The Great Winter Fuel Debate

Well done George 'Bungle' Osborne for the delivery of bully-boy IDS's idea of a temperature gauge for expats in respect to whether they continue to receive Winter Fuel Allowance after 2015. There is no doubt from the Twittersphere that this news has followers of the Daily Mail positively salivating over their cream teas...

"Damn you expats! Supping your sangria in sunny climes on the verandah of your chateau. This will teach you for leaving Blighty to become over-run by immigrants taking our jobs, our homes, claiming our benefits... blah-de-blah-de-blah..."

Yeah, whatever.

Just to put the record straight. Yes, I know that WFA is not aligned to NI contributions in the benefit grand scheme of things. So saying things like "we paid into the system" (and I have said that, so guilty M'Lud) is never a good enough defence for the DM Mrs Buckets (oops, sorry, Mrs Bouquet). But those who are entitled to WFA have to be in receipt of a State Pension (or other benefits) that are gained through years of NI contributions.

Furthermore, those in receipt of WFA are not all rich pensioners living the high life on the shores of the Med, as the DM myth would have many believe. Some of us live very modestly, on basic State Pensions, paying increasingly high fuel bills to keep our houses warm during winter, just like our Blighty counterparts. And on that issue, I bet no bugger would suggest that retirees to the warmer UK areas like Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset should lose their WFA? Oh no... because they are probably the darlings of the DM who would vote the UK out of EU tomorrow should the opportunity arise!

So what of the life of a retired expat? We don't overload the NHS. Instead we pay for our medical care - would you get out the cheque book to see your GP, like we have to? We don't get Pension Credit to top-up State Pensions that are below the living amount decreed by Government - so many live below the poverty line. We don't get the additional Cold Weather Payments when our temperatures drop and stay in minus figures for days and weeks on end. Instead we live in fuel poverty - our energy bills being much more than 10% of income that the Government uses as a measure of fuel poverty.We don't claim Housing Benefit. We pay council tax - no rebates here. We don't block up the social housing list or rattle around in large houses more suitable for families. Since the bank crash of 2008 our incomes have fell by 20%, thanks to a weak Sterling vs Euro rate, while cost of living continues to rise.

So think before you start lambasting the pensioner expat who worked all their lives to spend retirement away from the rat race... one day we might all head home!

Free school dinners - social stigma or entrepreneurial opportunity?

Watching a debate on Sky News this morning, regarding how the Government's Universal Benefit plan will deny many children from poor families from receiving free school dinners, and the commentator's observation about the stigma of free school dinners, raised not just a wry smile on my face but a veritable chortle.

Not that I was belittling the issue - not at all. I was a free school dinner recipient back in the early 70s and the social stigma being discussed this morning reminded me of the way that my secondary school handled the situation in the days of pre-political correctness.

Dinner tickets were required for any pupil who chose to eat in the school canteen. Those children whose parents paid for the "pleasure", were required to purchase the appropriate tickets at the window of the school secretary on a Monday morning. Us "free school dinner kids" were obliged to attend said window at the first morning break... in full view of classmates and other school attendees who would inevitably take the "proverbial".

Worse, and obviously not content with the separate queuing system that segregated us "poor kids" from our better-off classmates, although the tickets for free school dinners seemed identical there was one further demarcation of our lowly status... that of a thick blue line running across the printed "Dinner Ticket" that was not visible on a paid-for ticket!

Needless to say, many free dinner school kids chose to take packed lunches as opposed to expose themselves to such discrimination and the inevitable bullying that teenagers can inflict on the "outgroup".

But - in a "what goes around, comes around" sort of way - by my third year of secondary school (perhaps by some sort of act of political correctness even, who knows?), the school changed the system. Yes, we still had to go to dispensing window at a different time to the others to collect our "freebies", but now the tickets were identical in every respect to their paid-for cousins. No more thick blue line delineating their (and our) lower financial status.

And what a chance for any budding entrepreneur (there were a few of us). Doesn't take a lot to imagine the scene:

"How much do you pay for your dinner tickets?"

"50p each."

"I have some here that I don't want... only 25p each."

"Deal!"

In or Out?

As the news media rumbles on about the possibility of an EU in/out referendum, I would just like to give an alternative view - that from the perspective of a retired expat, renting a small home in northern France, living on basic State Pension... and definitely not the champagne-quaffing, chateau-residing, sun-worshipping stereotype that the media likes to enforce upon the word "expat".

If the good British public do indeed vote in 2017 to leave the EU, then I can only hope that, if the Tory's draft parliamentary bill for an in/out referendum is passed, they have put a strategy in place to ensure that suitable social housing is available for the expat exodus back home.

In this respect, it is worth noting - and for the benefit of those UK residents who believe the Daily Mail rhetoric about expats - that on our return the UK will become responsible, once more, for all the benefits that we do not receive while living in another EU country... like Pension Credit, Cold Weather Payments, Free Bus Passes, Free NHS treatment & prescriptions (we have to pay insurance here to get medical treatment), Housing Benefit, and Council Tax Benefit - to name just a few.

I appreciate the anger that is caused by news stories of EU immigrants, for example, claiming UK Child Benefit for children who have never set foot in the UK... that enrages us expats too.

While Labour challenges every step of the Welfare Bill (and doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that non-workers should earn less, not more, than the employed), we are all witnessing immigrants (EU and otherwise) entering the UK and picking up benefits, almost immediately, which we are not permitted to receive despite individually having paid in over 44 years of contributions to the UK coffers!

So if the good British citizen does choose to leave the EU... then hang the bunting out at Dover... and have the welcome mat on the doorstep of our nice social housing retirement bungalow. We're coming home!