I had ten minutes so thought I’d cobble together a rough spread sheet for how an average salary person, remaining at average salary all their working life might grow a pension pot. Even with employer contributions the number by 65 years old looked a lot like your £107k and not at all like the table I found. (I then checked where my table came from - produced by a pension provider. So not surprising that they’d want to make people think their own pot is small.)
Amended numbers and apology from me is that a £107k pot would generate something like £6k a year. Add to a couple’s £22k state pension and you get a household income of £28k. Not that much but, assuming their home is mortgage/rent free then decent enough. And clearly higher then most in Yorkshire, where I presume all the below average live.
Have you the figures for 2005 Lincs after Brown’s tax raid and when I retired. This is the
pensioners we are talking about.
And didn’t Brown sell the bulk of our gold at bottom dollar.
As I previously said, not everyone has a “pension pot”, many do not have a “mortgage free” home as they are renting so still have rent to pay. Your figures are also for couples yet there are a great many who are living alone so do not have that double pension.
Yes, your points are very valid. There are definitely many who failed to adequately build a pension pot and many who are burdened with all the household costs on a single pension. Clearly people like that deserve a fuel allowance (even though it can seem as if those who planned and prepared for retirement are now also bailing out those who did not or could not).
The numbers of pensioners in private rented accommodation is shocking (about a sixth) and its no coincidence that this is rising while the stock of social housing has massively fallen.
No, sorry, I don’t. I suggest you look it up yourself and let us know. (Although I thought the biggest impact of Brown’s actions was the reduction in final salary schemes ad a move to less generous schemes.)
I noticed one of my pension funds fell by 10% due to the chaos of the Truss budget. Is it possible that all politicians hate private pension funds?
I had a quick search Lincs but could not get any results but I think the figures might be less than the ones you quote, after all Brown’s action were estimated to have knocked £100 billion off the pension funds. 10% is slightly less than the 33% I suffered.
Surely, the means test needs to be unambiguous and the allowance itself indexed to any given years Ofgem price cap.
Is anyone taking the government to task for not cracking down on power company profits and reducing power bills? It seems that is the bigger part of the problem.
I think we have been promised self sufficiency so we can get back to domestic ripping each other off, without the input of Johnny Foreigner 
I don’t know any pensioners with an annual income of £35,000, that would certainly give me a luxurious life.
Speaking from a female perspective but also living in “the south “. ( does that mean we don’t need it because it’s warmer?) None of my friends even reach the £12,500 income for paying tax. In fact reaching that threshold would considerably enhance my lifestyle.
If the numbers are correct about the average pension pot, then the average pensioner should get the £11k state pension plus something like £6k from a private pension. This of course means that half the retired population gets a lot less - in some cases zero private pension and perhaps not even the maximum state pension, if NI contributions were not sufficient.
This shows how unfair the system is for people who worked a lot less (parenting, being a carer, part time work without pension provision, etc.). These are the people who really need the fuel allowance.
Oy you😉 . Leave the southerners out of this this argument. There are many down here, and I do mean MANY pensioners who struggle to manage month to month in the summer and relied on their WFA to help heat their single room they do try to keep warmish in the ruddy cold months. Now of course, some will eventually be struck down by hypothermia to end up in hospital costing the nation far far more than their original WFA that arse-hole Starmer filched from them🤬
Southerners are no different to northerners and feel the cold just as equally.
Sorry LongDriver, it was a bit ‘tongue in cheek’ and you make a very good point about the NHS picking up the slack from pensioners who can’t afford to heat their homes and suffer the many seasonal illnesses that winter brings.
Running conventional energy production (coal & Gas fired power stations) down before a suitable alternative was in place, and still isn’t (Imported energy is very expensive) was a very stupid and thoughtless move by the government Annie. The resulting move to Wind Turbines and solar panels (very unreliable) have to be financed by somebody…And that’s you and me on our energy bills.
If this WFA malarkey is an example of Starmer’s jerk-reaction and ill though through policies, the we are all in for a very rough 5 yrs.
Absolutely LD, it they weren’t spending so much money on weapons to Ukraine they wouldn’t need to cut the WFP. We’re going to have more casualties over the winter than Ukraine will…
And Biden doesn’t seem so keen to be responsible for WW3 during his time as potus, and I must say, I agree with him… 
If America takes a step back, we’ll be on our own…
Hmm - you would think Starmer would be sympathetic to pensioners seeing as he is so hard up himself that he had to accept gifts of clothing and glasses for himself and his wife!
But the pension is £169 a week which is far from 11k
OGF I am not sure how keeping coal mines open would have led to lower fuel costs, same with oil which it’s apparently cheaper to refine abroad and buy back. I thought we still used North sea gas. Although it all seems to be owned by private companies. I understand these resources were privatised by Thatcher in the early 80s. I guess selling off industries is how you balance the books as a quick fix which you cannot repeat but is a vote pleasing strategy.
