If it comes to it would you choose heating or eating?

[Tuliprain]

We were having this discussion the other night. I would choose eating and husband would choose heating - so we are already stuck. Im thinking we could warm up with blankets and hot water bottles etc but nothing you can do about hunger. He says the house will go mouldy and he’s rather be hungry than cold. Such a depressing subject to be considering.

Eating. People lived with minimal heating in houses for centuries. But you need to eat to stay warm as well as to do everything else.

@Aaaabbbcccc

Someone educate me - if your income is so low that this is a real dilemma surely you get benefits/allowances so you can have both. This is a genuine question.

Well upthread I mentioned that my DD and her partner work and also get Universal credit but because of a mess up with their employer have been told they'll get nothing this month and it'll take weeks to sort out. So not only cant they afford their normal bills/food/rent, they certainly couldn't afford higher bills than they have now.

And people on zero hour contracts have no guarantee how much work they'll have each week so their income fluctuates because of that. Meaning a hike in prices might be affordable one month but not the next.

It's never as cut and dry as 'just get some benefits to top it up' as universal credit really isn't fit for purpose.

Plus max rent you can claim
Is 30% of the average mean rent in your area. Which is usually enough cover social or council housing rents. Say home is £100 week on council and private is £250 the max council will pay is £170 say. That leaves you massive gap which has come out of any benefits you may have. You may be able downsize later on if you can find someone who take you on benefits but that doesn’t help If you lost job or off sick and have 6m left on your lease.

@Aaaabbbcccc

Someone educate me - if your income is so low that this is a real dilemma surely you get benefits/allowances so you can have both. This is a genuine question.

See Akire's post just below your own.

Regrettably some patients can't cope with cold houses even with layering clothing and blankets. Some medical conditions make cold houses practically intolerable.

@Aaaabbbcccc

Someone educate me - if your income is so low that this is a real dilemma surely you get benefits/allowances so you can have both. This is a genuine question.

There are some individuals who don't because they can sometimes literally be £1-2 pounds over some threshold.

Depending on where you live in the UK, and the type of housing, you might have substantially different fuel bills while having roughly the same income. The welfare system doesn't take account of this.

Despite the publicity about wealthy pensioners, a substantial number of women who took time out from their careers to care for children or went part-time to care for parents or other family members, don't have much of a pension and inadequate resources to buffer them against financial shocks like this.

Tenants in private housing have their housing costs pegged to the Local Housing Allowance and it can be significantly out of step with their actual rent.

Universal Credit is capped for a large number of people. People with disabilities on legacy benefits didn't qualify for the UC uplift when it was available.

The Resolution Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Trust and many others, including the Royal Society, have lots of relevant reports.

I don’t understand why were are not out demonstrating?
We March for everything else?
Why not this?
I’ve got my slow cooker looked out, my dryer is taking a holiday and I’ll be put it iv socks over my baby’s hands at night.
Good times , in this 2022 modern U.K. life……..

@Zilla1

Regrettably some patients can't cope with cold houses even with layering clothing and blankets. Some medical conditions make cold houses practically intolerable.

Starving is more likely to kill you.

Silly question- has to be food.
I grew up in a house with no central heating. Only a coal fire which would be lit late afternon.
In winter times we could scrape ice off the inside of the bedroom and bathroom windows.
I had zero heating in my bedroom as a child- and lived in Scotland.

[quote Scianel]@Piggyk2 I've always wondered that as well. Surely if the boiler is running its running, I don't understand what you'd save by turning some of the radiators off.[/quote]
My thermostat is downstairs, I don't need upstairs heated as it's mostly bedrooms and also the heat rises anyway. I have the radiators on where I want the heat, in the sitting room and bathroom. The thermostat reaches temperature then the boiler turns off.

@Aaaabbbcccc

Someone educate me - if your income is so low that this is a real dilemma surely you get benefits/allowances so you can have both. This is a genuine question.

Benefits are calculated only to cover the absolute essentials, based on the minimum the government thinks people can live on, leaving little if any margin for other expenses that most people would take for granted; repair bills, replacing white goods and so on. Its difficult to put money aside for these things when your income has been deliberately set at a subsistence level, so people end up using money they would otherwise have spent on bills. Many people move suddenly and unexpectedly onto benefits as a result of life events, job loss, illness, relationship breakdown etc, and have pre existing financial commitments, loans, credit card repayments that were affordable when they were waged but are suddenly not. Many don't realise they can be renegotiated and try to repay them from their low income, which is not sustainable and often results in an inability to affird essential expenditure. The benefit system is often poorly administrated with long delays before people receive their entitlements, or are they refused their entitlements due to error or incorrect decision making. Entitlements are not well publicised. People who have never claimed before are often unaware there is help available and so fail to apply. There are other reasons connected to universal credit, zero hours contracts and fluctuating income that can leave people without sufficient money, which are too much to describe here. There is a lot of information from the child poverty action group that explains though if you're interested.

