Liberal Democrat leader has said he is suffering the effects of the credit crunch just like everyone else, with his family now "mortgaged up to the gills".Mr Clegg's fixed rate mortgage for his house in Putney, south-west London, expired last year, forcing him to search for new deals. Speaking to the Independent, he said: "Without going into the gory details of our family finances, we are mortgaged up to the gills like a lot of other people. "I had a two-year, fixed-rate deal which ran out, and it has been very painful to move on to a different one – like millions of other people." Mr Clegg and his wife still holiday overseas, unlike Gordon Brown, but they have stopped staying in luxurious hotels. "We always have very frugal holiday tastes because we just go and stay with my in-laws in Spain," he continued. "I hardly drive a car any more... we heat the house less, [and] turn the heating down. "I'm much luckier than other people. My wife and I are not really struggling to put food on the family supper table. My wife works – she's a full-time lawyer – [and] I work, so we have two incomes. "We are very lucky, but we need every penny of those two incomes. If we do, I can't imagine what it is like for the many millions of British families who aren't as lucky as we are," he added. Mr Clegg launched the Liberal Democrats energy initiative earlier this week, calling for the UK to become energy independent by 2050 while simultaneously consolidating its use of renewables.
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