Swinney to subsidise the bloody winter heating payment for all pensioners

[OptimismvsRealism]

The SNP are complete fucking twats

I'm not a millionaire. Neither are most pensioners. 27% of UK pensioners have a household wealth of £million or more - most of it tied up in the property they live in, and, according to MN they are not allowed to sell up and waste the kids inheritance by living off the money that they earned. And it would be very helpful if they could shuffle off the mortal coil before wasting it all on care home costs.

If the government wanted to take money from the rich, there were better and easier ways to do it than stealing from the poorest people. 23% of single women pensioners, 20% of single men pensioners and 13% of pensioner couples live in poverty. Many more are "just over the poverty measure", but cannot afford to adequately heat their homes. It's astonishing that more people on this site can get their knickers in a twist over stamp duty or inheritance taxes than about the conditions of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society. and then claim the site is overrun with lefty do-gooders.

And yet we had to go on strike for over a year just to get what in the end amounted to 2% a year (ish) because there wasn't any money. This is as bad as freezing council tax for another year.

Morriszap at moment as long as they live in Scotland, I don't want folks down south deciding on our future

But there always has to be a cut off

Your mum is effectively less than £50 a year worse off. That is less than a £1 a week

OP- so you're earning over 100,000 and complaining about money to pensioners? Or was the tax a lie?

I appear to be the subject of your ire! I agree, I was fortunate to have a grant for university. I did have to pay a huge amount for a mortgage because the interest rate reached 17% but I'm certainly not a millionaire codger. I could complain about being part of the squeezed generation who is providing childcare for my grandchildren and also having to deal with guardianship for my very elderly mum but I won't. I think you are taking your rage out on the wrong person here. Where are your statistics from, as a matter of interest? There are no millionaires where I live

This, @OptimismvsRealism what's your thoughts on the now probably 4th generation of families who have never worked or contributed to the economy and probably never will receiving multiple benefits?

Bloody Swinney and the snp. My children missed the last 2 weeks of education due to strikes. Pay your lowest paid staff more money and let the boomers get on with it

I'm not convinced that people with huge houses and savings need the benefit.

There may a need to 'bring up the baseline - to make sure no one dies.

BUT I know of pensioners not putting the heating on when they have £££'s in the bank. Honesty - the last gov brought in the 'line' at which people needed support - that should be used .. you could do a taper - so people like the pps mum get the £50 they are down on.. but still the limits should be there.

Stealthmodem , I understand that the powers to be need a cut of but as Martin Lewis said ( not hundreds of pages ) and yes I'm a big Martin Lewis fan

6-8% really, where is that info from? There were 15.6% on Scotland are higher rate taxpayers compared to 12.6% ruk, tax year 21-22 are the most recent which were published this July.

I'm not sure what you mean by this ? We have recently sold our rental property which was my late mother's home as we were in the process of selling our main home and buying a smaller property to live in(and incidentally is cheaper to heat) and I can assure you we paid Additional Dwelling Supplement on the purchase. We had previously looked at buying another BTL to supplement my pension and had to factor in the ADS.

DD has not long graduated and got no grant and took out student loans which she will repay as she is now earning over the threshold. I did get a grant but that was over 40 years ago and I've certainly paid it back in terms of tax !

I believe MPs can claim about £3000 for their heating. Their basic salary is over £90000

Oh and I cant claim state pension until 67 so its not like in France where they were on the streets rioting when pension age went up to 62 !

Nothing wrong with it, no point pensioners freezing to death. We will all be coffin dodgers one day too🤷‍♀️

DH sent me a link the other day for Scottish Carer's Support Payment details. Didn't even know there was such a thing.

@WookieMama
Actually, I think we’re both wrong on the figures. I didn’t account for the increase in Scottish residents brought into the higher rate band due to higher Scottish tax regime

. I just looked at the Scotgov Income tax distributional analysis for 2023/24 - sorry can’t link and it says that only 11 per cent of adults will pay the higher rate and 0.7 per cent the top rate. It goes on to say “Despite this, these individuals are estimated to account for 65% of the total Income Tax take in 2023-24 which highlights the reliance of receipts from top earners.”

Maybe we’re comparing apples and pears, but I didn’t quote my figures in bad faith earlier. I’m only too glad to find out it’s more than I thought!

However, I remain to be convinced of the economic case for independence ( sadly). There are 4.6 odd million people in the whole of Scotland and over 10 million in Greater London alone. Even supposing Scotland’s high earners don’t scarper if independence looks likely, losing access to English tax revenues from their comparatively huge taxpayer base , not to mention all the listed and other large corporates, seems to
me rather silly.

Thanks for the response! I wasn’t trying to be goady, just genuinely interested as I’d been looking at stats recently.

I do think there is a case for Scottish I dependence to work, but accept ideas on paper and real life are not the same thing. What I can’t get my head around is how Scotland are better in the Union, but the Union is better out of the EU. Anyway I digress… but always interested in other opinions and try to view things from all sides 😊

@EvelynBeatrice @WookieMama another interesting stat - 23% of employed people in Scotland work for the public sector and are therefore paid entirely from tax receipts from the other 77%

Comparable with the North East and less than NI or Wales. It’s not a bad thing surely? Or is it? More Teachers, NHS staff and Police are good no? Having 700 more NHS staff per 100k people and 13.5 pupil to teacher ratio in primary schools compared to 20.8. As always the devil is in the detail I suppose.

I guess it's a bad thing if your policies drive out the higher income tax payers so finding the right balance of taxation, and other costs/benefits on offer is more important here than in NI or Wales

She's referring to the boomer generation who got free tuition. Not free grants though, they were means tested. It's worth mentioning that a lot less went to university and salaries were a lot less and people weren't really encouraged to take out second pensions.

Yes I did think that regarding tuition fees and grants but was querying the comment about ADS and tax relief on mortgages which I think are misleading.

Grants were indeed "means tested however this was based solely on parental gross salary and took no account of outgoings so the parental contribution expected was not always forthcoming.

Also like other posters I now do own my home but I bought my first home on a 100% endowment mortgage with rates of between 9 and 14% and paid more than half my salary in mortgage payments.

I've also seen my pension age rise so this assumption that all "boomers" are property tycoon millionaires is laughable.

I'm no fan of the SNP but this may be the first sensible decision they've made in a very long time - even if it is clearly a cynical election ploy

I get the point. But has that actually happened though? In any significant numbers? I don’t know a single higher rate taxpayer that has left of has plans to, indeed many would be willing to pay a little more for improved services.

@WookieMama I agree that many if not most are willing to pay for improved services - the issue is that services are really NOT improving ( looking at you Scotfail)

also @TheWittyBird - what did Martin Lewis say ? Did you mean to include a link ?