Can’t just be me who is sick of the moaning about the private school VAT and winter fuel payments

& First Group CEO who own, among others GWR, earns millions of £ per year, much of it derived from Taxpayers subsidy.

So why shouldn't a 'driver get a good Pension? its not a job i'd want to do, given the numbers of people who end their lives in front of a train.

Neither would i want to be a Doctor, 10 or 15 years of training, years more to get to consultant level, dealing with horrific injuries or diseases, telling parents their child has an incurable illness.

No thankyou.

Absolutely. If someone just gets the basic state pension that's £11,492 a year. My 90 year old next door neighbours council tax alone is over 3k a year, and her home is very poorly insulated as she can't afford to update it, so the winter fuel payment was really important to her. She broke her hip so doesn't get out much, so gets very cold. She gets I think a few hundred per year from her deceased husbands work pension which puts her over the threshold. She is incredibly worried that the payment has been stopped, when we pop in with a few groceries for her, she is fretting about this and feels this will make it her last winter as her generation was brought up believing should never get into debt, she will freeze before she does this. Where we are the neighbours will rally round and support her, but this is probably quite rare.

My parents get joint state pensions plus private pensions and they are on around £40k a year, in a very well insulated house, early 70's fit and well.

Neither of these will get the payment, will vastly different situations. Labour has done this in such a crude and cruel way.

Of course people have heard these arguments. They just tend to see them as the scaremongering they are. Most people don't expect 'loads of cash' either. Just that every little helps. The majority, like I say, simply don't care about your niche issue, so to suggest the government needed to go to the bother of whipping up envy to get this through is beyond ridiculous. About as daft as the idea that before we had a Labour government no one noticed the gulf between the haves and have nots and were not angry at the unfairness. Labour haven't put that idea into the minds of the suggestible poor. How patronising of you to suggest that.

He must have very healthy savings, then! People on really low incomes (i.e. below the tax threshold) pay no tax on savings interest of up to £5,000 p.a.

I've been on all the VAT threads and actually that's one argument I haven't heard, unless the local school was so dire that it was actually a reasonable statement. Most of us protesting this policy are in the bracket already mentioned...unmet needs in poor state schools with better ones inaccessible due to catchment prices, or private giving the small, calmer environment than 1000+ comps can, no matter how good they are academically.

Why would they? business is only interested in profit and IF they did come up with a Pensioners Tariff, the costs of this lower price would be passed on to the rest of us, many of whom cannot afford to pay more.

No, the Government has to change how the energy market works, there is no competition and very soon, we will all see £150 to £200 go on our bills, with increased standing charges so even if you do cut back, you still pay.

TruthorDie
I’m well aware of that

Are you? Do average ability children do well anywhere?

OP, are you familiar with how public sector pensions work? The have just moved from the private sector to the public sector and I am counting myself super lucky!!

doctors get - every year- a guaranteed pension of 1/50 of their salary, for life, indexed for inflation. Train driver get 1/60 on the same basis as does civil servants.

when we are increasing public Sector, we are also increasing the pensions. This is a HUGE cost to the public.

you can do a fun experiment on this. Someone who earns £50k all their career (doctors and train driver make much more than this for most of their careers) and works for 40 years will retire on £33,333 for life. This will be indexed up for inflation and CPI. In order for someone in the private sector to get the same, you need a pension pot of £560k approximately (not sure if that even is inflation/CPI adjusted). How many people can save up for this during their life time?

This is what is such a huge cost for the government. This is where all the money from the pensioners’ fuel allowance will go. Pensioner who (if they are on the breadline) do not have a public pension.

My MIL hasn’t stopped banging on about the winter fuel payments and sharing things on Facebook. They are far from struggling and spend most of their time holidaying abroad each winter. She also shares “stop the boats” nonsense though and is generally a bit stupid, so she seems to have jumped on another band wagon with this one.

The DWP already have a system in place as pensioners whose income is over a certain amount have to pay tax. So they could use the existing system to see who would qualify for fuel payments. They could set the cut off point to say £20,000 per annum which would help the pensioners who need the WFA.

