Nick Robinson on the Today programme said that people affected by withdrawing the Winter Fuel Allowance were "the wartime generation". AIBU to think he's wrong?

OP, there were plenty of women and children who weren't fighting but they had to cope with being bombed out of their homes. Or whose dads didn't come back so they grew up in poverty with widowed mums. There was no UC.

And plenty of children who dads came back so damaged, mentally and physically, that life afterwards was very difficult.

Meat rationing did not end until 1954. You couldn't go and buy what you wanted, even if you had money.

I imagine this is who is referred to as the wartime generation.

My GF did National Service and ended up in Egypt in the aftermath of the Suez "crisis".

According to the man himself, the only fighting he ever got close to was scaring off Bedouins who would steal anything the Army hadn't nailed down, and sometimes that didn't even stop them. He did say though that in order to go to town or deliver mail, you had to do so in a Scout car because the same Bedouins were fond of taking potshots at the Brits.

The other did his NS just after the war but was never posted to any active combat zone, unless you include some of the rougher parts of a few of the UK's larger cities.

My eldest GP guarded prisoners of war toward the end of WWII, which was seemingly a fairly common duty for women in active service.

I presume he means people like my parents who were born during the war.

This might be an interesting link. Lots of conflicts going on at the time,

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/national-service-experience

Between 1947 and 1963, a total of 395 National Servicemen were killed on active service.

Yeah this is true. Sometimes completely nonsensically too.

An example is Grandfather in law. 80s. Independent. Since the fuel price nightmare and the Russia invasion he will not put the gas heating on. Says he’s not spending that much and it’s his way of standing up to putin.

Instead he uses an electric heater to blow hot air under a blanket which he drapes over his feet propped on a footstool. Like some kind of human body hot tent.

I have expressed many times he’s likely to set himself on fire. It is concerning.

I was born in 1950, and completely agree with you.

National Service WAS a form of conscription. And i bet you would have no trouble describing it as such if your kids were made to do it.
DM is 88 And at 8 years old had to work in the fields to help my gran while my grandfather was conscripted into the Italian Army. Remember not all pensioners are British and those who had their childhood in other countries will have experienced the war differently

My grandparents, who were war generation and have sadly all died over the last few years, probably needed the money. They had small state/ widows pensions and had to pay for home help etc.

My baby boomer parents with a combination of their final salary and state pensions clear about 7k per month. (Public sector/middle management pensions. We were MC but not wealthy) They have long paid off the mortgage on the house that they bought for a fraction of what it is now worth. They have significant savings and investments and have also recently inherited lump sums from their parents. They really really don't need the winter fuel allowance.

We really need to rebalance the economy towards support for working aged people and families who have seen wages fall far behind COL (unlike pensions).

The way they have chosen to means test it seems rather blunt, however. The idea of using attendance allowance or disability status instead would seem like a reasonable idea. Or even just upping the age limit to say 85+ which would allow continued support the most vulnerable.

I actually think using disability benefits in some way makes the most sense. But then I would also include non pension aged recipients who had the highest level of need. Housebound people with disabilities, whatever their age, must struggle with winter heating costs.

@HauntedBungalow that is embarrassing for you.

Poor FIL. Tell him you’ve found a way to claim it and pay it into his account yourself with an official sounding reference. That’s what we’re doing for a similar situation. Our senior now expects their WFA on 1 October (and will get it).

Well I'm affected by losing the Winter Fuel payment and I'm definitely not war time generation.
It's a really weird thing to say.
Actually Nick Robinson himself is just a little over 10 years younger than me. I wonder what generation he regards himself.

My grandparents remember seeing their city being bombed, I would call them the wartime generation. They did their National Service during the 50s in conflicts too.

Three years after the war ended is not wartime generation. They weren’t even born. They’re the children of the wartime generation.

There is a tendency to harp on and on about it, in my opinion because emerging the victor in WWII is about the last notable thing the UK achieved before sliding into relative obscurity and decades of managed decline, so I think it's viewed as some sort of Halcyon era even though I also think that's a very slanted view of things, and I doubt merchant seamen who were being torpedoed in the mid-atlantic or private soldiers facing Japanese suicide charges in the Burmese jungle would see it the same way.

It also annoys me that this generation is also feted as superhuman and used as a comparator to denigrate younger people, as if WWII combatants weren't fighting for their own existence as much as anything else, some reluctantly, and as if younger people today would somehow be incapable of much the same thing. The idea that every UK participant in WWII was motivated by a universal hatred of Fascism is nonsense. The majority of people were there because they were conscripted or signed up before it inevitably came to that. There's still a lot of overly-romantic bollocks written about WWII, but it's not polite to point that out.

I remember coming out of the air-raid shelter on the morning of my 3rd birthday, and feeling excited. I remember doodle-bugs and later on, rockets It. was just life then. I have a decent teacher's pension and am able to shop at Waitrose, drink gin and feed my cat.

Surely 'the war time generation' are those that were born and grew up during the war- so people in their late 70s and 80s.

FIL is wartime generation. He lives off his state pension and is over the threshold for claiming pension credit. He was managing - just about. He is now worried sick about how much his fuel bill is going to be this winter.

I know the majority of mumsnetters have parents who are living their best lives, driving jags and crusing the med but there real people out there who genuinely have nothing.
He is 92, has just bought his first ever duvet and has literally taken to his bed and says he's not leaving it.

This!

YABVU Op & actually quite ignorant.

They're not the wartime generation, they're the baby boomers... And the baby boomers are collectively some of the wealthiest in terms of generations atm. It's impossible to make a sweeping statement, YANBU. The people who will be most affected are those on low income!

My mother was born in 1931 and my father (now dead) in 1928, and my aunt in 1932. They definitely remember/ remembered the War and experienced it. But I’m not convinced that their assumptions about politics and people’s behaviour at the time was correct.

Otoh my aunt was recently telling me how her father ordered eggs from the grocer on the black market (he asked for golf balls, which seems a touch comedic). She remembers it vividly, as does my mother and it had a huge influence on their lives. But Nick Robinson is way out with his calculations.