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?

According to OP none of that matters. It only counts if she was flying bombers over France 🙄

If he's really worried then he should look into what benefits are available to him

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/benefits-entitlements/benefits-calculator/

Is a great tool that can help.

DM in her 80s remembers being bombed out and shunted around the country. She doesn't remember what her father was like before the war when she was a very young infant, just the broken man who returned and the traumatic aftermath of that. She never met her uncle who was worked and starved to death in Burma. She was in her teens before rationing was fully lifted.

Older pensoners definitely experienced the toll of WW2 and often many traumas from that era and the slow recovery through the 1940s-50s.

My mum was a child during WW2 and has vivid memories of it. She’s 87. Does she not count as the “wartime generation”?

The strange thing is that technically you could have a parent born in 1946 and their child born in 1964 and they’d both be boomers.

I think better to give to some who don't need it than risk some not getting it who do need it and might be suffering in a cold house all winter.

I know many don't need it. But I worry that there are many more who fall between the cracks.

My parents were born 12 years after the war. At 67 they're both boomers.

My DM was a child in the war. She remembers sitting under the table with her mum when the air raid siren sounded. She was entitled to the higher rate WFA. She certainly isn’t wealthy and just misses out on pension credit.

Gosh, what a luxury for you to be 'bored with it' !

There are plenty of people still around who were born 1939-1952 so understand the hardship and deprivations of war, and can remember rationing. That didn't end until 1954.

Few people had decent heating. Houses were poorly insulated. That age group understand the impact of cold. It seems you do not.

You are embarrassing in your ignorance.

He’s talking out of his very Tory arse. People in their early eighties were toddlers at best during the war.

My Dad (81) doesn’t need the WFA and donated to Shelter every year because he thought it was immoral that he was given it.

I think my mum qualifies - born during the war, lost several uncles to it, and a father quite traumatised by what he'd seen. Impacted by the war definitely.
I will never agree with the removal of a universal WFA, just as I thought the Tories were fuckers for removing universal child benefit. It seems reactionary and cruel. I'm sick of hearing all the 'oh my rich parents don't need it - should have set up a dedicated 'return your WFA charity' instead for all those people willing to hand it back.

Mum remembers her Mickey Mouse gas mask and how scary it was to practice putting it on.

Dad remembers meeting his Dad for the first time when he was 4 years old. His Dad came back from RAF service in Malaysia clutching a mechanno set and a toy train.

My parents are aptly described as the wartime generation. Like many pensioners, they don't need the WFA. They might grumble, but they know their 2 disabled grandchildren have more need for decent health & social care than they have for the WFA.

My Gran is 86 and was a child during the war and remembers it well.

However statistically most pensioners currently alive were born after the war

That's just not true. They're not all dead at all! Many people who were children in WW2 are still very much live including my grandparents. They lost their fathers, older brothers and uncles, often in families where grandfathers had already been killed in WW1. They lived very hard lives and then went onto have children themselves in the 50s with so much undiagnosed trauma.

I wish the WFA for older people was going to be distributed based on council tax banding. It seems much less likely to leave vulnerable older people in fuel poverty.

I have family badly affected by it, really struggling and I'm worried for their health and survival, but they were born in the late 40s, i.e. boomers.

”Most” pensioners now are not wartime generation (ie those who lived through the war). It’s got to be a higher percentage of boomers than silent generation now surely.

Both of my parents were born when rationing was still around. Both also profited heavily from the advent of Thatcherism and were one of the first generations of working class people to find themselves with significant disposable income. Neither of them ever voted Tory in their lives, but they certainly didn't suffer for being born immediately after the war. They're typical "boomers", are absolutely minted and have attained a level of affluence that similar people in their 20's and 30's today will never see outside of inheritance/a lottery win.

There is absolutely no reason to hand pensioners like my parents WFA, even though the fit the demographic of what some in here are claiming to be the "wartime" generation.

I heard him say that and I thought the same. It's more the baby boomer generation surely.

That is true, but you could say the same thing about anyone under 20 today and Covid, and I don’t think many people would argue that even quite young children weren’t affected by that - there are still a lot of people who will remember something about WW2.

My father remembers his first banana aged 10 or so in the early 50s, but I don't think that particularly qualifies him to get the WFA 70 years later.

(Though I can see the argument for giving the WFA to pensioners who get Attendance Allowance or other disability benefits, as they're more likely to be immobile and suffer from the cold. Someone should suggest this if they haven't already.)

I've been visiting mine this week (born in the 50s, so not wartime). They've both brought it up, angry at Starmer.

Yes, it is cold in the house, but you leave the back door and front window open for 18 hours per day so that the fucking cats can come and go as they please, and you just spent £60k on a new car.

My dad was born during the war, he definitely does not need the winter fuel allowence.
I think people see pensioners as little old people with no money shivering around thier gas fire. They forget about people like my wife who is 70 now , still working 25 hours a week in a physical job..
We never needed her fuel allowance but had some nice city breaks with it.