What is "fuel poverty" ?

grizzly1911

Best part of a million students living in rented accomaodation?

Toughen em up a bit.

grizzly1911

Percy1983 wrote: »

The ideas of poverty in this country are a bit wrong.

Fuel poverty = having a bit less to spend on fags, sky TV and iPhones.

Child poverty - child not having an xbox 360 or PS3 to play on.

Stereotyping.

Yoof not having enough money to get on the housing ladder = ipod, ipad2,3,4,5, iphone2,3,4,5; 50" plasma, 5.1 surround sound,drunken weekends, holidays in Magaluf, stags/hens in Amsterdam, Mini, etc.

HappyMJ

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

So to sum up, none of us are quite sure, of the definition of disposable income.

I asked the question in part because last night, while doing the washing up, I was listening to a phone in from people with debt problems.
The advisor, trying to see off an aggressive card company said "Let us decide on your disposable income" - and proceeded to tease out figures for a lot of deductions and "necessities" before arriving at a pretty miserable "disposable income". So that the card company could be offered a few quid per month.

I am pretty sure that disposable income is a whole lot less than after tax income?

However in an inflationary environment no government is going to accept "the income left over after allowing for taxation by inflation that is impoverishing me" or "the income left after current cost accounting depreciation of my real assets".
Both of these measures need to be taken into account to decide if the real wealth of an individual or a nation is declining.

If persons can really claim to be in fuel poverty when living at a density of less than one person per heated habitable room room is a moot point. Perhaps only those living in flats should be able to claim fuel poverty?
The rest could downsize to something smaller, more efficiently heated and better insulated ?

The definition of disposable income depends on the context. In regards to unsecured debt repayments it's after tax and NI, rent/mortgage and after living costs such as gas, electricity, oil, water, council tax, mobile phones, landline phone, internet, child care, travel to work costs, holidays, insurance, maintenance etc.... If someone is on benefits then their disposable income in the context of debt repayments should technically be zero or if they have anything left over then benefits are paying too much or they are living a frugal lifestyle.

Percy1983

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Stereotyping.

Yoof not having enough money to get on the housing ladder = ipod, ipad2,3,4,5, iphone2,3,4,5; 50" plasma, 5.1 surround sound,drunken weekends, holidays in Magaluf, stags/hens in Amsterdam, Mini, etc.

Those stereotypes I agree are completely wrong, I am actually going at the governments definitions rather than the people who live under said definitions.

The problem is we use the word poverty way before it is actual poverty.

IE, fuel poverty should be not being able to heat accommodation properly even if all luxuries are dropped.

child poverty should be when they don't know when there next meal is coming, not when they don't know when the next 360 game is coming.

grizzly1911

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

decide on your disposable income" - and proceeded to tease out figures for a lot of deductions and "necessities" before arriving at a pretty miserable "disposable income". So that the card company could be offered a few quid per month.

I remember working on an insolvency case where someone, who had been wealthy and had lost it, claiming school education for three children as necessary expenditure.

As far simply selling up and moving from the draughty pile to a small insulated box , that is an option for some, it is not the answer to the problem.

Just heard Davey make the point that some of the large increases are down to industry inefficiency and only a very samll amount down to government green initiatives. So glad we privatised them to make them more efficient - appears that they forgot they would have to replace/improve infrastructure too when they were happily skimming the profits.

molerat

I am in fuel poverty then but not as much as council tax poverty which is 1.5 times my fuel bill !

alinwales

when we moved into our house a few years back, I wanted to take the sky dish off the front of our house cos I knew we'd never use it. The wife told me to leave it there else our neighbours might think we were rich


As for room temperatures... the thermostat in the hall is usually set to 16, as it's only got a piddly radiator, and it never gets warm enough though the rest of the house is usually Ok (with help from local TRVs)

exarmydreamer

Percy1983 wrote: »

Those stereotypes I agree are completely wrong, I am actually going at the governments definitions rather than the people who live under said definitions.

The problem is we use the word poverty way before it is actual poverty.

IE, fuel poverty should be not being able to heat accommodation properly even if all luxuries are dropped.

child poverty should be when they don't know when there next meal is coming, not when they don't know when the next 360 game is coming.

Absolutely right and if my son wrote, 'yoof', like that his private tutor would be sacked.

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

We consider a household to be in fuel poverty if it needs to spend more than 10 percent of its income on fuel for adequate heating (usually 21 degrees for the main living area, and 18 degrees for other occupied rooms).

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/funding/fuel_poverty/fuel_poverty.aspx

But as far as I'm aware there is no substantive reason why it should be 10%, rather than 8% or 13.26%.

So it's another spurious definition of poverty like the definition of child poverty which is actually a measure of income distribution.

Perhaps we could keep pensioners and other deserving people warm by burning the idiots that come up with this rubbish.

BobQ

roddydogs wrote: »

Its something that BBC Breakfast time drags up every few months to prove how nasty the government is.

Yes. They should realise that most people know this by now.:)