Cold hearts

16 January 2010

Perhaps the least fashionable cause in Britain is the welfare of our elderly.

Some £3.5 billion is earmarked towards helping the elderly in winter — yet, as so often with this inept and deceitful government — the money misses its target. About 50,000 of these payments go to pensioners living on the continent, many retired in Spain. The so-called ‘winter fuel payment’ does not even allow for the rise in council tax bill. And this tax, for what? The average household pays £25,000 to the government each year — yet this week some neighbourhoods have had to shovel the snow from their own streets. Rather than help the elderly, the welfare state often seeks to frustrate the care which others offer. Take the case of Jean and Derek Randall, found dead in their Northampton home last week. A neighbour tried to warn the council that they were facing difficulties, but was told that her concern was irrelevant as she was not a family member. The horizontal ties which bind communities to each other are gradually supplanted with vertical ties binding the individual to the state. And while these ties bind, they offer little support.

It is sometimes said that the hallmark of a nation is how it treats its most vulnerable. The hallmark of a welfare state is how it treats the people who built it. Someone is dying from the cold every five minutes in Britain this winter. We can and must do better.