No one should have to suffer or die because they can't afford fuel to heat their homes in winter.

Today, Keir Starmer's Labour made it official. government policy. Vulnerable pensioners in Britain, to save the wealth of the 1%, must choose this winter between heating or eating. Winter fuel payments introduced in 1997 by Gordon Brown for pensioners will be from now on "means-tested."

 It is estimated by Age UK close to two million pensioners will lose their winter fuel allowance payment. Many of them aren't well off enough to absorb the loss of the subsidy. Labour knows this because their own study concluded cuts to these fuel payments could result in four thousand more deaths among seniors this winter.

 It's mean-spirited and a signal to Britain's entitled that Starmer austerity will protect their wealth better under a Labour government than a Tory one. Only one Labour MP voted against the cuts to the winter fuel payment maintenance bill, Jon Trickett. Labour's remaining 400 plus MPs including the 53 who abstained on the vote put their careers before their constituents. The worst is yet to come from Starmer and his government rotten with careerists and lickspittles.

The Harry’s Last Stand project, which I worked on with my Dad, for the last 10 years of his life, was an attempt to use his life story as a template to effect change and remake a Welfare State fit for the 21st century.  Below is one of the many essays from that project that are still relevant to the battle we wage today to stop his past from becoming our future. It is on fuel poverty in 2013 when austerity was only three years old. Now austerity has grown from a toddler to a teenager of fourteen, and its destructive, deadly force against the ordinary grows worse.

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As the light in the tea-time sky grows less, autumn begins to uncoil itself over the land like an intemperate vagabond. Today, I can smell the scant trail of smoke from the fires lit in the hearths of homes trying to keep the cold outdoors – despite the spiralling costs of energy. This inclement weather leads me on cat's paws to a winter that occurred, long ago during the Great Depression when I was a bairn and there was nowt to eat and nowt to heat. It was truly a time of discontent with more than 20 million people mired in enormous economic difficulties. The era was so desperate that I, along with other children from working-class stock pinched coal from colliery slag heaps and hoped that those busted shards of fuel would burn the damp out of our dismal terraced houses.

The 21st century has become a harsh and unforgiving world for those who must contend with austerity on fixed wages or a pension;

The most distressing example of corporate profit hubris is the increase in heating and electricity bills by four of the big six energy companies. This jump of almost 10% in the cost of heating one's home will cause enormous hardship to the elderly in this country who are not wealthy and struggle to keep up with the cost of living.

This may be why the PM's recent remedy to combat the chill of winter with a jumper stung me as much as chilblains did in my boyhood. It clarified to me what I had already suspected, few members of Parliament have experienced the ordinary trials and tribulations of middle and working-class life.

One-quarter of this country's population has experienced fuel poverty, which means they have had to economise to keep their homes heated or, even worse, they go without food to keep the lights on in their houses. Whether the government wishes to acknowledge it or not this is a real crisis for too many people in this country. Yet MPs are more accustomed to listening to the concerns of corporate lobbyists for the energy industry.

It is not that our politicians don't have solutions to the escalating cost of energy because each party has offered remedies. Some even make sense – like capping energy prices, taxing these companies or subsidising the cost of heating one's home. The problem is that all of these proposals to cure the outrageous price of energy are for winters in the future. This is why I fear that this coming winter will be unnecessarily harsh on too many vulnerable people because it's impossible to keep warm on promises of relief that can't be burned until 2015. (And it never came then either)

Besides, it is not proper or just that a senior citizen, who have contributed to the prosperity of this country, through their taxes, their volunteer work and sometimes even through national service, must spend their golden years worried about whether they should use their pension money to have a proper meal or keep warm. As a pensioner, I have been one of those fortunate few who have not been forced by economic necessity to choose between eating and heating. However, I know I am the exception to the rule because I have visited too many friends who have not been as lucky as me. Sadly, I have witnessed their decline hastened by rising consumer energy prices that have left them financially constrained and in poor health. There is no more lonely end, for a well-spent life than to ebb away from existence in one's parlour while huddled near a dim electric fire that sputters out inconsequential heat.

Warm domiciles and proper nutrition are as essential to the old as they are to the young. No one in this country should be allowed to suffer, become ill or die because they cannot afford to absorb endless energy price hikes that enrich the few at the expense of many. It doesn't take a degree in medicine to know that if a person can't afford to heat their home and they are old; they are more likely to become ill and to avail themselves of our already overburdened healthcare services.

Winter is nigh and I am worried that this generation of politicians and business executives are so ignorant or indifferent to history that they are leading this country back to those grim days when fuel was so expensive for ordinary folk that lads like me had to scoff coal to keep warm.

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In August I published over 25k words here, which is a lot of words. To be honest too many words. If I wasn't so short of cash the post would be fewer but more polished. But that isn't happening anytime soon if ever. I still have a bit to cover for my rent. So, if you can and only if you can please subscribe to my Substack or use the Tip Jar. I am reducing a yearly subscription by 20% because it is a fire sale, of sorts. Take care because I know many of you are sharing the same boat with me.