At the moment the cut off point is too low, which is why Age Concern are asking for people to sign the petition.

Pensioners feel the cold more, are less likely to go out, some have mobility problems. If they are cold they are more likely to suffer from associated illnesses and end up in hospital. This will put more strain on the NHS over the winter months.

The state school supported us but when the school applied for assessment for ehcp the la still came back and said that he could manage in a mainstream school with no additional support required and assessment wasn’t needed so I had to appeal to even get assessment. I’d got to the point though where I was refusing to pick ds up when the school asked me to unless they formally excluded him so the school just wanted us out and did out the pressure on for me to withdraw him but I held fast until I got a place in the specialist. I know of several other children at the same primary who drifted though primary with no ehcps becuase the school managed by asking parents to pick up when they couldn’t manage or parents that were forced out into home educating

None of the above but he does have some savings which he will have declared, so perhaps that’s why.

They have said now that there won’t be discounts for ehcps this was just something mooted by people before the election but not actually said officially. It has been said that vat will be applied to all fees regardless of whether the child has an ehcp as in cases where the child has fees paid by the la through an ehcp the la can claim the vat back so there is no cost to them overall

If he’s not a liar then It must be wrong so he needs to contact hmrc and get it corrected. If £218 is his only income he should not be paying any tax. It’s not just pensions he needs to take into account for income though if he has bank interest, investment income, rentals income, wages it all needs adding together and if his total is above £12570 he will pay tax on the amount over this limit. If he is telling you he is paying tax and his only income is £218 a week then it is either incorrect or he is lying about his income

Your son must have EHCP funding to get a place at a specialist school. I have no issue with that if his level of need is so high. Did the state school say there was no need for specialist education or did they support you with documentation etc?

they are talking about discounts for those with EHCPs

Which will put even more pressure on the system when private school parents or wannabees realise they can get a discount if they get an EHCP. And that extra pressure will disadvantage the children of those parents who have no choice but state education, even more.

So the relatively well off will benefit over the poor and the averagely paid, yet again

Presumably you're young and active.

Many elderly people aren't and their income may be slightly above that to make them eligible for Pension Credit and thus WFA.
We'll see if/when cases of hypothermia increase next winter.

Many pensioners are eligible for Pension Credit but don't claim it, saving the government billions. Perhaps there should be more of a targeted campaign to help those eligible who don't claim at the moment.

I hope the State education sector is poised and ready for the influx of pupils who were or would have been privately educated!

Winter fuel payment should always have been means tested so for me this is a move in the right direction, but the way it's means tested and the levels for qualification need to be looked at urgently.

I agree. If it had always been means tested and someone suggested making it universal, people would rightly say that was ridiculous.

That doesn't mean the threshold it's now been set at is right though.

Well, my Dad must have become a compulsive liar as he claims he pays tax on £218.15 per week. That’s the only explanation I can think of.

Everyone I know has signed the petition from AGE UK petition about the winter fuel allowance.

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/our-impact/campaigning/save-the-winter-fuel-payment/?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADyp8JIfAVmBuUdJkbZUTrXrxUq1j&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlIG2BhC4ARIsADBgpVQtrcZueFXj64-CPPGUPo3U82uBEe_LeH8p5r6lHOPa1f4ghM7mRgAaAshcEALw_wcB

Well he either has other income so his total income is more than £12570 or it is wrong, how is the tax being collected as state pension isn’t paid through paye? Does he have to do a tax return?

TruthorDie
Bright children can get on anywhere, my siblings and l went to a comprehensive. We all have a couple of degrees, one of us has a PhD so it didn’t hold us back too much in life.

There are just as many private schools that cater for average ability children (and even lower ability children) as there are private schools that cater for 'bright children'.

Hopefully the energy companies will come up with some kind of lower tarrif for pensioners.

They won’t pay tax on £944 a month it’s under the personal allowance.