It Never Gets Cold in Spain Iain Duncan Smith

GLASSMAN wrote:if you live in spain full time from the UK it was your choice to live here,you must have known the WFA is not available if you qualify for it.you can always move back to qualify for benefits,which I suspect a lot of pensioners live here own 2 homes , 1 spain 1 uk,and claim everything available.

Mickey Braw wrote:Speak for yourself. As a pensioner living here on the lovely Costa Blanca for many years, there is no way that WFA should be paid to us.
There is a massive difference between the climate here and in the UK.

Jan wrote:I can't debate either way about the fuel payment as I don't live full time in Spain but what I will say is, in the UK we can have our heating on from end of Sept to end of April in some years which is very costly.(Depending on how cold it is, it can be 6 to 7 months)
In Spain most of our friends living there say they have two or three months where they need heating on constantly inside the house, mostly evenings and early mornings, as they say it is warmer outside most days in winter in the middle hours of the day. It is still expensive to heat a home in Spain but it's usually only around 3 months that constant heating may be needed. Dec to end of Feb. Although March evenings can be cool in the house too and then a bit of heating may be needed depending how hardy you are LOL (That's the earliest we've ever been during the year)

Jan

Martin the artist wrote:

GLASSMAN wrote:if you live in spain full time from the UK it was your choice to live here,you must have known the WFA is not available if you qualify for it.you can always move back to qualify for benefits,which I suspect a lot of pensioners live here own 2 homes , 1 spain 1 uk,and claim everything available.

Well I live in Spain mainly because on a meagre UK old age pension, I would find it too expensive to live in UK.
I do not own a property in the UK and when I moved here I was a couple of years short of my pension.
The WFA allowance was removed for Spanish ex-pats after I'd moved and beconme resident.
And I don't claim for anything in either UK or Spain.

The UK OAP is the lowest in Europe (whilst the Spanish pension is almost the highest) and the WFA was introduced as a sop to make pensioners greatful to their caring government!
Whereas they should have been increasing the pensions in relationship th the 40 years payments that pensioners have made into the system.

But now I see the UK are beginning to call them 'pension benefits'!
(A subtle way to eventually abolish them?)

But if all other EU countries can afford to give better pensions, surely UK should be able to!

lexia wrote:I think people are forgetting it's not just 2 or 3 months in the winter we need heating to keep warm. We also need aircon to keep cool for 2 to 3 months in the summer.