted pillow to post, where were are hurting too much to be able to work full time to pay the bills before pensions kick in, Id be grateful for that money

Mother in the meantime send hers ro the RNIL ( and good luck to them )

I find Maizie that try as I might, I don't fully understand (I get the gist, its Keynesian economics and borrowing for growth, I did at uni but that was a long time ago - perhaps if we hit a recession due to world factors we cant control - it might take root.

Your response is entirely predictable, Allira.
Could you clarify that remark please MaizieD?

You seem to have ideas about me which are untrue, so on what basis did you form that opinion?

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.

You may have been lucky so that remark was totally predictable.

Not everyone was so fortunate, nor do they inhabit the well-heeled middle classes where so many Gransnetters seem to reside.

I know many younger people, funnily enough they seem to love us both and . I'm second Mum to several apparently!! But they're not resentful of older people, they generally love their own parents too.
Perhaps they don't inhabit Mumsnet.

Your post has come across as rather spiteful in fact.

Allira

growstuff

Allira

In fact we're not anyway.
We're all lumped together, though!
Free university education? Only 4% of school leavers went to university anyway.
Houses were cheaper in relation to salaries but then some people were left in negative equity when they were still paying a mortgage. Endowment policies linked to mortgages failed.

Yes, we really 'had it good'

We're not baby boomers either!

Slight correction.

8 - 10% of school leavers went to university in 1973, when I did.

No correction needed, in 1963 4% of school leavers went to university.

It's probably worth remembering the age gap on GN.

Doodledog Creating division certainly sounds like Dominic Cummings, but I don't think he ever had anything to do with IF. He did run a think-tank called "New Frontiers Foundation", which was about winning elections (I think) - he put his thinking to good use in the Brexit campaign.

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.

growstuff

Allira

In fact we're not anyway.
We're all lumped together, though!
Free university education? Only 4% of school leavers went to university anyway.
Houses were cheaper in relation to salaries but then some people were left in negative equity when they were still paying a mortgage. Endowment policies linked to mortgages failed.

Yes, we really 'had it good'

We're not baby boomers either!

Slight correction.

8 - 10% of school leavers went to university in 1973, when I did.

No correction needed, in 1963 4% of school leavers went to university.

Allira

^In fact we're not anyway.^
We're all lumped together, though!
Free university education? Only 4% of school leavers went to university anyway.
Houses were cheaper in relation to salaries but then some people were left in negative equity when they were still paying a mortgage. Endowment policies linked to mortgages failed.

Yes, we really 'had it good'

We're not baby boomers either!

Slight correction.

8 - 10% of school leavers went to university in 1973, when I did.

^ Endowment policies linked to mortgages failed.^

Endowment mortgages were a Thatcherite, market inspired creation. The belief that investment in the markets would always be profitable. We got caught by that, too, though fortunately we didn't end up in negative equity.

However, the house we bought 30 years ago is now 'worth' immeasurably more than we paid for it. Without us having to spend on it over the years anywhere near the difference between the purchase price and the amount it is worth now.

In fact we're not anyway.
We're all lumped together, though!
Free university education? Only 4% of school leavers went to university anyway.
Houses were cheaper in relation to salaries but then some people were left in negative equity when they were still paying a mortgage. Endowment policies linked to mortgages failed.

Yes, we really 'had it good'

We're not baby boomers either!