Susanna Reid has explained that she first came across Elsie when researching a feature GMB were planning with Money Supermarket’s Martin Lewis. When Johnson finally agreed to give GMB an interview, Reid decided that her approach was going to be about the people who need help now and are not getting it. Remember she talked too about the family with two disabled children who rely on a range of electrical aids whose electricity bill is now £400 a month.
Elsie’s choice of what she does with her time is not the point. We know little else about her other than she lives in a council house in inner London banded F. Some people elsethread seem incredulous that a council house can be in band F and assume it must be huge. Why is Elsie living in such a big house? Why dosn’t she move? I have explained elsethread how it is perfectly possible for a small council house to have ended up in band F based on 1991 market values in London. As such she will not receive the £150 energy payment.
The point is that fuel bills have quadrapled and people on limited incomes are having to make the choice between warmth or hunger. People should not be reduced to seeking warmth on buses and in public buildings or having to buy the leftover food in shops at the end of the day. They have a right to be warm in their homes and to have enough to eat.
Please don’t assume that everyone has the same personality or social options. We know little about Elsie or how long she has lived alone or how Reid became aware of her. For all we know she may be a recent widow and struggling with bereavement. I gather she has been overwhelmed by the publicity this has caused and has asked for privacy. In a way, Reid has weaponised Elsie to make a point about a government which is failing its most vulnerable people. She should not have needed to if we had a decent government doing its job.
There’s a tone from some on this thread that makes me very uncomfortable. Elsie is simply an example of the gulf that exists in the UK between rich and poor. Government has a duty to help and protect the most vulnerable in our society and to alleviate their suffering NOW. The UK is the fifth richest nation in the world behind the USA, China, Japan and Germany and could easily help people. The rise in energy prices has little to so with supply and demand as we are being lead to believe. Once again it is traders playing the market for personal and corporate gain. Yes, there are concerns about Russian supply but the prices of oil and gas and other fuel commodities are largely set by energy traders. Their actions, buying and selling massive energy bets based on minor or even nonexistent changes to real-world supplies are stoking rising prices and volatility. As always, some people get very rich and everyone else pays the price.