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How many old folk will have to die this winter to pay for the £2million bonus for British Gas boss Chris Weston?

How many pensioners will perish to repeat the £4.9million salary and bonus paid last year to his Centrica parent company boss Sam Laidlaw?

I’ll tell you how many: If there is a hard winter, thousands, if not tens of thousands, will die prematurely because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly.

This is getting personal. The fatcats at the top of the energy firms, already rich on the profits of their privatised companies, will get richer on the backs of the poor, the aged and the vulnerable.

Just one year’s bonus of £2million could pay the typical £1,471 dual-fuel bill for 1,359 households.

It is sickening. It is beyond scandal. It is a social crime against helpless consumers. I do not advocate capital punishment for these odious bosses. Not yet, anyway.

But there must be some way of channelling citizen anger against the men – they are all men, by the way, without an inkling of what it means to be a woman trying to budget for a family – who are bringing misery to millions of homes.

The politicians are worse than useless. Patronising Energy Secretary Ed Davey tells us to put on another pullover. What, on top of the ones we’re already wearing?

And Clever Dick Cameron advises us to change supplier. What, from SSE, which last week put up its prices by 8.2%, to British Gas, which increased its by 10%? Of course, the Prime Minister doesn’t get gas and electricity bills. We pay them.

The switching option is an illusion. We tried it, but the bills were just as high. That’s because the Big Six play follow-the-leader every time, driving up prices virtually in unison. And they control 98% of the market.

So, Double Chins Weston, smirking out of every newspaper, how you gonna cope with the public loathing that your profiteering company has aroused in millions of consumers?

And you, multi-millionaire Laidlaw, sitting on a cash pile higher than St Paul’s Cathedral, how will you like the wave of public fury coming your way?

These energy bosses have to hear it loud and clear from every corner of the land. Write to your MP. Email your protest. Inundate radio phone-ins. Find some way of giving vent to your wrath.

Don’t take it lying down. Not this time. This time they have to understand the damage they are doing to people’s lives.

No more excuses. No more glib explanations about international this and security-of-supply that. This time it has to be different. It must come out of their hide, not ours.

Their monster profits are not sacred. Human life is.

Read more of Paul Routledge's opinion here