Even worse, when he did his social anthropology degree in Cambridge I taught the varmint!
Good for you Jane, the more of us do it then the more work it makes for them and the less their clever ideas appeal. If there are enough people writing, then they start counting numbers and get cautious. All fine by me and the price of a stamp is fair dales if I can't get their email addresses.
No wonder she smiles so much- it's all those fences!
Clegg cost me a shedload!
Normal non-answer. Another politician with a degree in talking a lot but saying nothing. A plague on the lot of 'em!!!
Nick Clodd has responsibility for constitutional reform. Now I feel realllllllly assured (that nobody is on our side)!
As for the rest of it. She managed to say nothing in a lot of words, but how would she vote on the policy? Answers on the back of a pinhead please.
The answer to that David is for DC not to do so many stupid things. He has put himself into a corner by making a statement that the Winter Fuel Allowance will not be means tested, so they are having a go at us on trumped up figures to try and make savings.
I have asked our MP why they would spend money on a policy that is bound to be challenged at the European Commission?
Jane Ellison MP's reply to me- was yours the same?
"Dear Mr Rosemont
You wrote to me about earlier this year about the Pensions Bill. I thought that you would appreciate an update now that the Bill has completed all of its Commons stages.
First, you asked me to support New Clause 20 of the Pensions Bill, which would entitle UK pensioners living overseas to have their state pension uprated, in line with the UK state pension. Currently, the state pension is uprated abroad only where a relevant treaty or agreement exists. I appreciate your concerns on this matter, which I know has been the subject of discussion for many years, and understand that for some UK pensioners living abroad their state pension is an important part of their income.
This issue was debated during the recent Report Stage of the Pensions Bill. You can read the debate online here, and the response given to the debate by the Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, here. As you will see, the Minister did express sympathy with UK pensioners living overseas who have had their pension frozen at the level it was set when they emigrated. However, he explained that, particularly in the current economic climate, it would place too much pressure on the public finances, both now and in the long-term, to introduce the uprating which New Clause 20 called for. However, he did give assurances that the Government would continue to look at this issue.
With regard to the Winter Fuel Payments (WFPs), as you know, the Chancellor announced in the July Spending Review that the Government intends to withdraw WFPs from some UK pensioners living in a region with a higher average winter temperature than the warmest region of the UK (south west England). As my caseworker informed you in his email, another former constituent living abroad raised this issue with me earlier in the summer; to share their concerns, I wrote to Steve Webb. I drew the Minister’s attention to the point you and other constituents living abroad make – that, whilst summers in warmer climates can be hot, the winters can also be very cold. I attach a copy of the reply I received from the Minister (with the details of the original constituent on whose behalf I wrote redacted), although I realise you may find it disappointing.
Although these changes are current Government policy, they will not be implemented in this Parliament, and there is therefore likely to be further debate on them ahead of the 2015 General Election. This is certainly the case in an area like Battersea, and many young constituents have contacted me criticising the fact that pensioner benefits have been largely untouched in this Parliament, whilst some working age benefits have. Universal benefits attract particular comment as they are awarded irrespective of the level of past contribution.
You also asked me to support a change in the law so that UK citizens living aboard who have lived abroad for more than 15 years can maintain their entitlement to vote in UK general elections and European parliamentary elections. I appreciate your concerns and I did write to the Deputy Prime Minister, who has responsibility for constitutional reform, to share them. Ministers have stated that there are no immediate plans to change the legislation in this area. However, the Government does want to see more eligible overseas voters registered. To try to get those numbers up, it is lengthening the timetable for UK parliamentary elections from 17 to 25 working days. This will particularly benefit overseas voters, as they will have more time to return their postal vote.
Finally, you expressed disappointment that the Conservative Party had not implemented the change on Inheritance Tax pledged before the last election. I do appreciate your disappointment and was sorry to learn of the effect that this is having on your family’s financial situation. However, as you know, we did not win the last election and are in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who do not support this policy, and consequently we have been unable to proceed with it. Whilst this is frustrating, I do think that the Government has nonetheless achieved much that Conservative supporters can take pride in. This includes reducing the UK’s structural budget deficit by one third, raising the personal allowance threshold on Income Tax, supporting business and reforming welfare so that it will always pay to be in work and not living solely on benefits.
