In the Telegraph, Maya Wilson-Autzen profiles 72 year-old retired teacher Lynn Emm, who, because of Rachel Reeves, is now forced to choose between warmth and survival. Here’s an excerpt:
Britain has faced freezing temperatures this week, with some regions falling to lows of -20°C, yet millions of pensioners are in the same position as Ms. Emm.
An estimated 10 million retirees have been left without the winter fuel allowance after the Government announced only those in receipt of pension credit would qualify. Ms. Emm only just misses out on the £200 support.
The former teacher said she is “really scared” to turn the heating on as she can’t afford a big bill.
Ms. Emm receives the full new state pension, which is £221.20 a week, just £3 above the cut-off for winter fuel allowance. She is also in receipt of a teacher’s pension. However, in 2023 she lost her life savings after being targeted online. She lost a staggering £200,000.
“This money was supposed to give me some comfort and pay for a few small luxuries in my retirement. It is completely gone and now the Government has cruelly taken away the winter fuel allowance and I am forced to scrimp and scrape to survive with no savings to fall back on,” she said.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting came under fire last week after urging pensioners to turn their heating on in light of the plummeting temperatures. But people like Ms. Emm are “so frightened” to put the heating on for more than an hour or two a day at most.
Instead, she wraps herself in blankets while moving around the house during the day: “This week has been freezing and miserable.” …
Half of people in Ms. Emm’s position are going to bed earlier to avoid putting the heating on, or have started skipping meals to save energy, a survey by the charity Independent Age found. Caroline Abrahams, director of Age U.K., said: “Wearing more layers and staying in bed for longer might have worked for older people when the weather was mild, but now it has got really cold and there’s snow and frost around, it won’t be enough to keep them adequately warm.”
Ms Emm… lives off her state pension, which goes almost entirely on bills and food. She is forced to search for bargains and live off reduced items: “I don’t buy any luxuries or comforts.” …
She has been forced to turn to charities like Lightning Reach, a financial support portal, which has launched a Winter Warmth Network to connect struggling pensioners with support.
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Jabby Mcstiff
7 months ago
It is a terrible thing scrimping on heating because it has consequences. All of your bodily functions slow down. You might get constipated and you can feel great anxiety due the stress on your functioning. I know people who live in poor countries who say that if the old folk in their own lands were unable to put the heating on then there would be revolution overnight. And these are totalitarian regimes. We have become so toothless that we can’t even protect our old people. This is a harbinger of destruction.
And people knew each other more in the old days, even in London a neighbourhood would be more familiar with each other than today.
Jabby Mcstiff
7 months ago
My advice would be put your heating on regardless even if it runs up a debt. It might seem like a hopeless strategy but I think it is the best one in the long run. The alternative is that you sit and shiver and accept the culling.
It makes me wonder how older folk manage in Scandinavian countries, where it’s colder for a hell of a lot longer than the U.K, but maybe their governments just aren’t as crap generally and as callous in their treatment of the elderly. Although Canada is another cold country a lot of the time and they’ve got a seriously crappy government, so some comparisons with how other pensioners fare in much colder climes would be interesting, if anyone happens to know. With fixed incomes I’d have thought keeping older people comfortably warm in their own homes must be a challenge faced by not only the British.
How the heck do they manage in Siberia?🙁
I lived in Norway and energy was dirt cheap. And they have this really effective method of underfloor heating in their houses. It’s the best form of heating against serious cold. And its nice to lie on the floor and get all warm. The situation in this country is the worst I have experienced anywhere in the world in terms of how demoralised people are and how little they expect. Like some dark spell that gets worse and worse. Is it a memory of a devil’s bargain I don’t know.
hogsbreath
7 months ago
Rachel Reeves is trying to kill off as many of you as possible.
BillT
7 months ago
A heating bill which is inflated thanks to the mad millipede’s insane rush to net zero.
Ron Smith
7 months ago
She doesn’t look too well in that photo does she!
Jabby Mcstiff
7 months ago
They’ve put the mind virus in over time in such a contorted way that you can’t steer the victims back to health. That is the lesson that many carers are learning right now. That understanding and resistance occupies a very marrow path.
Jabby Mcstiff
7 months ago
No more chocolate no more warming spices. No more warming family occasions. Midazolam and Remdesivir are where we want to take you. They already have when you look at the numbers who are dying through Remdesivir. They want you dead but I’m sure you know that already. All I can say is in the next couple of months there will be lots of diseases. Please don’t get tempted into taking a shot that you hope will protect you. If you take a shot after all that has happened then you deserve eternal damnation anyway.
MajorMajor
7 months ago
So Ms Emm probably worked all her life (she receives the full state pension) and can’t afford to heat her home.
