One in four households will be pushed into fuel poverty this year fear campaigners

[Nikki Stone1]

I thought the UK got a piece of the Iraqi oil pie. What is going on here? (Of course these folks still have shelter. Many of our people are now homeless and in shelters (see below this article)


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6400124/One-in-four-households-will-be-pushed-into-fuel-poverty-this-year-fear-campaigners.html


One in four households will be pushed into fuel poverty this year fear campaigners

One in four households in Britain will be pushed into fuel poverty this year because of rising energy prices, according to projections from the latest Government statistics.


By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 7:03PM BST 21 Oct 2009

Official figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed the number of fuel poor in the UK have doubled from 2 million in 2004 to 4 million in 2007. During the same period domestic energy prices rose by up to 80 per cent.

Households that are forced to spend more than 10 per cent of income on energy bills are considered "fuel poor".

DECC estimated that the number of fuel poor in England alone will rise from 2.8 million in 2007 to 4.6 million in 2009.

Watchdogs Consumer Focus said if the increase is applied to the UK, the total number of households in fuel poverty in the UK could be as high as 6.6 million this year. The Government's own advisers the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group said the total could reach 7 million within 18 months. ...

Meanwhile in the US....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/business/economy/19foreclosed.html?_r=1&em

Foreclosures Force Ex-Homeowners to Turn to Shelters

CLEVELAND — The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom.

The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West — mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one — passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of her car.

But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter.

“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates......

[Loudmxr]

1. You want to explain why the Brit mega rich are different than the Yank mega rich?

Really you don't have a handle on American history and you're not of Irish decent. But seriously. This is a good post to remind people that the rich in both countries look out for themselves instead of their country folk.

Especially the Brits who still have that class system which they make soooo many boring movies.

I am American by birth and can walk the streets where my grandparents and father grew up in occupied Ireland.(now the Republic) So I am not the biggest fan of the British aristocracy. :smoke: