Voters will thank Labour for scrapping winter fuel payments, Wes Streeting claims

27 comments

1. Why do the press say they scrapped it? Didn’t they just make it means tested like it should have always been?

2. I am a voter and I certainly do thank them for starting to shift benefit payments to old people towards means testing. Next step: the free bus passes for all old people should be means tested too.

3. Theresa May lost her majority because in her 2017 manifesto, she said she will means test the winter fuel payments and scrap the triple lock by 2020. So Labour needs to pray that the pensioners forget about this by 2029 or they will lose their majority just like Theresa May.

   Edit: Just to be clear, pensioners in Wales, Scotland and some parts of Northern England are more likely to vote labour over tories

4. I for one already thank them for it. My grandparents don’t understand why they are given it when they can afford to go on cruises every year.

5. “Labour just give handouts to everyone when they’re in power!”

   Except when they don’t and that’s also apparently terrible.

6. Labour blah blah. Conservative blah blah. Bleak stuff and wallowing in misery politics.

   Shite never changes.

7. I don’t know if I’ll necessarily be thanking them, because it’s not like they’re taking that money and giving it to me instead.

8. Doubt. It’s not a huge amount of money saved – and comes at a huge political cost.

9. Also it’s £5.70/wk I really don’t know why pensioners are complaining

10. Well, it’s ‘The Independent’. Which, as ‘independent’ as it is, it’s probably in the pockets of wealthy donors and Tories? 🤑

11. This was the main thing the right wing papers have successfully latched onto so they are going to keep milking it for everything its worth.

12. What makes me laugh is the people who repeatedly complain about ‘last 14 years’ complaining that this keeps getting brought up. Ironic.

13. Hardly. Its just such a small thing. I don’t expect labour are ever really going to fix the worsening inequality in this country. I know reform would make it even worse.

14. Im already thanking them. Fuck none means tested handouts when so many others are suffering.

15. More than one third of pensioners are asset millionaires. The rhetoric of the news articles (which are majority owned by murdoch and right leaning billionaires) was that this was an evil thing to do.

16. It always should’ve been means tested. Right decision long term. I think they’ve made the right call.

17. I already do.

    It was a sensible considered change.

18. The media around this winter fuel thing really annoys me. My parents own outright their own home, have state pension, defined benefit pensions etc. – they shouldn’t really have the state pay for their energy bills. Means testing makes sense for it.

19. Yeah, we should all be grateful our future selves became £200pa worse off…

20. Labour Crashed the economy, Labour scrapped fuel payments, Labour are looney lefties…. Same old tabloid shit

21. My grandmother in law still has her winter fuel payment. My millionaire stepfather doesn’t though. He’s more upset about it than my GMIL is about some of her friends losing it.

22. my neighbour complained on Facebook about not receiving his winter fuel payment whilst staying at a 5 star resort in the Maldives.

23. Next year’s increase in the state pension is about £400 more than inflation for a year.

    Don’t see the newspapers screaming about this positive change which makes it net neutral for most every pensioner

24. Anything that fucks over the boomers is fine by me, keep it up

25. I love that Daily Mail want to means test so hard that people who need benefits can’t even get them. But they’ll shit their pants if Dame Judi Dench doesn’t get £400 a year

26. I mean yeh making it means tested so those Boomers who don’t need it and hold the most generational wealth per head in this country don’t keeping taking more wealth out of the country sounds like a great idea.

27. they’re probably scrap the state pension or halve it for anyone born after a certain age soon. The ponzi scheme of paying tax but getting nothing in return continues

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