Winter Fuel Allowance

[tonicha]

I know this is an emotive subject.

Grumpy has, for the last 2 years, had the winter fuel allowance, which has paid for us to get over a ton of wood, to keep us warm at night, in the winter. Believe me, you wouldn't like to be in our house without any heat, when it's damp and cold outside. We also use an oil filled electric heater. This is downstairs. Upstairs gets no heat at all, apart from any sunshine during the day.

So the government have decided, that as we live in a warm/hot country, he is to lose this benefit.

I've just looked at the weather forecast for the next few days.

We're down to 3C at night- which is colder than England. It is now 17C in the lounge, with all the doors shut and we're wearing at least 2 layers each, plus socks and slippers. Grumpy is actually wearing a coat.

Can find no logic in this - yes, we are in a warm country - during the day and also during the summer. Some fiends in the north of the country have snow most of the winter and are down to minus figures. They light their fire in the morning and have central heating too, same as we'd have done in England.

Some people we know asked their local junta (government) what benefits they would/could get. They were told, in no uncertain terms, that as they hadn't paid into anything in Portugal, why would they expect to get anything back.

[TheOstrich]

It's a difficult one, Ton - you paid your money into the NI scheme, no doubt, when you lived and worked in the UK, so (certainly in my book) you're much more entitled to receive benefits than those, currently so desperate to get into the UK from elsewhere in the world, who have contributed nothing. Would that we were less of a soft touch and more like your junta refusing to pay anything .... but that's another story!

But on the other hand, you're an easy target in the drive for austerity cuts which are affecting those of us who still live here more and more every day.

[Rodo]

It is a difficult one. You will struggle to find much sympathy from most people over here I'm afraid. Quite often we wish our temperatures at night would go UP to 3º. The main problem is elderly people living alone who have very little income and who are really struggling between having a bit of heating or having food to eat.
Most people will see them as the priority, not people living abroad where temperatures rarely get down to freezing like they do here.

Sorry if I come across as sounding unfeeling, but am just trying to paint the broader picture.

[victor]

But overall this is a piddling amount of money to save when compared to the millions given out as foreign aid to countries that definately do not need it

[tonicha]

Rodo, I knew that when I posted, that there is a fine line.

More elderly people over here die each year, because of the cold - our homes are not built for winter. Ours has no insulation and it's quite modern.

I'm not looking for sympathy. We made the choice to come over here - the cost of living is cheaper.

We manage, each month, on Grumpy's state pension. And each month, I'm able to save a little out of that for the big bills, which are in the main, almost the same as in England. The only things cheaper is council tax and car tax. We pay 50 euros a month for electric and then also have to pay about another 100 euros each year, to top it up. Gas is 200 a year, more if we have visitors, as it's bottled.

BUT we do have friends who live in the north, who will also lose their heating allowance, as Portugal is classed as a hot country. They've had their central heating and wood-burners on since October. And will continue to do so until probably April. The same as England.

What does annoy me that the bods who decide that we live in a hot country do not do their research. How can Italy, Spain and France be described as hot? In the summer, in parts, yes. In the winter, no.

And the state pension here is 350 euros A MONTH!!!!

[Kaz]

I think it really should be means tested My MIL gets it, she lives in a 4 bed bungalow with two reception rooms, the place is huge, and she is pretty comfortably off. She would shoot me for saying it but I don't think she should receive it, she can afford to pay for her heat herself IMO

[Workingman]

It really is a difficult one, Ton.

The original idea was to give UK based pensioners a bit of help in the winter months, then it got extended to all pensioners.... and that meant ALL, there was no means-test. Now it is going back to the original idea in there austere times.

The problem is that once a benefit is given, as in your case, it is hard to take it away.

I am of the view that I paid in for x years and that I should be able to take out regardless of where I live.... it is what I signed up for aged 16 when I started work. It is not my fault that the State did not invest my money wisely, or chose to spend it on other things. It has a contract with me and should honour it.

[tonicha]

My parents in law refused to take it - we needed it, to be honest. Now we have that extra 3,000 a year coming in, it'll be helpful but if it goes, it goes. That meant we could burn more than 3/5 logs a night, and I'm not kidding, Grumpy would only bring in that many

It just annoys me that we're classed as a hot country. We're blinkin' not.

[cromwell]

If you've paid in, then you should be able to draw out. At a time when big business is being allowed to tax dodge on an industrial scale it is a mean trick to pick on pensioners abroad. If Google, Vodaphone, Starbucks, Yorkshire Water, Amazon et al paid their whack we would be literally billions a year better off.

[Kaz]

The problem is that the goal posts are shifting! For example until I was 50 I thought I'd get my pension at 60, and possibly Mick could take early retirement, but they changed it and now I will be 66, so that plan is blown out of the water I thought I had a contract with the government for that Frank, but it didn't stop them reneging on it!

I don't see why the better off pensioners should get it, not when they are cutting back so brutally on many benefits for people in difficult situations