This week’s news about the changes to the winter fuel allowance prompted to me to start this thread. I didn’t know if it belonged in the news or personal matters category, so made it an ssp thread.
How do you feel about intergenerational differences in opportunity and wealth? Do we have a moral obligation to sympathise? Do old people not realise how good they had it for so long? Is it finally time and ‘good’ pensioners need to adjust in a way working people and families did over the last three or so years? When was the last time Age UK had anything to say on anything?
Wealthy country should be able to take care of their young and old in adequate ways, but how are you spending any leftover pounds between the two?
Hard to say. I live on a street which is a bit of a jarring mixture of affordable housing association flats and massive houses that as the area’s become more gentrified have rocketed up in value, meaning on the one hand I see or occasionally speak to elderly neighbours who can barely afford to live, and on the other have parents of friends sitting on a few hundred grand of bricks and mortar they’ve paid ten or even five percent of that value for.
No doubt there are lots (and I mean lots) of people who have just benefited from age, and it’s easy to feel angry at that if you’re younger and struggling to pay your rent or get on the property ladder, but I probably wouldn’t waste too much time considering that my parents, born in the sixties, would’ve experienced double-digit unemployment, strikes, record interest rates (on cheaper property, admittedly) as young adults, or that my grandparents, born in the twenties, would’ve seen war, deprivation, a pre-NHS Britain, etc.
seems really cynical of labour, they know elderly people are much less likely to vote labour so they are disposable, it is just as bad as the conservatives disregarding young people. should just be based on need/means, if older people don’t need extra support they shouldn’t get it just because they are old, if they need it then they absolutely should. I don’t know much about this change but gather they are taking away from people who do actually need it? If there isn’t enough money to go around select one billionaire at random and take all their money and let it be a warning to others to not be that greedy.
as a group older people did consistently vote for a government that inflicted austerity, while being more protected from the consequences, I do think that is bad. I don’t think older people in need should be punished for it, but do think there should be more awareness raised about how bad the last government was for younger people, and other groups. obviously a wider problem of people not being very civic minded, approaching voting like a consumer seeing which party offers them the most, rather than what they offer those most in need and what is best for the country. doubt labour or the media are going to encourage that discussion.
I’m just not really sure that many older people have it that great tbh
My mum had to pay nearly £20,000 out of pocket to get her hip replaced. She’s one of the lucky ones who had savings and has paid off her mortgage. It’s absolutely crazy that someone could be waiting two or three years in constant pain and with deteriorating mobility to get an operation on the NHS.
Lots of reasonably well off but not particularly wealthy boomers are also having to do similar.
All of our living and working conditions are deteriorating.
It’s now tied to pension credit, which I assume is an administrative thing as much as anything, but essentially it’s designed to top up very low incomes only.
I was talking to my mum about it and she has lost her winter payment. She’s not well off by any means, she has a small NHS pension from the last 20 years or so of her working life, and she owns half her house outright. And she’s above the pension credit limit. So I guess I’ll be supporting her again this winter…
It’s intersectional, generally speaking by having more assets, working rights when they were at work, and ofc being the largest cohort of people preventing any genuine left wing economics at the ballot box, I do have less sympathy for them than for young people. But obviously individually vulnerable old people deserve to be looked after by the state.
Be interesting to know if the administrative clusterfuck that Labour has caused by announcing this without any plans in place for the massive increase in pension credit claims costs more than it saves. Sensible would probably have been to do it next year.
By making it means tested, Labour would argue that they are removing the winter fuel allowance from those that do not need it. A universal benefit like that seems incongruent compared with all the bureaucratic hoops you need to jump through for e.g., child support.
I think this is interesting. I would struggle to think of anything any Tory government from Cameron onwards did for younger people. Maybe some of the help around first time house buying (albeit imperfect)? Not the olds fault but the young were often collateral in return for the perpetuation of privileged economic fortunes.
Of course, some of this isn’t just to the oldest generation’s benefit. You will now have the greatest transfer of wealth from boomers to their gen x and/ or millennial children.
My in-laws had to be the primary carers for their parents until they (the in-laws) were into their seventies. A seventy year old man having to go and help up a ninety year old woman whenever she had a fall, several times a week and at all hours, with no official help or support. It’s wrecked them physically and mentally. One more demonstration of how the social contract in this country has frayed to nothing.
I worry about my parents, they are not rich pensioners, do not own home and live in social housing. They’ve never driven, rarely go on holiday, and have never gone abroad.
Any money then do have they like to spend on their grandchildren, and they seem happy with. Coronation street and EastEnders etc.
I do worry if the winter fuel payment will affect them. They say they are ok, but I do think it’s so I wont worry. I’ve helped them out in the past financially
Not all pensioners are rich and it quite annoys me sometimes those who assume all pensioners are boomers and have to much wealth.
I’m not going to get much, if any inheritance. I’m assuming I’ll be paying for funerals at the moment when the time comes.
One thing I would charge is increase inheritance got the most wealthy, it’s not right some richer kids get a bigger start in life, whilst others kids start in poverty.
