We know that it is highly likely that the number of people who will die as a consequence of hypothermia this year will increase unless we have a miraculously warm winter.
No doubt those who cried were aware of this fact. They knew that this vote was, in fact, condemning some people to die wholly unnecessarily because there is absolutely no economic justification for the action that Rachel Reeves has taken. All that she is seeking to do is to send meaningless gestures to the City of London, none of which they wish to receive, and nor do they require. As such, this action is entirely unnecessary, and so too, in that case, are the losses of life.
But whacking up energy prices by far more for absolutely everyone is just fine. Because climate change is best dealt with by that Curajus State planning everything rather than using those dreadful, common as oiks, markets all the economists say to use.
Tsk.
They cancelled the winter fuel payments because it helped white people.
Labour isn’t going to help white people, it wants you outnumbered, dead, broke, or in prison.
“the number of people who will die as a consequence of hypothermia this year will increase unless we have a miraculously warm winter.”
Every winter will be miraculously warm from now on, which is what this warble gloaming lark is all about.
So do we pray for the climate catastrophe to speed up to save lives? Or slow down, to kill people?
I don’t understand how the same politicians who said “if the restrictions / masks / lockdowns / clot shots, save one life it’ll be worth it (ie: fuck the economy)” are now saying “we need to kill nearly 4,000 pensioners to save 1.4 billion”…..
A brighter government would have modified the triple lock on pensions to be the highest of the three measures over a period of time rather than just the year in question. This would stop pensions growing faster than everything else. The saving would allow the winter fuel payment to be retained as part of the pension, making life easier for those unable to budget for the greater costs that arise in winter.
@andyf
I thought that the whole reason for the triple lock was to ensure that pensions do grow faster than everything else over time? To gradually catch up with the pensions that other countries have, compared to which the UK’s pension is amongst the lowest.
If you’re 67+ and haven’t learned how to budget for seasonal expenses, a summer holiday, Christmas presents, higher gas bills, then you frankly are not going to be helped by being paid your £300 in a lump sum. The most adult portion of the population are being treated like kids up until now. If they really do have the brains of kids due to ageing, there’s a range of other benefits for them, attendance allowance, carers, SMI council tax discount.
While she’s at it, Reeves should cancel the £10 christmas bonus payment for *everyone* on the DWP computer.
@John Tee
“pensions that other countries have”
Countries paying higher state pensions than us tend to have higher NI (or Social Security) rates. In many countries, people don’t save into private pensions as the state pension is sufficient. In the UK we pay less NI and tend to save into our own pensions.
In most countries the state pension is higher for those that have contributed more – something we no longer have.
So comparisons are pretty meaningless.
@AndyF
That’s been my thought for quite a while. 5 years seems like a good horizon. You could even guarantee that the nominal amount received will not go down on a year-to-year basis, thereby “upgrading” to a “quadruple lock”
She could just make it taxable, so those below the tax threshholdwho need it most get the full whack, those on standard rate get 80%, higher rate get 60%, top rate only get half with minimal extra admin cost.
One good thing about this fuss is that over 5% of those eligible for Pension Credit who weren’t getting it have applied in only seven weeks
@Bongo
A surprising large proportion of the population at any age are completely unable to budget. Even otherwise intelligent people. I knew a chap who was a partner at a top London law firm (Magic Circle). His accountant told him that HMRC owed him 40k, so he immediately went out and spent it. A day or so later the accountant clarified that he had misunderstood and that HMRC was owed 40k. The family lived on bread and baked beans for months.
“A surprising large proportion of the population at any age are completely unable to budget.”
I have a relative like this. 62, has always held down a job, seems to spend his money as soon as he gets it and is constantly lurching from crisis to crisis. Whenever some completely predictable expense comes along it’s a problem because he’s permanently skint.
I was on a FB conversation relating to something tangential (Sky using ‘CYM’ to represent Wales) – got into discussion with a ‘Woke’ acquaintance who made the comment that basically tomorrow belongs to ‘The Wokerati’.