At the same time somebody arriving in a dinghy is put up in a hotel at the taxpayers’ expense.
Just about says it all.
Sorry, but that’s a red herring. Why should she be forced to live off her savings? Surely her income should be sufficient to cover normal day-to-day expenditure, such as food and energy bills?
This story has to be false, in several possible ways. In the first place, if this woman is 72 then even if one assumes the latest possible date for her birthday (ie. 11th January 1953) she would have reached the female state pension age in November 2015 ie. she simply does not qualify in that case for the new state pension but for the much lower value old state pension. So which is it, has the journalist got her age wrong or her state pension amount wrong? Furthermore, if she is as stated in receipt of a teacher’s pension why is she said to live just on her state pension? How much is her teacher’s pension (for which she would have qualifed at age 60 and which from that point on – even if not taken at that age but later – would have been uprated by the CPI every year), and what does she do with that money? The implication of the article is that she had a career as a teacher not just, say, a stint working a handful of part-time years (and think about how she saved £200,000, not easy if you are on poverty wages).
All told, I am afraid to say that this is sloppy journalism (and OK, to be fair there’s oodles of contemporary journalism which falls into that category), focused on an attempt to manipulate the emotions without adequate concern for factual accuracy. It’s also ironic that the article glosses over the contribution of the teacher’s pension to income in this case given how the Telegraph bangs on (and on, and on, and on) about the so-called scandal of “gold-plated public sector pensions” (the standard phrase it trots out endlessly, combining, naturally, both cliched language and factual error: they are actually called public service pensions, you Telegraph dummies). Poor stuff from the Daily Sceptic, below its usual standards.
It’s not fair to blame the Daily Sceptic just for reporting on a Telegraph article.
But I must admit that I wondered why she can’t put on the heating, even though she receives a full state pension plus a full teacher’s pension, which together must be double what ordinary state pensioners get.
The easiest solution for freezing pensioners is to heat one room only, nice and snug, like the sitting room, keeping the inner doors closed. Sleeping in a cold bedroom with the window slightly open is good for your health and a more sound sleep. The shower heats up the bathroom, and cooking heats up the kitchen, so you only really need to heat the living room.
Maybe the problem is that some pensioners live in those big open-plan houses that must be very difficult to heat, like living in a barn. The photo seems to show her in a large living room area. “Open-plan” houses are the worst invention for cold climates, in my view. Smaller homes and flats are warmer and more snug. Put in lots of internal doors, so that you can “build up a fug” in the sitting room at least, like they did in the old days.
She may well have been scammed out of her Teachers Pension. Remember the adverts warning about that, unfortunately people were given control over their pensions years ago and were able to move the lot over to a ‘safe’ investment scheme which may have just stolen her investment. Because other than that if she’d been a teacher all her working life say 35 -40 years she’d be almost be on half pay to retire on. I agree too little information for this story to ring completely true.
Looking back at some of the Labour Party general election slogans:
‘The Labour way is the better way’ 1979
‘A future fair for all’ 2010
‘For the many, not the few’ 2017
The best one in my opinion, especially mindful of both the dire Conservative attempts to ruin the country, ably supported by the ever complicit ‘opposition’ BFF Labour Party – and certainly descriptive of the here and now – a government led by Sir kneel and his stooges:
‘Britain deserves better’ 1997
Yes, Britain does deserve better but who is going to bring that about?
In answer to your last question clearly not this government or indeed the previous one. We do however appear to have gleefully leapt from the frying pan into the fire.
CircusSpot
7 months ago
She does not look well and I feel sorry for her, but she is not a good example to use. Instead they need to talk to the old people who go to the Library and other public buildings to stay warm during the day and spend their time in bed with a hot water bottle.
The Real Engineer
7 months ago
Does anyone else notice that the Government and Police also have failed to stop all this scam crime? I do not know how the £200,000 was stolen, but the fact that is was needs huge attention. How and who are the questions, and organised often foreign criminals are the answer. I suppose these are as welcome now as boat people?
I don’t understand. Haven’t we got plenty of cheap wind power? Ed also promised £300 off our bills. So we should all be thankful for the Great Ed and follow his religion of truth. Deniers are ….err, deniers.
Richard Lyon
7 months ago
4 degrees average temperature marks the death zone in the UK. Winter deaths rise rapidly below this. 2,439 died in cold damp homes in the relatively mild (5.3 degC) winter of 2019/2020. In the cold (3.5 degC) winter of 2020/21, 14,502 died. And that’s just from the direct effects. ONS estimated the total number of “winter excess deaths” is around 24,000.
“Net Zero” is a deadly ideology.
jsampson45
7 months ago
I saw a report that the cutting of the winter fuel payment has cost the taxpayer £400,000,000 because of the resulting benefit claims.
