The level of excess winter deaths in the UK is higher than Siberia’s. This is why.

Cold-Hearted

Posted December 27, 2010

The level of excess winter deaths in the UK is higher than Siberia’s. This is why.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 28th December 2010.

Were you to list the factors that distinguish civilisation from barbarism, this would come close to the top: that the elderly are not left to die of cold. By this measure, the United Kingdom is a cruel land. Although we usually have one of the smallest differences between winter and summer temperatures at these latitudes, we also have one of the highest levels of excess winter deaths. Roughly twice as many people, per capita, die here than in Scandanavia and other parts of northern Europe, though our winters are typically milder(1). Even Siberia has lower levels of excess winter deaths than we do(2). Between 25,000 and 30,000 people a year are hastened to the grave by the cold here(3) – this winter it could be much worse.

Why? Inequality. We have an economic elite untouched and unmoved by the ills afflicting other people. It survives all changes of government. Its need for profit outweighs other people’s need for survival. Here’s how our brutal system operates.

Fuel poverty is defined as having to spend 10% or more of your income on keeping your home at a decent temperature. Between 2003 and 2008 (the latest available figures) the number of households in fuel poverty here rose from 2 to 4.5 million(4). That’s not people; that’s households: this blight now afflicts 18% of the UK’s population. Yet, since 2000, over £25bn of our money has been spent on programmes ostensibly designed to prevent it(5). Admittedly, much of this spending doesn’t really have anything to do with fuel. The winter fuel payment is, in truth, a universal pension supplement which people can spend as they wish: it helps large numbers of the elderly to get by. But most of the other spending programmes are ill-conceived, unfair and unfocussed.

Even before the coalition took office, the government’s statutory advisers estimated that 7m households would be fuel-poor by 2016(6), which happens to be the date by which New Labour pledged to eliminate fuel poverty. As the incomes of the poor fall and the Tories deregulate still further, it could get even worse.

The main reason is that the privatised, liberalised utility companies have been allowed to get away with murder. In her excellent new book Fixing Fuel Poverty, Brenda Boardman shows that fuel poverty has risen so steeply in the UK because public control over the energy companies is so weak(7). In 2002 the regulator, Ofgem, decided that it would stop regulating consumer prices. The energy companies immediately increased their profit margins: 10-fold in one case(8). When world energy prices rise, the companies raise their tariffs, often far more steeply than the wholesale price justifies. When they fall, domestic prices often stay where they are.

The price rises are exacerbated by policies which penalise the poor. People who use pre-payment meters to buy gas and electricity (who are often the poorest) are stung for an extra £120 a year(9). Those who consume the most energy (generally the rich) are subsidised by everyone else: they pay a lower tariff beyond a certain level of use. It ought to be the other way round: the first units you consume should be the cheapest. Before the election, both the Tories and the Lib Dems demanded an inquiry into competition in the energy market. They’re not demanding it any more(10).

There should be a perfect synergy between climate change and social justice policies. As the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee points out, “improving the energy efficiency of homes is the most effective way of tackling fuel poverty.”(11) But the government’s green policies are grossly unfair and regressive: everyone pays at an equal rate for reducing energy emissions, yet those who need the most help to green their homes and reduce their costs don’t get it. Policies such as the European emissions trading system, the carbon emissions reduction target and the feed-in tariff are, according to the government’s Climate Change Committee, likely to throw another 1.7m people into fuel poverty by 2022(12). This is an outrage.

The main scheme for improving the homes of the fuel poor, Warm Front, is so leaky and badly constructed that, if it were a house, it would be condemned and demolished. Only 25% of the money it spends relieves fuel poverty(13). There’s no requirement that the worst homes are treated, or that they are brought up to an acceptable level of energy efficiency. Boardman discovered that “the proportion of expenditure going to the fuel poor is less than they contribute”(14).

Now the scheme has been suspended. The government has launched a consultation on how it could work better when it resumes, but there will be much less money(15): even if it starts to work, it will address only a fraction of the escalating problem.

Nothing will be done to reduce fuel poverty until governments discipline one of the least regulated energy markets in the rich world - controlling profits and prices - and help those who need it most. Green policies must be funded by transferring money from richer consumers to poorer ones. It’s a scandal that none of this was addressed by the Labour government. It would be little short of miraculous if it were tackled by the Tories. But until something is done, the cold will keep killing, at levels which even the Siberians don’t have to endure.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Brenda Boardman, 2010. Fixing Fuel Poverty, p168. Earthscan, London.

2. As above, p168.

3. As above, p168.

4. Department of Energy and Climate Change, 2010. Annual Report On Fuel Poverty Statistics 2010. Table 1, Page 3. http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/Statistics/fuelpoverty/610-annual-fuel-poverty-statistics-2010.pdf

5. House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, 30th March 2010. Fuel Poverty:
Fifth Report of Session 2009–10, Volume I, Page 6. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmenergy/424/424i.pdf

6. The Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, cited by the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, as above, Page 7.

7. Brenda Boardman, as above.

8. In 2002, Centrica raised its profit margin on domestic energy sales from 0.4% to 4.2%. By 2008, it had risen again, to 8.8%. Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 77.

9. Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 82.

10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/29/energy-bills-rise-price-increase?INTCMP=SRCH

11. House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, as above, Page 3.

12. Cited by Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 92-93.

13. Cited by Brenda Boardman, as above, Page 148.

14. Cited by Brenda Boardman, as above, 92.

15. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/household-bills/8206453/Warm-Front-abolished-for-this-year-and-cut-back-in-the-future.html

Doug Stanhope on 'Why Your Opinion Doesn't Matter'.

The 1914 Christmas Truce: A Plum Pudding Policy Which Might Have Ended The War (The Independent 24/12/10)

A private's letter from the trenches has resurfaced after 95 years to add colour to the World War I story that still resonates down the decades.


The following letter from Private Frederick W. Heath, first printed in The North Mail on 9 January 1915, has been resurrected by researchers at christmastruce.co.uk, which is edited by Alan Cleaver and Lesley Park. Alan says it stands out among the many letters on the site, although research into Private Heath is still ongoing.

A Plum Pudding Policy Which Might Have Ended The War, written in the trenches by Private Frederick W. Heath:

The night closed in early - the ghostly shadows that haunt the trenches came to keep us company as we stood to arms. Under a pale moon, one could just see the grave-like rise of ground which marked the German trenches two hundred yards away. Fires in the English lines had died down, and only the squelch of the sodden boots in the slushy mud, the whispered orders of the officers and the NCOs, and the moan of the wind broke the silence of the night. The soldiers' Christmas Eve had come at last, and it was hardly the time or place to feel grateful for it.

Memory in her shrine kept us in a trance of saddened silence. Back somewhere in England, the fires were burning in cosy rooms; in fancy I heard laughter and the thousand melodies of reunion on Christmas Eve. With overcoat thick with wet mud, hands cracked and sore with the frost, I leaned against the side of the trench, and, looking through my loophole, fixed weary eyes on the German trenches. Thoughts surged madly in my mind; but they had no sequence, no cohesion. Mostly they were of home as I had known it through the years that had brought me to this. I asked myself why I was in the trenches in misery at all, when I might have been in England warm and prosperous. That involuntary question was quickly answered. For is there not a multitude of houses in England, and has not someone to keep them intact? I thought of a shattered cottage in -- , and felt glad that I was in the trenches. That cottage was once somebody's home.

Still looking and dreaming, my eyes caught a flare in the darkness. A light in the enemy's trenches was so rare at that hour that I passed a message down the line. I had hardly spoken when light after light sprang up along the German front. Then quite near our dug-outs, so near as to make me start and clutch my rifle, I heard a voice. there was no mistaking that voice with its guttural ring. With ears strained, I listened, and then, all down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war: "English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!"

Friendly invitation

Following that salute boomed the invitation from those harsh voices: "Come out, English soldier; come out here to us." For some little time we were cautious, and did not even answer. Officers, fearing treachery, ordered the men to be silent. But up and down our line one heard the men answering that Christmas greeting from the enemy. How could we resist wishing each other a Merry Christmas, even though we might be at each other's throats immediately afterwards? So we kept up a running conversation with the Germans, all the while our hands ready on our rifles. Blood and peace, enmity and fraternity - war's most amazing paradox. The night wore on to dawn - a night made easier by songs from the German trenches, the pipings of piccolos and from our broad lines laughter and Christmas carols. Not a shot was fired, except for down on our right, where the French artillery were at work.

Came the dawn, pencilling the sky with grey and pink. Under the early light we saw our foes moving recklessly about on top of their trenches. Here, indeed, was courage; no seeking the security of the shelter but a brazen invitation to us to shoot and kill with deadly certainty. But did we shoot? Not likely! We stood up ourselves and called benisons on the Germans. Then came the invitation to fall out of the trenches and meet half way.

Still cautious we hung back. Not so the others. They ran forward in little groups, with hands held up above their heads, asking us to do the same. Not for long could such an appeal be resisted - beside, was not the courage up to now all on one side? Jumping up onto the parapet, a few of us advanced to meet the on-coming Germans. Out went the hands and tightened in the grip of friendship. Christmas had made the bitterest foes friends.

The Gift of Gifts

Here was no desire to kill, but just the wish of a few simple soldiers (and no one is quite so simple as a soldier) that on Christmas Day, at any rate, the force of fire should cease. We gave each other cigarettes and exchanged all manner of things. We wrote our names and addresses on the field service postcards, and exchanged them for German ones. We cut the buttons off our coats and took in exchange the Imperial Arms of Germany. But the gift of gifts was Christmas pudding. The sight of it made the Germans' eyes grow wide with hungry wonder, and at the first bite of it they were our friends for ever. Given a sufficient quantity of Christmas puddings, every German in the trenches before ours would have surrendered.

And so we stayed together for a while and talked, even though all the time there was a strained feeling of suspicion which rather spoilt this Christmas armistice. We could not help remembering that we were enemies, even though we had shaken hands. We dare not advance too near their trenches lest we saw too much, nor could the Germans come beyond the barbed wire which lay before ours. After we had chatted, we turned back to our respective trenches for breakfast.

