ALL aboard the winter fuel payments bandwagon!

It's time to stake your claim -- as everyone aged 60 or over by the beginning of this week becomes entitled to the £200-per-household benefit.

Indeed, Pensions Minister Ian McCartney has been busy reminding those in the 60-and-upwards age group in East Lancashire to put in for the money and has set up a special telephone helpline to make sure all who are due the payment get it.

(And, please, remember to vote for the nice government who gave it you, folks).

But, hey, what about all those 60-plus men still in work earning good wages? Are they so poor that they need a £200 state handout to keep the home fires burning?

No-one would begrudge older folk on low incomes a benefit that keeps them warm and removes the fear of the winter quarter's fuel bill.

But why on earth is it being paid to people with decent incomes -- many of them employed men in the 60-65 age group who have reached the top of the earnings ladder in their occupations and others who are far-from-poor retired folk who have nice company pensions on top of the one they get from the state?

No matter how much these people may point out that they have paid into the system all their working lives, the question, surely, should be, do the comfortably-off deserve welfare if they don't need it?

And didn't we get a telling insight into just how much this benefit costs with the disclosure this week that in Pendle alone 34,102 winter fuel payments were made last year at a cost of more than £5 million?

How much of that was taxpayers' money being burned to cosset the better off who don't need help? And how much of it might have otherwise gone to the truly hard-up who do, or to ever-struggling public services like the NHS?