I’ve watched the debate raging about the winter fuel payments with some interest. There is an argument that the whole thing shouldn’t be necessary anyway. If the pension was operated along the lines of the private sector, pensioners should be able to manage without. However, what we have is a Ponzi scheme and the state pension is seen as a benefit, not something that has been earned – even though those in receipt have paid in for decades. The problem, is that the state has pissed that money away and is now looking to make cuts.
As is always the case with Labour (the Tories less so until recently) they do not seek to make real, meaningful cuts where it would make a difference. Accept for a moment the argument in favour of the winter fuel allowance and balance that against foreign aid. Apparently the latter is all fine and dandy – we can afford that – but we cannot afford to help our own elderly keep warm in the winter. This, now, is the optic that the government faces and it appears to be facing it down. My own scumbag MP voted with the government on this, which was no surprise. A far left Marxist mayor of Lewisham who was parachuted into Kingswood in the by-election, knowing that once the boundaries were redrawn, he would be in a safe seat. What a vile individual he is.
I digress. If we stopped spending money on foreign aid and closed down unnecessary government departments, cutting the winter fuel allowance wouldn’t be necessary. Also, all those proposed tax rises wouldn’t be necessary.
Kier Starmer appears to be going with the tough it out approach and hoping that he will come out the other side smelling of roses. In doing so, he exposes not only the Labour lie – they do not care for the people they were set up to represent – but also his own nastiness and hypocrisy. The same applies of course to his iron chancellor. Make no mistake about it, these people are the enemy.
A party that claims to represent poor people has a vested interest in keeping them poor. They are against grammar schools because they allow ordinary kids to better their situation and that leads them to becoming middle class. Their problem now is that those poor people have finally caught on that Labour doesn’t represent them and never did. Their voter base is now the well off folk in comfy government funded sinecures which is why those unnecessary government departments are safe.
Mine – Helena Dollimore, Hastings and Rye – a labour drone, obeyed the inner party.
This will have no real effect on me, but fuck me, does it make my piss boil!
There’s a willfulness about it, a determination NOT to be told by a bunch of uppity squatters (i.e. the indigenous British population) what they can do in THEIR realm.
To which they are entitled by dint of their manifest moral and intellectual superiority.
I suspect they know exactly what the optics are but don’t care. After all, what are even their own MPs, other than mere fodder?
I’m the same as you. I don’t need it and I feel that the whole thing shouldn’t be necessary anyway, but, yes, the sheer dogged nastiness makes me angry. I knew they would be bad, but even I am surprised by the level of sheer spite they are displaying.
I’m not. I’m now incapable of surprise at the level of spite coming from Labour. Or the Tories, for that matter.
It’s the “Deputy Head Girl” phenomenon, to borrow from whitesundesert@. Prigs who will impose their will on the unwashed populace, for their own good.
Part of the problem is that we seem to be to be governed (ruled, even), by people who hate this country. When MPs shout “Allahu Akbar” during their self congratulatory speeches on being elected, and even the Prime Numpty stating he prefers Davos over Westminster, the clues started coming in. Money to welcome the small boat invaders, no problem. Money for countries with atrocious human rights records, no problem. Money for countries which have their own space programmes, and more millionaires in one city than the whole of UK, no problem. Allowances for impoverished pensioners to heat their homes, or funds to help homeless ex Service personnel, many suffering from PTSD, “Sorry. No money available”.
I’m coming to the end of my life (progressive prostate cancer), but I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren and the kind of world they will live in.
Rant over.
Sorry to hear that, Penseivat.
I’ve enjoyed and disagreed with your posts in equal measure, but I think it’s fair to say you have left the world in a better place than it would have been without you. Best of luck.
Apparently there’s a big hole in the government’s finances. In a sensible world, one of the options considered would be less government. But no, the only option is more tax.
All recent regimes in Britain have been the same, ditch the manifesto lies within the first week and do what the hell they like.
Towards the end of their term they’ll row back a bit, bribe the electorate with their own money and sadly most of the plebs are too thick to see whats happening and their goldfish memory span has along forgotten the first 4 years.
Things changed a bit this time because even our brainwashed electorate couldn’t bring themselves to vote yet another bunch of Tory wankers back in, lets hope the same happens in 2029 (assuming we’re allowed another election) with this Labour bunch.
