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

My dad lives in council sheltered housing it isn’t cheap because they add charges for various things. They aren’t all rich my dad himself has a very small pension which pushes him over the tax threshold and not eligible for pension credit.

He really needs that payment. Not all pensioners are loaded. Many are not! I’ve complained about it all with him. He worked since 15 and he deserved a comfortable retirement , not financially but physically.

Don't worry, Labour's definition of "the rich" will probably sweep you and everyone else too before long, and you'll get to join in with the sputtering and outrage

But i agree op re the tax on private schools.

I do love the ONS about 40 a year:

https://www.beta.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsfromhypothermia2019to2023

is especially shocking when you take into account the fact that the winter fuel payment is already so low that thousands of pensioners die every winter of hypothermia- and that is even now with very mild winters caused by global warming.

Really ? I have worked in the NHS for 24 years, I have not seen one person die of hypothermia. The only cases I have seen are street homeless people or those who fall in to rivers or are pulled from the sea. If thousands were dying I think I might have seen a few more cases.

I agree there are a lot of struggling pensioners who don't get pension credit.

I think the issue is to means test it in any other way (ie dedicate a staff force to managing eligibility) would cost so much the savings would be lost.

But yes awful for those who are suffering

I 100% believe that Labout are high on their own supply at the moment, and resent the rural heartlands for keeping them out of power for so long. So any financial penalties will be aimed at traditional Tory voters. Certainly seems that way so far. I don't have skin in the game as not young enough for school kids and not old enough for WFA.

I just posted a video of him talking about this not so long ago when he was in the opposition party..

People have very very selective memories.

🙄🤬

I guess both cuts and VAT are easy to impose. Neither affect me personally but I think removing benefits for pensioners is a dangerous road to go down.

https://x.com/exRAF_Al/status/1822749909864390890

Seems that Sir Keir Starmer agreed with you on this not so long ago as well…

i hope the fuel costs wont be hugely expensive this winter.
i was concerned for my dm and looked into what she had coming in but she has too much for pension credit
she will be worried.

Imagine If the Tories had scrapped the WFA, the jibes that Kier Starmer would have trotted out. Some pensioners are well off and don't need it, some really aren't well off and are just over the threshold so won't get it, some of those will die.

As for VAT on school fees the downsides of this will take time to work through the system and it won't be the 'big' win people are crowing on about.

I wouldn't be surprised if they start charging for GP appointments.

Both policies have been implemented too hastily and with little regard to their impact.

I'm not against either policy but I believe the VAT issue could have been handled much better. Mid term is an awful time for any child to be changing schools. I think beginning of the next school year would have been better or even leaving existing pupils in their schools until there is a natural break. The more important issue than creating 6500 new teachers would be stop the alarming loss of excellent teachers due to their working conditions. I don't know enough about what's going on in schools but I guess academies haven't improved the sector.

The fuel allowance, very sneaky of the previous government to set the pension credit limit below the full pension. It seems a lot of so called experts haven't realised this. It would have been better to align it to council tax support, which would capture more pensioners that don't qualify for pension credit. Mind you that will probably depend where you livebas it differs from council to council now.

I am not affected by either policy but believe them both to be unfair in their current guise.

You are the one moaning OP. Your moaning is boring,

The concept of something being tone deaf is nonsense. You can always find someone worse off than yourself. Should I say it's tone deaf that people complain they don't have the choice of sending their kids to private school when there are other parents who can't even afford to feed their kids?

There are a lot of things that are wrong with private schooling e.g. it perpetuates the inherent inequality in society and is therefore wrong especially in such an extremely class based society as the uk. Psrsonally i also think the academic hothousing isnt that great for the private school kids either. Neither of these have got anything to do with tone and taste. Or would private schools be fine as long as no one admitted to anyone less well off than them.that they send their kids to private school?

The fact that you think that tone rather than any real impact is important is a sign of how much deeper the problem is

Neither issue impacts me.

However, I know people impacted by one or the other.

