It Never Gets Cold in Spain Iain Duncan Smith

Martin the artist wrote:Oh dear, everyone seems to be missing the point.
Either pay all pensioners WFA or none as we've all paid in the same.

BUT best to do away with the WFA anyway and increase pensions.

For a government to have to give its pensioners an 'allowance' is debasing to humanity.
Our pensioners have worked all their lives and are now supposed to be enjoying the privileges of age and should be living their third age without having to get pittances from their government.
Makes us feel like the beggars sitting outside the supermarkets with their bowls saying 'thank you very much' to the goevernment for their paltry £200 per year.

Its time UK respected their pensioners like the Spanish respect their pensionistas and give us some real financial increases rather than fob us off with menial 'allowances'!

Spot on Martin.You have to ask yourself why the payment of a WFA necessary at all rather than get distracted by the blinkered, emotive, sterile argument of whether it should be paid in Spain or France. Or whether because its colder on the north coast of GB and therefore more expensive to heat a home there should be different levels of payment of WFA.


UK has the fifth largest economy in the world and the largest in Europe after Germany so you might imagine that it would be more than able to pay pensioners a level of state pension that would allow them to live fairly comfortably without freezing to death in a cold spell.


Unfortunately you would be wrong. Out of 27 European countries we come in at number 21. Arguably WFA was only introduced in a cynical political response to mounting publicity that pensioners were having to choose between eating or keeping warm and a significant number were dying through hypothermia.


So rather than the geographic squabble over who should get WFA or whether anybody really needs it maybe nobody should. Instead a caring Govt ,of any persuasion, should cut out the meaningless rhetoric of “we are all in this together” and the more recent “ our society should work for everyone” and create a fairer society where people do not have to choose between eating or keeping warm.



Just for the record I am, as prefect put it, a “ retired Civil Servant with an undeserved and ridiculous large pension supplementing the state pension”

The basic Spanish pension (for those who have paid the minimum of 15 years contributions) is €340 a month.
If the basic contributions are paid for the whole 35 years then the state pension is €588 a month. Virtually all the Spanish contribute extra over and above this amount (like topping up your NI payments). It then rises to €8229 a year although many add more to this by paying extra. Most pay something between 19 and 24 percent of salary into the pension fund to increase the amount.
In UK, you will have only paid the basic NI which averages out around 9% (11% but some of the pay is not counted and is capped).
The new UK pension of £600 pound a month compares very favourably considering the lower amount of contributions.
It also works out at £236 a week for a married couple which is £12272 per year compared with the Spanish married couple pension of €10.152 a year. (Figures from Avoco advisers).
The only way to increase your pension is by paying more into it. Hopefully the new compulsory workplace pension will stop people retiring on only a basic pension with basic contributions.
When taking out residencia, the proof of income now required is that it is equivalent to the basic Spanish pension of €588 per month.
(also note those figures are for a 4 week period and not a calendar month which is actually 13 payments a year.)

Hi All...love the discussion...too cold to go out so this Topic is perfect to sit around our collective computers and debate. The reason the UK Government were made to spread the payments to Pensioners abroad was simply that the payments were "universal" ergo...If you have paid in then you were entitled by virtue of your pensioner status to receive the said payment.As it is not means tested even the Queen gets it.What Irritable Dodgy Smith did was to use a StatuTORY instrument to qualify such payments. In this case he simply fiddled the mean South of England winter temperature level against Continental temperatures by including the French oversees departments temperatures (Martinique etc) meaning that of course Continental temperatures would never fall so low as to meet the criteria. Interestingly pensioners in Italy can still claim as they (the Italians) did not have any warm tropical temperatures to be used against their mean temperature. I am all for means testing to give some real focus to British government policy.Incidentally how many of my fellow Forum members received the Christmas Turkey tribute from HMG that was nice of them was it not.Just had some nice Minestrone soup while while thinking about my fellow pensioners sitting around there fires in Italy.Winter draws on.

marcliff wrote:

TerryG wrote:

marcliff wrote:Even in this very cold week (which is highly unusual as we used to visit in January and go home with suntans) I doubt the heating needs to be on more than a few hours a day.

Ours is on from 6am till 11.30pm. And that`s with fitted carpets throughout the house.

Well do something about your house. Fit proper double glazing, insulation and so on.
We had ours on timer for an hour this morning so it was warm when we got up. Just put the gas fire on for an hour and turned it off because it was getting really warm. In UK you'd have proper double glazing instead of the fitted, very thin, ones they have here. Check all the seals around the windows, we found big gaps which we sealed properly. Insulation tape inside the window sliders and draught excluders under the doors.
It costs half what you'd pay in UK for proper windows which makes the biggest difference.
(Apologies if you've already done it, I know some properties here do not retain heat but there are things you can do).

We have a big house, not a small apartment, and we`ve got double glazing on all the windows and doors ( which are triple glazed ) and all the radiators are on a thermostat. A gas fire wouldn't keep our house warm, although it may do for one room. When you say gas, do you mean a portable calor gas heater.

Terry G with due respect if you have a big house that you can not afford to heat perhaps downsizing may be the answer

TerryG. Well Said.....

florimondo wrote:Terry G with due respect if you have a big house that you can not afford to heat perhaps downsizing may be the answer

If you lived in the UK and you had weather like we have at the moment the heating would be on full blast, not just for a few hours each day and that`s in a proper insulated house . I`ve not long been back from the UK, so I know.

I didn't say I can`t afford to heat our house, because we can with no problem. Yes our heating bill is high, but what price comfort. Our house is as snug as bug in a rug. and having fitted carpets in the whole house, including bathrooms has made a vast difference.

Those floor tiles may be okay in the Summer but they are freezing in the Winter, and as all the rads are on a thermostat they just kick in when needed.

Interesting quote from The Telegraph:-

Helen Creighton, of the International Longevity Centre, said: "The Government aspires for the UK to be the best place in the world to grow old.
"Whilst the UK is by no means the worst place in Europe to grow old, we’ve got a lot to do to top the European league."

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/11189414/Why-Britains-state-pension-is-one-of-the-worst-in-Europe.html)
And their graph of State pensions compared as a proportion of average salary (based on OECD figures from 2012)

And here is list of NRR - net replacement rates (again OECD figures):-

And, of course, since the referendum and the resulting fall in the pound, UK has dropped further down these tables.

We are very much the poor relation.

Not off topic.

If you qualify for WFA by UK residence after 60 ? or whatever. Do you still retain it when moving out of UK. I remember that this was the case but maybe changed when they had no choice but to pay following IDS pathetic attempt to curry favour with his bosses.