Quote Originally Posted by Brin View Post
There's those that will clearly need it but just miss out and then there's those like my Mate and his Wife.

They decided to move to Lanzarote permanently approx 3 years ago having had a brand new £280,000 house built for them.

For the last 3 years both of them have claimed the winter allowance because the Government said they were entitled to do so, because they had property they owned and rented out here in the UK at the time, although clearly living abroad. They thought it was great, which just goes to show what a mess the last Government was running before being driven out.
In fairness it was Labour who introduced the fuel allowance as a non-means tested benefit. They did it in 1997 when a far higher percentage of pensioners were living in poverty than now.

I don't recall pensioners freezing to death before the introduction of the fuel allowance, but that doesn't appear to discourage the current scare tactics of the right.