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.

@viques ageism towards young people and children is absolutely fine. Mention anything even vaguely critical towards pensioners and be met with howls of “ageism”. The double standard is incredible!

Yes I know how QE works. Your post conveniently is hyper focused on our interest payments and you are still demonstrating that you have no idea why we accrued the debt in the first place despite my posting you a 2min read that would have made you better informed on the subject.

You’re just falling in to the same trap. Divide and conquer again.
A lot of those mothers and grandmothers will have started work at 16, with no further education or qualifications and won’t have gone back in to work out of choice, but rather out of no choice. Because trying to get back in to a workforce that is based on experience and qualifications after you’ve been out of the loop for so long, looking after the kids, and have sacrificed any chance of getting a job let alone a career - because that is what was expected of women if their generation - is just not viable. Lucky for them if their houses did go up in value because they might need that cushion when their options are limited.

Btw why would a Tory shill stir up a negative thread about pensions? Pensioners vote Conservative more than any other group, tend to be wealthier, benefit from Conservative policies....

I think you've missed the point.
In order to receive those other benefits, claimants are means tested. They must prove they're poor.
Pensioners haven't. Some pensioners are rich. No benefit claimants are.
Rich people not receiving a £300 handout they don't need, is not a punishment.

I paid £2.4k/child per month for nursery.

Unlike most of you folks, I have no issue with making sure the next generation doesnt have to pay those crazy prices for childcare.

Sure, I won't benefit from those changes. But so what?

At a certain point, you will have to stop having such massive levels of self-entitlement or nothing will improve in the UK.

I wish people would get it out of their heads that most pensioners are rich. Most aren't. This negative attitude is soul destroying.

Which is why I wrote my post, to even up the score. Incidentally it was not aimed at young people or children.

@TheThinkingGoblin
Oh yes, Brexit. Another decision generally made on 'feelings' by the uneducated.
I agree with you, on everything.
People may not like your tone but I sense frustration in having to field arguments based on invisible facts.

Its right that poorer pensioners should have help
It is not right that wealthy pensioners get additional non-means tested benefits

Exactly this - and I'm a pensioner, with a level of assets which mean I'd get nothing

Nor would it have to be expensive to administer, though they'd probably make such a hash of it that it would become so. The obvious thing would be to pay extra benefits just to those on Pension Credit to start with, then review how that's going and make adjustments if necessary

And no, we don't all vote Tory ...

@FullFaceOfPineapple Unlike millennials, many so-called "boomers" had to start work when they were 14/15/16 (my parents for instance) so really, you won't have been working longer. Women especially didn't have the salary, pension and workplace (and maternity leave) opportunities you have now. Your blame-the-elderly attitude is misdirected ,at best.

Do you not realise I do this for a living?

I don't need a video or a silly website because I look at this information literally every single day.

Every single day.

But do keep going. Its amusing to read the stuff on here.

What?
I was replying to Lindylou2020 who seems to think the payment this thread is about is the Cost of Living payment.

I probably should be a bit more friendly.

I just get exhausted by it all.

Its the same incorrect arguments over and over again. You get tired of replying.

What really annoys me is that the Tories exploit this so effectively.

I keep seeing this line about means testing being too expensive. Make the winter fuel payment (and others) taxable benefits instead then. Problem solved.

Or just pay it to pensioners who qualify for pension credits. Easy.

Because, As has been mentioned many times now, divide and conquer. Make sure you’re at each other’s throats instead of looking at where the real issue is. Always a good time to post this for example…

A lot of people my age[67] left school at 16, and worked until state retirement age, currently 66. If it comes to it most of my cohort from school didn't go to university. My dad was born in 1916, he left school at 14 and went straight to work, he joined the Army the day war was declared and served till V.E day. He was made redundant at the age of 63, I'm convinced that his employer took pity on him as he was already ill. He died at the age of 72. My mother died at the age of 47.
The moral of the story is that life is tough for lots of people, some get to have very hard lives, others don't. There is no rhyme or reason to it. And ,as we have the welfare state, we trust those who run it/maintain it to provide the means to care for us. The fact that they don't have a clue how to run it should make us all angry, we should be up in arms ,collectively , about the way it's run , and we should take governments to task for it, rather than sniping about at different sections of society.
And I have voted Labour every time since February 1974, much good it's done me.

@TheThinkingGoblin Maybe people would be more willing to engage and listen to you in good faith if you weren't so flipping self-righteous and patronising. You behave like you're only person on here with a maths degree and actuarial exams behind you.

Does the winter fuel payment not count as income then? Because state pension isn’t taxed as such but does count towards your taxable income.

@Judashascomeintosomemoney and @BellaBellla that line keeps being trotted out. But many boomer women and above gave up work when they got married and never returned to it after raising their families entirely through choice. My maternal grandmother did exactly this - worked for one year as a teacher then quit after getting married. But for my paternal working class grandmother there was no choice to do this. She worked her whole life, as did many working class women. It’s a convenient excuse many middle class women used. Now all women bar a very few wealthy ones have to work - there is simply no choice given rents and house prices. We would love to have the choices they did.

I’m a pensioner, don’t own my own home, only have state pension and have several health conditions. I will really need that £300 to keep my heating on. Do you realise that older people can’t regulate their body temperature and are much more vulnerable to the cold? Not all of us are wealthy and plenty of us are poo.r

No, it’s tax free.

I get it, you obviously care, but you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

There’s a lot of ignorance amongst young women today on the reality of pensioner women during their working years (back in the 1960s/70s). Many women were sacked once it was found out they were engaged or married. Finding a job as a married woman was nigh impossible and you can forget being a working mother in any professional capacity unless you had the aristocratic exemption card going for you. Working class mothers did work FT but for very little and with no maternity, no childcare, no FSM, - child poverty was off the charts then. They aren’t sitting on inflated house values with generous pensions and whatever- pensions were not that common overall and rarer still for the working mother.

I know my own mum (born 1945) despite having a degree lost her job when she fell pregnant and couldn’t find FT work after having children, she stopped work by no choice of her own. She tried to do a bit of supply teaching but the school soon dropped her because of “unreliability” too many sick days due to sick children. She hated being a SAHM. She was always trying to get jobs around the village (we could only afford one car and my dad needed it for work so she was limited to tramping about the village). We’d end up on jobs she could bring us children to like fruit picking on farms to make cash. It wasn’t until the 80s- in her 40s that things had changed enough for her to go for a professional job that would fund her to have a car too and even then it was hard for her to get an entry level job due to ageism and such a long gap in work history.

She had no pension. Good thing she died at 55 before she could even retire, hey?