How will you vote?

[Tman]

That remains to be seen and I hope you're right, but alternatively Corbyn and Abbott doing the negotiating??

Apart from being as weak as dishwater, Corbyn's clueless on real-world stuff and she has problems with sums bigger than ten (little fat grasping digits)
"Here's my opening offer...we'll give you everything you want and then you can be really nice fair Europeans and hopefully give us some nice stuff in return".
What a nightmare he is.

[baldrick]

May will want a deal for Big Business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is going to be disappointed.

[SierraOscarBravo]

The Conservatives are actually proposing to means test the winter fuel allowance for the elderly, which is long overdue. It has never made much sense for government to give this handout to affluent pensioners who do not need it. Those that need the winter fuel allowance ie. the majority of pensioners will continue to receive it.

I haven't read the Conservative Manifesto, only what the media has reported about it. But as I understand it the Conservatives are saying they will save £2.5-3bn by means testing the winter fuel allowance. As there are 10m pensioners receiving it, that means most would lose it. The Tories are saying the poorest pensioners would be protected. They haven't made clear what the amount of pension or assets taken into account would be.
I assume that because I have a RM pension, own a small flat (which is worth relatively a lot because it's in London) and still have my redundancy money, I probably wouldn't get the WFA, though I am far from affluent.
I suspect it will be only the poorest pensioners who get pension top up credits who will get it. If they are able to complete the necessary paperwork, or have online access to a DWP claiming process - from what I gather this is how benefits claims are made these days.

What is wrong with targeting winter fuel payments on those most in need? It is ludicrous that millionaire pensioners and even those with assets running into hundreds of thousands are currently receiving these payments. Far better to means test this benefit and plough the savings back into supporting care for the elderly - precisely what Theresa May is proposing.

Labour are promising billions of extra spending and borrowing but nobody knows where the money is coming from. Far from helping working families Corbyn's higher taxes, higher spending and higher borrowing would plunge our economy into recession and bankruptcy.

[SierraOscarBravo]

The Conservatives are actually proposing to means test the winter fuel allowance for the elderly, which is long overdue. It has never made much sense for government to give this handout to affluent pensioners who do not need it. Those that need the winter fuel allowance ie. the majority of pensioners will continue to receive it.

I haven't read the Conservative Manifesto, only what the media has reported about it. But as I understand it the Conservatives are saying they will save £2.5-3bn by means testing the winter fuel allowance. As there are 10m pensioners receiving it, that means most would lose it. The Tories are saying the poorest pensioners would be protected. They haven't made clear what the amount of pension or assets taken into account would be.
I assume that because I have a RM pension, own a small flat (which is worth relatively a lot because it's in London) and still have my redundancy money, I probably wouldn't get the WFA, though I am far from affluent.
I suspect it will be only the poorest pensioners who get pension top up credits who will get it. If they are able to complete the necessary paperwork, or have online access to a DWP claiming process - from what I gather this is how benefits claims are made these days.

What is wrong with targeting winter fuel payments on those most in need? It is ludicrous that millionaire pensioners and even those with assets running into hundreds of thousands are currently receiving these payments. Far better to means test this benefit and plough the savings back into supporting care for the elderly - precisely what Theresa May is proposing.

Labour are promising billions of extra spending and borrowing but nobody knows where the money is coming from. Far from helping working families Corbyn's higher taxes, higher spending and higher borrowing would plunge our economy into recession and bankruptcy.

[baldrick]

That remains to be seen and I hope you're right, but alternatively Corbyn and Abbott doing the negotiating??

It isn't the Prime Minister and Home Secretary who would conduct Brexit negotiations. It would be the Foreign Secretary and Brexit Secretary.
If a Labour Government is elected the negotiators would be Emily Thornberry and Sir Keir Starmer.

Boris Johnson is the Conservative's lead negotiator. Is anyone going to take him seriously?
Johnson was pro-EU before he thought that supporting Brexit in the referendum would boost his chances of becoming Prime Minister (until he was stabbed in the back by Gove). He says we are leaving the EU but not Europe, he wants to keep trading access. He has opposed controls on EU migration. He wants Turkey to join the EU and promised them the UK's support.

[baldrick]

The Conservatives are actually proposing to means test the winter fuel allowance for the elderly, which is long overdue. It has never made much sense for government to give this handout to affluent pensioners who do not need it. Those that need the winter fuel allowance ie. the majority of pensioners will continue to receive it.

I haven't read the Conservative Manifesto, only what the media has reported about it. But as I understand it the Conservatives are saying they will save £2.5-3bn by means testing the winter fuel allowance. As there are 10m pensioners receiving it, that means most would lose it. The Tories are saying the poorest pensioners would be protected. They haven't made clear what the amount of pension or assets taken into account would be.
I assume that because I have a RM pension, own a small flat (which is worth relatively a lot because it's in London) and still have my redundancy money, I probably wouldn't get the WFA, though I am far from affluent.
I suspect it will be only the poorest pensioners who get pension top up credits who will get it. If they are able to complete the necessary paperwork, or have online access to a DWP claiming process - from what I gather this is how benefits claims are made these days.

