Woman who rides bus to stay warm is tip of pensioner poverty iceberg

theguardian.com:

Britain’s cost of living crisis has another potent symbol: Elsie, a 77-year-old woman who found the cheapest way to keep warm was to switch the heating off, leave home and ride the buses all day using her pensioner’s freedom pass. Her story left Boris Johnson once again flailing in the face of everyday hardship.

According to the prime minister’s interviewer, the Good Morning Britain TV presenter Susanna Reid, Elsie’s gas and electricity bill had soared from £17 to £85 a month. She was losing weight, having already cut down to just one meal a day, and shopped only in the late afternoons when price-reduced “yellow sticker” items came on sale.

Elsie’s was just one of many “choices” that viewers told the programme they had been forced to make as they struggled with static incomes and rising costs, and there was not a lot more to be scrimped and saved. “What else should Elsie cut back on?” Reid asked the prime minister.

“I don’t want Elsie to cut back on anything,” replied Johnson. But he had little else to offer Elsie, who already received a warm home discount and did not qualify for a council tax rebate. Johnson boasted he had introduced the freedom pass. “So, Elsie should be grateful to you for her bus pass?” asked Reid frostily.

The exchange, according to Age UK’s charity director, Caroline Abrahams, showed the government had “no clear answers” for millions of pensioners who struggle when huge price increases overwhelm their fixed incomes. “Not good enough,” she tweeted. Labour called for a windfall tax on energy companies to cut fuel bills.

The consumer finance journalist Martin Lewis said Reid’s question powerfully highlighted how he, as a compiler of ingenious cost savings hacks for consumers, had run out of options and