The British were faced with a choice: “starve or freeze to death”

The average UK household faces the prospect of seeing its annual electricity bill rise to £3,549 from October – an increase of £1,578, up 80% – after the energy regulator countries raised the price limit last week. The price cap sets the maximum amount that energy providers can charge for each unit of energy and gas.

CNN Business talks about an elderly British woman, Yvonne DeBurgo, as an example. Over the past three months, a 77-year-old widow from Oxfordshire in southern England has lost almost 25 pounds (about 11 kg) as a result of eating only one cooked meal a day – with a piece of fruit or a sandwich for dinner.

DeBurgo lost weight in an attempt to save money – a sobering manifestation of the catastrophic cost-of-living crisis in the UK that seems to have no end in sight, notes CNN Business.

In July, inflation topped 10% for the first time in 40 years due to skyrocketing energy, food and fuel costs. The Bank of England predicts inflation to rise to 13% by the end of the year. Analysts say it could rise even more early next year.

DeBurgo, who relies on her state pension and supplemental retirement benefit, says her groceries bills have already nearly doubled in about a month, and rising fuel costs are further troubling her winter energy bills.

“I don’t want to end up turning into a skeleton… this has to stop eventually. But if I can afford to eat by then, I don’t know,” she told CNN.

This is a crisis that should be at the forefront of the British government. But instead, outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson is virtually absent, having gone on two vacations in less than a month. His critics accuse him of washing his hands of the energy crisis and shifting the blame to the conflict in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Downing Street said the next British prime minister should introduce any major new spending plans to support those who are struggling. Two candidates, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, are currently vying to become the next leader of the Conservative Party and therefore prime minister, with the results of that race due on September 5. Only ordinary members of the Conservative Party, who make up less than 0.3% of the electorate, can vote for a new leader.

And while research shows that older people are more likely to vote conservative, neither candidate has laid out a clear plan for how to deal with the cost-of-living crisis that is already keenly felt by many in this age group.

About 2 million retirees were already living in poverty before the crisis, according to the Center for Better Aging, a charity dedicated to improving the lives of older people, whose 2022 annual report showed that there are more poor retirees in 2021 than the previous year.

According to data from the Money and Pensions Service, sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions, about 44% of people who have reached the current UK retirement age of 66 say it is their main source of income. Most pensioners receive a basic state pension of £141.85 a week (about 10,000 rubles) or about £7,400 (about 520 thousand rubles) a year, with a new pension introduced in 2016 of about £9,600 (673 thousand rubles) per year. The state pension rose 3.1% in April, well below the rate of inflation at the time, at 9%. The next increase in the state pension will be in April next year.

“So these people have already suffered and now we are in a situation where they will get even worse and many more will fall into poverty because of what is happening,” says Morgan Vine of the charity Independent Age.

People who took part in the Independent Age survey in June and July painted a grim picture of their daily lives. “I turned off the heating, I don’t wash the floor that often. I don’t vacuum that often, I only wash dishes when absolutely necessary, I can no longer bake with my grandchildren, which breaks my heart,” said one pensioner.

“Leisure trips are a thing of the past, social life is a thing of the past, if costs continue to rise, I have no answers, I would not mind working, but I am 88 years old and no one needs me,” said another respondent.

Such poverty exacerbates health conditions, while life expectancy also declines, according to a report by the Center for Better Aging, which notes that the number of years older people spend in good health is also declining.

The NHS Confederation – the body representing the leaders of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) – said this month that fuel shortages, in particular, create a “vicious circle of need for medical care”, explaining that doctors can treat a patient’s illness, but if illness… – for example, a chest infection – is caused by cold, damp housing, the cycle of infection will continue when the patient returns home.

This is a concern that Yvonne DeBurgo does not leave. She doesn’t know how she’ll manage to keep warm this winter to deal with the symptoms associated with her fibromyalgia and arthritis.

“I think the government thinks we should either starve to death or freeze to death,” DeBurgo says.

Morgan Vine shares these concerns. “Obviously, we are incredibly concerned that colder months are coming because we really think that this will lead to an increase in the number of deaths of older people,” she said. And this forecast did not come out of nowhere: according to the NHS, almost 10,000 people died in England and Wales in 2021 due to the fact that it was too cold in their homes.

In a statement last week, NHS leaders warned of a looming “humanitarian crisis” if the government does not address energy costs, saying fuel shortages “will inevitably lead to a significant increase in demand for already very fragile services” and may increase annual cold-related deaths in homes.

Hospitals in the UK are already close to bending under the pressure of the crisis, with older people particularly vulnerable to service gaps, including record high hospital queues and a shortage of workers.

In August, there were two examples of such failures in the country. A 90-year-old woman reportedly waited 40 hours for an ambulance after falling from her home in Cornwall, southwest England. Her son, Steven Sims, wrote on social media that she fell on Sunday evening and that the ambulance arrived on Tuesday afternoon, and that his mother then waited another 20 hours to be examined by a doctor at the hospital. “The system is completely broken,” he told the BBC’s Cornish service.

And in another case in Cornwall, an 87-year-old man waited 15 hours for an ambulance after breaking seven ribs and a fractured pelvis, his daughter told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the conservative leadership rivalry is largely devoid of serious debate about the full extent of the crisis facing the health service.

So far, the British government has announced that eligible households in England, Scotland and Wales will receive £400 spread over six installments to help with rising fuel bills from October.

But many say that this is not enough.

In April, the Conservative government broke a campaign promise by suspending for a year the so-called “triple lock” formula, a measure that raises basic state pensions by either 2.5%, inflation, or average earnings, whichever is greater. .