Incidentally, apart from my own pension grievances and issues with my daughter mentioned below, I treat this as a human rights issue. I am a human rights professional in effect, OK I specialise in children's rights, but it is all much of a muchness at base. I have a shelf full of books and CDs full of legislation, direct links to EU, ECHR, UN, UNHRC and various other sites that hold more than useful information. When I send the bar-stewards a nice little letter it is usually packed out with enough HR law to keep them busy for quite some time and more than once I have had responses from ministerial legal officers. I would recommend all of you taking actions to look for EU and more international laws, particularly commitments the UK has made in conventions and treaties, and all possible judicial decisions whether domestic or international. They do react when confronted with such challenges and the more of us who do that then the better. I too shall not simply whine and wail and watch my entitlements stolen by the miscreants who govern the UK.
Incidentally does anyone know where Mac got his tan? Was it by any chance down the Street of Shame?
Keith you obviously like recycled old jokes like Mac! Incidentally Mac himself lives in a luxury riverside block of flats in London SW11 where a 2 bed flat costs £1.75 million and yes the residents do have a swimming pool too. Judging by photos of him on the internet he like many "gentlemen" of the press is not unaverse to a drop of the old vino tinto as well! See below!! Why just have a go at all expats when there are plenty of champers slurping rich pensioners in the UK who get WFP, go on winter cruises or even to their Spanish second home among many other possibilities? It's the absurd generalisation that one objects to. There are many expat pensioners who need WFP as they live in genuinely cold places in the winter months. Why should they be stripped of it because they left the UK? We know that UK politicians don't give a "fig" for them of course! The next thing to come along is to reduce by 5% mediacl benefits for those expats in the EU as they can go back to the UK to have "elective " treatment. I urge everybody to read the definitions because many "elective" treatments are in fact non urgent treatments many of a serious nature. The idea that somebody can just go back to the UK to have such treatment is utter rubbish. Just imagine the cost of getting there, staying somewhere if you don't have free accommodation, getting enrolled with a GP (if you can), getting hospital appointments and getting treated and returning. (I would personally also have the problem of getting somebody to look after my daughter, taking her to school etc as my wife is working). The problem is often that these schemes are thought up spotty faced researchers recently out of Uni and the whole thing has just not been thought through. The politicians are then forced to fumble. My own MP (Jane Ellison MP) has admitted to me in writing that she's not really interested in expat pensioners as the mostly young in her constituency already think that pensioners get too much!To neatly round the circle among her other constituents she counts- Mac himself!!!!!! We may all be sure that MPs will be getting nice salaries and pensions wherever they are! Pip! Pip!!!! PS Pic of Mac's pad below!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wowo! Welcome Graham and Brian - its great to see the real heavy guns on here. Come on people there is a war on. This war is being waged by a cowardly British Government on Pensioners. It is shocking, it is distateful and pernicious. We need your help to be able to help others from this offensive. People like your Children if you are too old or too rich to care about your circumstances and people like your grandchildren whose retirement pension will be zilch and why? Because of complacency of course. Come on, sign the petitions and teach our government something about respect!
One of our daughters is Down as well Roger. Education was ace for her in Wales but the NHS did not give a sh1t and so moving here was always part of the plot, not the main one admittedly though. Now she receives excellent health support for some relatively small things that were 'too small' there. We applied to the DWP for support but we too were turned down, but we cannot take it further because CAF have given her that support instead. We were given no actual reason for why she was turned down other than the usual 'we regret to inform you your application has been unsuccessful' type of rebuff.
Well said Roger Boaden and Paul Rees! Everyone of course has their right to express opposing opinions but I must say that I was always brought up to respect my elders and never excpected to find such disrespect when I reached old age too.
Some people love and adore the Daily Mail more than they even love their handbag dogs!
I know of no-one who has so selflessly put himself about in the support of his fellow citizens as Harry Shindler. He sent a copy of his letter to me for distribution in the hope that his fellow Britons would equally give unselfish support. He has worked so well, without reward, to honour the graves of those who were killed in the marshes of Anzio and in the rest of Italy. He is a man with a warm outgoing heart. I met him at Brussels when we went as a delegation to the EU to plead for the cause of Democracy for the British Citizen. The EU is our safeguard against our own government. If the UK falls out of the EU those of us dependent on the UK for our income and our standing in our country of residence and indeed in the UK itself, will suffer. We will be seen as foreigners within the EU and strangers in our home land.
