What are all pensioners getting another £300 this winter??

[F0RBIDDENFRUIT]

They are amongst the richest people in the country, yes there are poor pensioners but a lot of them are way richer than anyone else.

£300 more for energy, none of the old people I know need this, they all have more money than their children.

Just because they vote, that is the only reason they can be doing this.

The £300 is paid per household, on top of what the person/s would already get.

If someone/anyone in the home is over 80, then they will get £600.

If anyone/everyone in the home is under that age, they will get £500.

For any pensioner on means tested benefits, they will get other payments.

https://www.gov.uk/winter-fuel-payment/how-much-youll-get

Cool.

So basically you have no clue how the UK economy actually works.

My mum needs this money but i think it should be means tested via the tax system- just like child benefit is.
And certainly pensioners shouldnt be able to receive it for their second homes like a pp parents did.
There are some pensioners who desperately need this money and others who really dont- i think its been widely reported that pensioners have been the least impacted by COL crisis and as an age group are the most protected / weathiest - clearly there are execeptions- my mum being one of them!
I just think it should be means tested like ither benefits.
But the government arent interested in fairness - their main aim is to secure votes, pensioners vote and a lot of them, particulay the wealthier ones , vote tory.
Also there seems to be an emotional response to removing pensioner benefits which perservely doesnt apply to children i.e capping child benefit( in a blunt unfair way!)or only allowing UC for first 2(?) Children.

Yes, when I was young, so could I.

Age brings extra expense, so let's not make out it's a fortune.

Anyone working will be getting much more than that. Whether that's just wages or with a top up, they will be getting more.

Also there seems to be an emotional response to removing pensioner benefits which perservely doesnt apply to children i.e capping child benefit( in a blunt unfair way!)or only allowing UC for first 2(?) Children

I think that is wrong too, but that is a whole other thread!

Means testing costs so much (admin/process) thst it's often not worth doing.

Cost of debt service matters immensely.

We have a very high cost of debt because we have about 25% of Gilts linked to inflation.

Its a very big problem right now in the UK as its eating into revenues.

What about all the money paid out to businesses during covid? The millions pocketed by politicians and their cronies with their PPE and contact tracing deals? Elderly people weren't responsible for any of that.
Blaming elderly people for everything is unfair. I am late 60s and none of my friends and family vote Tory.

The boomers in particular hit a sweet spot where their life expectancy has increased but their pension ages had not been adjusted.

Entirely untrue. Why do you think WASPI women were up in arms? Boomers are the first generation since state pensions were introduced to see their pension age rise. Every woman retiring this year will have seen a six year increase in her pension age.

I do actually know how our economy works, and paying our pensioners is not even one cause of our current national debt.

Here’s a little bite size tutorial for you on what we can borrow money to fund as a nation.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/334/uk-economy/uk-national-debt/

Your post is rather like me connecting dots between our public debt and QE causing your house value to inflate so your personal unearned net worth increase is being partially financed by our national debt! All those scrounging home owners sitting on piles of cash funded by the taxes of the hard working majority who are private renters.

You’re connecting random dots of data that aren’t really linked with a causal relationship.

This is what I would do as well.

From a cost/benefit standpoint it makes the most economic and financial sense as more women would work, so you would get better productivity. Country then ends up wealthier because it produces greater economic output.

I posted earlier on in this thread to point out that it is not just people of State Pension age who will receive this £300 COL payment this November.
People on the following benefits will also receive it:

Universal Credit
Income based JSA
Income related ESA
Income support
Pension Credit
Child Tax Credit
Working Tax Credit

There is also a separate £150 payment for people receiving disability benefits such as PIP.

I'm not trying to win any prizes or to be told how wonderful I am to supply the above information, but I'm very surprised that nobody has picked up on this or replied.
Old people are being vilified for getting this payment, but the people in the other qualifying categories, many of whom will be much younger, are not, (quite rightly IMO).

So........did OP and PPs not know about the people on certain benefits also being eligible for this payment?
Now that we do know, are they too going to be undeserving of it, or is it just "pensioners" we want to punish?
The point may well be made that people in the other groups, by the very nature of receiving those benefits, will be in need of the COL payment. Too right, IMO.
And there are of course some "pensioners" who absolutely do not need an extra £300.
But it seems acceptable on MN to lump all old people into one humongous category and label them Tory voters, Brexiteers, and "boomers", (which is a lazy, childish, insulting term in itself), and that's perfectly ok 💁

I am really torn with this debate. For poorer pensioners the winter fuel payment is really important. Cold kills older people and adequately heated houses is really important. My grandmother just lived on her state pension and was properly poor. When you get the hyperbole about poor pensioners, people are imagining frail 85 year olds.

But… I do also see a group of people in their late 60s to 70s sitting on expensive property and getting benefits that they don’t need while younger people are struggling with cost of living. This generation is different to the 80-90 year old post war generation. When people are seeing this cohort, that is where the sense of unfairness comes from.

