Winter Fuel Allowance - EUReferendum nonsense

As EUReferendum makes it too difficult to post comments (what are they afraid of?), I cut and pasted the nonsense on Winter Fuel Payments in italics below.

The point is that everyone gets the Winter Fuel Allowance - the qualifying factor is not need, but age. So rich OAPs get, OAPs whose rent includes heating costs get it and OAPs who spend the winter in Spain get it. It's a straight supplement to the Old Age Pension.

The government's energy policy may be foolish (fuelish?) - although I would suggest it's too early to say. But it's got nothing to do with payments to old people.

Incidentally, they use the stupid socialistic phrase "fuel poverty" as if it was something special. Presumably, if you are poor, you are also "food poor", "clothing poor" and "package holiday poor". If you are on a low income, you have to choose what you spend it on more carefully than if you are on a high one. It would be perfectly rational to decide to spend less on keeping a house warm in favour of spending more on something else. That is what being poor means. The winter fuel payments are a way of making these choices less keenly felt, and are in many ways (non-means testing for instance) a good thing.

Anyway, here's the nonsense:

There would be some very great sense in tightening the qualifying criteria for winter fuel payments, as this administration is considering doing, if at the same time efforts were being made to keep fuel costs down.

However, it should be remembered that the core policy of the Cleggerons – as it was with the previous administration – is to increase the costs of home heating, so to promote fuel economy and thereby reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The winter fuel payments, in this context, are a mechanism for mitigating the inevitable effects of increased fuel poverty and the concomitant increase in the death rate amongst the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable to hypothermia.

Not least of the problem here though is that the Cleggerons have such a limited grasp of the effects of their own policies. They are unable to link the effects of two diverse actions.

But then, such an activity would require them entertaining two separate ideas in their foetid little minds at the same time – something entirely beyond the capability of our current rulers. Unfortunately for the soon to die prematurely, the consequences of the linkage are going to be all too apparent.