Surely they can’t expect us to pay 240 per month for power!

[Ellie198712]

Just read Martin Lewis’s latest email and it’s predicting average bills of £2900 per year!! Surely the government will need to step in and subsidise this cost. Our current bill is about 100 per month, and this just seems untenable for the vast majority

It would cost a lot to means test it I agree. It's very unfair.

theemperorhasnoclothes

MrsSkylerWhite
BBC radio report yesterday told how two children had died from hypothermia sleeping on a road on their way to the Polish border in minus temperatures. That was one small place, they won’t have been the only ones.

It really does sound like you begrudge the help.
Homeless people in this country die from exposure in the winter. The numbers of homeless will increase as costs go up with price rises.

All deaths matter not just some. This government should give money to Ukraine (and as a nation, outside of government, we're giving loads too - deliveries organised from my kids schools) but anyone who thinks the government are doing it for anything other than good PR obviously hasn't come up against the way they treat disabled kids and their families in this country.

They really don't care about vulnerable people. They just care about good optics and looking after themselves.“

Don’t disagree with any of that.
Comparing one group to another never helped anyone though. Ugly things begin that way.

Yes, agree.

I do think we need to start holding this government accountable and not just roll over and accept it when they tell us normal people have to absorb these price hikes. Why not the 1%? During the pandemic the 1% have got richer whilst so many got poorer.

Ok, yes, boomers have an easier life than many in society - but they're not the problem. It's the ever widening gap between the super rich and the way that politicians use taxpayers money as a way to enrich themselves, quite blatantly during covid, with absolutely no consequence. The way that the shareholders only ever get profits and no responsibility or payment for mistakes. This is not democracy.

This isn't about Ukraine. France has put a far lower price cap on energy bills than Britain has. It is a political choice.
Energy companies are making record profits. Our government could make the price cap much lower. They won't because they don't care about poor people.

I think your understadning of how long term taxation, funding NHS and social care is flawed.

No retiree pays for their NHS needs. We all pay for someone elses!

And nobody pays for the whole of their social care. Again, we pay it forward, for someone else. And nowadays those who have assets pay for a proportion of those costs. Even down to selling homes for permanent social care costs.

And if you think it would be cost effective for somone to sell their home for temporary care costs then again, you have misunderstood the financial ramifications of that person then requiring state help with rent etc. The cost : benefit analysis will change over time. But I am betting that someone with far more knowledge than you or I, or the weird age hating bots that seem to crop up daily, is constatnly evaluating those costs.

(the wealthiest in the UK now)

Well, if you want to cherry pick your data...

Between April 2018 and March 2020, median individual wealth was £157,000 higher in the South East than the North East of England and this regional disparity has increased over time.

On average individual wealth increases with age, peaking in the 60-to-64 age group at a level nine times as high as the 30-to-34 age group, before falling in older age groups as people use their wealth to support life in retirement.

And of course, the individual differences

The age differences make sense. You work for a lifetime, saving what you can and, just before retirement age, many will have paid off house and cars, kids, all large standing debts etc. Will be living as cheaply as they ever have.

I suspect you are one of thise who feels it would be 'fair' if someone at the age of 20, with no experience, no saleable skills, no idea yet, gets paid the same as someone with skills honed over 40 years of working, is a provable asset to their employer,.

Some of the things you decree 'absurd and unfair' are life.

Mums and kids being poor is not because people 40 years older exist.

You perspective is coloured by what, fear or hatred?

alltheapples

This isn't about Ukraine. France has put a far lower price cap on energy bills than Britain has. It is a political choice“

Yep. 4% in France.
54% in UK

Gobsmacking.

On the last age uk figures that in less than a decade the proportion of female pensioners in the UK living in poverty has increased by six percentage points resulting in one in five female pensioners – 1.25 million – now living below the breadline and 1 in 3 of those will be black or Asian. There is over 2 million pensioners living in poverty in the uk today and that figure is rising so do shove you generalisations and elderly bashing up your ill informed arse.

And don’t bother quoting the figures for child poverty as I know they are worse but that doesn’t mean the elderly should be ignored.

@SamphiretheStickerist

I think your understadning of how long term taxation, funding NHS and social care is flawed.

No retiree pays for their NHS needs. We all pay for someone elses!

And nobody pays for the whole of their social care. Again, we pay it forward, for someone else. And nowadays those who have assets pay for a proportion of those costs. Even down to selling homes for permanent social care costs.

And if you think it would be cost effective for somone to sell their home for temporary care costs then again, you have misunderstood the financial ramifications of that person then requiring state help with rent etc. The cost : benefit analysis will change over time. But I am betting that someone with far more knowledge than you or I, or the weird age hating bots that seem to crop up daily, is constatnly evaluating those costs.

(the wealthiest in the UK now)

Well, if you want to cherry pick your data...

Between April 2018 and March 2020, median individual wealth was £157,000 higher in the South East than the North East of England and this regional disparity has increased over time.

