Winter Fuel Payments

You raise quite a few different points tinks

I agree on the means testing of the fuel payments for the elderly especially due to some of the incomes of the ‘fat cats’. Personally I think it was introduced to help the people with very low incomes but like a lot of ‘good ideas’ was not thought through properly.

Social Care has become a complete farce over the years. It is not about care but about cost cutting. Local councils used to provide the care for people who needed it but in an age where costs have to be reduced the care is tendered out to outside agencies. The same for a lot of things, for example school dinners, where the demands of profit reduce the provision of the product. Council care homes stand empty simply because the funds are channelled in different directions without thought about whether the quality of care is the same (because it is not) but to reduce costs.

When my mother left hospital because a social worker said she could cope for herself, though the simple act of moving from her bedroom to the toilet took half an hour to cover the 6 feet involved, she was given a list of 21 companies that served her area. She rang every single one and not one of them would visit the village she lived in because it was not financially beneficial. Fortunately, and I use the word advisedly, my mother died less than a month later but I think more through desperation then illness.

Government budgeting has always been a case of rob Peter to pay Paul, so means testing fuel payments and speeding fines are far more likely to be used in areas totally alien to where that income comes from