Exasperated, an acquaintance exclaimed that she was totally ashamed of living in Britain.

Her head in her hands, how could we live in such a cold, hard, uncompassionate cruel nation who treated its vulnerable, sick, frail and needy appallingly, not least in times of crisis, she asked?

A kind, selfless woman, who has dedicated her life, in her career and her personal time, to making life better for those who need it. Her current focus is supporting elderly and sick people living on the streets.

She’s a woman who sees the real issues in the raw every day – has done for decades - and understands the why, how where and when, a far cry from comprehension of the UK’s social problems in Westminster and energy companies’ CEO offices about our social problems.

We were talking about how the once forgotten few were now fast multiplying to be the forgotten masses who, often through no fault of their own, are being swept aside to fend for themselves, sinking because they don’t conform with the image the establishment want in our broken country.

It’s a strong word, but obscene is the only way to describe the actions of British Gas engaging bailiffs to force their way into people’s homes to install prepayment meters, sometimes when people were out at work. British Gas’ earnings this year are expected to rise eightfold.  Obscene.

A climate based on fear and force, making people who can’t afford energy prices now pay even more into a meter is obscene, especially when some of these people are sick, vulnerable, frail and incapable rather than feckless, arrogant, persistent avoiders.

Trained intimidators forcing their way into people’s homes is bad enough, then to hear within days, that energy companies Shell and BP reported record annual profits, with other energy firms having similar rises - £23 billion for BP and £32.2 billion for Shell, the highest in its 115-year history. 

If that’s not the strongest case for energy firms to pay more tax, what could be? Obscene.

Their coffers are bulging while more and more people are getting into energy debt, with countless more to come as bills ramp up. Courts have approved more than 300,000 applications to forcibly install a prepayment meter this year. It feels Dickensian

Where’s the moral responsibility of companies to protect customers’ lives, especially the most vulnerable? It will soon be a matter of life and death. Where will the blame lie then?

Fear is the umbrella word – fear of not being able to afford it, of bailiffs, of bills, of cold – all round fear, for millions of people. Already seven million have prepayment meters.

If pressure on the most vulnerable isn’t bad enough now, come the spring when the government cuts its financial support, it’s unthinkable.

Prepayment meters put people into a constant state of panic watching metres ticking down to cold, darkness and silence.

The vulnerable are supposed to be exempt, but we hear of people having no power for their critical health machinery, the chronically sick expected to be cold and sit in the dark until, as if by magic, a money tree grows outside their door.

British Gas insists it only sends in the bailiffs if people refuse to engage with them about their debt. 

But vulnerable people are terrified. It’s not so much a case of head in the sand as incapability of dealing with the issue. they are not running away; they are baffled and scared.

It’s obscene to make these people already in jeopardy go on to an even more expensive system. 

It’s way over time for special affordable social tariffs to embrace a wider group. It would be a humane and the logical step.

I had a prepayment meter as a student in Sheffield in the 80s. Our supply always felt so precarious and fragile. 

I cannot imagine a family, or people whose health relies on electricity living like we did in the draughty top floor flat – or garret as we liked to call it with dodgy gas fires and a prepayment meter in its pokey galley kitchen.

Disorganised and hard up, we often ran out of coins to feed it, so it ran out, usually when soup or beans had yet to bubble on our hob and an essay was due, so we had to work wrapped on coats by candlelight. Thankfully, in those days assignments were handwritten.

It was grim but we were young, and it was part of the student deal. It feels prehistoric, inhumane and, that word again, obscene to impose it on the poor, needy and weak in 2023.

It’s not just energy squeezing people to the pips.  One in five households are already struggling to pay water bills due to go up by the biggest jump in two decades soon by an average of 7.5% 

Then the forgotten few are being deprived of access to banking, with rafts of high street branches closing. There is a wrong assumption by the wealthy detached ruling few that everyone can afford and use computers and technology.

If they can’t afford to heat or switch the light on, a MacBook won’t be on their kitchen table.

It’s time energy companies – and banks – came up with solutions together in the interests of their customers rather than their profits.

They are making life bleak for so many, unnecessarily and cruelly. Obscene.