Grenfell memorial, BLM, DIE, Big Trans – these were all fait accomplis and you had better suck it up.
This is a Government of Racists for Racists. Steve is spot on.
They cancelled the winter fuel payments because it helped white people.
Labour isn’t going to help white people, it wants you outnumbered, dead, broke, or in prison.
Possibly true. But whatever the motivation – pensioners vote Tory? – the basic policy is a sound one. This ‘millionaire’ pensioner living quite comfortably on £55k pa wants to see welfare-dependence reduced. Many more state handouts should be means-tested. And no or very few pensioners will die without the WFA: they and their families will have to budget…
Theo – Possibly true. But whatever the motivation
Malice.
Theo
That’s a fair point if they weren’t replacing the indigenous population and frittering away money on the non-productive public sector – both of which cost considerably more than the Winter Fuel Allowance.
How much would it cost the curajus state to means test every £300 benefit? My guess is ~£500.
Nice cartoon in the Speccie: “Oh dear. I was hoping our fuel allowance would pay for our Oasis ticktes.”
@ Chris Miller
The reason we don’t means test a lot of benefits is because the administration costs more than the benefits. As Labour will find out with the WFA.
CM/JS
See our host’s article on Substack about the US’s largely means-tested welfare system. Sounds good to me…
JS: The reason we don’t means test a lot of benefits is because the administration costs more than the benefits. Once true, but why still now? And if true, streamline the inefficient administration or abolish the benefit…
V_P: mine is a fair point whatever Labour thinks and/or does, because universal benefits = socialism = welfare dependence…
VP – That’s a fair point if they weren’t replacing the indigenous population and frittering away money on the non-productive public sector
Zackly my friend. We’re constantly gaslighted into thinking that you’re the nutter, you’re the bad guy, you’re the swivel-eyed racist lunatic… for not… wanting to ram the country full of dodgy looking young men – with no marketable skills other than “delivery driver” or “cleaner” – some/many? of whom turn out to be violent, stabby mentalists and/or sex criminals.
I’m not a racist, I watched Desmond’s every week and laughed at the jokes.
Germany has recently suffered 3 high profile public stabathons by migrant men, it’s why AfD and why Scholz has gone cold on Schengen. Which the parochial British Remainer press and political bubble will largely ignore in their tiresome Euromaniacal obsession with getting back to the good jobs and fabulous Monkeypox orgies in Brussels, but Germany turning off Schengen is Yuge news. It’s a diplomatic Nord Stream 2 explosion under one of the Eee-Yew’s architectural pillars, a mini Deutschsit. Btw, maybe people would be more welcoming of refugees if they stopped trying to kill us? Maybe we would be more credulous of Net Zero if you didn’t simultaneously insist on importing a city the size of Birmingham every single year, requiring enormous additional CO2 emissions (boo!) on our part, now and forever more? I’m just trying to do joined up thinking here, folx.
Yes, not all refugees are violent crims and probably the great majority are not, but that violent minority keeps appearing in the news, doesn’t it? Obviously the solution is to refer to the stabber as “a Stuttgart man” or whatever the local town recently blessed and spattered with Diversity (why does our Greatest Strength have to make women feel afraid to walk the streets at night? Just asking.) happens to be, but that’s not working either. Because the internet.
Hence, why Elon Musk is in the crosshairs. Have you noticed how vicious the press is to him, since he bought Twitter? It’s really evil and nasty, they’ve been monstering him worse than Gary Glitter. I am a paranoid psychiatric patient on brain medication, so take this for what it’s worth, but I believe TPTB in America and Europe are looking to put him in jail before the US presidential election. My spidey sense is tingling.