What is wrong with targeting winter fuel payments on those most in need? It is ludicrous that millionaire pensioners and even those with assets running into hundreds of thousands are currently receiving these payments. Far better to means test this benefit and plough the savings back into supporting care for the elderly - precisely what Theresa May is proposing.

Labour are promising billions of extra spending and borrowing but nobody knows where the money is coming from. Far from helping working families Corbyn's higher taxes, higher spending and higher borrowing would plunge our economy into recession and bankruptcy.

The Tories are not going to scrap WFA for just millionaire pensioners. If they are intending to save £2.5-3bn they will withdraw WFA from most pensioners.

The Labour Manifesto has costed their proposals and set out where the funding will come from. Mainly from increasing Corporation Tax and higher rate income tax on the wealthiest 5%.
The Conservatives are going to cut real spending on the NHS and education, as well as on pensioners and the poorest. They are proposing to cut Corporation Tax further. They have not costed their proposals.
Labour has challenged them to cost their manifesto proposals and to have the Institute of Fiscal Studies examine both parties' manifesto costs and funding figures, to evaluate them. But the Conservatives won't do that.

[SierraOscarBravo]

That remains to be seen and I hope you're right, but alternatively Corbyn and Abbott doing the negotiating??

It isn't the Prime Minister and Home Secretary who would conduct Brexit negotiations. It would be the Foreign Secretary and Brexit Secretary.
If a Labour Government is elected the negotiators would be Emily Thornberry and Sir Keir Starmer.

Boris Johnson is the Conservative's lead negotiator. Is anyone going to take him seriously?
Johnson was pro-EU before he thought that supporting Brexit in the referendum would boost his chances of becoming Prime Minister (until he was stabbed in the back by Gove). He says we are leaving the EU but not Europe, he wants to keep trading access. He has opposed controls on EU migration. He wants Turkey to join the EU and promised them the UK's support.[/quote

Theresa May as Prime Minister will ultimately decide on the Government's negotiating positions and her team of Ministers and negotiators will argue our case from the same agreed position.

The Labour frontbench is a disgraceful mix of smug, patronising, racist, unpatriotic, terrorist sympathising, Marxist loving imbeciles who are a world away from the voters they claim to represent. The only thing they will be negotiating is their own demise into obscurity.

[SierraOscarBravo]

The Conservatives are actually proposing to means test the winter fuel allowance for the elderly, which is long overdue. It has never made much sense for government to give this handout to affluent pensioners who do not need it. Those that need the winter fuel allowance ie. the majority of pensioners will continue to receive it.

I haven't read the Conservative Manifesto, only what the media has reported about it. But as I understand it the Conservatives are saying they will save £2.5-3bn by means testing the winter fuel allowance. As there are 10m pensioners receiving it, that means most would lose it. The Tories are saying the poorest pensioners would be protected. They haven't made clear what the amount of pension or assets taken into account would be.
I assume that because I have a RM pension, own a small flat (which is worth relatively a lot because it's in London) and still have my redundancy money, I probably wouldn't get the WFA, though I am far from affluent.
I suspect it will be only the poorest pensioners who get pension top up credits who will get it. If they are able to complete the necessary paperwork, or have online access to a DWP claiming process - from what I gather this is how benefits claims are made these days.

What is wrong with targeting winter fuel payments on those most in need? It is ludicrous that millionaire pensioners and even those with assets running into hundreds of thousands are currently receiving these payments. Far better to means test this benefit and plough the savings back into supporting care for the elderly - precisely what Theresa May is proposing.

Labour are promising billions of extra spending and borrowing but nobody knows where the money is coming from. Far from helping working families Corbyn's higher taxes, higher spending and higher borrowing would plunge our economy into recession and bankruptcy.

The Tories are not going to scrap WFA for just millionaire pensioners. If they are intending to save £2.5-3bn they will withdraw WFA from most pensioners.

The Labour Manifesto has costed their proposals and set out where the funding will come from. Mainly from increasing Corporation Tax and higher rate income tax on the wealthiest 5%.
The Conservatives are going to cut real spending on the NHS and education, as well as on pensioners and the poorest. They are proposing to cut Corporation Tax further. They have not costed their proposals.
Labour has challenged them to cost their manifesto proposals and to have the Institute of Fiscal Studies examine both parties' manifesto costs and funding figures, to evaluate them. But the Conservatives won't do that.

The Labour manifesto pledges higher taxes, higher spending and higher borrowing on a scale not seen in decades. Labour lost by a landslide in 1983 on a similar manifesto at the time dubbed the longest suicide note in history.

You really are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think Labour can win on such a platform.

[Tman]

May will want a deal for Big Business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is going to be disappointed.

A deal for business? Now there's a thought.
Who else would it be for, (as business is (or should I say, was) the prime mover of the EEC before it became a federation of European states and morphed into the EU) Mrs Smith's annual holiday to Benidorm?
I won't be "disappointed" but I will be delighted.
Only the dead-eyed and dogmatic would view business as anything but good.

