THIS week I'm ‘Angry of Macclesfield’. Angry that elderly people must face the oncoming winter unable to pay their spiralling bills. Age Concern are worried about pensioners forced to make the choice between heating or eating as energy, water and food bills rocket.
For those in rural areas the cost of heating oil has doubled in two years while any money they might borrow will be at premium rates. How do they survive?
Unless they plan to eat loft insulation the government offers no answer meanwhile oil companies make obscene profits and bank and building society executives collect multi-million pound bonuses for failure. Where’s the leadership? Where’s the sacrifice? You can bet your fuel allowance MPs aren’t going to make any. When politicians talk about sacrifice they mean yours. They'll have a million reasons why they should have increased salaries, pensions, tax-free expenses, etc. Politicians don't do sacrifice they do indulgence.
No wonder unions strike, it’s the only way to get heard but the elderly have no union and were it not for Age Concern they’d have no voice at all.
So who’s going to look after them this winter? If we don’t do it no one else will. I’ll volunteer to pay a needy person’s electricity bill for one quarter if you will. We can ask Age Concern to organise it.
How about it?
The views on this page are Vic Barlow's and not necessarily those of the Express
