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Livewire - December 23
By Don Thompson, 78, of Cleveleys
I DON'T consider myself a militant pensioner but I think I've earned the right to heat my home
adequately and eat sufficiently and travel on a bus free without others grudging me the privilege.
it probably seems a long way off for you but I genuinely fear for your future because I think most younger people today will be worse off than I am at my age.
Think twice before buying Christmas on credit at the expense of the year to come. More workers are being forced into early retirement through redundancy and other factors.
I have been to several Pensioners' Parliaments in Blackpool in my
former incarnation as a trade union
activist in east Lancashire, having retired here, on my wife's death, only recently.
The parliament is the public face of Britain's biggest pensioner organisation, the National Pensioners Convention, and wants the Government to act immediately to stop the rise in elderly deaths in winter.
I am relatively fit and active, and still enjoy a beach walk daily, but saw my lovely wife decline after a fall at home during the one week I was away from home, at our daughter's home, because of health problems there.
She ended up with hypothermia. She was rescued thanks to a neighbour's vigilance but was never the same. I sold our home and moved into a flat in order to admit her to a care facility worthy of her. It came at considerable cost. I now live in a small flat.
The other day I found myself economising on heating during the cold snap. Surely a few hours of the central heating off wouldn't hurt, I thought.
But I soon got so chilled I found it hard to move, to make myself a cuppa, so I turned the gas fire back on. It's not as good as the central heating though.
I thought of my wife, falling, in our home, and succumbing to the cold after two days immobilised, on the floor.
The latest statistics show a 49 per cent increase in the excess winter death rate between December 2008 and March 2009 in England and Wales, compared with the year before.
My wife died in January this year. I wonder if her death counts? The same figures show 36,700 more people died during the winter than at other times of year, up from 25,300. Most were over 75. It's the highest figure since 1999-2000.
People are dying because they worry about rising fuel bills and whether they can afford to heat or eat. Fuel poverty is any household spending more than 10 per cent of their income on fuel bills.
I get pension credit minimum guarantee, and spend around 15 per cent and up to 20 per cent on heating and other fuel bills when it's cold, but I'll always economise on other things first.
My wife didn't. I used to tell her she worried too much about bills and that nothing mattered so long as we had each other. Now I know just how true those words were.
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Weather for Blackpool
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Light sleet
Temperature: 1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Light sleet
Temperature: -3 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: South east