I detect so much 'I'm alright Jack' attitudes in our fellow expatriates. It is appalling. Below at the end are listed a number of publications of the Daily Mail in which the expatriate senior citizens are lampooned, derided, mocked. This disease is spreading amongst the resident population in the UK. The Government - even to the Chancellor - are deriding us -'they live in hot countries' - Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP treat us as self-imposed outcasts - rats leaving the ship. What other restrictions on pensions would they like to impose?
So let us ask in the similar manner as Kennedy once said 'Ask not what your country do for you, but ask what you can do for your country - i.e. your fellow citizens' In the manner of Harry! Let us all try to reverse the appalling attitude of those at home towards our fellow citizens in the rest of the world. Let us show pride in being British and let us live so that those 'at home' look on us with pride.
Government has a duty to care for its citizens everywhere! (that means seeking us out, and to listen to us!) AND the citizen in turn has a duty to ENSURE good government. It is so shockingly sad that the general run of expatriates do not perceive this. The Daily Mail is copying the early tactics of the Nazi Party when in 1932-4 it mounted a lampooning/derisive campaign against the Jews - leading to the horrors of the holocaust - THAT will not happen to the British expatriate seniors. But it seems this derisive campaign has a following in Government. It is necessary to be vigilant in the cause of self protection. Do not leave it all to others.
I note that of the petitions - the one to seek continuing payment of the WFP increases by 30-40 a day and has reached 14,326 (30/11/13) - That one for Representation to the Government barely increases by 5 a day and has only 2687 signatures.
But that one on Representation is so very much more important - The first represents an attitude of 'give me - give me' the second is a portrayal of a desire to be a good citizen - just like Harry - and a desire to help our fellow citizens.
So sign up to http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/55085
DAILY MAIL publications this year deriding the British pensioner abroad.----
Daily Mail Online 9 January 2013
Daily Mail Online 25 June 2013
Daily Mail Online 26 June 2013
Daily Mail Online 25 August 2013
Daily Mail Online 15 November 2013
Further to what has already been written I would commend everybody to read the article on Page 4 of the December edition of The Connexion, France; Mainland France does meet the UK´s "cold test" with some constructive input from Brian Cave. More good stuff on Page 9; MPs for expats - join the campaign. Well done again to The Connexion for sticking up for the rights of expat OAPs unlike the DM who just like to knock us at every possible opportunity!
On a slightly different subject concerning Harry Shindler I wished to add the following to my earlier:-
On the 18th February 2014 Roger Waters of Pink Floyd will be visiting Italy to lay a commemoration to his late father who was killed during World 2 after Harry had discovered the location of the place where Roger´s father was killed.
Once again very well done to our Harry!
The Mail is complicit in passing on rabble-rousing messages directly from government ministers which is neither clever nor funny. There are expats at all economic levels and the poor ones should have assistance from society without out being made to feel like cheats and spongers. The picture being assiduously built up is one of gin swilling Brits haning out on the Spanish Coatas. The reality is that hundreds of thousands of Britons live normal lives, but in a different country to the UK within Europe. This group should not even be a political topic but should be treated fair and square, with no special treatment but also with no oppressive treatment either. The IDS weasling ways will backfire because at the end of the day he is cheating overseas Britons, and he knows it.
Oh, and by the way, a message to Irene - please read all these headlines, and then judge if you think there is not a sustained campaign from within the UK Government to knock all expats, and make them appear as 'sun-lounging scroungers'!