All through the day no shot was fired, and all we did was talk to each other and make confessions which, perhaps, were truer at that curious moment than in the normal times of war. How far this unofficial truce extended along the lines I do not know, but I do know that what I have written here applies to the -- on our side and the 158th German Brigade, composed of Westphalians.

As I finish this short and scrappy description of a strangely human event, we are pouring rapid fire into the German trenches, and they are returning the compliment just as fiercely. Screeching through the air above us are the shattering shells of rival batteries of artillery. So we are back once more to the ordeal of fire.

* Transcribed by Marian Robson.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/the-1914-christmas-truce-a-plum-pudding-policy-which-might-have-ended-the-war-2167090.html

Funny Irishman

I'm Doug Stanhope, and that's why I drink.

Assange's lawyer leaves Westminster Magistrates' Court 14th Dec 2010 (by our intrepid reporter)

Reflection On Experience by Kathleen Sawisky

Greetings and Salutations fellow Scoliotics!

Life has been fairly hectic lately, with an oddly high ratio of disagreements between myself and the people in my life (more than willing to admit I am half responsible for all of them. Half. Because it takes two, you see?) So I thought today I would sit down and do some therapeutic blogging about the detrimental effects, something like scoliosis, or indeed any medical problem, can have on a person in a psychological manner.

Ignoring the many psych terms I've learned over the last three months (although I like to think my psych prof would be thrilled if I even attempted to use them) the effects of scoliosis can be summed up thusly:

They suck.

I'm also willing to suggest They stink, They're driving me mad, and the often thought of but little used Argh!

Growing up with scoliosis during the time of adolescent development gave me a fairly negative outlook to the support systems that extended beyond my family. Friends were pretty useless. That's not to say they didn't care, I think they genuinely did, but hey, when you're a teenager you're more inclined to be worried about your own crap, and perspective can often be lost. The same goes for those of us who were suffering from any medical issue during that time, whether it be in the past or going on right now.

Perspective is absolutely vital, but disappears quicker than a snow drift in Chinook country (yes, I'm Canadian.) We tend to forget that outside of our cozy homes, our suburban neighbourhoods, our war-less countries, that people exist with the clothes on their back and nothing less. Don't get me wrong, hearing 'At least it's not cancer' still drives me mad. After all, surgeons are physically moving our spines. That is they are actually taking the spine, a rather vital piece of your body, and actually moving it. Moving it. Sorry for thinking that something like that is sort of intense.

Then again, it isn't cancer. It's a double-edged sword. While they don't always know the cause of scoliosis, there is something they can do about it most of the time, if you're lucky to live in a country with public health care and surgeons with the abilities. That doesn't mean it always ends well. I'm one of the many living examples that it doesn't. But the fact that something can be done, or even attempted, is a plus. Does that mean that I want to sit quietly while people who have never experience scoliosis tell me that it could be worse? Hell no. It probably could be worse, and if it ever get to that mythically 'worse' place that I've heard so much about, they will still insist on telling me "Well, it could be worse. It could be cancer."

So what do we do? We can't exactly beat logic or perspective into a person, and manslaughter is still a crime. All we can do is continue to exist day to day with our chronic pain and pray it won't get worse. It will, that's inevitable, but while I can still live and breathe and stand, I'll do my best to keep perspective.

Don't think I'm discounting all that we've experienced. No one should be allowed to, and of course, they do. But by getting angry with the naysayers in the world who think they're doing us a favor by reminding us once again, that we don't have cancer, all we do is lose our own perspective on our situation.

We get angry because they don't understand what its like. We get angry because they're minimizing our experiences as if they're nothing. We get angry because we have to suffer and these ignorant people don't.

The fact of the matter is that medical traumas, be it scoliosis, cancer, amputations, whatever you want to put in there, all of it, has a level of trauma associated with it. And every person experiences that trauma differently. No one has any right to suggest that the experience is anything less than what it is, and yet here we are, day after day, fighting to find one person outside of our web-circle who's willing to accept that the pain, the loss of our dignity at the gloved hands of total strangers, the never ending surgeries and the miracle cures that are anything but, has come to alter us forever.

We'll never know what sort of people we might have been if scoliosis hadn't become part of us in the most literal way imaginable. Maybe I would have been a sweet girl with a pleasant disposition. Maybe I would have been a cop after all, or pursued my singing to a professional level. Maybe my whole life would be different compared to what it is now if genetics hadn't gotten in my way.

Then again, maybe I'd have been a sweet girl with a pleasant disposition, or a cop, or a pro-singer. Looking at my life as it is now, beyond scoliosis, I know and understand that my life is as it is meant to be, which is a very Zen outlook if I do say so myself.

I guess the point of this post, if I really had to sum up, is that it may suck, and we may be essentially alone in our experiences, but it's those facts that actually make us who we are today. And beyond the chronic pain, I'm pretty happy with myself.

POSTED BY KATHLEEN SAWISKY AT TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Captain SKA - Liar Liar (wonky view but still worth posting)

I was going to write something, but then I played this...

I know how to embed Youtube at last.

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised [Early Version] - 1970 (with thanks to Toronto Kate)