Re: winter fuel payment
 

I think that by then it would be rather more than 140 pounds.
It is a really difficult conundrum for everyone that have quite a few years until they receive their pension. The problem with people providing their own pensions is how would they do it. The private sector has proved time and time again that they cannot be trusted to come forth with the money and even if they do what type of tinkering will future governments do. For every politician that says it will be ringfenced there is another who will change it.
Someone I know was going to buy a second house to use as a pension, great while prices rise but of what use would it be today presuming he could even sell the second house.
Anyone who thinks that they can pay for a pension using shares lives in cloud cuckoo land and has been proved to be useless over the years unless you are very lucky.
The next problem is the low and very low paid workers, how do they pay for a pension. They do some of the most important jobs for any society so do we just throw them out onto the street.
Unlike MT I would hate to see us back in the Victorian era.

Graham

Re: winter fuel payment
 

I wish I had a second house to sell around here, they sell within 3 or 4 weeks and always go for more than the asking price...would be a nice little pension pot.

Re: winter fuel payment
 

If only it were Greek banks and institutions that were exposed to the Greek bonds...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...s-bank-exposed

Re: winter fuel payment
 

Maybe instead of expecting the state to provide our living costs as a right our entitlement, we start doing more for ourselves and by relying more on our extended families to help.....existing benefits should apply to help those who can't or don't have the means to help themselves.

Re: winter fuel payment
 

very true and a crackin post.:thumbsup:

Re: winter fuel payment
 

I am sure that system is very widely spread throughout the world, places like Ethiopia, Somalia, India etc.

Re: winter fuel payment
 

The following was taken from The Times letters to editor 21-10-11

Pension Poverty
Sir, I am saddened but not surprised to see MPs calling for the method of calculating state pension increases to be amended (by which I mean, of course, lowered). It seems to have been forgotten that pensioners already stand to lose 0.4 percent of their annual increase because of the change from RPI to CPI.
A single pensioner's minimum guaranteed weekly income is £137.35 but the official poverty level is £178 a week, and 83 percent of pensioner households receive the majority of their income from state pensions or benefits. After reduction in winter fuel payments and the increases in fuel prices many pensioners are contemplating the stark choice between food and heat.
David Smith
Chair, National Pensions Convention
Devon

Re: winter fuel payment
 

Uhhh the extended family are in the shit too except for those Directors who are now earning 50% more salary than a year ago but we are all in it together!

Re: winter fuel payment
 

No, it was in Spain and other Mediterranean countries until very recently....lower taxes and more choice and independence......why do you think countries are in so much debt? because they are forking out more than they are receiving....now look where we are at.

Re: winter fuel payment
 

Mostly to immigrants legal or otherwise who have never paid into the system... but who have an automatic entitlement to all the free healthcare, help and benefits going.:eek:
Why do you think so many head for the soft touch UK, it looks after them better than it's own! :thumbdown:

At least Spain has the good sense not to through money away on non nationals unless they have contributed to the pot.

Re: winter fuel payment
 

My neighbour is a teacher, retired on max pension after a full career teaching, deputy head, he's so burnt out he can only manage three days a week as a supply teacher!;) He likes to play golf on the other four. And he's far from alone, there are loads that teach for a few days a week as supply teachers, so not content with a full pension, they want to keep the would be teachers out of a job.

Re: winter fuel payment
 

doesnt sound very burnt out to me, they say it is stressful on the golf course, all that competition

if there are all these teachers around why are the kids in classes of 25-30 when they could be in 15-20

better utilisation of rescources - both labour and money

Re: winter fuel payment
 

I think part of it is that the schools want to keep the supply staff who can keep order. Many supply staff can't. This causes chaos in the schools. I don't know how many of you have been in a UK school on a normal day (not a "show" day when the best kids are wheeled out) you would be shocked at the behaviour. Even 10 years ago it was bad and you have no discipline measures available to you, send them to the head of year? They just tell him/her to f**k off as well. I couldn't believe it when I came to Portugal, the atmosphere in the classroom was so different and most people wanted an education. I, a socialist, began to think that education as a right should be taken away so people valued it. Of course when I thought it through I know it's not feasable.

Re: winter fuel payment
 

You missed the irony, the smiley! ;) Someone claimed that most are burnt out, I was just making the point that many aren't, even after retiring they still want to carry on working, earning more money. Still, they are on half term now, so another chance to recharge their batteries.:)

Re: winter fuel payment
 

My husband took early retirement from teaching in 2004. He was a good teacher, had no problems with discipline and for most of his career enjoyed it (although he still found it very stressful).

Towards the end of his career he found it so stressful and so full of unneccessary form filling and other admin, coupled with schools being classed as 'institutionally racist' because teachers would not allow children to call them 'man' or 'honkey', also no way to enforce discipline,that added to his health problems, he could stand it no more and took his (reduced by 1/3) pension as early as he could. And this was in the best non fee-paying school in our city.

He has not been in a classroom in any capacity since and would rather work in B and Q.

Most teachers I know have retired early. I only know one who carried on until 60, and by that time he had just been riot controlling for five years, (he was in one of the worst schools in our city) not even trying nor expecting to teach anything. :(