“Cheers. Thanks winter fuel payments!”
Cocktail glasses clinked as a couple in their mid-70s toasted their first night on a December break back in Tenerife.
That’s always been the issue with winter fuel payments – they were never targeted at the people that needed them.
This couple were comfortably retired, enjoyed several holidays abroad every year, including a couple of winter escapes to the sun and were fit and well. Why shouldn’t they? They’ve earned it.
The fact that they could joke about their winter fuel allowance paying their holiday bar bill told the story.
Why should they be given a few hundred pounds a year to help pay their heating bills when they could well afford it?
They were probably living in the old family home worth multiple times what they had envisaged, with private pensions on top of their state pensions, changing their car every few years and were fit and well.
It makes no sense. Just like child benefit for high-earning parents when so many children go to school hungry and dirty.
Pensioners are far more affluent than they ever were. Not that they like it to be said out loud. Of course, they worked hard, went without and saved. But an element of luck and timing too has helped make their lot far more comfortable than 1960s and 70s pensioners.
Spiralling house prices and the tiple lock guarantee on pensions in 2011 are just two bits of ‘luck’.
Today, 4.3 million UK children – 30 per cent – live in poverty and nearly 1 million people over 66.
So Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to take away universal winter fuel payment to fill a £22bn “black hole” in public finances makes sense.
It’s not being ripped callously from those that need it. The million pensioners who rely on pension credit and benefit will still get the help.
There should be more too; only one in three pensioners eligible apply for pension credit, experts reckon, so are missing out on vital support. They must apply now, and they will keep the winter fuel payment.
It’s a matter of need and fairness.
If Reeves can be criticised for anything, it is for setting the cut off too low for the payments - £200 for households under 80 receiving pension credit and £300 for over 80s.
No one resents pensioners being well off - more than one in four pensioners live in millionaire households. Many enticed to take early retirement in early 50s on hefty pensions – they simply don’t need a state handout for heating bills simply because they meet an age profile while they drive Teslas and play tennis.
In fact, benefits for all over 60s need more scrutiny. Do people 60-year-olds need free prescriptions?
Most still work with no sight of retirement.
In London, everyone over 60 has free rail and bus travel. Friends there are bewildered. None feels old. They have no plans to ‘slow down’ and can’t fathom why they can travel for nothing.
In fact, having children later, now free of higher education burdens and empty nesters, they are speeding up and trying to fit in everything they couldn’t do during the demands of parenting.
It feels ludicrous that people who dance on tables past midnight, play competitive sport, run, walk and cycle then go home on the train with a free pass because they are ‘old.’
Now 60, I’ve discovered a whole host of benefits I am ‘entitled’ to a senior rail card for reduced fares, supermarket discounts, cheap cinema tickets for Silver Screeners.
But as a full time worker, do I need 10% off Iceland or cheaper rail fares? This has caused some lively debate among colleagues disgruntled that fit, healthy and earning sexagenarians are granted these perks.
As for the winter fuel allowance, kudos to those who have donated it to charity or food banks, but it is far better to be in the public purse for direct use.
We are ageing slower with better diets, more health awareness and younger mindsets.
There are others in far greater need.
Just today on Facebook, yet another mother appealed for help because her and her children had no food until ‘payday’.
Who would you rather the winter fuel allowance went to?
Spain does not need your custom
Award gold medals for all those poor triathletes forced to swim in the mucky dungy brown Seine this week.
A major €1billion regeneration project still left dangerous levels of e-coli that forced training sessions in the river to be cancelled and events postponed.
Heavy rain increased sewage levels.
Declared safe, competitors said they felt and saw things they shouldn’t think about too much. It will probably give them nightmares if not sickness bugs.
It was above and beyond national duty.
If Spanish don’t want tourists, they don’t want our money.
Who wants to go on holiday with locals screaming at them to go home – or as was scrawled on the wall this week: “Kill a tourist?
There are plenty of more lovely welcoming places to go.
Hit Spain where it hurts, cancel and head to Greece, Croatia, Italy to have fun and feel safe.
Spain does not deserve your custom.
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