Stop implying it's not so bad now because you grew up with no central heating and scraped ice off the windows.

[flashbac]

FFS

I also had no central heating in the house as a kid. There was a hole under the bathtub that cats would use to come in while you were freezing arse off on the loo. It was bloody grim. I don't wish it on anybody. People shouldn't have to be uncomfortable in their own bleeding homes for goodness sakes. It shouldn't be happening in this day and age. Stop defending it.

@orangeisthenewpuce

I think what the posts are saying is that living in a cold house is doable. And people who've done that know this. If we can't afford the rises in energy costs then we need to make changes. Some people aren't used to putting on jumpers and wearing socks in the house. My husband who was born in the 60's has never lived in a house without central heating.

But even when my heating is on, I'm still in layers, socks and slippers. I currently have 4 layers on, 2 pairs of socks and a pair of boots. All doors and windows closed. Heating isn't on, but it is April.

But no one reminiscing about the glorious olden days seems to have made any connection between living conditions and lower life expectancy/poorer health in the people who live there.
Not one single person on this thread has said it was better then.

@Pissyduck

YANBU

why are people happy with the bar being set so low? We live in one of the richest countries in the world and yet wealth is distributed in such a way that people are being forced to live in the cold without enough money for food.

The social contract between citizen and government has been ripped up and spat upon by this government.

I agree with you.

I was born in the 50s and it was a different world then. We had one coal fire, a paraffin heater in the bathroom to stop the pipes freezing,. We had one bath a week and many of the ‘things’ that are now part of every day life were not available. I would not go back to that now and I don’t want other people to have to live in misery.

I am really lucky that I am able to heat my home and eat. As are my grown up children. But why is it a matter of luck? This country is rich enough to ensure that all citizens, whatever their personal circumstances, have a decent standard of living. It is disgraceful that they don’t.

Thing is the people the tories need to keep themselves in power are the same people who will struggle the most with the cold.

Having said that, I do think there is something uniquely about this country that loves suffering. Something about the 'keep calm and carry on' spirit which harks back to the war. So I can't imagine things changing. I feel as though people would rather everything be miserable for everyone all the time.

The French would have wheeled out the guillotines by now.

Nobody has suggested it's acceptable but posters are saying we lived this way in the 70s and we managed.

This is an issue in a lot of Europe and is absolutely not confined to the UK, but some governments are doing more than others, plus in the UK we have had the perfect storm of Brexit, followed by covid, followed by Ukraine/Russia. The answer is for people to stop voting Tory ffs, they've demonstrated for years their priorities are themselves and their shareholders.

I sit and mark/tap away at a computer most evenings and at least a day at the weekend. It's quite hard to keep active when you need to sit and work. It's also quite hard to mark when your hands go numb.

Amen to that, OP. We lived like that as kids in the late seventies early eighties, my parents were brilliant but the house was always freezing and it was utterly crap. Life shouldn't be like that today.

Fuel problems were always going to happen , circumstances have just sped it up.There are too many humans with to a high level of power consumption for it to remain cheap or easily attainable. For a 20% increase in population size, energy consumption increased by 43.6%; conversely, for a 20% decrease in population size, demand for energy decreased by 44.6%. the increase in consumption together with the depletion of natural resources is a perfect storm. We are well off here much of the world's population has too little energy to meet their basic needs we are only getting a small idea of their struggles now. .Not only are costs of fuel increasing so us the environmental affect in getting the fuel.

Those happily having large families, 3 cars, 4 televisions etc are not helping. Fuel us never going to be cheap again and although circumstances have sped it up, it was inevitable that prices would become expensive. Thus to some degree a result if selfishness like cranking up the heating to 25 because you like it hot, having more than 2 children.. think of the world those children will grow up into because of even higher consumption and costs.

Absolutely. We live in a first world country, in the 21st century. No one should be living like that in the UK today. It’s shameful.

It’s not just about heating costs though is it? Yes, we can layer up etc of turn the heating off but so much of our lives requires electricity- even the landline phone. Even the smart meters need power.

@CaptainMyCaptain It's all the 'we survived' comments, which are disingenuous at best as plenty of people didn't survive or had their health irrevocably ruined or life expectancy shortened due to or as an indirect result of poor diet and living conditions. Those people just aren't here to tell us about it. Some people won't survive a freezing home over winter.

@KalaniM

Given that the price rises are lower elsewhere in the Europe I think this is an issue for government discussion, really one for quick legislation if possible.

THIS THIS THIS

THIS. 100%

I grew up with dressing gowns and hot water bottles and electric fires/coal fires {Freeze your back off, scorch your legs}
~Frost flowers on windows..