[NWpostie]

......and strengthen her hand ahead of the Brexit negotiations.

Apart from repeating the mantra, how exactly will her hand be strengthened?
Who apart from TM thinks this is true?

A Prime Minister who goes into the Brexit negotiations having just won a landslide victory will be able to command greater authority than one who has a tiny majority or none at all. Theresa May will be able to rightly argue that she has a fresh and decisive mandate from the British people to stand up for British interests.

And the EU officials, and individual European Governments will rightly argue that only 52% of the UK electorate who actually voted were for Brexit.

And 52% is a majority achieved fairly and squarely.

The EU has used and abused the UK for years treating us as nothing more than a cash cow.

We need a Prime Minister who will stand up to these unelected bullying bureaucrats and fight for Britain. That person is Theresa May.

If I remember correctly we have contributed 8.6bn a year to the EU and we are a net contributer as pay in more than we take out. The eastern European countries are quite rightly worried about having to contribute more as they take more out than they put in, which is why they are demanding 80bn so far other figures have been bandied about even up to 100bn. That's money we need for post Brexit Britain, we should refuse to fund the EU gravy train, we have been treated shabbily and sidelined in major decisions which is again not to our advantage.

Why should we remain a member of a club which won't reform and ignores us while demanding our money for "subs", while the club committee goes out on a jolly funded by members subscriptions and they were unaccounted for in the budget, if this was a bowling club, it would be investigated for fraudulent accounting and corruption.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

[

What is wrong with targeting winter fuel payments on those most in need? It is ludicrous that millionaire pensioners and even those with assets running into hundreds of thousands are currently receiving these payments. Far better to means test this benefit and plough the savings back into supporting care for the elderly - precisely what Theresa May is proposing.

Labour are promising billions of extra spending and borrowing but nobody knows where the money is coming from. Far from helping working families Corbyn's higher taxes, higher spending and higher borrowing would plunge our economy into recession and bankruptcy.

Because means testing is the most expensive way to administrate any benefit. Every time you means test someone, and it rarely happens just once, it sometimes costs more than the amount actually saved if they fail the means test.

A much more progressive (with a little P) would be to base it on Tax Codes, ok some middle-class high earners might get it when they don't need it but you could have a voluntary opt-out scheme for them at less cost to taxpayers, and would also mean those that are too proud to claim benefits, but actually need them, will also get it.

Means Testing is a political tool, which is kind of strange when the Conservatives say they want a smaller less intrusive form of government.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/200 ... e-benefits" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Means-test welfare reform is a costly waste

[Tman]

"Means testing" means (or at least should mean) that potential benefits are aimed at the most needy, which in the case of WFA seems reasonable.
The basic mechanics of how it's paid or assessed doesn't come into it with regard to whether it's a Good or Bad Thing to continue with.

[loverman shabba]

I'm going to vote for Ken Clarke.

im voting for clark kent

[fishtank]

It's difficult to argue for means testing of Winter Fuel Allowance without extending that proposal to State Pension since it's really just an extension of the latter. Be careful what you wish for. It's not too much of a stretch to say that those with an occupational pension don't really come into the category of "most at need" of a state pension. Add to that auto-enrolment and you're not that far from the full privatisation of the "state pension". Remove the risk from the state from an increasingly aging population and lay it right at your feet.

[feduppostie]

Copied from a friend - everyone needs to read this before they vote

THIS IS SERIOUS!

The Tory social care announcement in their manifesto.
Vile and uncompromising.
Be very careful what you vote for!

Quote from a city worker :
"The Conservatives will attempt to soften the blow by promising that pensioners will not have to sell their homes to pay for their care costs while they or a surviving partner are alive. Instead, 'products will be available' allowing the elderly to pay by extracting equity from their homes, which will be recovered at a later date when they die or sell their residence.
I have just seen this post online:
'People need to read the small print associated with this because its a lot nastier than it looks.
I work in the City. The insurance industry was approached by the Government several months ago with the aim of creating a new market for a new product.
This arrangement is a culmination of those discussions. You wont have to sell your house PROVIDED that you purchase an insurance product to cover your social care. The "premiums" would be recovered from the equity after the house has been sold and the Insurance company will have a lien on the house and can force a sale if it wants to. So your offspring cant keep it on the market for long in order to get the best price.
The real kicker in this is that in order to encourage the industry to market these products the government guaranteed that there would be no cap on the premiums.
This was in some ways "attonement" for Osborne's destruction of the highly lucrative annuties market. This means that the premiums could be up to (and including) the entire remaining equity in the property after the government has taken its cut. Companies will be falling over themselves to get their snouts in this trough.
In short your offspring and relatives could get absolutely nothing from your estate.
If you buy one of these products you need to read the small print very very carefully indeed because there will be some real dogs on the market.
I suspect that this is another financial scandal waiting to happen, but by the time it does May will be long gone."