This cannot go on...

[Kaz]

Doreen got £600, and said similar to you medsec

[Workingman]

Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the £400 energy payment and the £500 winter fuel allowance (£900 in total)... but between them I will only be forking out about £175 of my own money for my whole energy bill for the 2022-23 financial year. This is madness!

This has been done scatter-gun style - everyone who qualifies gets the payments whether they need them or not.

I do not need all the help and some of my payments could have gone to someone more needy. Means-testing, although bureaucratic, would have been my way.

[Suff]

It has been captured in the political echo chamber. Now the press have made it so toxic that they will spend twice as much as needed to ensure that nobody can point a finger.

[Workingman]

There are households on £100k plus who do not really need the £400 energy payment.

There are pensioners on the standard £185.15 per week OAP pension, plus their company pension and other benefits, who do not really need all of the £500 winter fuel allowance, but they still get it. I am one.

Then there are young working families on minimum wage and struggling like hell - no winter fuel payment for them.

I know who I would rather help the most.

[cromwell]

It is odd.
My late father in law worked on the pit top. As part of his job he got free coal. Then we went all gas, so he got a payment to compensate for the loss of his free coal, which continued into his pension.
Then he got the winter fuel allowance, so in a sense he was getting paid twice for the same thing.

I don't see how we can go on paying so many people money they don't need. Some do need it though.
It just seems to me that Covid or rather the media pressure over Covid, has led to a situation where if anybody is in any sort of trouble no matter what, it's the governments job to sort it out otherwise they are heartless killers.

[victor]

Well a simple solution really although obviously not nationally -- if you do not need it find a family that could use it

[Workingman]

So, how would that work? Who puts who in contact with whom?

Man with five bed detached drives Jag down terraced street handing out tenners. Please!

We have a local old people's centre of which I am a member. It gives out financial help, food drops, insulation tips / work, and so on.

A lot of these people are really on the edge, so I help out. Try going in an 80 year old's council flat with concrete floors and walls and piss poor glazing and see how you get on. We have helped install thermal underlay on the floors and thermal plasterboard on some of the walls, certainly in the living room. Heavy curtains from rail to floor and draught excluders on doors also work a treat and cost pennies. There are times when the old ways work really well.

Simple, it certainly isn't.