I ''Only'' heat my house to 18 degs C, sometimes 19, cold is bloody miserable.

Freezing bedrooms with pluming breath in winter was normal. Glass streaming with condensation.

Horrible.

Yes, OP, that was our life in the 70s. In what we keep being told is one of the richest countries in the developed world, today's children shouldn't be seeing us regressing.

YANBU.
I grew up like that, but my parents grew up far poorer, half-starved in fact, with not enough pairs of shoes nor even underwear to round, so I was always being told I didn't know how lucky I was and it used to make me feel both shamed and annoyed.
What's worse, is that with all the price rises of fuel and food, very bad times are here again and it may well be far, far worse. In fact, some people could be frozen with the cold, half-starved and not properly clothed again soon, like my parents were. People need to prepare for the worst. God help us all!

The problem is not for the comfortable middles classes who don't want to turn down the the thermostat and put on a jumper (they always have choices). Its for the millions who budget for every £1 , who don't get to the end of the month with a few hundred left for treats , and whose fuel bills will now take away some of the things that no-one want to live without.

[quote Hugasauras]@CaptainMyCaptain It's all the 'we survived' comments, which are disingenuous at best as plenty of people didn't survive or had their health irrevocably ruined or life expectancy shortened due to or as an indirect result of poor diet and living conditions. Those people just aren't here to tell us about it. Some people won't survive a freezing home over winter. [/quote]
agreed.

As a teenager {Young} there was an old rental, Lansdowne Drive, London fields..a Georgian Terrace.

The high ceilings meant that the bar fire heat was no more efficient than a candle.

An old man was dying on the upper floor, covered in a rough, grey blanket.
He was delirious.
I went to check on him a few times, and said {in my utter ignorance}

''Oh, you have a drink?...I thought it was like a raspberry milkshake.

He said ''Don't touch it, love, don't touch it''...

It was sputum from his lungs.

It was bitterly cold.

Many years later, on channel 4, this very place was mentioned on ''Gimme Shelter'' about rogue landlords.

I should have called an ambulance. He said he was ''OK''

An older Irishman.

Breathing icy air can't have been good for this poor man.

It's also just another layer of exhaustion for people living in poverty or skirting the poverty line. Taken in isolation, turning down the heating or reducing your food bill a bit isn't really a big deal. But when every single thing you have do is a struggle, when every day you just have to try and get through and know that tomorrow will be exactly the same or even worse, then adding something else on top, even something that might seem minor, is an incredible weight. So many people have to live joyless and absolutely crushingly exhausting lives because of the battle to just survive day to day.

Edit...Lansdowne Drive {the terrace} is all gentrified now.
I wonder if the wraiths of the past still haunt the rooms.

Remember there’s local elections next month. It’s pretty much the only way to show government how we’re all feeling. They don’t appear to understand how most people live

I grew up in the 80's. We had just one gas fire in the living room. When we got home from school in the winter the first thing we did was put the fire on and it took about 10mins before we could take coats off. Upstairs we had a calor gas heater on the landing to take the chill off the bedrooms. All the beds had blankets and I remember getting an electric blanket as an Xmas gift one year. Used to dread getting up in the morning or during the night in winter. In a house a few doors down from us they still had their open coal fire and one of the girls a couple years older than me died when her nightdress caught alight.

Going back to those days is not something I'd recommend.

You’re not wrong OP. But I do hope it makes some people think about their energy usage. It gives me the rage when I go to someone’s house and they’re wearing a t shirt but have the heating on! Ditto every light in the house!

I grew up with ice on the inside of the windows and only one coal fire in the kitchen. I now have a husband who has had a stroke and feels the cold very much. Don't know what to do really. Does anyone think Sunak will change his mind about this stupid Spring Statement. I have a granddaughter on benefitsand I know that she will find this very hard.

Queen of Destruction You're so right the govts have always been in it for what they can get out of it.

Though I too grew up with frost flowers on the bedroom windows we didn't have ALL of these consumer goods that we think of as necessary now. We all use so much more fuel than we ever did and take it for granted.

I think the media ,and various Government Ministers you know the ones no idea of price of Bread or milk! Just dont really care about us plebs. They like the idea that many older people "had it tough" and it suits them for these people telling younger generations they had no CH, or a poor diet .You are right should we be going backwards ? No .We also had no CH when I was younger ,and was reminded of this a couple of years ago when the Boiler broke down and we had 3 weeks of no CH.Bloody freezing .Gas Engineer agreed as he had a similar childhood and no wish to return to it!

Well not ALL of us obviously but just think of this tecchie stuff now. It's become a right to own it.