Remember after he bought Twitter, and it turned out a bunch of letter agency feds were on the payroll, and/or had superuser access to the database, under the days BE (before Elon)? It’s very important to them to control the internet (i.e. you). Censoring the internet was one of the very few things Treeza May (isn’t it funny how her malignant reign was so consequential?) actually fought for, as Pee Emm. Why, may you ask, waste political capital on something unpopular that nobody asked for? Story of our lives.
They know the chickens are up t’ something. And they don’t like it.
Stop giving them money. Purge them from council housing lists. Bring back vagrancy laws. Deport any convicted of an imprisonable crime.
One of the reasons for the demographic crash of native British is the impossibility of getting a house big enough to raise kids in.
“We need immigrants to do the jobs that the natives won’t do.” Bollocks. Reduce Universal Credit and pay more for low skilled labour. (And don’t you start, Timmy. The bins still need emptying even if the marginal profit is negative.)
Let’s have dynamic benefits:
A month that isn’t December when the wind blows and the sun shines, then your Giro from the DWP reduces.
But when there’s a dunkelflaute your Giro goes up.
Because some dudes who are grown adults spunk anything they get by the end of the week and might plausibly be helped by the government micromanaging their seasonal spunkings when they’re 67+.
Not.
philip – the amazing wealth creating benefits of Britain’s wonderful immigration system:
Our offices used to be cleaned by chatty old white ladies with strong local accents. Now it’s all recently arrived Africans. Some of them are very friendly (the girls) but some of the men (the younger ones) refuse to speak to us office dwellers, they just glare at you as if they hate you. And perhaps they do.
We still have the chatty old white ladies, only they’re now collecting state pensions instead of working, and we’re now paying Mwengwe tax credits, housing benefits, plus free education and healthcare and council-provided interpreters for his wife and six children, so he can cheaply hoover the carpets in an office building 6,000 miles from his original home.
And the toilets are no cleaner.
This is an amazing British success story, if you believe the CBI. We have successfully growened the GDP, if you believe the Treasury. Trebles all round!
“A surprisingly large proportion of the population at any age is completely unable to budget”
Can’t means won’t, as I was always told at school.
not all refugees are violent crims and probably the great majority are not
True, I’m sure, but I don’t give a fuck. Talking of gaslighting, they’ve even got you doing it. None of these fuckers are genuine refugees.
As for ‘regular’ immigration, importing peasants from backwards violent shitholes does not do the country any good. Every single one would be a net cost, even if they integrated smoothly, which of course they don’t. Especially as there are millions of non-working natives.
The post-Brexit wave of 3rd world immigration wave was a direct attack on Britain’s working classes. Even under the existing immigration/benefits complex, there was no reason that Ugandans could get in but Poles not. They both operated under the same rules. Brexit hasn’t stopped Romanian gypsy beggars or Albanian criminals coming in, has it? It is a big ‘fuck you’ from the Establishment.
Steve @ 6.40 “Yes, not all refugees are violent crims and probably the great majority are not”.
Saw a meme a day or two ago on an American site:
“Some who want to come here are bad people. Violent, criminal, gang members etc. We don’t want them here.
Some on the other hand are decent, honest, hard working. We don’t want them either”.
Steve @ 11.40 (i’m not stalking you, honest…..). We had a cleaner at my old place of work, a lovely lady called Elizabeth from Colombia. She started teaching me Spanish. We had a conversation one day and I asked her if she liked England. She replied “I like English people, I don’t like the foreigners……”.
One thing that has me confused (well, one amongst many tbh), if the government knows that there are 800,000 pensioners not applying for pension credit they are entitled to, why don’t the government kick some arses in the DWP and tell them to give the pension credit to those 800,000 pensioners without having to fill in a meaningless form?
Marius – None of these fuckers are genuine refugees
Yarp, I’m not too precious about the legal pretense (refugees, asylum seekers, migrants) they use to get here, that’s just for obfuscating to the general public.
An ostensibly law abiding toilet cleaner and his six kids from Wakanda should no more be here than Wild Wacky Acid Man was.
Addolff – Marvelous 🙂