To give you the pensioners facts

This is absolutely untrue ! Your mother would NEVER qualify for UC at 70.!

She needs to claim pension credit. Even on UC the capital cut off is 16k . On Pension Credit they don't even start considering capital until you have 10k in the bank and then reduce your weekly allowance by £1 for every £500 she has above 10k. So your mother would be entitled to Pension Credit less £4 a week if her state pension is below £221 a week. .. and subsequently would be entitled to winter fuel allowance. Even if she had as much as £221 she would still qualify for council tax reduction and a single person discount which is worth more than the WFA.

Regardless of being on PC or a higher state pension, if she rents she can claim housing benefit as well.

I suggest. You get on a good benefits calculator like 'Turn2Us' and get the facts rather than all the hysteria that's come up about this.

Because people under 66 are expected to be working, not living off benefits. Therefore your income should be larger than the state pension. Anybody who isn't genuinely suffering bad health, whether physical or mentally, or have other good reason not to work does not need benefits. Get a job.

Interest rates average out at 9% over the past 50 years. That meant saving was an attractive prospect. So in reality the pension pot over that period gained far more than todays workers will ever see.

And as much as many of us wish to deny it. The crapshow that was covid and locking down the entire working country is a major part of this current financial mess that we are in. And it was done primarily to protect the lives of the elderly.

You could argue that as they were the biggest beneficiaries of covid lockdowns, they should also shoulder the lions share of the cost. The rest of the working population will be paying back the cost of it all for the rest of our lives.

And interest rates were 15%, with most mortgages unprotected from the often turbulent markets and sudden changes in interest rates in response. And the old state pension barely gives a couple £300 a week to live on. We didn’t have maternity pay or paid paternity leave, or wrap around childcare. There were no after school clubs and women had no protection from losing their jobs if they became pregnant. There was also no UC to top up wages to anything like the extent they are now or to pay For childcare fees. It wasn’t all jam.

If you are sick or disabled or care for someone. Then on 11500 per year you WILL be entitled to pension credit and the WFA.

Disability benefits do not qualify you for the WFP, and neither does carers allowance. Carers allowance stops when you claim state pension. This cohort will be no more entitled to WFA or pension credit than any other pensioner with no other income or savings.

Sorry you are wrong. If you are a pensioner on a low income then you absolutely CAN claim council tax reduction. ! If you are single then you can also get a single person discount on top. Worth much more than WFA !!

People born in the 1920's are aged mid 90's minimum, so are not affected by the rise in pension age. They knew throughout their working life that a basic state pension was always just enough to get by.

@anyolddinosaur
Older people have often worked from 16, 14 in some cases. They expected when old and sick they would at least be able to eat and keep warm, You have to pay for things you did yourself when younger.

State pension under the old system was about £170 a week. People who have an additional pension may only have enough to take them up to and 50p - £1 a week over the pension credit level. So they get no benefit from their private pension.

Houses require maintenance you often cant do yourself when older and sicker. You also cant always shop for and cook cheap meals, you may have to have them prepared for you. Although more old people own homes they are not necessarily well maintained or well insulated or have high value. Grants for boilers or insulation are not available unless you are on benefits.

Labour are taking money from some of the poorest people in the country.

Personally we donated our fuel allowance to the local food bank, wont be doing that now.

I notice you said 'we' when describing yourself. Assuming that means you are a couple, you will be getting a household income of roughly £440 weekly. That's a figure so many of your children and grandchildren can only dream of. Especially given the level of paid up home ownership among the retired. Your generation purchased homes when they were 3 times annual salary. Couldn't buy a caravan for that today.

And that is the taxpayers fault how?

A prediction about public response.

Not about strikes etc.

In the article:🙄

“Ms Heathcote, the general secretary of the PCS, told the BBC there would be "real backlash" which could take the form of industrial action if the government continued "along the line that they're heading" over welfare.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg5rl612n5o

I wil be more or less and so will many others.

Stammer is the thief that has stolen all our golden hours. Successive Tory govts have failed to raise pension rates and public sector pay. They have paid themselves and machine gunned billions to their cronies. They have stolen 99.9% your golden hours.

I appreciate the tax and winter fuel payments will negatively impact income, particularly for those on lower incomes.

