The Labour Government

Kirkstall Blue said:
Was it Brown who decided to raid the pension fund and combine it into general taxation that’s when he changed the name into a benefit.
Even pensioners pay tax the chancellor hopes they won’t be around or very few by the next election
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TBH not sure but whether its Blue or Red we work longer for the shittest pension in Europe
 
Vic said:
Sorry, you're way behind everything. The large majority of pensioners are well above the pension credit threshold (though that may depend on what "just above" means).

The big problem is that we paid N.I. to fund the pensions of pensioners then, not our own pensions in the future (which now is now, and funded by current taxes).

Without replicating the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, most pensioners now were brought up in houses without central heating, in colder winters than now and waking up with ice on the inside of the single-glazed windows. More seriously, pension credit is demonstrably the best way to deal with pensioner poverty (with commensurate savings in health costs), and raising the pension credit threshold would be a much better use of money than giving it to the majority of pensioners who don't need it - it might even pay for itself in saved NHS costs, so I'm not sure why that could not have been a sweetener for this awkward policy.

(And no truck for the people on here who would not give pension credit to anyone who hasn't "paid in".)
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Age Concern said they believed two million pensioners would struggle to pay their bills and heat their homes as a result of the change.

I grew up in a house where they’d be ice on the inside. I suspect many of us did. Older people need to keep warmer than we did as kids. I also remember the hyperthermia adverts they used to do on TV.
 
I remember hypothermia adverts that’s why it should be a staged withdrawal of the payment, so easy to work out a way to do that eg: reducing it by £25 every year and reversing the price hikes the Electricity and Gas boards put on consumers, the reason for the WFP in the first place
 
Kirkstall Blue said:
Was it Brown who decided to raid the pension fund and combine it into general taxation that’s when he changed the name into a benefit.
Even pensioners pay tax the chancellor hopes they won’t be around or very few by the next election
Click to expand...

You're confusing two different things. Brown's pension raid was the removal of tax relief on dividends paid into a pension pot.

Nothing to do with state pension.
 
Kirkstall Blue said:
I remember hypothermia adverts that’s why it should be a staged withdrawal of the payment, so easy to work out a way to do that eg: reducing it by £25 every year and reversing the price hikes the Electricity and Gas boards put on consumers, the reason for the WFP in the first place
Click to expand...

WFP was introduced by Gordon Brown in 1997, same budget as the pension raid.

Gas boards were abolished in 1972.
 
Vic said:
Sorry, you're way behind everything. The large majority of pensioners are well above the pension credit threshold (though that may depend on what "just above" means).

The big problem is that we paid N.I. to fund the pensions of pensioners then, not our own pensions in the future (which now is now, and funded by current taxes).

Without replicating the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, most pensioners now were brought up in houses without central heating, in colder winters than now and waking up with ice on the inside of the single-glazed windows. More seriously, pension credit is demonstrably the best way to deal with pensioner poverty (with commensurate savings in health costs), and raising the pension credit threshold would be a much better use of money than giving it to the majority of pensioners who don't need it - it might even pay for itself in saved NHS costs, so I'm not sure why that could not have been a sweetener for this awkward policy.

(And no truck for the people on here who would not give pension credit to anyone who hasn't "paid in".)
Click to expand...

The national minimum wage is around £10k PA more than the State Pension.
Every recipient of the full state pension who has paid into a state pension for 35 years has to earn a bit more than the state pension in other income to be above the minimum wage.
Yet every pensioner in this bracket will lose the winter fuel allowance - though some will be able to claim some additional pension credits - though many will be too proud to even try.
The Labour Party predicted 4000 deaths in 2017 for a proposed measure that merely taxed the Winter Fuel Allowance payment.
What's changed?
 
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