My father always has issues with his winter fuel allowance as he thinks it would have been much more useful to him when his kids were little.
If that fuel allowance was going to younger people in difficult situations I’d agree even more, as it is it’s just being taken from one hand of the more fortunate and being put in the other.
I think this makes sense, the longer triple lock continues then you need to scale back/remove other old age related benefits.
Without the planned for growth the mid 2000s, we have massively less money to go round on everything. So everything is getting cut except health and pensions, health costs per person are going up as more of us age, so what ends up happening is a squeeze on health despite spending rises and everything else being cut.
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OBR thinks pensions spending will hit £148 billion by 2028. That is 18% growth in the next few years as the fat tail of late boomers hit retirement. (uk births peaked near the end of the boomers in the mid 60s.
Let’s just cut everything and give it to pensioners. They’ve earned it
“could be”
It wont be though… once the pensioner backlash begins it wont be mentioned again.
This has just won Labour the next election.
Well done, Sunk!
This seems kind of stupid to me. Wouldn’t it be better for things to be mean tested. Otherwise you could end up with a situation whereby a pensioner who isn’t affluent has their winter fuel allowance taken away to pay for the triple lock of pensioners who don’t even need it.
That’ll be unpopular with heavily voting OAPs, as you may have noticed they go nuts about any loss.
I had to check that it’s further Sunak lunacy, the guys lost it. I’m not arguing right or wrong, just what I think will happen.
It would make a lot more sense to remove the triple lock, makes benefits like free bus passes/cheap TV licence/winter fuel payment means tested and increase the means tested pension credit
Good luck selling the loss of a benefit to pensioners, Rishi. They’ll be up in arms about this and, as I know far too well, pensioners *love* writing to their MPs when they’re unhappy about something.
11 comments
My father always has issues with his winter fuel allowance as he thinks it would have been much more useful to him when his kids were little.
If that fuel allowance was going to younger people in difficult situations I’d agree even more, as it is it’s just being taken from one hand of the more fortunate and being put in the other.
I think this makes sense, the longer triple lock continues then you need to scale back/remove other old age related benefits.
Pension spending plus forecasts from the OBR
[https://public.tableau.com/views/Pensionerbenefits/Latestforecast?amp;:embed=y&:embed=yes&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link](https://public.tableau.com/views/Pensionerbenefits/Latestforecast?amp;:embed=y&:embed=yes&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link)
Just short of £120 billion. On a par with total spending on health.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_Kingdom_budget#/media/File:UKExpenditure.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_Kingdom_budget#/media/File:UKExpenditure.svg)
Without the planned for growth the mid 2000s, we have massively less money to go round on everything. So everything is getting cut except health and pensions, health costs per person are going up as more of us age, so what ends up happening is a squeeze on health despite spending rises and everything else being cut.
​
OBR thinks pensions spending will hit £148 billion by 2028. That is 18% growth in the next few years as the fat tail of late boomers hit retirement. (uk births peaked near the end of the boomers in the mid 60s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:UK_Population_Pyramid.svg
)
Let’s just cut everything and give it to pensioners. They’ve earned it
“could be”
It wont be though… once the pensioner backlash begins it wont be mentioned again.
This has just won Labour the next election.
Well done, Sunk!
This seems kind of stupid to me. Wouldn’t it be better for things to be mean tested. Otherwise you could end up with a situation whereby a pensioner who isn’t affluent has their winter fuel allowance taken away to pay for the triple lock of pensioners who don’t even need it.
That’ll be unpopular with heavily voting OAPs, as you may have noticed they go nuts about any loss.
I had to check that it’s further Sunak lunacy, the guys lost it. I’m not arguing right or wrong, just what I think will happen.
It would make a lot more sense to remove the triple lock, makes benefits like free bus passes/cheap TV licence/winter fuel payment means tested and increase the means tested pension credit
Good luck selling the loss of a benefit to pensioners, Rishi. They’ll be up in arms about this and, as I know far too well, pensioners *love* writing to their MPs when they’re unhappy about something.