On average individual wealth increases with age, peaking in the 60-to-64 age group at a level nine times as high as the 30-to-34 age group, before falling in older age groups as people use their wealth to support life in retirement.

And of course, the individual differences

The age differences make sense. You work for a lifetime, saving what you can and, just before retirement age, many will have paid off house and cars, kids, all large standing debts etc. Will be living as cheaply as they ever have.

I suspect you are one of thise who feels it would be 'fair' if someone at the age of 20, with no experience, no saleable skills, no idea yet, gets paid the same as someone with skills honed over 40 years of working, is a provable asset to their employer,.

Some of the things you decree 'absurd and unfair' are life.

Mums and kids being poor is not because people 40 years older exist.

You perspective is coloured by what, fear or hatred?

I am an Actuary.

I am a professional and understand the numbers.

You clearly do not.

For Social Care, the current 55+ folks have not paid a penny of £££ to fund their care.

Worth repeating: not a penny

This is simply not true. Anyone who has assets above a certain amount has to contribute to their care on a sliding scale. Above a certain higher amount, they pay for it all.

FIL was in a care home for 2.5 years and MIL for over a year. All paid for by themselves.

Every single penny.

@Proudboomer

On the last age uk figures that in less than a decade the proportion of female pensioners in the UK living in poverty has increased by six percentage points resulting in one in five female pensioners – 1.25 million – now living below the breadline and 1 in 3 of those will be black or Asian. There is over 2 million pensioners living in poverty in the uk today and that figure is rising so do shove you generalisations and elderly bashing up your ill informed arse.

And don’t bother quoting the figures for child poverty as I know they are worse but that doesn’t mean the elderly should be ignored.

Children is 26% and rising.

But you miss the point.

With children, poverty impacts education, health, lifetime earnings etc..

The cost to the country is immense. We are going to be paying for a far unhealthier population over the next 30 years as those children grow up.

Thats what most people don't get (or flat out don't care).

@PuzzledObserver

For Social Care, the current 55+ folks have not paid a penny of £££ to fund their care.

Worth repeating: not a penny

This is simply not true. Anyone who has assets above a certain amount has to contribute to their care on a sliding scale. Above a certain higher amount, they pay for it all.

FIL was in a care home for 2.5 years and MIL for over a year. All paid for by themselves.

Every single penny.

So the 55+ paid NI over their lifetimes to fund the social care of the 85+ group?

The answer is no.

Again, stop twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to justify a completely ludicrous policy.

An Actuary?

One with a bias as wide as the Sahara!

I know what an actuary is. And I know that any data analysis comes with its own inherent biases, human or otherwise.

Don't fool yourself that you are in possession of superior knowledge just because you can crunch numbers and make guesstimates. As can be seen in your posts you lack something - a balance, the milk of human kindness for anyone over the age of 55!

@PuzzledObserver

For Social Care, the current 55+ folks have not paid a penny of £££ to fund their care.

Worth repeating: not a penny

This is simply not true. Anyone who has assets above a certain amount has to contribute to their care on a sliding scale. Above a certain higher amount, they pay for it all.

FIL was in a care home for 2.5 years and MIL for over a year. All paid for by themselves.

Every single penny.

I don't think our Actuary Expert is interested in Actual Truths!

So the 55+ paid NI over their lifetimes to fund the social care of the 85+ group? So who do they pay for? It isn't themselves, you said so! So who do they pay for? Or does that money just disappear?

We are all fully aware that we pay forwward. That the youth of any era pays for the older poulation. That's what the NHS is built upon.

That we now also expect to pay for our own social care, in part or in whole, is a change based on need, the national pot doesn't stretch, we all know that.

What do you want to happen? Anyone over the age of 55 will, as of today, be required to pay cash for all of the health and social care needs?

What about those who are already on the edge of poverty - figures have been given here? Do they just piss off and die quietly?

What about those under the age of 55? Or do you just think the NHS pot will refill and todays youth can have their own money back at end of life?

Come on Actuary - explain it all!

Some people do not pay for their care , however , if your unlucky enough to have the diagnosis of dementia and end up in a care home you could end up spending 80k as my own late elderly father did for 18 months of quite basic care and he didn't have a house to sell on either just savings and pensions.
Adult social care is woeful in the Uk. He paid for everything , yet some others can and will have it paid for.
I'm dreading getting older I really am . it's bad enough now with higher prices and just existing
I'm not bitter , but it's always the ones who pay their way who sometimes come off worse.

@tttigress

Erm, but if the government subsidies the people who pays? The tax payer. Who is the tax payer? The people!!

The problem with subsidies is that WE (the people) will end up paying for them. The only thing that varies is which people end up paying more. Are you willing to support the rest with this?

It would cost a lot to means test it though.

It would in its current form, but if you scraped the winter fuel allowance and instead ploughed the money into reducing council tax for bands A and B then older people determined to stay in properties larger than their needs and therefore expensive to heat would need to fund this luxury themselves, and people of all ages in fuel poverty would get financial assistance.