I am sorry that I cannot respond in more encouraging terms, but I hope that this information is helpful."
Very reassuring - not!
You're dead right there Mike. Mind you they manage to be pretty daft and/or duplicitous on many things: Equitable Life/Inheritance Tax/Winter Fuel/possible medical costs in Europe ....dedahdedahdedah. I know Camoron's secretary (Godmum to my son) and she asked me not to write so many letters to hiself!!!!!!!
I am protesting now Brian.
I have sent Roger's information to our MP, who is a prime fence sitter, and just fobs me off with the standard reply from the Minister of Pensions without taking any trouble to understand the situation.
He will have to do so now and if I receive another whitewash of a reply, I will write to the local paper for his constituency and put matters straight.
Mike, you may be right. I am not a Conservative, in fact I have and never have had a party that represents me because unlike people who use the word to embellish their party's image as something it is not, I am a socialist. No, not a communist, Stalinist, Labourite or anything people will label me with for lack of any other 'branding'. There are a fair few of us among the ex-patriots worldwide. We imply cannot live in our 'own' society any longer. However, above all else I have no prejudices generally about people's political allegiances with exception of those reactionaries who are anti-foreigner, Jew, Roma, disabled, unemployed and so on in an almost endless negative list.
People like IDS are beginning to adopt traits some of those extreme reactionaries hold to be the way the world must be. That is an authoritarian world with a ruling hegemony who are as rich as Croesus and the rest off us belong down the pit digging for coal and such things they use to justify our existence. It is why I find the policies of the present UK coalition so hateful and unjust but also, as a passing note, the present French government's position too, the USA and another lengthy list of supposedly democratic nations that are disabusing the majority of their people. Those countries also often have an alternative that is no better or even only worse. The present UK government has no actual mandate to do what it is doing and the fact that the majority of Lib Dems have not crossed the house is unbelievable.
If following your line of thought, if one single 'loyal' Tory voting from France (elsewhere too for other reasons perhaps) actually votes for them then they are shooting themselves in the foot if their party returns to power. It is their right to do so, but more fool them for being conned and lied to and then probably being among the better educated ex-pats who then protest loudest of all too late.
The Government claims that it has done something about the economy, but is strangely silent about the fact that it has done nothing about the National Debt. When they go into the next election, with every working voter owing a years salary to the Chinese, the outcome is not going to be good for them. So they are scratching around looking for pennies, because they have failed to do anything about the pounds. Well, here is a suggestion for them - why don't they take the Winter Fuel Allowance away from all those UK residents who spend their winters in Spain as a way of avoiding fuel bills?
For reasons I find it hard to understand, the majority of ex-pats seem to be Conservatives (or ex-Conservatives). With so little support in the home country, one has to question the sanity of alienating their few remaining overseas supporters.
Bravo and the more the merrier - except for IDS and his bureaucrats.
Perhaps the government in the light of the clear manipulation of climatic data should here the words "Judicial Review". I don't think I can remember a government in the last forty years which has had to turn tail/u turn so much as this. Meanwhile the Chump seems to shout louder and louder in the Commons. Really he is a disgrace . The Chump's performance would have been laughed out of court in my own modest Redbrick Debsoc so God knows what the Oxford Union would have made of his performance. But of course it doesn't really matter because we're just little people.I suspect, though I never asked, that my father might have been a working class Tory voter though I hope not. If he had been then I think that the comparison between Macmillan reading his Thucydides in the trenches of the Western Front and the Chump doing his PR briefings for a TV channel might have given him pause for thought.
Brian, I'm ready to join you on the barricades! I agree with the idea of bringing complaints to the CoJ.
