British pensioners living in Europe are set to keep the winter fuel allowance this year while millions of the elderly at home are stripped of the payment.
As many as 35,000 retirees on the Continent are in line to get the £300 handout even if they exceed the new wealth threshold set by Rachel Reeves.
Expats living in the European Union plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland are guaranteed the allowance by the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Damn right too of course. £300 is a couple of tonnes of wood around here. A winter’s heating.
Excellent! The media can now run endless stories about Elsie in Spain spending her cash on fripperies while Gertrude in Preston freezes.
Great job, Rachel!
How much plutonium would £300 buy ?
Keep it in a nice glass lantern, it’d make the house nice and warm and be decorative.
Not in Cyprus they don’t…
The flat we lived in in Platres had been built to the same build spec as flats in Limassol, keeping that place warm in winter was not only effing expensive but also horrible as we had to use Calor Gas so keeping the walls dry and free from mould was akin to painting the Forth Bridge.
Julia, I’m not sure the UK media ias allowed to do things like that anymore…
With Grist here… if Labour do something it is automatically a Good Thing so any negative effects can quickly be memory-holed. Anyway Gertrude deserves to freeze — if she lives in Preston she’s almost certainly guilty of Wrongthink.
Guido has a lovely picture of Starmer and Scholz getting cosy. I think TTK may not need two terms in order to create in the UK the earthly paradise that Scholz can already boast.
They are guaranteed the allowance; but is the value of the allowance fixed? If not, just reduce it to £1. Problem solved.
Throw some more plutonium on the fire!
Meanwhile, expat pensioners living in other than a restricted list of countries like Montenegro are stuck with a pension that has never increased (and never mind WFAs or Christmas bonuses) since day 1 – in my case 21 years.
asiaseen
You remind me that I heard of that complaint from expat Brits in Oz.
Indeed I understand that it had applied since just after WW2.
“They are guaranteed the allowance; but is the value of the allowance fixed? If not, just reduce it to £1. Problem solved.”
They’d have to reduce the UK payment to £1 as well, even for those on Pension Credit. Whatever the level of the WFA in the UK (regardless of who gets it) the Euro pensioners get the same.
Reduce the WFA to zero.
Add £5 a week to the applicable amount of Pension Credit.
Job done.
And if you want the lump sum payment, then put a bit of your PC away every month, and lump sum yourself grandma.