RTSC
7 months ago
Well the answer for everyone over pensionable age is to not vote for the Labour Party – ever.
They may kill off an extra 4000 a year between now and the next General Election, but that will still leave millions who can, and should, vote for Reform. Because that’s the only way the Net Zero madness will be stopped.
brightlightsweetown
7 months ago
Meanwhile our gas and oil reserves under the North Sea are being wasted under the pathetic Climate Emergency and Net Zero Ed Millionairband and other wealthy nutters who make £££ off our backs.
Heretic
7 months ago
Spare a thought for all the school children banned from wearing their coats in freezing classrooms and canteens, while their teachers are in big coats!
“A mum with children in Years 7 and 9 at the school said her daughters have come home complaining of ‘freezing conditions’ in classrooms as well as the canteens.”
She said, “It’s really hard seeing them come home and complain of the freezing conditions they tell me about,” she said. “Especially during lunch times, in the canteens, they are being shouted at to take their coats off, whilst all the staff have these big coats on, it’s not on.”
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
It is a terrible thing scrimping on heating because it has consequences. All of your bodily functions slow down. You might get constipated and you can feel great anxiety due the stress on your functioning. I know people who live in poor countries who say that if the old folk in their own lands were unable to put the heating on then there would be revolution overnight. And these are totalitarian regimes. We have become so toothless that we can’t even protect our old people. This is a harbinger of destruction.
And people knew each other more in the old days, even in London a neighbourhood would be more familiar with each other than today.
My advice would be put your heating on regardless even if it runs up a debt. It might seem like a hopeless strategy but I think it is the best one in the long run. The alternative is that you sit and shiver and accept the culling.
It makes me wonder how older folk manage in Scandinavian countries, where it’s colder for a hell of a lot longer than the U.K, but maybe their governments just aren’t as crap generally and as callous in their treatment of the elderly. Although Canada is another cold country a lot of the time and they’ve got a seriously crappy government, so some comparisons with how other pensioners fare in much colder climes would be interesting, if anyone happens to know. With fixed incomes I’d have thought keeping older people comfortably warm in their own homes must be a challenge faced by not only the British.
How the heck do they manage in Siberia?🙁
I lived in Norway and energy was dirt cheap. And they have this really effective method of underfloor heating in their houses. It’s the best form of heating against serious cold. And its nice to lie on the floor and get all warm. The situation in this country is the worst I have experienced anywhere in the world in terms of how demoralised people are and how little they expect. Like some dark spell that gets worse and worse. Is it a memory of a devil’s bargain I don’t know.
Rachel Reeves is trying to kill off as many of you as possible.
A heating bill which is inflated thanks to the mad millipede’s insane rush to net zero.
She doesn’t look too well in that photo does she!
They’ve put the mind virus in over time in such a contorted way that you can’t steer the victims back to health. That is the lesson that many carers are learning right now. That understanding and resistance occupies a very marrow path.
No more chocolate no more warming spices. No more warming family occasions. Midazolam and Remdesivir are where we want to take you. They already have when you look at the numbers who are dying through Remdesivir. They want you dead but I’m sure you know that already. All I can say is in the next couple of months there will be lots of diseases. Please don’t get tempted into taking a shot that you hope will protect you. If you take a shot after all that has happened then you deserve eternal damnation anyway.
So Ms Emm probably worked all her life (she receives the full state pension) and can’t afford to heat her home.
At the same time somebody arriving in a dinghy is put up in a hotel at the taxpayers’ expense.
Just about says it all.
She did lose £200,000 to a financial scam. Therein lies the real reason for her situation
I agree, unfortunate but not the government’s fault.
Sorry, but that’s a red herring. Why should she be forced to live off her savings? Surely her income should be sufficient to cover normal day-to-day expenditure, such as food and energy bills?
This story has to be false, in several possible ways. In the first place, if this woman is 72 then even if one assumes the latest possible date for her birthday (ie. 11th January 1953) she would have reached the female state pension age in November 2015 ie. she simply does not qualify in that case for the new state pension but for the much lower value old state pension. So which is it, has the journalist got her age wrong or her state pension amount wrong? Furthermore, if she is as stated in receipt of a teacher’s pension why is she said to live just on her state pension? How much is her teacher’s pension (for which she would have qualifed at age 60 and which from that point on – even if not taken at that age but later – would have been uprated by the CPI every year), and what does she do with that money? The implication of the article is that she had a career as a teacher not just, say, a stint working a handful of part-time years (and think about how she saved £200,000, not easy if you are on poverty wages).
