OLD, COLD AND SKINT

"A spokesman for Help the Aged said: "As the temperature drops, the death rate goes up but it's not just the sudden cold snaps, it's the whole winter. We've been hearing about a lot of people only heating one room and trying to spend as much time as possible in it, and also a lot of people will go out and kill time in heated places like libraries to try to keep their own bills down. "The huge increases in fuel costs have really hit pensioners. It now costs about £1,400 a year to heat the average British home and if you're on a pension of just £8,000 a year you can see that that's a sizeable chunk. Older people are really finding themselves in that awful 'heat or eat' scenario." (Observer, 11 January) RD