Regarding the recent election i’m more convinced than ever that the Tories (or whoever controlled that cabinet from the ski centre) went out of their way to lose the election, which only goes to show they could actually get something right even it was losing.
Many really wealthy people got the winter fuel allowance and didn’t need it. But there is the band of pensioners who rely on state pension only who are not eligible for pension credits, these are the loosers. Also lots are too proud to go cap in hand and claim pension credits. Perhaps the government should make the pension one amount, there is a difference if you claimed before 2016. If pension credits bring your pension up to the current amount why not just put everyone on that amount. Another thing pension credits give is housing benefit, council tax reduction and several other things. If they are topping the amount to basic pension, then giving extras why don’t the people on the basic pension get those extras????? None of it makes sense and the vulnerable will be the elderly in their 80s upwards, living in draughty houses, not that mobile so unable to keep warm. I hope those that voted for it sleep well at night.
The wealthy got it because the fuck useless civil service will ensure the administration of the means testing will cost more than the benefit itself.
To be fair it is £300 – means testing is always going to cost some money.
I always think that saying person x is on £100K pa, they pay £27k pa tax it is not fair that they get £300 winter fuel, is weird. They still give us net £26k!
“If pension credits bring your pension up to the current amount why not just put everyone on that amount. ”
Silly girl! Doing that would mean that, as there are two separate departments assessing eligibility, paying out two sets of benefits and employing two sets of snivel serpents, then one department would not be needed. Where are all those snivel serpents going to get such a cushy, well paid and well pensioned jobs? Have a heart, for Gods sake!
No, the Government client class cannot be inconvenienced and must be kept sweet to secure their support and votes.
As for wasting money (plenty more taxpayers money where that last lot came from), you are not allowed to know how, on what and where it is spent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dguZMfjKgCc
It struck me this morning, like a bolt of lightning, that Starmer & Co. are reinventing class warfare.
However instead of defending the working man (working class) they are attacking anyone who is not in Labour’s professional middle class. The rich (upper class) are to be squeezed until their pips squeak, the remaining hereditary lords are to be expelled from the House of Lords. The working class are to be reviled and punished for their impertinence of not complying with their new masters.
Look at the UK, look at the USA, look at the EU. Populism is back and class war is seen as a corrective antidote (by the current political elite). It will probably end in tears.
I’ve been following Charlotte Gill’s substack for a while (she’s also on Twatter), and the woke waste she is cataloguing is shocking.
The money that is being pissed up the wall on utter crap really makes my teeth itch.
Labour is clearly wedded to this attack on pensioners to the extent that Starmer, Reeves et al are prepared to weather headlines about pensioners dying of the cold. By contrast, there would be a lot of support for reducing or eliminating foreign aid, suggesting that going after pensioners is an ideological choice.
If one of the privileges of government is deciding how tax money is allocated then it makes sense to take money from those who can’t strike (or leave the country) so the government can give it to taxpayer funded workers who can strike.
Labour have form for instantly caving in to public sector unions when they gain power so we can now look forward to all the good things that follow eg rising inflation, ‘trickle down taxation’ as the wealthier leave passing the tax burden to the next tier down, falling investment and innovation, crashing economy in place of growth then back to more strikes.
It’s almost as though they’ve learnt nothing from the Wilson and Callaghan.
Wilson and Callaghan were paragons of virtue compared to this lot. At least with them, there wasn’t this evil spitefulness against the people they are supposed to represent.
I’d take Wilson or Callaghan in a heartbeat over kmer sturmer! (or the tory scum for that matter)
So would I.
Probably helps Wilson and Callaghan didn’t have Drakeford’s stint as dictator of the People’s Republic of Wales as their blueprint for governance
Back in 1972 They gave pensioners a £10 Christmas bonus. It is still £10 today, but with inflation should be c£100. That’s why they give cash amounts instead of a full pension which would be adjusted for inflation. So yes, the so called WFA should have been included in the full pension, which would have done away with all the bloody silly arguments about richer folk getting something that poorer folk should have.
It would be great if someone in another country (ideally one of the ones the UK sends aid to) to start a charity to keep British pensioners warm in winter.
I thought the conquerer of the British empire, (idi amin VC) did something like this around 1974?
The moral of this tale, for our descendants, is:
Do not take your money, from work or benefits and save it, but piss it up against the wall. That way, when the time comes for you to need help from the state, you, unlike us, will be eligible for everything.