Some families to get a total of £1,200 cash, to support with cost of living crisis.

[flashbac]

Highlights:
All families can now keep the 200 quid energy payment, no longer repayment based. This will be topped up to £400.
Low income families to get £650 straight into bank account.
(Non means tested) disabled benefit recipients to get £150.
All in all some will receive total of £1,200.
Funded by windfall tax.

No, the people with two homes shouldn't get two lots!

Why all the benefit bashing? Not everyone’s situation is the same!!! I’m a single mum to 3 kids who works 40 hours a week and employed and 5 hours a week self employed. I get no support from the girls dad. I’m a single income household so get a small amount of UC, everything is on me to pay, why shouldn’t I be entitled to some help?! Some of you clearly do not understand how daunting it is to know you are the only adult who pays the bills in your house!!

@MibsXX contact your electricity supplier. They should be able top you up if you explain. I've had to do it a few times.

Excuse me? I'm an honest hard working person who happens to get benefits because I'm a single parent on a low income. You're so ignorant that you seem to be forgetting that a lot of people who get benefits work as well. I don't have a partner so my income has to pay for all bills in my house.

You’re confusing the utility companies who supply your energy, with the energy giants like BP and Shell. It’s not the utility companies who are making the profits - as evidence by the number who failed because of problems when the wholesale energy prices rocketed - and the windfall tax is not on them, but the energy giants. The proceeds of the windfall tax will pass from the energy giants to energy suppliers (utility company as you put it) so that they can pass on the £400 rebate to their customers. There is no suggestion that the energy giants will end up with that money back because it’s passed on to the customers in the form of a direct payment to their energy accounts. Ofgem was tasked with setting a price cap to protect consumers by Theresa May’s government in 2017 and it’s completely independent of government. Energy prices are affected by global issues and you may have noticed there are quite a few recently - the government has no control over energy prices, which is why Teresa May’s government tasked Ofgem with setting energy caps each year, from 2017 onwards, so that energy suppliers could not charge more than a certain price per therm - it was meant to protect customers, not suppliers.

We are rural, and I dont know anyone here really, My mum would have but she died late last year. Swalec still havent given me back the 2 x 7 pound payments they took for my meter last weekend, that never landed on my machine, i mentioned that today on the phone to be told these things take time..

Forgive me for seeming simple minded, but all i see are rapidly spiralling out of control bills, and huge sums of money being cited as profits, I fully understand the principles of global shortages lack of supply etc, but someone surely should be sorting out the grabby blatant profiteering that is going on?

Do they have an online chat you can use if you don’t have credit to phone them?

Honest hard working people
...
Don't always have paid employment* *they are carers, have disabilities, look after societies children etc etc.
Thats a nasty implication and shows just how pathetic some people are. So eager to suck up the propaganda of the super wealthy that less fortunate are lazy, dishonest and undeserving.
Shame.
(I don't get benefits and I pay tax and I'm glad to contribute to those in more need before you decide I'm biased)

I did, after just over an hour of mostly waiting and listening to a woman read off a script , she then cut the call just after I asked, ever so nicely, for a bit pf credit for the weekend that I could repay on Tuesday!

That was all the phone credit i had left, was keeping that for emergency use as my dad back in hospital

Honest hard working people always get hit the hardest.

Hard working people in very low wages, without security and/or with health issues or caring responsibilities are hit hardest. Along with those who are unable to work due to disability or caring for someone with one. And that's why they get benefits.

If you don't fall into any of those categories, be very grateful for that.

Anyway, my family just decided to go to bed early, I think I will do the same. Thanks for letting me rant a bit guys, being poor and helpless is such a mentally draining thing, it's awful when you really thought you'd set everything up for a family hot meal, such a simple thing, especially as I often don't actually eat, I tell them I ate earlier, to see the faces drop when they are told we simply can't do it.

Have a great weekend folks, make the most of the sunshine, hug your family x

'Honest hardworking people?'
You must just mean 'people'. Most people are honest and hardworking. Lazy, deceitful people come from all echelons of society, including the very rich and the very poor.

