Monday, 29 July 2024

Cold Comfort

The pay deal with the junior doctors is a welcome sign of what trade unionism can achieve. Now we need some of it for the low paid. But Labour in Opposition would have torn a Conservative Government to pieces if it had tried to means test the winter fuel payment. Not so much as to have restored universality in office. But even so.

Pensioners are famously hard to reach with means tested benefits, and energy bills are 92 per cent higher than they were in 2021, but Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are surrounded by nepo babies who have no idea why anyone would need the winter fuel payment. Come the next General Election, then the pensioners will not blame a Government that had left office five years earlier. Nor should they.

4 comments:

  1. A lot of charities won't be getting those donations this Christmas.

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    1. The Daily Mail and Jeremy Vine should be on the case. And will be.

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  2. Imagine if the Tories vote against this.

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    1. I fully expect them to. The same goes for Reform UK. All four stripes of Unionist from Northern Ireland voted against the two-child benefit cap and will no doubt vote against this. Labour is to the right of the lot of them.

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