After watching a morning dose of Housing Porn (A Place in the Sun) on the box you’d be forgiven for thinking that retirement brings with it a life of leisure living in the sun but hey we know the reality and yet another report paints the picture we have known all along in that no matter how much the govt reels of its stupid statistics there is still poverty and it grinds us down into old age.

Help the Aged's annual report shining a Spotlight on older people and the UK`s shame, revealed that more than a fifth of older people were living in poverty, with 11% in severe poverty. Further to this worries about money led 20% of older people to avoid heating their bedroom, living room or bathroom,

The reports survey also found elderly people struggling with neglect, ageism, financial hardship and isolation. Nine out of 10 surveyed said their situation had not improved over the past 12 months, and 28% felt it had worsened.

Paul Cann, the charity's director of policy, called the findings outrageous. "Far from this period being people's twilight years, this report shows the reality of growing older in the UK is much darker. It is absolutely outrageous that people's lives are getting worse or not improving as they get older," he said.

This essential research while heavy on the statistics is very much at the core of the work of Help the Aged as it is from communities of the elderly, which cannot be said of the govt own spin of a elderly community better of than ever before.

Returning to the study, while it is acknowledged that excess winter deaths have fallen by almost a fifth, the study warned that 1.25 million pensioner households across the UK are suffering from fuel poverty.

Nearly half (47%) who are entitled fail to claim council tax benefit and one in three pensioners on the lowest incomes spends more than 10% of their income on council tax.

The report also found that more than one in ten older people (13%) are often or always lonely, up from 8% last year. An estimated 739,000 people - or 7% of the elderly - do not get out of the house more than once a week.

Elderly people also are struggling to get healthcare services, with as many as one in 10 finding it difficult to get to their GP or hospital.

Here `Help the Aged` is urging the government to remedy the long-term neglect of older people, starting with legal changes to outlaw discrimination. It is also lobbying for a commitment to end pensioner poverty and for the automatic payment of benefits to all entitled to them.

There is an old saying that you can catch more fly’s with sugar than vinegar but in this case the liberal reforms that come from a tea party’s and a visit by the local MP will fail, only to see many more die a humiliating death. Only the bitter tones of vinegar from the whole community, young & old will put an end to this genocide, a social struggle worthy of only the Biggest of Rebellions. Where is the Million strong March against the war on the Old?