Spot on Roger. Off to cut wood now, awful job in these 2⁰C tropical temperatures.
Timothy, I like MAC’s cartoons, and yes you can laugh at the ‘winter fuel’ version. Problem for me is that it’s the culmination of a process, as Brian says, of a Government Minister ‘chipping away’ at benefits available to expats. Iain Duncan Smith had a judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union go against him on 21 July 2011. Whatever your stance in the Europe debate, the fact remains that this judgement was referred to the CJEU by a UK Court, and under Treaties signed by four of ‘Dave’s’ predecessors is our ‘Supreme’ Court, and must be obeyed, particularly by a member of the Cabinet of HM Government.
Since the judgement Iain Duncan Smith keeps issuing statements, briefings and papers aimed at the Winter Fuel Payment, and the likely number of expat applicants who left the UK before reaching 60, saying he was out to stop them. In fact in the year 2012/2013 as against 2011/2012, new expat claimants jumped by 63%, and yet, the total of all claimants fell in the same period. As the WFP is a fixed sum and not subject to uprating, it stands to reason the total amount spent on WFP is falling year on year - according the IFS it accounted for 1.07% of total DWP spending. Claimants from EEA countries were less than 1% of the total of all claimants.
Iain Duncan Smith has increased awareness, aided by the Daily Mail and the Mail Online. His Department have ‘invented’ the ‘Temperature Test’, and declared several countries as ‘hotter’ than SW England. There can be no argument that the average winter temperature for Spain is above SW England. But, when it comes to France the DWP have ‘fiddled’ the figures! The source of the datasets of temperatures which the DWP have confirmed they used, shows France as having an average winter temperature of 5.08⁰C - compared to SW England of 5.60⁰C - in other words ‘colder’.
Ministers have declared France to be ‘hot’, and have admitted they used average winter temperatures from tropical islands thousands of miles away, because, in Iain Duncan Smith’s own words, “The French Government has decided that these territories are Overseas Departments of France, and so they are treated in the same way as mainland France - Winter Fuel Payments are currently made to those entitled who live there. Therefore the hotter French Overseas Departments have been included in the average winter temperatures of France.”
That’s a fiddle designed to deny the WFP to all eligible expats living in France. It has no basis in fact, since the French National Meteorological Service, Météo-France never adds the DOMs to France Metropolitaine, and the source of the DWP datasets has said it is absurd!
The DM has daily a circulation of 1,800,000 and a bit according to ABC (down half a million from 2000) and not 5,000,000 as has frequently been claimed. Hemispherectomies and leukotomies are clearly commoner operations than I believed previously.
I read what you say Timothy and I take it that you believe the image to be characteristic of the generality of expats. Maybe your own experiences are like that, and the people you know generally living with such a lifestyle. I don't think we have any expats with swimming pools within at least 25 miles (although there are 150 British owned houses within our 808 population village) and the expats I know and see regularly don't have extravagant lifestyles at all. In reality I know more people in the UK with huge houses (value £2 mill plus) complete with pools and second homes in Spain, France, Italy or Switzerland ditto and they continue to get the WFP. Apt - NO! Tosh- YES!It's amazing that you don't find the Mail to be purveyors of rubbish and hypocrisy. Yes Brian- keep it up!
Vic, it is all choice. If there were not people like myself who are cussed nuisances who ask questions and demand complete answers with precise reasons as to why those answers are given, then politicians would walk over us all. Politics is one of the four cornerstones of what I studied which took me from being a typical working class lefty to an educated even leftier son of a ..... You can help by making your own judgement as to whether or not an issue is justified or not. If you feel that, as with the WFP, since it is part of the pension you can accept the principle on which the government is working and allow them (and subsequent governments) to chip away at what pensioners who choose to live out of the UK are or are not/should or should not be entitled to after contributing to that for their working lives. Then you can sign petitions, write letters or support present and particularly future pensioners. The same goes for other issues you feel you identify with or are sympathetic with.
I find nothing offensive in this cartoon. It is very apt!
Vic my origins are no more or less than yours. I got educated, that is all. The rest happened to me, not because I went out for it. It's as much a puzzle to me as anything else. Having said that, I am very political and very much socially conscious. I watch politics closely, see how we are used as fodder for their ambitions and do not like it one bit. As for snooker against the great Fred, that is a wow... Did you win?
We have a treasured family photograph of me in conversation with a PM with initials JM, I'll say no more than a reception at No 10. I was there with Joan Lestor who was chair of one of the several charities I was then trustee of. At that meeting she introduced me to John Smith and said how she thought I would make a great candidate for the next election. I had a Times journalist friend standing nearby who exploded with laughter, he then told a Grauniad colleague who joined in. I went back to our host and got stuck with his OH, NM, who really is as boring as she was reputed to be. However, that was safer than Joan getting me into more trouble. I too have a tale or two to my rather strange life.
Clive - I am able to relate that I saw Major Atlee make a speech at Bromsgrove in 1951. My teacher told me to stop clapping as he was a class traitor! However it sparked an interest in politics which remains. After I was selected as a Parliamentary Candidate by Conservative Central Office in 1979 various personal friends advised me in strong terms to discontinue my parliamentary ambitions as they "held something on me"!