Ditto, unpaid parish councillor (who made sure we played by the rules), unpaid governor, trustee of a number of charities who tended to save the government quite a lot of money and a few more things beside. I share your feelings about violence. The ones of one gender could be strung up by a part of their anatomy we will not mention but makes eyes water thinking about, the others - well there must be something equivalent.
Interestingly on Radio 4 Today this morning there was a piece about every birth in the UK costing the NHS £700 in professional negligence insurance premium. By having my daughter born here in France I reckon I SAVED the nasho 700 nicker. I deserve a medal, or at least a tax credit. I should have billed the people of Britain all my professional time given freely for about 15 years as unpaid elected chairman of a quango, unpaid director of Business Link, unpaid school governor etc etc etc. Maybe we could all earn "Community Stars" which go towards a few minor benefits (like being a bit warmer) in our old age. Of course civil servants and retired MPs make d'd certain they get theirs in C A S H ! Makes yer wanta do som't'ing very violent!
I was looking through the briefing papers Roger linked and then went for a wider media and other source search. I think what he has put up sums it up without going to town on the same all over again. Then up popped 'Premature Winter Deaths in Spain 16% higher than the UK.' posted by Clive Walley today and within that was a 10 year study by Dr John Healy, University College of Dublin. So I had a look at his study.
I do not know how the UK's the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, ever reached the figures he is using and if they were produced by civil servants then they were done simply to play his tune because they are totally disingenuous. Then the contradiction between what UEA's Climatic Research Unit say and what the Department for Work and Pensions says they say adds fuel to the flames IDS has lit. If he intends to defy the Court of Justice ruling then it is for every one of us who is willing to bring individual complaints to the CoJ, perhaps write standard 'complaints' for people who cannot write such things for them to sign and send in and hope that by delaying tactics this would cause the action can be forestalled at the least.
It is fairly obvious that they intend to find a way of entirely disenfranchising us all. Health benefits will go, all pensions and other benefits such as disability benefit will probably be frozen and eventually the 'next generation' may well be entirely excluded. Electoral 'reform' to Individual electoral registration (IER) from June next year will actually exclude some hundreds of thousands of people with voting rights and in the green and white papers leading up to its adoption it is fairly obvious those of us who live abroad can count the days until we are no longer eligible to register.
It is schematic undermining of democratic principles and I do not care which party is responsible, it just happens that IDS who was the champion of the deprived not so many years ago is punishing them for being poor, homeless, unemployed or whatever and some of us for daring to live elsewhere. I take David's point about Scotland, my origins in fact, however they have already made the rules and those exclude people living outside of Scotland for just about everything. So unless we are willing to migrate to that nice damp, cold place...
This is a win win policy but I shall not take it sitting back and saying there is nothing to be done. I shall look to putting up petitions on every campaigning organisation's site, go to the CoJ as said and make my little, not very significant presence be known. Whoever wishes to join me is welcome.
I agree with the sentiment wholeheartedly but unfortunately it is not being applied across the board fairly and the cost of applying it fairly, given the huge wastage and cost of administration (with attendant pensions for those doing the administration) means that those being taxed are paying more than would be fair whilst those reaping the benefits are often over reaping by design or will. In principle if there is to be WFP then I think the application should be to those really needing it, and not just to those of the right age in the UK (even if they are millionaires [and I know several getting it] and/or existing or former MPs with several homes and may not spend the winter in the UK anyway). If a geographical/weather basis needs to be used then it needs to be one that has some realistic interpretation of the climatic conditions actually applying. Of course the reality is that they DARE NOT withdraw it on income basis in the UK as they will surely lose many votes. Expats unfortunately at the moment do not count enough.
When IDS first began his welfare reform programme, I was hoping the spirit of what Iain Macleod wanted to do was re-emerging. I spent some time with Iain Macleod in the sixties, and he once said to me - 'if you pay tax, you should receive no benefits, if you receive benefits, you should pay no tax, get that balance right and we will have a system fair for all'. That has always seemed to me to be the real target, but as we are seeing with Universal Credits, coupled with efforts to make artificial savings, the mean streak has been applied.