GE 2024

May get refined yet to be fair. It's only July!

I think the difficulty in doing it in a more nuanced way is how do you administer it when people have non PAYE income and don't do tax returns.

So the fuel benefit is (was) just for pensioners, but all of them got it.. it just low income pensioners?

If so, I rate this as a step in the wrong direction. The main issue there is if other poor people aren’t getting it, not that some rich people are. Sometimes, a universal benefit is just the way to go. Like, y’know, health and education and roads and stuff like that.

I get an electricity rebate despite having no need of one. If I object to it in the grounds that I don’t need it, I can give it to charity. If I object on the grounds that people like me shouldn’t get government support, I am a fucking idiot incapable of understanding that the vast majority of government spending benefits me.

I did find myself thinking about this overnight, and trying to square my support for the changes, alongside my general support of UBI, and not managing to do so. I'd be curious what the cost of administration of a more complicated system for the fuel support is. Is it basically cost neutral just to give it to everyone over 65?

Are you generally in favour of theoretically hypothecated benefits? If there are people too poor* to heat their homes, give them benefits so that they can, regardless of whether they are pensioners.

Fire-hosing money at over 65s (because they are the most likely to vote) is a really bad way to run a benefits system.

• • Sorry, but if you are old and want to keep living alone in the big house where your kids grew up you aren't in that category and my sympathy is limited.

Honestly this is, anecotally, a huge problem in our society - and a large part of the housing shortage.

Yes, but look what happens when you try to tackle it...
The Daily Mail rolls out some story of a 90-year-old war widow who has lived in her four-bedroom ex-council house all her life and it's not fair to ask her to move or pay more tax (ignoring the fact she bought it in the 1980s for 15k and it's now worth £750k), even though she's lived alone since her kids moved out 40 years ago. Story goes viral on social media, everyone is up in arms, and the plans get dropped.

But I totally agree - pensioners are the biggest problem in state expenditure. People are living longer, so we have more pensioners than ever before (and more adult social care costs).
The state pension makes up the vast majority of welfare spending, but instead the state goes after the unemployed/disabled as "benefit scroungers" - you can't go after pensioners, as they vote.

(A friend of my wife's has just been jailed for eight months for £20k benefit fraud (long story short, she has a serious long-term health condition with good days and very bad days, advised to apply based on her very bad days, approved for disability support. On her good days, she runs, including long-distance. Her ex's new partner (or her new partner's ex, I forget which) reported her Facebook running pictures to DWP, who prosecuted - they'll go after £20k benefit fraud, but its not worth going after £400m spent on dodgy PPE...)

That sucks. It's exactly the reason that Mrs. Seán and I are extremely fortunate in that, she too has good and bad days relating to a health issue and hasn't been able to work (reliably, in gainful employment) for 18 + months or so now having left her last gig following some time off sick.

Fortunate in that having done the sums we decided we could just about get by on my income income alone. So she's effectively retired. Maybe one day take a casual job if she wants to (or is able) but the point is the ballache, worry and requisite constraints resultant of her claiming any sort of incapacity benefit (personal pride thing aside, which is also an actual thing) would've been completely counter productive.

You mean like a benefit for a specific thing like heating costs in winter?

If so, ideally no.. I prefer we just make sure that everybody has what they need to live and don’t piss around with too many pissy little schemes. However, in the UK where there is a material increase in energy costs at a certain time of year, I don’t think having a ‘seasonal’ benefit is unreasonable. Obviously I would say that, at the very least, it should be available to people other than pensioners.

The case for something like that is less compelling down here. The need it probably greater in summer when people need the aircon, but I don’t think the health risks of homes being too warm as as severe. Our energy supplement is just a vote-winning ‘here’s some free cash cos the leccy bills are a bit nuts’.

I also have zero fucks to give for people who are equity rich and ‘struggling’ with the cost of anything. But given that an awful lot of people, old and young, are not that, I don’t think they are relevant here. That’s a different issue and best tackled through other policies (such as LVT, which is my go-to double whammy reform alongside UBI).

Thing is, energy companies will push you very hard (including making it the cheapest way to pay) to go to a monthly direct debit based on an average useage over the year, so not many people are actually paying higher bills in the winter.

Normalising multi-generational households could help both this and the social care "crisis".

The benefits system always seems a bit of mess with various daft examples of people receiving money rather than working.

My wife’s aunt works three days a week and then qualifies for hundreds p/m housing benefit as she has a child under 18. All because of poor life choices when previously she’s owned a house and sent their eldest to private school.

She qualified for all those extra covid fuel payments and bought an air conditioning unit with it.

She sounds cool.

Maybe she put the aircon unit the wrong way around, thus heating her house and cooling the globe at the same time.

Bit of a legend if you ask me.

It’s a shame she’s not making use of it in this weather as she’s invaded our* holiday.

*mother in law kindly pays for a lovely house in Cornwall each year for us, and she books a few nights nearby but spends all the time at the house and just witters nonsense.

Priti Patel out of the running to be Tory leader. Dodgy Bob the winner in the first round.