Anger over Daily Mail cartoon lampooning fuel allowance payments to expats

THERE is a great deal of anger amongst expats in France and other EU countries at a cartoon that appeared in the Daily Mail.

The Mac cartoon features a couple lying beside a swimming pool who are taking delivery of a crate of wine, with the punchline saying 'Oh goody! Here comes our winter fuel'.

Expats are angry at the inference that people use the Winter Fuel Allowance to buy alcohol, despite many saying the payment is used to help with energy bills in homes across France and the EU.

The Daily Mail cartoon comes soon after it was announced that expats living in a number of countries in Europe, including France, will lose the fuel allowance payment based on research that claims average winter temperatures were higher then those in the UK.

Now expats are being urged to write to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) to press the Daily Mail to issue an apology over the cartoon.

Graham Richards, of the Votes for Expat Brits website, said: "I have made a formal complaint to the PCC based on the fact that the Daily Mail has published a highly inaccurate, mailicious, badly and completly ill researched article and cartoon and is insulting to the vast majority of retired expats now living in other EU countries.

"It is an article of propaganda and falsifies their lifestyle as to alienate them from those still living in the UK."

Earlier this year electricity prices in France rose by 5%, which will be followed by a similar 5% increase on 1 August 2014, while it is estimated that energy costs in the French countryside are 23% higher than in cities.