Global Warming and British Pensioners.
Roncesvalles, Spain, Thursday Feb. 2, 2012
Now that global warming has covered the whole of Europe in a thick blanket of snow, will the Prime minister finally accept that the thousands of pensioners who moved to Europe over the past two decades do NOT live in a ‘hot’ country?
As recently as last December, we had the Daily Mail trotting out the tired old chestnut of :
‘Pensioners who have emigrated to warmer climes for their retirement are still receiving their winter fuel payments. It means that more than £13m a year is being paid abroad’ – dutifully illustrated by a photograph of two pensioners sitting in deckchairs on a summer beach.
Pensioners in Britain don’t need winter fuel payments if you wish to award them on the basis of summer temperatures! Nor do all British Pensioners living abroad – and specifically in France and Spain – receive a winter fuel allowance.
If you find yourself made redundant in Dover six months or six years before retirement, you will receive the winter fuel allowance when you get your pension. Live 25 miles away in Calais, and you won’t. So much for Europe.
This anomaly, whereby 80% of the House of Lords receive a winter fuel payment, whether they need it or not, whilst thousands of British pensioners, many of whom are now suffering real hardship thanks to the 25% reduction in the value of their pensions, are left to fend for themselves in this extreme cold weather, is ridiculous.
It is not helped by the subtly xenophobic comments of Liberal-Democrat Peers such as Lord Oakeshott.
‘It is farcical to be spraying out winter fuel payment cheques all around the Mediterranean.
‘The toast as they sip their sangrias in the sun at the Malaga golf club must be David Cameron and George Osborne.’
Surely more farcical to be spraying winter fuel payments round the House of Lords than to be penalising British pensioners for living in Europe?
Many of those pensioners would be entitled to far more in the way of benefits and pension top-ups if they were able to return to Britain – too many of them bought into the European dream, and are now trapped in penury in unsaleable apartments. Mocked by the MPs they still pay British tax to support – and denied a vote in elections.
Ms Raccoon is keeping warm!
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1
February 7, 2012 at 09:50 -
I’m curious: People from the EU are entitled to claim benefits in the UK. Are you, as an EU/UKresident in France, entitled to claim any of their benefits and if so, are there any similar to our winter fuel allowance?
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February 7, 2012 at 10:14 -
Nope, zilch, the French aren’t that daft.
Fortunately, I’m not that desperate, but I am more than aware of many people who really are living in desperate situation. One friend of mine is still, aged 74, female, cutting acres of grass pushing a mower every summer, to build up a small fund to see her through the winter months. Another, similar aged man has just hitchhiked down to Spain to work in a hotel for three weeks for a sum total of 210 euros, but at least he can pay his electricity bill now.
There would be an absolute outcry if British pensioners were doing this sort of thing to keep the wolf from the door in Britain – and yet both those people came to France because they couldn’t afford to buy property in the UK. Of course they could abandon their homes here, hitchhike to Calais, and demand the state pays their rent in the UK….but they have too much pride.
The French do direct foreigners towards the Restos du Coeur – a sort of soup kitchen affair, and there has been an alarming increase in the number of British citizens forced to rely on them as a means of staying alive.-
3
February 7, 2012 at 10:39
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4
February 7, 2012 at 10:22 -
Leaving aside the issue of substance, what a wonderful picture! It has made me smile. We had a heavy fall of snow here at the Abbey on Saturday pm, and I took opportunity to done heavy walking gear and go for a hike; it was a truly lovely experience to be in the glittering snow with ice cold air.
Sadly it is all melted now! But at least we havent had weeks of filthy sludge and ice
Keep warm Anna! -
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February 7, 2012 at 10:28 -
Brits spending their retirement in the sun, have been requested to donate unwanted Winter Fuel Payments to Help the Aged. Our Mick, who stands to gain nothing with the exception of his usual commissions, represents the interests of this great charity.
The political agenda will finally roll out to make sense, Anna. The big tamale vote-catcher, is the forthcoming Summer Cooling Payment. This is scheduled to benefit economic immigrants from Africa and Asia, to forward to loved ones back home, or not.
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6
February 7, 2012 at 11:21 -
The problem with all voter-bribes, like Winter Fuel Allowance and Bus Passes etc., is the political impossibility of removing them later – this is Brown’s poison legacy to all those who follow. They daren’t even abandon the Christmas Bonus, all of £10, which costs far more to administer than the value involved.
The idiocy of WFA is increased when you recognise that most people now pay their fuel bills by monthly direct debit, averaged out across the year, so there is now no ‘shock horror winter bill’ to pay when it’s cold.
Smartest trick would be to incorporate the £200 value into the State Pension (£4 a week, which is just a tad more), but then at least it would be taxed at 20% for most recipients and at 40% or 50% for the Lords/wealthy, whilst enabling the genuinely poorer to get it tax-free. That’s just about politically do-able – anything else would be drowned in howls of irrational protest.
Cameron & Co should have done this in Budget No 1, leaving long enough before the next election for many remembering recipients to have died off.The overseas recipients issue is a sideshow – it’s not worth frigging about with the system for so few, but the ‘politics of envy’ still applies.
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February 7, 2012 at 12:20 -
Roncesvalles? Ah, the Song of Roland, perhaps it is time to shelter in the cave and whilst there wake him and his friends up.
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February 7, 2012 at 17:54 -
” ……….many of them bought into the European dream, and are now trapped in penury in unsaleable apartments. ”
Sympathy Rating: Zero.
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February 8, 2012 at 06:37 -
In Oz, we British pensioners not only don’t get a winter fuel allowance , but a pension reducing by the day with an adverse exchange rate, and have our pensions frozen from day one..
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