The amount of Winter Fuel Payment has changed for this year.
For the winter of 2011/2012 the Winter Fuel Payment is between £100 and £300, depending on your circumstances.
With a forecast of a very cold winter ahead, this is something to look forward to even though it has been reduced this year.
Yes Mags, they have knocked it down to £200 this year.
I’d forgotten all about that, Mags. I only got my first one last year so it had gone out of my head. It is something to look forward to. 
Thanks for the link Mags, didn’t know they had changed the rates for this year. Even though reduced, the payment will be very welcome…
Yes, that link was useful. I’ll get £200 which will be very welcome, but why have they reduced it?
My last two were £250. It will be interesting to see what I get this time.
I think you’ll find you’ll receive £200 this year, Michael…
It’s Cameron and Cleggs way of saving the economy.
That was one of their first of many cuts.
I have had improved double glazing installed since last winter so hopefully my heating costs will go down. Particularly as I will be going up to Scotland in about 10 days and most likely staying until the new year.
I have started to paper the walls with the empty promises that should keep us snug.:twisted:
Yes, change of Governments is the reason it’s reduced…
Good one Hammer! 
At the expense of the elderly - again! I can think of many ways of saving on the economy, and I was never any good at sums at school. :shock:
to young to get it 
Don’t wish your years away, Kitty … I would willingly swop mine for a few more years! 
yes your right Mags, its just so expensive for everyone
and it just gets worse
Blimey yes indeed,
And did those feet in ancient times do a jig or two to keep out the cold, not arf.
That took me back a few years, Hammer … that was my school song!
I’m not crowing here, not by any means, but when Gordon died three years ago in 2008 I didn’t turn my central heating on for that terrible cold winter because I didn’t know if I could afford it or not. I was 58 then so wasn’t entitled to the cold weather payment.
I was still working full time, thank goodness, but I still had a car to pay off and a mortgage, both of which are now paid in full. I managed with a small electric one-bar fire and blankets wrapped around me, but I was still cold.
In the winter of 2009 I said sod it, I’m not going to be cold any longer, so I changed my fuel supplier as I’d been paying £186 a month for gas and electric, and I live alone. The central heating was switched on when I got home from work and not before.
Having said all of that, some elderly people can’t move around as nimbly and have to just sit and just sitting can make you hypothermic and that’s why so many old folk die from the cold.
It’s wrong. For goodness sake! This is the 21st century and nobody should be dying of the cold.
Sorry, I’ve rabbited on again, but I do get very annoyed when the government think that the elderly don’t matter anymore.
It was ours also, I slipped up badly when dodging assembly once. I always pretended to be a catholic and was able to stand outside the hall with the genuine ones.
It must have been a momentry lapse or I had an egg powder for breakfast but those chords struck up and I found my self singing it out loud.
Next news, old beaky mutton (Mr Sutton) dragged me by the lug into the assembly hall and made me sing the bloody thing on my own in front of 400 kids.
To make sure I had reverted to C of E the headmaster introduced my backside to his favourite method of persuasion, the tawse.
Hail bloody Mary.
