Nick Robinson on the Today programme said that people affected by withdrawing the Winter Fuel Allowance were "the wartime generation". AIBU to think he's wrong?

[HauntedBungalow]

Also, I am genuinely bored of this British obsession with referencing World War II when talking about unrelated random subjects.

World War II ended 80 years ago. The "wartime generation" don't need a Winter Fuel Allowance because they're all already dead, barring the odd 97 year old who is still living at home and paying all bills themselves.

He’s talking out of his very Tory arse. People in their early eighties were toddlers at best during the war.

My Dad (81) doesn’t need the WFA and donated to Shelter every year because he thought it was immoral that he was given it.

Gosh, what a luxury for you to be 'bored with it' !

There are plenty of people still around who were born 1939-1952 so understand the hardship and deprivations of war, and can remember rationing. That didn't end until 1954.

Few people had decent heating. Houses were poorly insulated. That age group understand the impact of cold. It seems you do not.

You are embarrassing in your ignorance.

My DM was a child in the war. She remembers sitting under the table with her mum when the air raid siren sounded. She was entitled to the higher rate WFA. She certainly isn’t wealthy and just misses out on pension credit.

My parents were born 12 years after the war. At 67 they're both boomers.

I don't think many of those would consider themselves as having experienced war though, certainly not in the UK where there was no invasion/firestorm/atom bomb etc. My dear old Pa is age 91 and he certainly wasn't piloting war planes or landing on the beaches of Normandy during the war. I have asked him about what life was like in the war and he says he barely noticed it. Because he was a child!

He had a tough childhood but that was down to horrendous living/working conditions for the precariat labouring class.

He did national service when he was a bit older but from what I can gather that mostly consisted of getting hammered in country pubs and was a bit of a fun break from his job on the railway.

Anyway none of his lot were shoving it to bally Fritz or whatever.

I think better to give to some who don't need it than risk some not getting it who do need it and might be suffering in a cold house all winter.

I know many don't need it. But I worry that there are many more who fall between the cracks.

The strange thing is that technically you could have a parent born in 1946 and their child born in 1964 and they’d both be boomers.

My mum was a child during WW2 and has vivid memories of it. She’s 87. Does she not count as the “wartime generation”?

Dunno. Was she flying missions over France?

DM in her 80s remembers being bombed out and shunted around the country. She doesn't remember what her father was like before the war when she was a very young infant, just the broken man who returned and the traumatic aftermath of that. She never met her uncle who was worked and starved to death in Burma. She was in her teens before rationing was fully lifted.

Older pensoners definitely experienced the toll of WW2 and often many traumas from that era and the slow recovery through the 1940s-50s.

If he's really worried then he should look into what benefits are available to him

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/benefits-entitlements/benefits-calculator/

Is a great tool that can help.

Plus my wider point is, can we not discuss anything in this country without referencing a war that ended 80 years ago?

Whether pensioners should or should not get extra cash towards their bills is entirely unrelated to world war II.

According to OP none of that matters. It only counts if she was flying bombers over France 🙄

My mother was born in 1931 and my father (now dead) in 1928, and my aunt in 1932. They definitely remember/ remembered the War and experienced it. But I’m not convinced that their assumptions about politics and people’s behaviour at the time was correct.

Otoh my aunt was recently telling me how her father ordered eggs from the grocer on the black market (he asked for golf balls, which seems a touch comedic). She remembers it vividly, as does my mother and it had a huge influence on their lives. But Nick Robinson is way out with his calculations.

Even if she was flying bombers over France it's irrelevant to whether or not she should get a fuel grant.

But also, I do think it's time that we stopped saying "wartime generation" for anyone older than we are.

They're not the wartime generation, they're the baby boomers... And the baby boomers are collectively some of the wealthiest in terms of generations atm. It's impossible to make a sweeping statement, YANBU. The people who will be most affected are those on low income!

This!

YABVU Op & actually quite ignorant.

FIL is wartime generation. He lives off his state pension and is over the threshold for claiming pension credit. He was managing - just about. He is now worried sick about how much his fuel bill is going to be this winter.

I know the majority of mumsnetters have parents who are living their best lives, driving jags and crusing the med but there real people out there who genuinely have nothing.
He is 92, has just bought his first ever duvet and has literally taken to his bed and says he's not leaving it.

Surely 'the war time generation' are those that were born and grew up during the war- so people in their late 70s and 80s.

I remember coming out of the air-raid shelter on the morning of my 3rd birthday, and feeling excited. I remember doodle-bugs and later on, rockets It. was just life then. I have a decent teacher's pension and am able to shop at Waitrose, drink gin and feed my cat.

There is a tendency to harp on and on about it, in my opinion because emerging the victor in WWII is about the last notable thing the UK achieved before sliding into relative obscurity and decades of managed decline, so I think it's viewed as some sort of Halcyon era even though I also think that's a very slanted view of things, and I doubt merchant seamen who were being torpedoed in the mid-atlantic or private soldiers facing Japanese suicide charges in the Burmese jungle would see it the same way.

It also annoys me that this generation is also feted as superhuman and used as a comparator to denigrate younger people, as if WWII combatants weren't fighting for their own existence as much as anything else, some reluctantly, and as if younger people today would somehow be incapable of much the same thing. The idea that every UK participant in WWII was motivated by a universal hatred of Fascism is nonsense. The majority of people were there because they were conscripted or signed up before it inevitably came to that. There's still a lot of overly-romantic bollocks written about WWII, but it's not polite to point that out.

Three years after the war ended is not wartime generation. They weren’t even born. They’re the children of the wartime generation.

My grandparents remember seeing their city being bombed, I would call them the wartime generation. They did their National Service during the 50s in conflicts too.

Yeah boomers in UK/USA were collectively born at the sweet spot re ability of middle classes across lower and middle rungs to acquire high value assets and also to secure those assets undisturbed in their post-work years by having steady income pension streams.

Upper middle have done even better of course but they always do.

And also ofc not every individual lower/middle middle class citizen was able to, but it was easier than previously and easier than now (because all the assets have already been bought and been resold multiple times and each time the pool that can access gets smaller).

Well I'm affected by losing the Winter Fuel payment and I'm definitely not war time generation.
It's a really weird thing to say.
Actually Nick Robinson himself is just a little over 10 years younger than me. I wonder what generation he regards himself.