Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

Nooooo...there's a much easier target sitting like the proverbial duck, just waiting for the slaughter. 'Hey, why don't we freeze pensions of Brits living in EU countries'? Not only would it bring in a few ££££00000s but it would actually be quite a popular move amongst a certain section of the British public. After all, we had the WFP withdrawn on the basis of completely fabricated statistics, so why not? Mind you, those same Brit pensioners now have the right to vote again, which might give Labour pause for thought in a few years time.....

 

But, @fairygirl, the gov can manage a very complicated child credit scheme. And HMRC has access to all pensioners' bank accounts and full details of any savings, etc, so I actually don't think it would be that hard to organise. I'd favour the full WFP going to anyone with income below £15k, and then half the amount going to those between £15-20k. Yes, there would still be a cut-off point, but it wouldn't slice quite so hard on those for whom fuel eats up a huge percentage of their money.

 

If they continue in this vein I don't see them lasting a full term.
Were these not the Robin Hood party, who were going to scrap non dom status and put VAT on private school fees, and take from the rich and give to the poor.

They seem to have got off on the wrong foot.

If they had waited and snuck these announcements in later in the year or next year after seemingly caning the rich first it might have gone down better.

Blaming the tories is not going work as most people are just going to think, so there's a black hole, isn't there always.
Has been all my life.

 

I would love to believe a full reset could happen, but I'm certain it never will as the wealthy enjoy great privilege from the current set-up. They weren't touched in yesterday's statement, AFAIA.

What seriously bugs me is the waste of starting projects and then abandoning them. The A27 bypass at Arundel has been summarily axed, yet work on the project has been going on for yrs, costing goodness knows what for all the consultations and reports.

 

I think better off pensioners (like my parents, and hopefully myself one day in the not-too-distant future) shouldn't get the winter fuel payment, but the cliff-edge system is a problem.
Surely it's not beyond the wit of humankind to work out a taper system.
Of course it might not be that easy, and with personal pensions it would likely be possible to "work" the system by using income drawdown or some such thing. I suppose the crunch is, will it cost more in admin to work out who's eligible and who isn't than just to pay it to everyone. Probably easier/cheaper to piggyback on the pension credit because someone's already doing the eligibility checks for that. Perhaps the pension credit itself should be tapered because it's not just income top-up, it opens the door to other things like free TV license, as well as WFP in future.

 

Labour governments have always been good at cancelling projects that have already had millions spent on them.
It's traditional.

 

Of course there's also the issue of people who would be eilgible for pension credit but don't claim it, either from pride and because they're managing on what they have, or because they don't know how or even that they're eligible. My now-deceased elderly neighbour was one of the latter, until someone from one of the charities (I think) came and helped her with it (I didn't know until after the fact when she told me how much extra she was getting, or I'd have offered to help her with it myself). There might be a flood of new applications if no WFP pushes people from just managing into not managing.

 

They questioned her this morning on the subject and asked if taking something like 1.4 billion from pensioners and giving 9 odd billion to public service worker's actually added up.

When you put it into that context 1.4 billion saving is a pretty small amount especially as she keeps going on about a 22 billion black hole.
Apparently it's all Liz Truss's fault.