Daily Mail Online 9 January 2013
Daily Mail Online 25 June 2013
Daily Mail Online 26 June 2013
Daily Mail Online 25 August 2013
Mirror News 13 November 2013
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/winter-fuel-payments-british-pensioners-2789343
Daily Mail Online 15 November 2013
Daily Mail Online 15 November 2013
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2507657/Mac--winter-fuel.html
The Mail Online has carried quite a few anti-expat headlines this year - five in fact if you count the MAC cartoon. They have carried reports of the 'anger' of Iain Duncan Smith over the ruling of the Court of Justice. A British expat family moved to Spain to give their Down's Syndrome daughter a better life. When she reached 16 they applied for incapacity benefit for her as a young adult. It was refused by the DWP, and so they started a legal appeal against the decision. A British Court referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union - which because of Treaty obligations is the highest court for all citizens of the Union. It looks as if IDS went 'ape', and ordered his civil servants to find a way of 'punishing' all expats, particularly those in Spain and France, the highest countries for claimants of the Winter Fuel Payment. There has been an increase of 63% in EEA claimants in 2012/2013 - I believe because IDS has drawn too much attention to the fact that those who couldn't claim, now can. Hey, but guess what - the total number of all claimants fell from 2011/2012 to 2012/2013, and, according to DWP figures expats, still only account for less than 1%!
The only things 'robust' about UK governance at present are a) denials when they mess things up and b) who they can penalise in order to fill the deep hole in the GDP they are digging by letting the rich off taxation whilst missing the point that they are also taking the capital out of the UK. Pensioners are simply one of the line of people vulnerable enough to go for without them having to worry about them too much.
Whatever our politics are, we should all make sure that nobody makes the mistake of contributing to this bunch being returned in 2015. I have grave doubts about Labour's competence but at least they do not have an IDS, a Hunt, a Gove, an Osborne and various other incompetent oafs to replace them and on present form, as much as I dislike him, Miliband is showing more substance than Cameron - not saying much is it?
Clive, I agree we have to wake a few people up, that's why I've been doing my little bit. As each day passes we are gathering more evidence of a cock-up at the DWP over this abomination of the 'Temperature Test'. If Météo-France, which is after all the equivalent of the UK Met Office, do not include the average winter temperatures of the Overseas Departments with those of France, but publishes them separately, then why should the DWP go to all this trouble to 'invent' the opposite. One MP I wrote to has given me a typical 'toe-the-line reply, and tells me that the DWP 'developed as robust a methodology as possible' - huh - so why did they get Italy wrong, that's not robust; why did they get Ireland wrong, that's not robust, and why add tropical islands to mainland France when no else does, that's not robust.
I guess the problem is now that too many people are tucked up in their own comfort zone to care any more about the less fortunate amongst us.
I can confirm that Brian Cave and I have had copies of the complaints that quite a lot of people have already lodged with the PCC contact details above. Anybody need any help and assistance with drafting up their complaint form please contact me graham.richards@orange.fr Well done Harry Shindler and all those who have lodged their complaints!
Offense taken!!!!
Wait until you all see the cartoon SFN Christmas card. I have been lampooned.....
:)
OK Keith. It is always possible to see the funny side of things but this so.called cartoon and the lie infested Daily Mail article fed to them by ther Government is all about attacking time-served taxpayers and now defenceless pensioners. Because the government which is suppposed to be for us all, is leading a campaign using dirty tactics supported my the Mail rag to encourage the politics of envy and a regime of hate towards elderly people . that cannot be funny. BANG!
Sure Brian but some of us have to try and awaken those who are sleepwalking into the abyss of indifference. I'm sure you could rouse a few more to the cause and help make the British Government think hard about their mounting unpopularity and maybe their nastyness.
We are still in a mess here following our storm damage and near frying by several zillion volts but it is important to me to raise the Pensioners Flag a bit and help those who possbily have forgotten how to fight back. Have a good weekend mate!
Commendable as it is, I think Harry Shindler's point will be lost. Not enough people react as he has. In fact most are quite happy to sit on their hands. I think you may have noticed that here where more or less the same people emerge with each new item on this topic generally. It is not a criticism of the people who do nothing but the society we came from that on the one hand proclaims what a wonderful democracy it is and on the other essentially teaches people to be content with what they have or else they will be 'punished' for speaking out. That the present government and a number before it is squeezing ever tighter so that our very life blood is all we have left has so demoralised many people that they are simply taking this all, hands raised and head sunk in defeat. That does not mean I am giving up and will withdraw into the comfort of my complacency but that I have learned to accept that the vast majority of people do not know how or simply cannot do what Harry Shindler has done.