Tragic face of this crisis

SHOWING the effect of the cost of living crisis can be hard.

We feel it in our pockets, each time we’re at the supermarket and petrol station. But it’s difficult to see what it means for other people. To bring home how stretched things are.

Today, the crisis has a human face. Judith Thorpe’s story brings home how real this all is.

Judith, a hospital cleaner, was a victim of the broken energy market.

Her fuel bills rising from £45 to £110 a month tore apart her delicate finances. “I just can’t make it work,” said Judith.

Now this brave, hardworking woman is gone, lost to a rare form of Covid, the last months of her life a struggle.

Fifteen million more people will be plunged into fuel poverty this winter as energy bills soar.

The Government has to do something. Windfall tax, energy furlough, anything. It is beyond urgent now. It’s going to be life and death for people.

Yet the Government now has more political advisers than ever before. There are 126 around Whitehall, costing us millions. God knows what they are doing, how many people do you need to advise a zombie Government?

Whatever it is they’re doing, it’s not enough.

Maybe it’s too much to ask for an idea from a Government that ran out of ideas a long time ago.