You say your PILs laughed about how they were goign to manage without the winter fuel payment. I’d suggest that they might be laughing on the other side of their face if one of them died and the other was left financially in the shit.

I have a friend who has one dc in the last year of private school. Because the VAT is goign to be an in year increase, she has literally no idea how to find the money for VAT in term 2 and 3. None whatsoever. Every pound was accounted for. What she’s probably going to do is to go into debt to pay the VAT and downsize her home when her dc goes to uni. By downsizing, she’ll be able to pay for uni and pay off the VAT debt.

If you are bored of the moaning, you should not expect anyone to listen to your moaning when a new government policy comes and hurts you.

Yes, but it’s woefully inadequate - my kids state schools’ refused to even support an ed psych assessment for both my children, as was the case with every person I know. Our local school is at the top of the Times league tables, so it’s not because of being under funded either. We all had to borrow money from grandparents/family to pay for private assessments and those still in state schools after diagnosis and being given an IEP were offered a few hours a week extra support for their children, or a place in the one size fits all remedial classes that did not address their personal needs. Several families I know had to take the LEA to court to get adequate provision, costing them nearly £40k.

How do those who can’t find that money manage? By putting up with the woeful provision because they have little choice. The provision is possibly improved by the fact that some parents have removed their children, enabling those kids to get assessed sooner and have some of those hours that would be allocated to them. I can assure you, when these privately educated kids are forced to return to the state sector it will be those kids currently in the state system who will suffer. The few resources there are will be more thinly spread, those who can get/have already got private assessments will get their SEN provision sooner while those children whose parents cannot will slip further back in the queue.

None of the labour govt plans demonstrate how they are going to fund the increased demand for SEN provision or where they will suddenly find fully qualified SEN staff (which now requires a PGCE, 2 years teaching experience and a 2 year Masters) when they will already struggle to find 6000 teaching staff.

Yeah well we'd also thought we had worked it out but we had budgeted for a 10% increase every year. Not 30%.

Erm it's 'tone deaf' love

Of course, I moan when a privilege is taken away from me. A lot of people are privileged in some way or the other and they would like to remain privileged. It is annoying when you don't share that particular privilege but I don't think it's so difficult to understand why people prefer to keep something that they believe is good for them.

It's a bit like getting lucky and finding a job with a good salary and then having that salary slashed by 20%. Yes you were lucky to have got a good salary but it still stinks when your salary drops by a significant amount.

Or imagine if suddenly your mortgage went up by 20%. Maybe just on properties above 200k to make it more comparable. Yes you were lucky to have been able to afford to buy a property in the first place but it still sucks.

I have a child in private school not because I think it's my God given right to get better education but because she was miserable in her old school and because we were lucky enough to be able to afford to send her to a private school. And even though in principle I don't agree with the concept of private schooling and I voted for Labour I still worry about the 20% increase in fees (on top of the 10% we already had this year). I wish we'd never gone private but now that she is happy in her school it's very difficult taking her out again. Yes, most kids are fine in state schools and maybe she would have been OK eventually but to change schools now is a big deal. There are actually lots of things I don't like about her school. It's not like it's perfect but I still think it will be too hard for her to change now. I almost wish that rather than charging vat they'd just banned private schools because then we would have had to take her out without feeling so guilty about it.

I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for us because obviously we are privileged in that we had the option to send her private and some people have much bigger problems than this but I reserve the right to worry about it. Except for this post I don't moan about it and certainly don't discuss it in real life with anyone but I don't think it's hard to see why the parents of private school kids aren't too thrilled about having to pay more now. No one likes paying more for stuff especially once they have committed to yhat stuff and can't really get out of it.

All state schools have SEN provision. In the UK, every school (and maintained nursery) must have a SENCO and every SENCO must be a qualified teacher. Independent schools are not required to have SENCOs. How do you think parents of children with SEND who can’t afford to pay for private education manage?

You moan a lot for someone who hasn’t got a clue what they are on about. People like you need to educate themselves outside of their bubble. Your older family is not the same as everyone.