vivweb01blog

A Warning to low Electricity and Gas users:   If you are anything other than a high user of both fuels, don't be tempted by offers from your supplier to fix your tariffs now.... Suppliers are now piling on the pressure to fix with a plethora of different and highly confusing offers, none of which include a reduction in the standing charge . These offers have been coming in thick and fast since last month following the latest price cap rise, and the unexpected rise in the cap from January, and OFGEM are effectively 'co-conspiring' with suppliers to try to get you to fix now, by soft-pedalling on a final decision on the precise details of any SC reductions. There is also a nasty rumour that OFGEM has caved in even further to the cartel and is likely to set a minimum consumption level (ca 666 kWh for electricity and 2500kWh for Gas) for a 'low' user to qualify for a reduced-SC tariff. This is ridculously high and would exclude many pensioners who have already cut their...

  Rachel Reeves has a thorny problem on her hands.  She needs to decide within the next 3 weeks (i.e. before the budget on Nov 26 th ) whether to break the key manifesto promise Labour made in order to get themselves elected in 2024, i.e. not to raise Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance. She knows that breaking this promise will be a highly unpopular move, not least with her back-bench colleagues, and doing so, however justifiably in her eyes, could spell electoral suicide for the party. If the opinion polls are anything to go by, the process of Labour's decline started as soon as she announced the near abolition of  WFP last July; it could really start to snowball in May of next year, in the aftermath of the predicted whitewash of Labour seats in the next round of local elections. The chancellor is also facing the increasingly gloomy financial outlook for the UK prophesied by the OBR, and is desperate to give herself as much financial ‘headroom’ as possible wit...

  Editor's note: Please see the recent update at the end of this text for analysis of the Winter Fuel reversal announcement in June 2025, and its implications for the future of universal pensioner benefits.....You may also be interested in a more recent update on the recent rumours that Reeves may introduce means testing for the State Pension itself, and other real or imaginary prospective horrors, in this November's budget....  ----------------------------- Now that the dust has well and truly settled after Reeves’ so-called ‘Halloween Nightmare’ budget in October 2024, and its consequences have fully fitered through to the economy at large, let’s take a look at what actually happened to pensioner benefits…and what we might expect to happen in future. We all know about the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment for the majority of pensioners last summer – you would have had to have been living on Mars for the last year not to. Although Starmer obviously thinks it's 'done...