I'm just going to niggle a bit on the Winter Fuel Payment cut.
OK, so we got those payments two years back, when we were getting by on our Civil Service Pensions plus a bit from the DWP and were getting roughly £900 pm. We got them again last winter when SWMBO was getting her State Pension but nothing was coming from DWP and we were getting £1500 pm. This year, we are both getting State Pension as well as our Civil Service ones and it comes to £2460 pm. We have no mortgage to pay and only the two of us to feed. We probably won't get a Winter Fuel payment this year and we won't need one. It won't be 'heat or eat'.
The full State Pension alone is £221 pw per person. Add that most people of our age will have contributed to,and be receiving, a workplace pension. Add that most of them will have paid off their mortgages and will no longer be supporting chldren (at least financially). I have to ask, what are they spending their money on that they can't manage the £20 a week it takes to pay for fuel?
Of course, if you insist on having the central heating going full blast all day from October to May, shoppng at Sainsbury instead of Lidl, buying clothes at Marks & Spencer and going to Spain every summer, you're going to have problems!
Us? Two more years of the school run because my daughter doesn't drive. Then the car goes because we won't need it and we save a couple hundred a month in insurance and another £30 in petrol!
Holiday in the UK - chalet, pod, tent, static caravan - probably less than £300 for the week. Invest in a jumper or cardigan and turn the bloody thermostat down! You only need it on for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple more in the evening. It never gets that cold nowadays, anyway!
I grew up in the North, in a house with no central heatng or double-glazing, just two gas fires downstairs and a fan-heater n the bedroom. Back in the days when the climate was sane and wnter eant frost, fog and snow, not just rain and mild, muggy weather. Quit moaning! Let that money go to young families with kids, who actually need it!
Incidentally, if they taxed the non-doms, etc, they might simply take their investments, and the jobs that go with them, elsewhere. Taxing the rich isna global economy is high-risk, no reward. They'd do better to make all British citizens liable for UK taxes regardless of where they live or work. There are entire colonies of tax-dodging, Tory-voting expats out there laughing at us.