[quote Scianel]@Piggyk2 I've always wondered that as well. Surely if the boiler is running its running, I don't understand what you'd save by turning some of the radiators off.[/quote]
You save because you dont lose heat through that radiator so your boiler warms up the rest of the house quicker (less radiators to heat less work) so it gets to temp faster and can be turned off sooner. Just remember to close the doors to any rooms with radiators off and use a draught excluder

It's not often that people post on such a thread whilst claiming to be blissfully ignorant and in need of eduction about 'benefits'.

aaahbbb - Job Seekers is a very old benefit that new claimants can't apply for now - it's all Universal Credit now, which can be super-harsh to people with isabilities and their Carers.

Start your 'education' there.

@bitemyarsenic

Where has anyone been gleeful? No one is suggesting a return to the middle ages. There was heating but we dressed warmly and blocked draughts/ reduced waste. Your Dad was in charge of coal and no one would consider lighting the fire until it was really needed. As a nation we are extremely wasteful Fuel, energy, food, clothing. You name it we chuck it away!

Thats what I was referring to.
The idea if people cant afford heating they will just freeze.
Jesus hopefully common sense and dressing warmly might make a come back !

But people DO just freeze to death.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1173232/#__ffn_sectitle

‘The UK government has launched a 10 year strategy to prevent deaths among old and vulnerable people as a result of fuel poverty. Some studies have suggested that as many as 50 000 people die annually because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly.’

This is from 2001. In 2018 almost 20.000 people died from cold homes, and that’s the official number which I believe is lower than the reality.

We’ve already turned our heating off.

I’m shocked and disgusted at the Government’s inaction over this. They seem more concerned about gutter politics and slinging mud at each other than acting like grownups and working together to find a solution to this. Of course non of them will be affected which might explain the lack of action. £200 loans doesn’t cut it. Sorry.

[quote AutomaticMoon]@oakleaffy Just remembered living in a warehouse and we made a hole in the ground with fire and potatoes in foil, mince patties in foil, into the smouldering hole for a while. It kept us going! But we had a sweet little community then, don’t really have that now anymore.[/quote]
Sadly you are right.
A street of squats ( Swaton Road, E3) was a nice community,
As were some in Notting Hill and even Richmond- but laws have changed.
I look back on Rightmove at my old Squat with almost nostalgia now
The wooden shutters are still there that I painted with skip found paint,
But now so many of these areas are gentrified.

I saw a postcard the other day
“
Make Bristol Shit Again” and laughed.
With sadness.
There was much more community.

If you're hungry, you feel the heat more. Eat.
Plus cooking will at least warm the kitchen a little.

But - we have got used to having our homes at a semi-tropical level. Most people over 60 grew up with very little heating and certainly no central heating. It is not the end of the world for healthy active adults and children to move around more and put a jumper on.

But what is really sad and worrying is that the government have made no special allowance for fuel costs for elderly and disabled people.

My sons death has dropped down to medium rate so I've lost tax credits. I've also just been moved onto universal credits because of it and it looks like I'll be getting even less

Then there's the fact that I now need to pay bedroom tax as older ds has finished full time education and moved out.

I'm lucky that the dla I get covers that sort of thing but it's getting really tight

Death! DlA

@bitemyarsenic www.e3g.org/news/17000-people-in-the-uk-died-last-winter-due-to-cold-housing/

15 Feb 2019
On Fuel Poverty Awareness Day, E3G [1] and National Energy Action (NEA) [2] reveal there were over 17,000 deaths due to cold housing conditions last winter and almost twice as many people died compared to the previous winter [3]. E3G and NEA also confirm last winter’s excess winter mortality in the UK was the highest since 1976. The new findings are released on national Fuel Poverty Awareness Day [4], the national day highlighting the problems faced by those struggling to keep warm in their homes.

@TheRemotePart

I don’t understand why were are not out demonstrating? We March for everything else? Why not this? I’ve got my slow cooker looked out, my dryer is taking a holiday and I’ll be put it iv socks over my baby’s hands at night. Good times , in this 2022 modern U.K. life……..

They demonstrated in France when their bills went up 45% and their Government listened and changed it so that the bills could only go up 4%. Boris and his ilk would sooner see people die than upset their corporate buddies.

It's not in reality a straight choice. No one can not eat at all so anyone saying "eating" is fudging.

Most people will strike a balance as best they can between very cheap food and measures to remain warm like extra blankets, curtains, keeping active, and heating only one part of the house. I live in a cold place, it's -9 now which is the warmest it's been all week, if we didn't heat at all there would also be no water. But in a pinch we could just heat the kitchen with the fire and spend most of our time there - the house was built for that. It's a lot harder in modern homes which, even with better insulation, just aren't designed with that kind of problem in mind.

@Tuliprain

We were having this discussion the other night. I would choose eating and husband would choose heating - so we are already stuck. Im thinking we could warm up with blankets and hot water bottles etc but nothing you can do about hunger. He says the house will go mouldy and he’s rather be hungry than cold. Such a depressing subject to be considering.

For me it's easy, basic heating to take the chill off the air. Then food. I wear when chilly, thermal trousers and thermal jumper, then a dressing gown on top, with thermal lined slippers.

@AuntyBumBum yes in the long term though it would depend on the weather in the short term - cold weather does increase mortality beyond falls - I vaguely recall an 11% increase in cardiovascular events leading to mortality following colder weather in preceding days for example. I wasn't suggesting the starvation approach, just a flaw for some people suggesting the 'in the old days, another jumper' approach.