All told, I am afraid to say that this is sloppy journalism (and OK, to be fair there’s oodles of contemporary journalism which falls into that category), focused on an attempt to manipulate the emotions without adequate concern for factual accuracy. It’s also ironic that the article glosses over the contribution of the teacher’s pension to income in this case given how the Telegraph bangs on (and on, and on, and on) about the so-called scandal of “gold-plated public sector pensions” (the standard phrase it trots out endlessly, combining, naturally, both cliched language and factual error: they are actually called public service pensions, you Telegraph dummies). Poor stuff from the Daily Sceptic, below its usual standards.
It’s not fair to blame the Daily Sceptic just for reporting on a Telegraph article.
But I must admit that I wondered why she can’t put on the heating, even though she receives a full state pension plus a full teacher’s pension, which together must be double what ordinary state pensioners get.
The easiest solution for freezing pensioners is to heat one room only, nice and snug, like the sitting room, keeping the inner doors closed. Sleeping in a cold bedroom with the window slightly open is good for your health and a more sound sleep. The shower heats up the bathroom, and cooking heats up the kitchen, so you only really need to heat the living room.
Maybe the problem is that some pensioners live in those big open-plan houses that must be very difficult to heat, like living in a barn. The photo seems to show her in a large living room area. “Open-plan” houses are the worst invention for cold climates, in my view. Smaller homes and flats are warmer and more snug. Put in lots of internal doors, so that you can “build up a fug” in the sitting room at least, like they did in the old days.
She may well have been scammed out of her Teachers Pension. Remember the adverts warning about that, unfortunately people were given control over their pensions years ago and were able to move the lot over to a ‘safe’ investment scheme which may have just stolen her investment. Because other than that if she’d been a teacher all her working life say 35 -40 years she’d be almost be on half pay to retire on. I agree too little information for this story to ring completely true.
Looking back at some of the Labour Party general election slogans:
‘The Labour way is the better way’ 1979
‘A future fair for all’ 2010
‘For the many, not the few’ 2017
The best one in my opinion, especially mindful of both the dire Conservative attempts to ruin the country, ably supported by the ever complicit ‘opposition’ BFF Labour Party – and certainly descriptive of the here and now – a government led by Sir kneel and his stooges:
‘Britain deserves better’ 1997
Yes, Britain does deserve better but who is going to bring that about?
In answer to your last question clearly not this government or indeed the previous one. We do however appear to have gleefully leapt from the frying pan into the fire.
She does not look well and I feel sorry for her, but she is not a good example to use. Instead they need to talk to the old people who go to the Library and other public buildings to stay warm during the day and spend their time in bed with a hot water bottle.
Does anyone else notice that the Government and Police also have failed to stop all this scam crime? I do not know how the £200,000 was stolen, but the fact that is was needs huge attention. How and who are the questions, and organised often foreign criminals are the answer. I suppose these are as welcome now as boat people?
Why so many scams originate in Nigeria | The Business Standard
Letter from Africa: Why Nigeria’s internet scammers are ‘role models’ – BBC News
I don’t understand. Haven’t we got plenty of cheap wind power? Ed also promised £300 off our bills. So we should all be thankful for the Great Ed and follow his religion of truth. Deniers are ….err, deniers.
4 degrees average temperature marks the death zone in the UK. Winter deaths rise rapidly below this. 2,439 died in cold damp homes in the relatively mild (5.3 degC) winter of 2019/2020. In the cold (3.5 degC) winter of 2020/21, 14,502 died. And that’s just from the direct effects. ONS estimated the total number of “winter excess deaths” is around 24,000.
“Net Zero” is a deadly ideology.
I saw a report that the cutting of the winter fuel payment has cost the taxpayer £400,000,000 because of the resulting benefit claims.
Well the answer for everyone over pensionable age is to not vote for the Labour Party – ever.
They may kill off an extra 4000 a year between now and the next General Election, but that will still leave millions who can, and should, vote for Reform. Because that’s the only way the Net Zero madness will be stopped.
Meanwhile our gas and oil reserves under the North Sea are being wasted under the pathetic Climate Emergency and Net Zero Ed Millionairband and other wealthy nutters who make £££ off our backs.
Spare a thought for all the school children banned from wearing their coats in freezing classrooms and canteens, while their teachers are in big coats!
School blasted by parents for ‘refusing’ to let pupils wear coats in ‘freezing’ classes – Mirror Online
“A mum with children in Years 7 and 9 at the school said her daughters have come home complaining of ‘freezing conditions’ in classrooms as well as the canteens.”
She said, “It’s really hard seeing them come home and complain of the freezing conditions they tell me about,” she said. “Especially during lunch times, in the canteens, they are being shouted at to take their coats off, whilst all the staff have these big coats on, it’s not on.”