Well has George Osborne lost it ....... 7 countries in Europe where Ex Pat OAP`S will loose their Winter Fuel Allowance have been announced FRANCE is one of the seven countries but guess what ITALY is not included....something to do with average temperatures !! so if you live in Calais no Winter Fuel Allowance but if you live in the toe of Italy you will get your cheque !!!.....madness!!
huh. I live in Alsace where -10 in January is not unusual. I won't stay there when I retire though.
I didnt not mean to imply he shouldnt get it just that if he was means tested he wouldnt i realise you didnt advocate means testing perhaps its in the reading or how the writer puts it over, we had a lecturer at college when i was taking my engineering exams he was pulled up so many times by a guy about his spelling he eventually turned on the guy and told him i am teaching bloody engineering if you want english take another course, thats my excuse and i’m sticking to it
Then there is the argument if you have worked all your life and payed into the system surely you are paying for those benefits be it WFA, child benefit or if the unfortunate happened and you lost your job unemployment benefit and the last but not least your pension why then should it be means tested, because you did well at school had a good education and had a well paid job, though having a good education does not always mean a well paid job but we diversify, someone who worked saved and made adequate provision for their retirement is to be penalised where yet another may have worked or not, not given a thought to their retirement is then compensated by various benefits, if the figures are correct a single person is not allowed to claim more than £350 per week thats £18kpa that will include their housing benefits also, my step daughter single parent get £372 per month housing paid, my age related pension is £7.500pa thats after 50 years of work, i add thats to keep both of us as my wife is to young to qualify yet and they want to take £200 off me good job my company had a pension i joined as well, bit of a slap in the face for parents who tell their children to do well at school and get a job how many kids are saying why i can get 18 grand for stopping in bed and get my WFA and a pension when i retire
Doreen if he was means tested then he would almost certainly loose it with £19k pa pension as a miner plus £10k as a postman plus his pension of £6k no i dont begrudge him he has worked for it he worked through the strike lost his mates and his parents dont have much to do with him because of it still as all the family were miners but his attitude of its only £200 a year i i lost it it wouldnt make much difference upset me maybe not to him but a lot over in France could feel the pinch on a cold winters night and we all most certainly worked for it as well
Talking to my brother in law about this he has just started to claim his WFA he is an ex miner still claiming his free coal allowance living in a £750k+11 acres house on the Shropshire Wale border he thinks i am making such a fuss over £200 his words of why bother claiming incensed me, why is he claiming his plus free coal, because he can was his reply
love this comment
Italy has sea all around it that is why it is warmer
when we came back to uk after 8 years in SW France for family reasons - everyone said to us it must feel so much colder herein Devon than in France i said "no it was much colder in the winter there and when we were there we had NO WFA"
We need more hot air and not so many dampeners.
@Cate. Brian produces the air and we pea eaters the methane!
@Jane. Quite so Jane mushy peas are indeed marrowfats. I have yet to find dried marrowfats in France but pois cassé produce a very close approximation to mushy peas save that they lack that viridian green so much admired by the Bitish.
Surely that is split peas, mushy peas are marrowfats.
Purée de pois cassés. Façon grand-mère if you must. Purée Saint-Germain if you're New Labour or posh. Not to be confused with Paris Saint Germain which I believe is a football team.
mushy, pasty as a synonym, comes out as pâteux surely - so petits pois pâteux.
Can you help me? I was trying to translate "Mushy Peas" into French the other day but only came up with "Pate des Petits Pois a l'Anglais". That doesn't seem to give enough emphasis to the tactile qualities of the product. Should it be Anglaise also- but pate is NM?
No, cos he's never had sludgy stuff like guacamole, he prefers to stick to sturgeon's eggs. How was he to know they didn't have that in a Hartlepool chippie?
Ah yes the "parachutiste de Hartlepool" I don't believe the story that he thought the mushy peas at the Hartlepool chip shop was guacamole. It couldn't be true....
Along with P Mandelson Esq! I'm afraid I'm almost out of gin and certainly out of palaces, chateaux, manoirs etc although according to Patrimoine de France we do live in a Maison Bourgeoise (aka Chateau de la Penurie, Rue des Ruines, Skintsville sur Notalot)
I believe he only accepts invitations to the floating Mediterranean Gin Palaces of the Russian oligarchs and then only in the summer recess.
:-D