@Takeawaytonight

I think its time that pensioners getting the £200 winter payment was means tested. Some pensioners do not need it whatsoever

Means testing costs more than it saves. That £200pa is a drop in the ocean.

If my electricity supply is “from 100% renewable sources”. Then why is my bill going up?

That assumes large properties, buys into the 'Boomer' ideology wholesale.

But if you are proposing a root and branch shake up of the benefits system, all benefits, tax breaks for all ages, of every kind, then yes. Count me in!

We could start with NMW, the gig economy and remove working tax credits via increased wages. I don't think they were ever supposed to be a permanent thing.

Then the long term unemployed, for whatever reasons. a basic living wage, housing, bills, food etc, and 'pocket money' without the infantilising label. Proper Universal Credit perhaps.

Workplace pensions: make them unaviodable, Make them sensible, allow individual contributions that are sensible. Ensure that that those on UC get the same minimal input as those who are waged so that payments don't drop off for some, creating a 'below the bread line' population in laterlife.

Child tax credits: Not sure about these, maybe the above changes would modify them - meaningful childcare vouchers for working parents.

There's load more. You'd have to make sure that every single one of them was done away with and then rebuilt within the new framework. We have seen what the piecemeal approach does!

I cannot believe the pensioner bashing on this thread. I agree some benefits should be mean tested. There are some pensioners who have benefited hugely from great pensions etc but there are plenty who haven’t. Stop being so cavalier about kicking people out of their homes- it’s their home, their memories. Todays pensioners didn’t go out for meals, have expensive holidays every 5 mins, a bottle of wine was a luxury, 2 car household were unheard of, they also didn’t furnish their houses every 5 mins to match instagram. They have also paid into the pot all their lives and what do they have to look forward to? Crippling care costs and grabby adult kids waiting for them to die. Leave them alone and have a look at what you contribute to society and the tax pot! Bullies.

@OrangeBlossomsinthesun

Well energy must be fucking expensive here in Spain in comparison as my last 3 monthly bills for electricity were 189, 289 and 240. We don't even have any central heating, just cooking, lights, fridge etc and maybe a plug in heater here and there.

I have no idea about electric prices in France now but when we lived there 1999 to 2004 it was very expensive.

Our French neighbours could not believe we had an electric oven because of the cost. Also none of them had an electric kettle, again because of the cost.

I can't remember now how much we were paying but it was much much more than we had been paying in the UK

@Clarabe1

I cannot believe the pensioner bashing on this thread. I agree some benefits should be mean tested. There are some pensioners who have benefited hugely from great pensions etc but there are plenty who haven’t. Stop being so cavalier about kicking people out of their homes- it’s their home, their memories. Todays pensioners didn’t go out for meals, have expensive holidays every 5 mins, a bottle of wine was a luxury, 2 car household were unheard of, they also didn’t furnish their houses every 5 mins to match instagram. They have also paid into the pot all their lives and what do they have to look forward to? Crippling care costs and grabby adult kids waiting for them to die. Leave them alone and have a look at what you contribute to society and the tax pot! Bullies.

I can believe it. MN is one of the most ageist corners of the Internet. My parents paid every penny of their care, both at home and then in residential care. Their combined care home bill was £9k a month.

So the 55+ paid NI over their lifetimes to fund the social care of the 85+ group?

Yes, that’s how the system works. I’d have thought an actuary would understand that.

@Clarabe1

I cannot believe the pensioner bashing on this thread. I agree some benefits should be mean tested. There are some pensioners who have benefited hugely from great pensions etc but there are plenty who haven’t. Stop being so cavalier about kicking people out of their homes- it’s their home, their memories. Todays pensioners didn’t go out for meals, have expensive holidays every 5 mins, a bottle of wine was a luxury, 2 car household were unheard of, they also didn’t furnish their houses every 5 mins to match instagram. They have also paid into the pot all their lives and what do they have to look forward to? Crippling care costs and grabby adult kids waiting for them to die. Leave them alone and have a look at what you contribute to society and the tax pot! Bullies.

Spare us the sob story.

A house is an asset. Period. There is nothing magical about it.

The UK is in a rightful mess because we keep propping up housing assets without taxing them properly.

We keep taxing the productive working population for the benefit of the unproductive retired population (for political reasons), while at the same time crafting policies to materially increase the wealth of the retired population at the expense of the working population (also for political reasons).

And people actually have the gall to claim pensioners have it bad.

As a group, they are now the wealthiest segment of UK society. The pendulum has swung way too far for their benefit and society has fractured.

This is also why UK profuctivity is suffering so much. More and more of our resources go towards the unproductive, retired folks and not enough gets invested to improve the skills and opportunities of the working population.

This has to stop. If it does not, the whole country will just get pooret and poorer as society ages due to demographics and the concentration of wealth.

That is not how it works.

Those 55+ have never paid for the social care of the older generations as a component of NI.

Absolutely 100% never.