I replied to this poster and the phrase ‘honest hard working people’ wasn’t lost on me either. The implication is that if you’re on benefits somehow that’s not honest. The post was also full of a lot of biased and inaccurate twaddle about people working the least hours possible to get more benefit - I have news, the DWP are not generally known for their generosity !! The benefit system is paid into by working people when they can afford to, in the hope that they never have to use it. Yes, some do take advantage, but it’s a minority and a lot of people don’t seem to be aware that you can work and claim benefits like UC - mainly because employers aren’t paying a living wage and because they’re allowed to get away with that, the taxpayer has to foot the bill. There also doesn’t seem to be any awareness that benefit claimants are tax payers too, and a lot have worked and paid into the system that they now find themselves having to rely on. I’ve said it before, the Tories are excellent at divide and rule - and judging by some of the populist propaganda that people have swallowed and regurgitated on this thread, it’s alive and well.

Having a mortgage is a privilege though.

Means tested is if you've got £16.000 plus or a second home ect.
They'll have worked this out already which is why it's not complicated.
If you're a millionaire with a wonky leg you won't get a means tested benefit.

No, means tested benefits take into account every last penny of your income and savings, and any savings over £6000 are taken into account in some way - £16,000 is the cut off point at which you no longer qualify at all for the benefit - UC comes to mind. The problem, as has been explained upthread, is that means tested benefit thresholds and tapers are set so low, that they leave many struggling families with no support because their income/savings is only a pound or two above the threshold - which is why the £400 universal payment is the best way to ensure everyone gets at least some help - those who don’t need it can donate it to charity and thereby redistribute it to someone more deserving. And if you’re a millionaire with a wonky leg, you won’t get means tested benefit but you’ll still get PIP if you’re disabled enough. Not criticising, just saying.

That's the case for UC but not for the old style tax credits. I am still on tax credits and there is no limit to how many savings you can have. I was fortunate enough to save and buy a house while on tax credits.

Do it, if that is how you feel. Doubt you will find it as attractive as you seem to think it is.

Absolutely. This is not going to help they way it could. Would have been better reinstating the £20.00 UC top up, to start with. I might be an old cynic, I feel the timing is a deflection.

Yesterday (before lunch) in my full-time job I dealt with a case of domestic violence, a psychotic breakdown and a third involving historical child abuse and facilitating the person’s privacy.

i get tax credits.

it’s probably because I’m a lazy cunt who doesn’t work hard/do an important job.

Don't worry, someone will be along in a minute to say "well I don't mean people like YOU." The breathtakingly arrogant, patronising ones who think they have the right to decide who is worthy of receiving benefits and who isn't.

You bet your sweet hippy it’s a deflection. Yesterday I was of the opinion that it was to take the attention away from the Gray report. Today I’m even more convinced of that because I’ve had an email from Rishi Sunak telling me how the Conservative party are now offering ‘real’ help. Anyone else had this ? It includes a button to press to ‘share’. I think they’ve had this latest package planned and prepared all along and delayed it until they knew what was in the Gray report. How else would they be able to announce it so quickly and prepare an email shot like this ? A cynical attempt to make us forgive and forget about partygate and all the other shit that’s gone down, in time for the next election. Anyone thinking of voting this lot back in needs to give their head a serious wobble.

Sweet bippy - bloody autocorrect again !!

Don’t forget you’re not ‘honest and hardworking’ if you’re claiming any benefit at all, if you’re on UC, you’re preoccupied with working out how little you have to work to claim maximum benefit, and if you don’t work at all you’re a lazy scrounger/feigning illness or disability and the ‘tax payer’ is keeping you. Also keep in mind that people on 100k per year are struggling too - being a high earner, apparently comes with its’ own set of financial constraints. Yes indeed, all those pesky high mortgages and Waitrose food bills leave you with less than £400 a month disposable income. And all you disabled folk out there, kindly make an effort to look more disabled - all these invisible disabilities are making it difficult to know who to shout abuse at the second you pull into a blue badge space or try to use a disabled toilet !! Oh and you’d better be grateful for your free cars and the other ‘freebies’ your so called disabilities entitle you to.
Have I left anybody out ?