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Good morning and welcome to the Independent Republic of Mike Graham right here on Talk TV.

We've got lots to do and we've got plenty of time in which to do it.

We've got three hours kicking off with Isabel Oakshot, Talk TV's international editor.

She's got plenty to say about the Dean Zahari situation, about what's

happening in Ukraine, where it looks as though things are ratcheting up, and Putin is looking to do

something next time before these tanks arrived from the West, before these tanks come in from

Germany, before Zelensky starts rolling into areas of the Ukraine, which have been occupied by Russian troops for quite some time.

We'll talk about that.

But I want to kick off this morning though with a sad story from the north of England, from Bolton to be precise.

A woman, sorry, from a place up near Manchester.

Barbara Bolton is her name, 87 years of age, found by relatives

unwell and alone in her freezing home. She was diagnosed with severe hypothermia.

She was a widow. She was a great-grandmother. She was a woman who used to work in a pharmacy.

She lived in Berry. She'd been there for 40-odd years. She couldn't afford to heat her home. She couldn't afford to pay the bills that would make sure that she stayed warm enough so that she could actually stay alive. Her son called Mark, who's 61 years of age, says she was concerned about all her bills because she was a pensioner. She was careful, and she was mindful of the prices and worried about them going up. She wanted to keep her heating on, but she just couldn't understand how she was ever going to pay the extenuating price of the bills that she was getting.

She couldn't do it, and she's been declared dead as a tragic case of energy poverty.

That is in this country in 2023.

She's a former news agent.

She died of hypothermia.

We're going to talk about that because, let's face it,

the ordinary stories of ordinary everyday people

is what we do here at Talk TV.

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