The £1.4BILLION for Winter Fuel Allowance has been used for Foreign Aid

[CrispsnDips]

…the exact same amount!
It looks like there may be a turnaround and the WFA might be reinstated (something about the Trade Unions objecting…?)

No just give us the source.
Personally I think reform voters and their ilk should be pleased by an increase in Foreign Aid. As if used effectively it will help reduce the number of migrants.
Also we should massively increase the amount of money used to reduce climate change as that is going to be the biggest cause of migrant movement we've ever seen unless we get a grip on it soon. In the longer term this will also bring down fuel costs for everybody including the elderly.

The £1.4BILLION for Winter Fuel Allowance has been used for Foreign Aid

That's the kind of nonsense provocative thread title that I keep seeing in threads about the Labour government. They just make me think that there is a little cottage industry of Tory party members or some such that are using MN to seed disgruntlement.

The title implies that the world's poorest nations have taken away a sum set aside for UK pensioners, when of course the truth is that there is no connection of that sort whatsoever. There is just a similarity in the amount.

It wasn't so long ago that politics threads on MN seemed to arise organically and to contain moderately informed discussion. Now, opening posts like this have dragged them into the gutter.

This! I'm getting so sick of this story. Those who are genuinely struggling will qualify for pension credit. Pensioners own 70% of the property wealth in this country. If they can't cope without an extra £200, they can downsize or use equity release. They're the generation who've had it best throughout history, free healthcare, free education, excellent pensions - no other generation previously has had it as good as them and the generations which have come after are never as likely to have as much wealth. Yet, we're all supposed to pity them. There is a safety net in pension credit for those who will truly struggle, I know not all pensioners are wealthy. Also, they will receive a £460 pension uplift next year. It's absolutely absurd that millions of wealthy pensioners have been getting £200 off the backs of working people.

As one of the hated Boomers, albeit not yet old enough for my pension*, I'm afraid I have no sympathy for people who want a handout but don't want to fill in a form to prove they're entitled to it. For those with literacy or other difficulties, I would imagine Age Concern and other charities could help with the claim form. We don't expect struggling families or unemployed people to be taken on trust if they need help from the benefits system. Why should pensioners be treated differently?

I am hoping that in the Budget Rachel Reeves will announce that Pension Credit will be made available to more people, ideally with immediate effect. The messaging around this has been poor. I suppose they wanted to alert pensioners before the winter but it's created an open goal for the Daily Mail and other Labour bashers.

Paying out a flat rate benefit without means testing saves a lot of admin costs but they've presumably worked out that even with the extra admin from additional Pension Credit claims they can save a lot of money by withdrawing WFA from pensioners not on Pension Credit, and I think this is the right decision. Lots of older people don't need it. The two I know best (my husband and my mother) certainly didn't need it, and would rather it was used to help those who do need help. The big problem with means testing benefits, though, is that wherever you put the cut off point people just above it are going to feel hard done by. Look at what happened when the Tories decided that Child Benefit would no longer be a universal non-means tested benefit.

*Yes! Boomers are those born from just after WW2, who are still under 80, through to 1964, and those people are 60 this year. Lots and lots of us are not yet OAPs.

PS I see the OP has not returned and hasn't provided a single link, let alone a credible one, to back up the claim in the OP. What a surprise.

can you provide a link that shows £1.4billion directly moved from DWP to aid?

I'm waiting, too.

@Bulldog01 sorry if I have misunderstood but if you're not yet at retirement age aren't you entitled to other benefits S an unemployed person?

The French care very well for their old people. Far better than the Brits do for their’s.
They don’t need your concern thanks.

They’re also the generation of elderly with the worst NHS since it was founded.
I’m 67 and terrified of becoming elderly and infirm in the next 15 to 20 years.
I can expect to wait 2 years for hip/knee operations, spend 12 hours on a trolley in A&E after lying on the floor at home for 4 hours, being told prescription medicine is in short supply, be neglected and expected to wet myself on a hospital ward and then be shoved into a sub par care home at £2k per week.

I've added my voice to the other posters who have reported this thread. It is horrible to see all the anger and division here, provoked by an OP who is clearly trying to foster the politics of resentment and zero-sum-game conflict.

I agree with you there. We're all facing an NHS and social care system which is in a dire state. This was the Tories though, and which demographic has voted for them in the largest numbers for the past fourteen years? Again, I know not all pensioners vote Tory, but they're the demographic who have done so in the largest numbers. There's an element of you reap what you sow for many of them. I do sympathise with those who have never voted in a way which has led us to the state we're currently in.

As pp have pointed out Government finance doesn't work like that. Benefits and pensions are AME and foreign aid (and most other departments spending) are DEL.

It will be just a coincidence that the amounts are the same.

This!!!

Agree @caringcarer - cut off too low which puts about 2million at risk according to Age Concern. After seeing my GPs spend their later lives in severe poverty, I'm not comfortable with this at all.

Ridiculous of Gordon Brown.

Maybe you don't know all pensioners.

Still waiting for that link OP…

Is this true? It's absolutely disgusting if it is.

Why don't you try reading the thread? Not a single bit of evidence has been provided to back this claim up.

If there is any truth in this it will go down like a lead balloon.

Lots of unevidenced claims are "absolutely disgusting if true". It's what social media "politics" thrives on and it is destroying us.

This thread is incredibly depressing.

A headline with absolutely no evidence behind it, and the majority just accepting it as truth and kicking off.

Yes. It scares me, to be honest. There's no future for a world where people don't actually think, and just accept what they're fed by a cynical media (and in the case of some countries, their government). This is how the Trumps of this world get into power. And ultimately how civil wars start.

Brilliant news thanks for sharing.

They were talking about it on LBC Radio last week but I can’t remember names/dates/times 😌

So you heard something on the radio. You don't know who said it. You do absolutely no research to check whether it's factually correct. And a week later you are so incensed that you start a thread about it on MN.
Excellent.

I’d ask for it to be deleted if I were you @CrispsnDips. Scaremongering at its finest.