Story on BBC - Indian IT Consultant comes to UK

[Diver]

Obviously the office for national statistics are wrong and you are right.
"excess winter deaths", and attempt to show the extent to which cold winter weather and illness lead to more deaths in he winter than in the Summer. Whilst some much colder countries (such as Finland) do not see much increase in death rates during the Winter, Britain has a history of high rates of Winter deaths.

The new figures for 1999/2000 show that nationwide there were nearly 55,000 excess winter deaths, almost all of which were among pensioners. This is up around 6% on the previous year and is the highest figure since the mid-1970s.

The figure for the London region is 6,030 an increase of over 22% on the previous Winter, and the fastest rise for any region. Out of the 6,030 "excess" deaths in London, 2,160 were pensioners over the age of 85 and another 1,690 were aged 75-84.

Norway had more than double economic output per person than the UK in the 50s and 60s prior to North Sea Oil

Wrong wrong wrong.

In the uk the power/heating companies all supply fixed low rate power/heating for all of pensionable age, all they have to do is ask for it.
My mother can leave all of her lights and appliances on including the heating 24/7 365 days a year and pay a hell of a lot less than the rest of us do for intermittent use.
She never goes cold in winter and her bungalow is like a hothouse all year round.
There is always food and even luxury foods on the table, how come she can do it when these others can't.
Maybe they have not applied for reduced cost heating/power. maybe they spend all their money on Bingo, Fags and booze, I don't know. What I do know is that there is no reason for any of them to starve or freeze to death.
Perhaps some people should spend more time worrying about the elderly and less time worrying about immigrants.
A simple phone call to inform the power/heating co that the customer is elderly is all it takes.
Banning immigrants will not save the lives of the feeble minded or the neglected.

[vhadiant]

In 1995 the UK GDP per person was 62% of the US GDP per person, compared with Norway's 80%

Norway is now 3rd on the GDP/capita list, behind Luxembourg & Ireland, ahead of US (according to IMF).

They do have loads of oil though. Funny thing with Norway, much like Singapore, the government owns a lot of the infrastructure, companies and banking. This is against the capitalism but they've shown it how it can work. Although having said that, both country have smallish, manageable, highly educated population.

[Diver]

Wait for the:

"But very few immigrants"

post.....................It's coming, wait and see

[vetran]

Wrong wrong wrong.

In the uk the power/heating companies all supply fixed low rate power/heating for all of pensionable age, all they have to do is ask for it.
My mother can leave all of her lights and appliances on including the heating 24/7 365 days a year and pay a hell of a lot less than the rest of us do for intermittent use.
She never goes cold in winter and her bungalow is like a hothouse all year round.
There is always food and even luxury foods on the table, how come she can do it when these others can't.

Diver I think you will find she is actually growing Skunk in her loft to fund her lifestyle.

[Diver]

Diver I think you will find she is actually growing Skunk in her loft to fund her lifestyle.

You know I'm gonna have to check now don't you

[hugebrain]

Wrong wrong wrong.

In the uk the power/heating companies all supply fixed low rate
My mother can leave all of her lights and appliances on including the heating 24/7 365 days a year and pay a hell of a lot less than the rest of us do for intermittent use.

A simple phone call to inform the power/heating co that the customer is elderly is all it takes.

My grandparents had far too much pride to accept handouts like this. No wonder there's so much poverty with scroungers like your mum around.

[Ardesco]

Wrong wrong wrong.

In the uk the power/heating companies all supply fixed low rate power/heating for all of pensionable age, all they have to do is ask for it.
My mother can leave all of her lights and appliances on including the heating 24/7 365 days a year and pay a hell of a lot less than the rest of us do for intermittent use.
She never goes cold in winter and her bungalow is like a hothouse all year round.
There is always food and even luxury foods on the table, how come she can do it when these others can't.
Maybe they have not applied for reduced cost heating/power. maybe they spend all their money on Bingo, Fags and booze, I don't know. What I do know is that there is no reason for any of them to starve or freeze to death.
Perhaps some people should spend more time worrying about the elderly and less time worrying about immigrants.
A simple phone call to inform the power/heating co that the customer is elderly is all it takes.
Banning immigrants will not save the lives of the feeble minded or the neglected.

Rose tinted glasses methinks.

My grandmother got a council grant to make her house habitable as it scored 0/100 on an energy efficentcy rating when she was still alive. The council gave her a £60,000 grant and hired builders in to damp proof the house, rewire the house and insulate the house properly so that she would no go cold in the winter.

The builder turned up, did half a damp course, painted her front door a colour she didn't want and then buggered off before fitting any insulation. A council electrician came along and rewired her house, it was then tested and passed off as safe. The next time I went round she asked me to have a look because the circuit breaker was tripping once an hour and I found out that the electrician had not bothered tightning the screws in any of the light switches and in a couple of instances had wired them incorrecty. I wired them all in properly and the circuit breaker stopped tripping all the time.

All in all she had 2 months of hell while council workmen wander around her house trashing parts they werent supposed to touch and not doing half of the things they should have done. The builders buggered off before finishing and the council never chased them down and never had anybody come and finish the job and it took 6 months to get the council to come and remove all the rubble left in her garden. After all the work was done her house still had an energy efficientcy rating of 0/100 and it still didn't hold heat, yet the council forced her to sign a bit of paper saying that £60,000 worth of work had been done on her house and she was liable to pay it back if she moved out/died in the next 4 years.

So yes with all of the help available to our vulnerable pensioners I can still easily see why so many don't ask for the help, or once they have got the help still die from hypothermia even without blowing all of thier money on booze, bingo and fags. Also bear in mind that most pensioners now days were brought up to belive that benefits were somthing that you did not claim. It was a huge humiliation to admit that you were unable to pay your own way and many pensioners would probably perfer to live in horrible conditions than go down the benefits route and announce to the world that they are no longer capable of looking after themselves. A shame more people these days don't have that level of pride and the desire to pay thier own way through life!!!!

your mother is obviously one of the lucky ones, there are many that are not so lucky in the world.

[lilelvis2000]

Who says the Barons are dead? Seems to me they've been renamed 'Council'.

Kinda reminds me of my house's morter. It was crap from the start. I can scrape it out with my finger if I wanted to. The builders never owned up to the fault and so we've been left with the bill. I would take them to court but if I win, there's no guarantee that they would still do the work. I don't have a armed group of heavies to enforce a court order.

One has to wonder why in the US and Canada the pensioners are the richest generation in their respective countries history...while in the UK they're unable to heat their homes and eat in the winter.

[lilelvis2000]

Norway is now 3rd on the GDP/capita list, behind Luxembourg & Ireland, ahead of US (according to IMF).

They do have loads of oil though. Funny thing with Norway, much like Singapore, the government owns a lot of the infrastructure, companies and banking. This is against the capitalism but they've shown it how it can work. Although having said that, both country have smallish, manageable, highly educated population.

Maybe this is relevant or not, but Norway has been ranking as #1 on the UN's HDI for the last several years. The UK is well down, even below the Americans. What factors they use in this ranking I'm not sure.

[kingshuk]

What factors they use in this ranking I'm not sure.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

A long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth.
Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weight) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrolment ratio (with one-third weight).
A decent standard of living, as measured by the log of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in USD.

In 2006 UK was in 18th position (US was in 8th position) - http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/