To say the £35k winter fuel threshold is way too high!

[chocolateismyweakness4]

The threshold needed to be raised, but £35k?! I wish I earned that and I have a mortgage and commuting costs. It also doesn’t take into account savings (so they could have millions in the bank) or household income.

We all know it’s a bribe, but they still won’t get pensioners to vote for them.

This is all too common sadly. Reform voters won’t see it though and say all boomers are War Heroes who “paid in millions over the years”. It’s ridiculous and very worrying for the future as there is no money for our own children.

This is a bonus that started in 1972 and is paid to anyone on a state pension about 3 weeks before Christmas. £10 fifty-odd years ago was a lot and could probably buy most of the food for a Christmas dinner, at that time.
But the amount has never changed so it seems hardly worth getting excited over these days! Don't know why they continue to pay it.

I tell you what we won’t hear:

…“thank you”.

There won’t be a small gathering of misfit pensioners in town centres holding flags and banners like we had the other week but which now say thank you for a) the two substantial state pension hikes and b) the ‘free’ money for fuel even if you have an above average income of £34,999.

There’ll just be more whining.

ha ha ain’t that the truth!

Minimum wage, the amount considered suitable to live on while working full time is 22k. So of course a threshold of £35k, potentially for people who never worked or never worked full time, is too high. It’s bloody crazy. They’re so terrified of that generation. Maybe more of us should start to make them terrified of the rest of us.

The pensioners who will benefit most from this are the ones that rarely leave their homes because they are not well enough to do so.

And those whining about future pensions - you will have an occupational pension, something many existing pensioners had no opportunity to acquire. Others, who signed up when they could, have small pensions that prevented them getting WFA last year.

You whinge about people who provided for their own retirement because you dont want to do the same.

I havent heard of any pensioners saying they wanted the benefit back for everyone, just that Labour took money away from some of the poorest and sickest people in society. Labour voters were, quite rightly, ashamed of that. The level it's now been set at is the government's choice.

Yes there will be lots of whining, but it will be coming from spolit jealous children.

That is the reason younger people need to work and stop relying on long term sick and PIP because they are too anxious to get a job. It needs a complete shake up.

Why does this myth about never working or never working full time come from?

It is amazing how you manage to shoehorn bashing disabled people who receive disability benefits into threads that aren't about disabled people who receive disability benefits.

It is an obsession.

Has it crossed your mind that not all pensioners are demented, frail 90 year olds? The great majority of 60 and 70 year olds and many 80 something year olds are entirely independent, many still very active. Children require care up to a certain age. That is a necessity. Most pensioners do not. Your post is total nonsense.
As the previous poster said, a typical pensioner's expenses are a tiny fraction of a typical family's. They usually have no housing costs, have no childcare costs, a small food bill, less essential travel costs. Those things cost thousands of £ a month. And people of working age pay more tax.
The amount of wailing when Labour first announced that WFA was to be withdrawn was totally out of proportion. This is emblematic if the mess we are in as a country, totally unable to discuss how to manage UK finances better.

Maybe more of us should start to make them terrified of the rest of us

Well if younger people got up off their bums and voted, they might find political parties wooed them more. It is not older people's fault that so many younger people can't be bothered to vote.

I'm glad your DM will get her payment back.

I'd be interested to know what she thinks about couples on £70k being entitled to it as well...

It isn't. Money has got to come from somewhere. It's either cut some benefits or raise taxes. It isn't rocket science. If there is backpeddling on winter fuel allowance then the money needs to come from somewhere else.

The culture, hard as this is for some to grasp, has utterly changed. This is not the country I grew up in except geographically. It was the norm in the 60s for women to leave work after having kids. In some sectors, after the men came home from war, it was very much enforced. So many women in the 60s did not work in paid employment. I think it was the 70s and 80s with the beginning of the change back to imperialism that women started working part time again. My mother in the 70s and 80s was quite unusual in working part time and used to have many neighbours to ask to keep an eye on us youngsters as we were left on our own from the age of 6. ‘Working mum’ became a phrase in the 90s and early 00s as it became more common, but still many were part-time. As for the men, of course they’ve never faced restrictions on employment: but you’re a fool of you think boomers were all working harder than now. 9-5 with an hour break plus tea breaks was considered a hard full-time job and very few worked hard compared to later generations.

Nice bit of victim blaming there! According to you, t's all young people's fault that they have been regularly discriminated against for so many years. What is wrong with some people using arguments like this to try to justify their points?

It's not a myth. Working mums became common place only in the 90s/00s. Most silent/boomer (especially the older ones) didn't work when their children were young and some never returned.

My mum, who would be 95 if still alive, worked. As did all my friend's mums. I don't know where this myth that married women with children didn't work in the 60s,70s, even 80ss comes from.

Oh my. Can you back this up with statistics?

Free childcare 😂 what parallel universe are you living in?!

https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/BN234.pdf

Google it. It's very easy to find statistics, although I thought it was common knowledge that more women work nowadays compared to 60s/70s/80s
Anecdotal but, at the primary school I attended, (state primary, middle class area), only one of the mums in the whole school had a full time job (she was one of the teachers), a couple of others did very part time cleaning/worked in a library flexibly but the huge majority did not work at all until their children were in secondary. I can literally think of three who worked at all and we knew the majority of the families as several children in my family across the age groups.

Of course. But I don't think the answer is just that working age people should just work more hours to cover the cost for those who aren't working! 40 hours a week is enough. Especially if you have kids.

Thank you for your comment, which is interesting. To unpick: 60 yr olds will be at work until they are 67. Some late 60 yr olds and 70 yr olds are already long term unwell, not all but some.
Every single grandparent I know is involved to some degree in childcare, so helping the next generation to lower costs. They pick up kids from school, childmind, whatever. Many are volunteers, in charity shops, hospital drivers, environmental projects. Of course they don't have childcare costs. They are the childcare.
'Usually' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. At least 25% have housing costs, for a start.
There are 7.7 million taxpaying pensioners, an increasing number at the higher rate. According to Age UK, 18% of pensioners live in poverty.

As we all know the problem with the WFA is that it wasn't means tested and to means test it would be incredibly expensive. I do think the cost of living for young families is challenging.

You know why women with children under school age didn’t work? Because there was no childcare. Taking a few years off before kids started primary doesn’t equate to never working or never working full time. To qualify for the new state pension 35 years NI contributions are needed most women retiring now have over 40 years.

The big difference is that today’s pensioners in the main started work at 16 and took a few years off in their 20s before their kids started school. Around half young women today don’t start work until their early 20s. Working mothers with kids in school were the norm from the 80s on.

I agree, truthfully but when I was younger, I always worked my way out of financial difficulty. It's harder for older people to do that.

I agree with every word of this. I was a well paid accountant, and I remember to my eternal shame the day I couldn't afford to go to work because I couldn't afford the car park because of my childcare fees. (The city car park cost hardly any less then than it does today thirty odd years later).

We fought long and hard to improve things for working mothers. It would be nice if they knew that.