Pensioners found dead after gas was cut off
over £140 bill

Every Xmas the television in Britain puts on old films by
Charles Dickens, usually things like A Christmas Carol. This depicts a world
where heartless employers force people to work on Christmas Day and poor people
perish of cold and hunger in the Workhouse.

These films always end happily, with repentant capitalists cheerfully
giving
away turkeys and Xmas puddings to the poor. People are left with a warm feeling
that everything is for the best in the best of all capitalist worlds and that,
after all, these things happened a long time ago. But today’s news shows that
the bad old days are still very much with us.
 
The festive season in Britain got off to a grim start with the revelations in
the press about two
pensioners who died weeks after their gas supply was cut off because of an
unpaid bill of £140. These events happened, not in 1840 but in the year of our
Lord 2003.

George Bates, 89, and his wife Gertrude, 86, were found on 18 October in the
living room of the house they had lived in for 63 years after a neighbour called
the police. Mr Bates, a retired postman, had died of hypothermia in his armchair
and Mrs Bates was lying on the floor having died of a heart attack.

Mr and Mrs Bates were discovered 13 weeks after British Gas disconnected their
cooking and heating supplies because they failed to respond to repeated requests
for payment. Neighbours said that the elderly couple were good humoured and
active. Mr Bates was known as an immaculately dressed pensioner who would
entertain staff with jokes and coin tricks at his local convenience store.

Jagdish Patel, 50, the owner of the couple’s local post office and grocery shop,
said that Mr Bates was meticulous about money. "If he was ever short by a
penny or two, he would refuse to buy it on account. He would walk home to fetch
the extra money rather than go without paying the full bill. This should have
not happened to this wonderful couple," he said.

British Gas told Westminster coroner’s court that the company was “prevented
from informing social services” about the disconnection because of the Data
Protection Act, which prohibits the disclosure of such information without
consent.

This case was still more tragic because, as it happens, the
couple had enough money to pay the bill. British Gas said that a representative
had spoken to Mrs Bates on her doorstep on 9 June about the unpaid bill and she
had given no sign of being unable to cope or understand. The bill remained
unpaid and the gas was then cut off.

These deaths were therefore the result of bureaucratic mismanagement. But in
many other cases, old age pensioners, living on a pittance, must decide whether
to spend their meagre incomes on food or heating bills, which in Britain’s
inclement winter weather, can be extremely expensive.

While the case was being heard, the Faculty of Public
Health issued a warning that 2,500 elderly people were expected to die in the
week before Christmas, because of the cold. Poor housing, inadequate heating and
"fuel poverty" – defined as any household which has to spend more than
10 per cent of its income to keep warm – were the main causes of the excess
winter deaths, the faculty said.

National Statistics, formerly the Office of National Statistics, said that
between 24,000 and 49,000 extra deaths happened during the winter months in
recent years.

The cause of these deaths is usually attributed to things like influenza, heart
attacks, pneumonia and the like. It is put down to weather conditions and the
level of flu in the community. But the real cause in most cases is poverty
and neglect. Professor Sian Griffiths, president of the Faculty of Public
Health, said that too many people were dying of the cold in Britain
"because we haven’t taken the problem seriously".

She said: "The UK remains one of the worst countries in the world at coping
with unseasonal low temperatures. All of us must be vigilant and look out for
family, friends and neighbours who may be suffering. Often fatal illnesses
develop two or three days after a cold snap has finished."

The Meteorological Office said that an extra 8,000 deaths
were expected for very one degree Celsius the temperature falls below the winter
average. But it is too easy to blame the British weather and place the
responsibility on neighbours and family. 

Why should this kind of thing happen in the year 2003 in a supposedly civilized
country? If people lived in decent houses, with adequate insulation and central
heating, and enough money not to have to worry about expenditure on fuel, these
tragedies would not occur, or at least not on such an unacceptably huge scale.

In the Britain of which Tony Blair is so proud, many people
– not only the old – are living in slum conditions, in houses that are cold
and damp, and have no proper heating. Many others – mainly young unemployed
people – live on the streets and sleep under bridges or in shop fronts. Mr.
Blair, who, as we all know is a devout Christian, has hit upon a solution for
the problem of these vagrants – introduce tougher laws against begging and get
the police to move them on.

Indeed,
the spirit of Scrooge is alive and well in Tony Blair’s Britain. 

London, 23rd December 2003.