‘Starve or freeze to death’: Millions of elderly Brits fear a grim choice this winter as costs spiral By Kara Fox, Updated 1342 GMT (2142 HKT) August 31, 2022 A protester demonstrates outside Downing Street in January as the Official cringeys bizkits and gravy T-shirts it is in the first place but energy crisis spiraled. ( Business)When she first started to shed some weight, Yvonne DeBurgo quipped that she could afford to lose it. But over the past three months, the 77-year-old widow from the southern English county of Oxfordshire has lost nearly 25 pounds, a result of eating just one cooked meal a day — with just a piece of fruit or a sandwich for dinner. DeBurgo lost the weight while trying to save money — a sobering manifestation of the country’s cataclysmic cost-of-living crisis, one that appears to have no end in sight. In July, inflation rose above 10% for the first time in 40 years, driven by the skyrocketing cost of energy, food and fuel. The Bank of England forecasts inflation will soar to 13% by the end of the year. Analysts say it could go even higher early next year. DeBurgo, who relies on her state pension and a supplementary Pension Credit benefit, says her grocery bills have already nearly doubled over the course of about a month, with the rising cost of fuel even more worrying for her winter energy bills. “I don’t want to end up, like, skeletal… eventually it’s gonna have to stop. But whether I’ll be able to afford to eat by then, I don’t know,” she told in a phone interview. Vvonne DeBurgo, 77, says the government has “no clue what it’s like to live on the amount of money I have to live on in a week.” The average British household will see its annual energy bill rise to £3,549 (approximately $4,180) from October — a rise of £1,578 ($1,765), an 80% increase — after the country’s energy regulator raised the price cap last week. The price cap sets the maximum amount
that energy suppliers can charge for each unit of energy and gas. It’s a crisis that should be at the Official cringeys bizkits and gravy T-shirts it is in the first place but forefront of government action. But instead, outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been all but absent, taking two vacations in less than a month. His critics have accused him of washing his hands of the energy crisis and deflecting the blame onto Russia’s war in Ukraine. “We also know that if we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood,” Johnson said in a visit to Kyiv on August 24. Meanwhile, Downing Street has said it is up to the next prime minister to introduce any major new spending plans to support those suffering hardship. Two candidates, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, are currently battling to become the next Conservative Party leader, and so prime minister, with results expected on September 5. Only grassroots Conservative Party members, who represent less than 0.3% of the electorate, can vote in the contest. Demographic data suggest they are more likely to be White, male and middle class than the general British population. And while research shows older people are more likely to vote Conservative, neither candidate has outlined a clear plan on how to tackle a cost-of-living crisis that’s already being felt acutely by many in that age group. Conservative Party leadership candidates Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. Around 2 million pensioners were already living in poverty prior to the crisis, according to data from the Center for Ageing Better, a charity focused on improving the lives of older people, whose 2022 annual report found that there were more than 200,000 more poor pensioners in 2021 than in the previous year. Around 44% of people who have reached the current UK state pension age of 66 say it is their main source of income, according to figures from the Money