I totally disagree with a universal £200- £300 heating costs allowance. This should NOT be paid to everyone, irrespective of income or wealth.

Why is there NEVER any mention of capital in these calculations. ?

One of my Aunts likes to whinge on about the loss of her WFA because she 'only has a pension' .. but she also has at least £300k in the bank from her parents house she inherited outright 3 years ago. !

If you are genuinely on 11500, per annum have no savings and rent- then claim housing benefit and council tax reduction (which for avg band D house is £1500 off a year.) Much more than WFA.

If you are genuinely on 11500 a year and own your own home but for some reason have not paid into an occupational pension and also have no savings... then claim council tax reduction. As above.

If you are sick or disabled or care for someone. Then on 11500 per year you WILL be entitled to pension credit and the WFA.

However if you are in the first 2 categories and have over 16k then you won't qualify and you know what ? Just like the rest of us you have to dip in to your savings if you can't afford your fuel bill. ! Most families who struggle do not have those savings to dip into.

The reason my Aunt gives is that savings are for emergencies. I would suggest that if your house is cold and you are cold it is an emergency.

But OP, those are not the facts for "pensioners", they are your facts for you personally and they do indeed make sobering reading. However, you can't claim that all pensioners are still paying rent, all pensioners will be surviving on the state pension, etc etc. I am approaching pension age and I'm very fortunate to not be paying rent and to have a decent occupational pension. I could just as easily come on here and present my facts to show that pensioners don't need the winter fuel allowance? That is not in any way to say that I'm not sympathetic to your plight and that of many many other pensioners but you can't tar everyone with the same brush.

Sorry, what's your point?

Pensioners currently are still getting a vastly better deal than anyone my age in an equivalent situation will when they reach pension age.

@User6874356 well it wasn't in their manifesto and I didn't vote for it.

Same as existing pensioners did. And they had cheap housing, free education, etc.

Of course we should hold people in power to account. However we still need to be realistic that there are limited resources available and they must be allocated between groups. Not everyone can just have everything they want.

You have over 35yrs to still sort out a decent private pension. 🤨

Baby boomers have been lucky that the generation before them was much less populous and had shorter retirements. So bb had a bit of a sweet spot where they have been able to claim more than they paid in. It’s the next generation who are paying for this. As a result retirement ages are going up, benefits like university fees are long gone and the NHS is struggling due to an aging population.

The bb have taken out - many benefits are gone as a result. Likely universal state pensions will be gone soon too for my dds generation.

I agree @User6874356 that we shouldn't fight the gvt.
But at the same time we must not blindly trust those who hold power because they will be subject to the corrupting effects of power
We should pay attention to what's going on, look beneath the surface, hold their feet to the fire etc.

I dont think you understand the demographic issue. Todays pensioners supported a far, far smaller group of older people above them, who lived shorter lives and spent fewer years in retirement.
As a working population there were loads more people paying in than taking out.
Many were also promised enormous pensions whilst not paying in anywhere like enough money - the people doing all the pension forecasting back then basically got the numbers wrong.
Many boomers had 'non contributory' pensions! They didn't pay anything in to them at all, only the employer paid in - and some of those were final salary. The result is that todays working population have huge pension obligations to fund, whilst the number crunchers have realised its not affordable to give todays workers anything like such generous pensions 😢

Fighting the government? I don’t know if you understand what the government do.

The government have to get us to pay into the pot and then distribute it to us via public services and welfare payments. If they are using 10% of taxpayers funds to pay for state pensions (as they do) they can’t be used for something else.

each pound of taxpayers funds can only be spent once. We choose the government based on how they say they will allocate these funds. Fighting the government is pointless- we live in a democracy!

Hmm. If you've always had unskilled jobs and never earned enough to save as a single person - no private pension.
My mum has 12k in an inheritance from her mum. She uses bits of it every year to cover her shortfall or when disasters happen like the car breaking down. She is 70 and still has a physically demanding cleaning job because she doesn't qualify for UC due to the 12k. She won't be able to do the job much longer. She rents. The fuel allowance let her buy coal or logs in winter to heat the downstairs. She now won't get it.
She certainly hasn't been lazy in life. But she's never had extra to save. The only way for her to get UC and be maybe £40 better off, is to blow her 12k and have no safety net at all.