I think there is a big problem to come though in the generation below current young pensioners. Healthy life expectancy isn’t great so people will struggle to work until state pension age. I suspect you will end up with a big cohort of people living in poverty between 60 and pension age. In that context, the pensioner benefits won’t come soon enough.

I think it should go into people with pension credits. I agree it's because more older people vote Tory and to keep them in power.

“We have a huge shortage of workers in the UK and I think it is poor economics that all those young healthy women are sitting in cafes on their fat backsides guzzling coffee when they could be helping the economy.”

Forget the alleged ageism here, what about the blatant ageism and sexism towards young women here who apparently just sit around in their fat asses drinking coffee and drain the state. Never mind that their mothers and grandmothers often gave up work entirely after having kids and never returned to it but now sit on vastly inflated house values and generous pensions and benefits. Yes all of the young women should hurry back to work and have zero time twitch their kids so we can pay for the fucking pensioner who enjoyed a significantly lesss stressful life. Disgraceful.

Spoken like a true neo-lib, as long as the line goes up, you realise always wanting the line to go up is a major reason why the world is currently in this state?

Because when you discuss them as a group on threads like this, they are all portrayed as wealthy Tory-voting homogenous group and are essentially responsible for all the ills of younger people. It's ageist and the language directed towards elderly people on this thread (and many others in recent years) is appalling. In Scotland for instance 10% of pensioners live in persistent poverty (15 % in relative). The wealth disparity between rich and poor is actually widest amongst pensioners. That's not an inconsequential number to those of you who claim not to know any "poor" pensioners. Pensioners are also more at risk than any other group (with the exception of disabled groups) of dying prematurely because they can't heat their homes. But I imagine a lot of PP's think they should be offed sooner rather than later anyway so they can get their paws on their (supposed) mansions.

Yes, the payments should be means tested. Yes, money should be redirected into government-funded childcare. Not only would that get women without recourse to childcare into work to boost the economy, but in many other cases the elderly would be less a drain on NHS resources because they are fucking knackered and ill before their years due to providing excessive childcare to grandkids, instead of taking life at a steadier pace and enjoying their grandchildren on their own terms/capabilities.

I think everyone on the thread is assuming that the OP meant the Winter Fuel Payment, which is only for those over a certain age. However, now I reread the OP it doesn’t actually say that… and as
the —Tory shill— OP hasn’t returned we’ll never know which one they meant I suppose.

I am an expert

Oh honey, this is Mumsnet, everyone’s an expert here 😉

Again, this is becoming a meme, this was 2 elections ago

Jeremy Corbyn eyes 'grey vote' accusing Tories of 'attacking pensioners' | The Independent | The Independent

If you think a Labour gov would try and impose anything is like thinking that Labour will come around and improve the housing situation to cause a natural deflation in housing costs.

I am a geriatric millennial and I have been working since I was 16 including throughout uni because the loan I took out didn’t cover rent and living costs. I lived on significantly less than £156 per week. My weekly food budget was £20, I would seriously love to see most pensioners hitting up M&S on the reg live on that! Why shouldn’t I enjoy a decent maternity leave considering it’s my taxes and NI that are paying for it and my children who will be paying off the national debt for decades to come.

We receive subsidised childcare in the form of 30 hours because the government wants us back to work! No other reason and we have still spent over £80k to date on childcare so we could both work. Lucky us’! By the time I get to retire at 68 assuming the SP age doesn’t go up I will have worked for a total of 50 years(52 if counting mat leave). Way more than the majority of the boomers.

This resentment is growing and growing amongst my generation and the generation below it and believe me it will come out in the attitudes because there is a huge amount of inter-generational inequality and injustice here.

@FullFaceOfPineapple

yes, god forbid there would be blatant ageism on Mumsnet. Surely the sky would fall.

there is no limit on child benefit you can claim for unlimited children.

I have no doubt. The only way they will win the next GE is to convince the feeble minded to vote for them using Culture Wars:
It's pensioners fault the country is a mess.
It's today's generation of snowflakes.
It's asylum seeker's fault.
It's NHS workers fault.
It's the BBC.
It's the Civil Service.
It's Transfolk.
It's people on benefits.

What is sad and infuriating in equal measure is that the one single thing this incarnation of Tories are good at is manipulating the irrational and stupid.

Do you even understand how Quantitative Easing (QE) actually worked?

Its not magic.

They simply bought up a large amount of short-term Govt debt to flatten the yield curve and increase the money supply.

But here is the problem that few people seem to understand.

That debt was bought by the BOE at 0.1% and was not of long-duration and fixed. When it was at 0.1% the Treasury benefitted (BOE transferred interest to Treasury)

Now that interest is 4.8% guess what happens?

Quantitative tapering (QT) means BOE sells the Gilts and makes a HUGE loss.

Will be about £120bn loss over 4 years or so.

Thats £30bn/year that will have to come from tax revenues.

These costs add up and it simply doesnt work to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich.