Winter fuel payments

Goodness, you sound very unhappy, why don't you try and reframe things in your mind to think you don't have to be a victim.

No I don't like child poverty. Neither does Farage. That's why he's reversing the 2 DC cap inserted by Tory's and not reversed by Labour who bang on about child poverty yet in power do nothing to stop it. Farage voted against the 2 child cap whilst Labour MP's voted to keep it, or a few abstained. Labour say one thing in opposition then do opposite in power. 2 faced Labour.

Just because your circle don’t need it, it doesn’t mean that others don’t. There are lots of pensioner out there who have struggled over the winter due to it being withdrawn from them as their state and private pension is just above the cut of for pension credit. Single/widowed/divorced women will be disproportionately affected due to child rearing, part time working, being excluded from occupational pension schemes etc etc.

You are still making my point for me I’m afraid. The safety net was there regardless. Council housing was functional. Right to buy was used by many. It is simply not there anymore.

At one point my dad was supporting a family of five on a factory wage in London. He could afford to run a car. We ate well. Had secure housing through the council. That is the safety net. It does not exist anymore. So I would love it if the government could maybe start doing some future planning for the next generations of pensioners who currently have no safety net never mind a safety net when they eventually manage to retire. Because that is the ticking time bomb.

@C8H10N4O2 what deductions did you pay at 13?

I’m talking about people entering the full time workplace at 16,15 and 14

When did the majority of people enter full time work at 14?

The winter fuel allowance should have been changed to a means tested benefit but I do not agree with removing bus passes.

I would not want to see people using cars that really shouldn't because they can not afford to travel.

Stange she'd continue having so many kids if she knew they'd be going hungry.

I’m X boundary and have paid deductions since my first daily paper round job at 13. I don’t delude myself that the pennies per week of my paper round money was a serious contribution to the national economy.

I’m talking about people entering the full time workplace at 16,15 and 14 and no longer being in education. Most of whom would also have been doing paper rounds and other casual jobs from much earlier.

I would ask my dead father why he allowed himself to have a and injury at work and then only be able to do certain that were only low paid after.

So much f ignore

Same here. I am 37 and I got my first PT job at 12 years old. No exaggeration. I worked throughout studies, university, postgrad and PhD. I recently “treated” myself to some unpaid leave so I could have a month off work as I was close to burnout. Before that, I had not had longer than two weeks off work for 15 years. I still have at least 30 years to go before I can collect my pension. By that point I will worked in some way, shape or form for 55 years. But yeah, I’m just lucky I guess.

Me too.

No you are still describing mostly the better off - at least the middle incomes. I knew milkmen growing up, none of them owned their own homes until the council house sell off at which point some did.

I’ve no idea how Raymond Briggs’ parents could afford a nice semi and a SAHP before then because none of the parents iin my working class community could dream of it. The cost of a degree was irrelevant - very few boys went to university and even less girls. They didn’t take up “satisfying and rewarding” careers, they took jobs. Often tedious manual or semi skilled jobs which at best might have some supervisory potential. They regularly didn’t have workplace pensions, some of the men did.

Remember the census routinely recorded working class women as “home duties” despite their doing long hours of shift type work to fit around family responsibilities. They still worked, even if it wasn’t naice MN approved careers.

Incidentally the same bizarre identity group based calculations which claim pensioners are all millionaires make millennials set to be even richer. That’s is how useful identity politics is compared to actual needs (or class) based.

Most of them didn’t go to university and were at work from 16, 15 or even 14 depending on exactly when they were born.

I'm a millennial & paid NI since I was 17 & throughout uni. I'm not unusual.

You cannot compare UK state pensions and the state pensions of other European countries. The reason? We have occupational pensions too, and most other European countries have occupational pensions BUILT INTO state pensions. Take the average occupational pension and add that that to the state pension, then compare and you’ll see that the UK pension is average in Europe.

Yep look at @C8H10N4O2post on the reality for some pensioners.

I don't know, why don't you go and ask my mother why she allowed herself to be raped by my father...

I’m not disagreeing with you about the benefits of older people using the bus. What I am saying is that they should not need to be incentivised to do so. If we are all a community the how about paying it forwards from their side too?

Just like today’s pensioners paid for the two generations before them.

But the demographics aren't the same which is the issue!

You are actually making our point for us. Most people of that generation did not need to go to university to have fulfilling careers that paid all their bills, usually enabled one spouse to be a SAHP, and build up assets debt-free. Nowadays you need a degree for most admin jobs. A degree costs on average £50k in debt. And the likelihood of earning anything close to what the buying power of the older generations had is pretty much zero. The rules have changed. The ladder has been pulled up.

I use this example a lot in these discussions. One of my favourite films is Ethel and Ernest. Based on Raymond Brigg’s parents. They were able to buy a three bedroom house in Wimbledon on a milkman’s salary after WWII. How many milkmen would it take to buy that same house now?

Most pensioners I know. != “significant percentage of pensioners”.

Actual data shows UK pensioners on some of the lowest pensions in Europe, a third in fuel poverty and the significant majority will not go into residential care.

When posters say “all the pensioners I know are rich” it tells me more about the PP than UK pensioners.

Bus passes were brought in to serve multiple purposes (and remember they can only be used off peak).

Partly it increases the number of older people giving up cars/regular driving (you don’t see the same effect in younger card holders in the UK).
Partly it increases the activity and social connections in older people which has health and other benefits reducing costs to NHS and social services.
Partly it justifies transport routes which are underused outside peak hours and in some areas keeps them alive.

The whole community benefits from all of the above.

Exactly. The younger generations will not have that pay off, and we need to come to terms with that. Life was easier. That is a measurable fact. And all the posters who are saying that the younger generations will receive inheritances-are you joking? Most pensioners I know are absolutely living it up, add to that potential care costs, any inheritance usually split amongst multiple siblings/grandchildren etc. it is actually rare to receive that much. And not to be morbid but most people receive inheritances later on in life these days-how does that help early adulthood?

And on a related note, what really bothers me about this generational divide more than anything else is that the older generation could afford to fail. Could take risks. Could take their time. I know pensioners who spent vast swathes of their twenties and thirties travelling, volunteering etc. before knuckling down to work, and were still then able to afford to buy a house and get themselves together. In my generation it is actually very rare to be able to do that because it’s been nose to the grindstone since adolescence, and we still will not have the same level of assets. We haven’t been able to have those adventures or take those risks. Because there is absolutely no safety net.

Relaxing of income threshold confirmed by PM.

Most of them didn’t go to university and were at work from 16, 15 or even 14 depending on exactly when they were born. Most of them had living standards which young adults now would consider “developing country” at best but then were entirely the norm.

Availability of public services wasn’t so rosy either. Class sizes of 40-50 were the norm at least in urban areas from the late 50s through to at least the late 60s in very poorly equipped schools often with outside loos and generally non existent facilities. There was a chronic shortage of teachers, especially for early years.

Things change, some for the better, some for the worse. One of the “worse” I see a lot here is younger women sneering at older women and saying they didn’t work because they were merely SAHMs.

Actually I already inherited because I was made an orphan at 20! I paid inheritance tax and neither of my parents reached pension age.