Thanks Clive. As it happens I do have some good ones and as many of the subjects are predeceasing me I may be able to "release" a few in the coming months and, if I have them, years. Quite a few of the people I bumped into through work or play were well known and some to an extent notorious. Many a page could be filled. The only things that hold me back are my own impecuniosity and the fact that not a few people hold rather embarrassing details including possibly photographs of my own misadventures.
Blimey Mate your going back a bit '70's eh! In the late 60's when you was just a lad, I had a long and heated debate with one Harold Wilson who was blah blahing to a crowd whilst standing on a balcony (for safety) with Shirley Williams in Stevenage. He had just bowed to American pressure to scrap the worlds most advanced Fighter Jet "TSR2" and was considering cancellation at the USA's demand of the world's one and only Supersonic airliner "Concorde". Britain got its bail out from the IMO finally supported by the US and France would not accept cancellation of the Concorde project. Thank goodness for that otherwise we might have missed at least a glimse of what could have been the future in Airline travel all over the world.
The late Harold now seems tame compared to the actions of this government in power that I foolishly voted for.
I take back every word I ever said about the Rothermeres- I clearly wasn't rude enough! Just found this on Wikipedia:
"He (4th Baron Rothermere) has Non-Domicile (UK) tax status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts which entail him paying almost no UK tax on his income, investments or wealth.[5"
Whoever wrote this scurrilous nonsense should be apprehended at once and severely dealt with by the courts. Peter Carter-Ruck would turn in his grave if he could. M'lord H is not claiming WFP as he's not old enough and PC-R don't need it no more.
Thanks for a good laugh on a cold and damp saturday evening on the Costa Blanca (North). I enjoyed your tale and look forward to reading more of them!!
Ms Lump of Lard of the Year, many years ago at that. That the Rothermere dynasty has not been confined to a hospital long ago sometimes amazes me. Of all the aristos they are about the most excessive. At present their nasty little rag is kept 'hands off' by Viscount R and left in the dirty hands of Paul Dacre. Nonetheless, after decades of being as shameful as they are, if Rothermere had any morals or conscience he would close it down.
I would never buy or read a DM under normal circumstances, and it's been a while since I was on a park bench, but my attention was drawn to the recent scribble by Mac, a former aspiring artist now trotting out recycled jokes at the behest of m'lord Rothermere.
I did however have a rather interesting personal experience during the I think late 70s with a certain Bubbles Rothermere who whilst driving her Rolls Royce rammed my Citroen Dyane with me in it in Belgravia one day, after her normal lunch. She then ran away as fast as her precarious high heels would allow and to avoid interrogation by myself or indeed by Knacker of the Yard. I tried for several months to get financial redress but eventually managed to do so after using the good offices of Sue Grabbit and Runne the well known advocates. I have been mildly irritated by the Rothermeres ever since. Meanwhile readers may enjoy the attached artistic photograph of Bubbles and the Rothermere holiday home at Cap d'Ail in the south of France. Students of Google Earth may well note that the large swimming pool not unadjacent to the lavish property appears to eclipse that of the Mac cartoon. Champers all round!
Well said Brian and I agree whole heartedly. I used to sometimes pick up the odd abandoned DM off a park bench or train station waiting room when I lived over there and could never fathom out its thinking! I found it to be very obtuse about just about everything and most vindictive about anyone it targeted. It has become the lap dog of the current Conservative led government, some of whom are already developing the Nazi swagger about things they beieve or don't believe in. "I share your concerns about immigration" as a very recent headline in the media in respect of his endeavours to win back a few fasciasts from the UKIP one policy party.
Good point Alexander. Perhaps we should remind them of their proprietor back then, Lord Rothermere who was a friend and supporter of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. As John Simpson wrote of Rothermere: he believed that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". Simpson believed he was was talking about the violence against Jews and Communists, their disappearances, internments and probably by then in the early 1930s their executions without any form of trial and verdict to at all attempt to justify what they were doing.
With that history behind them the DM should choose its victims a little better. They can quote Führer Duncan Smith as much as they like but lest they forget...
Looks like he needs a visit to the quack. A night on that might finish him off...........on what?!
David, maybe not a tan but what his head is dunked in in order to get his 'inspiration' ;-)
On that latter point, my OH not being a UK citizen although she has lived and worked there could also be refused because I only have basic pension officially - let's not mention work I need to do to survive. Plus, at present, two children to support one of them with special needs... I am not a good economic proposition for them :-D
If the UK government is seriously asking pensioners to return to the UK for among other things medical treatment, WFP allowance etc etc it's going to blow an even bigger hole in the net immigration figures they have not been able to control!!! If I have to go back I have to prove to UKBA or whatever they are called these days that I have sufficient resources to support my non EU wife, but my daughter can get it without her mother. If I didn't have what they judge to be sufficient resources then I would not be capable of returning to the UK with my family!!!!!!! So where would that leave me if the UK leave the EU- effectively stateless!!!!!! On a positive note I could be dead by then.......