To resent the U-turn on winter fuel allowance?

My mother in law will be pleased. She has done nothing but moan that they took away the money she uses for chemicals for her pool.

There’s every reason not to do it, it means far too many people who don’t need it have it restored. The savings would be so minimal they might as well make it a universal benefit again.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

There's well over a million. And climbing as tax brackets remain stagnant. It would cost next to nothing to administer and would save hundreds of millions of £s. There's no reason not to do it.

No they wouldn’t. @GrouachMacbeth is proposing that the threshold for WFA is at the threshold for higher rate income tax so every pensioner, ie virtually all of us, would receive it. Very few pensioners have incomes of £50k+.

Pensioners whose only income is their state pension are below the tax threshold so they’d continue to miss out on WFA. They are already missing out on WFA because if they receive their state pension in full they are not eligible for pension credit despite an annual income of less than £12k.

Because it would save barely anything and people like me would still get it. There are very few pensioners with incomes over £50k.

🏆 🏆 🏆

Because the WFA is a small, one-off payment. Benefits are higher relatively speakign and are paid out monthly. Therefore, it is costly to means-test it. People who don't need it should opt out but in my experience, the wealthier you are, the meaner you are. In the years when my earnings are good, I donate it. In the lean years, I use it to pay my heating bills.

They could possibly include it in the tax code which means those pensioners who pay tax whould be taxed on it up to a point when the whole lot went. I'm not sure how pricey that would be. It might mean that all in receipt of the WFA would have to submit a tax return each year which is a recipe for an expensive omnishambles.

I'm sure it's been said before, but why not link it with tax code so those with standard rate tax code get it and not those with a higher tax code.

The things you mention weren't in place when people of my age entered the work place, or not until later. Women were often dependent on their husbands' pensions. I was a single parent in the days when this was not usual. Most women stayed in bad marriages becasue there was no financial way out - no money, nowhere to live. I used all my money to support myself and my son. There was nothing left over. I now have my state pension and a small work pension.

And I still work and pay tax, so don't start lecturing me on what I should or shouldn't be doing. It was the campaigning women of my generation did gave women who were left to bring their children up by themselves a way of doing that. It is women of my generation who campaigned to support women who faced domestic violence and campaigned to change the law that said rape could not occur in marriage. It was women of my generation who campaigned to get better access to contraception and abortion.

Without that, change would not have happened, and the way things are looking now, many of thise changes could be reversed. I feel very sorry for the financial difficulties too many families are facing today, but stop blaming the previous generations and start looking at who has pocketed the considerable wealth of this country that should be coming to all of us, but is vanishing into well-lined pockets.

No doubt. Spite comes from spiteful people of all ages, just as entitlement does.

I can't understand the idea that people should be viewed differently based on an artificially ring-fenced 'generation' that was initially designed as a means of marketing products to people born in different eras. Someone born in 1963 has a very different experience from someone born in 1945, and even more so if you factor in sex, class and geography. Whether a cohort of people do X Y or Z 'as a whole' is surely irrelevant? Not only that, but given the huge societal changes between 1945 and now, it would be surprising if anything else were the case. People generally behave as others around them do, and in accordance with the norms of the time, and it's foolish to blame them for doing otherwise. Generalisations would be considered extremely offensive if aimed at other groups.

Some 'boomers' are net beneficiaries of the tax system and others aren't - in exactly the same way as Millenials or GenZs. Either we have a system based on contributions or we have one based on a 'free at the point of need' model, and the latter is a lot less divisive.

I completely sympathise. It’s tough being young now and the idiotic spouting about too many coffees and avocado on toast infuriates me.

Of course it isn’t. My post was quite specifically about the Thatcher government which wasn’t voted for by people in their 20s. My generation sadly has to take responsibility for the latest 14 year Tory shitshow that’s broken the country.

As a young(er) person I would also like this. I constantly hear stories from old(er) people about how they worked hard to buy a house and didnt splurge on non essentials with no reflection on the fact that working hard has no bearing on lots of people my age's ability to buy a house due to ever increasing house prices and lack of no/low deposit mortgages!

That poster seems to want fawning...

It was only a few posts ago you were blaming voting patterns during your lifetime on your parents generation. Is it only your generation who are somehow absolved of any responsibility for anything?

well the plural of anecdote isnt data, so neither of our personal experiences are factual. But interesting how everyone has a different perception of a situation based on who they're surrounded by

Nobody wants “fawning”. A respite from constant blame for economic decisions over which we had no control would be nice though.

I’m not sure what you think the slave debt point adds to this debate.

Certainly each generation pays for costs incurred by previous ones, and current ones, and invests in things that will benefit future ones. That’s not a refutation of the intergenerational fairness point, it’s the premise of it. The question is about what is fair, if what a cohort costs gets too far out of line with what they contribute.

You have spent about four posts now making a point that no-one refutes and which adds not much.

The slave debt was paid off in 2015 as part of a restructuring. The debt was £15m. That’s about 0.00122% of one single year’s government spending. Prior to that, the govt had been paying 4% interest on it. That’s £600,000, or about 1.8 pence per taxpayer per year.

Threatening to withdraw from charity work over lack of fawning is pretty spiteful...

No, you didn't pay enough tax to actually reduce total debt. The government at the time just borrowed from source A to pay off debt owed to source B.

But you didn't "pay" it. Unless it happened in 5 of the last 50 years when we ran a surplus, it was "paid" out of borrowings, i.e. similar to robbing Peter to pay Paul. Basically reorganisation of debt, rather than actually reducing overall debt.

I don't.

I got £100 a year, I pay tax at 20% so I'd still be up £80.

The tax we paid was used for the slave debt. Don't keep twisting in the wind.