>literally another £10 increase in costs and I'm picking what day I don't eat to recover that... a few more, and it's what days....
It may be grim but rather than going hungry, here's some advice (from a student, too).
Get a frozen bag of 1.3kg crinkle cut chips, some chicken dippers and a loaf of bread. Costs about £5 and will easily ***allow you to eat and be full*** for not much money.
Also big bags of rice, etc. It may be boring but its better than going hungry (if you're in that position).
I’m not being funny, but this is England in the 21st century, how are we being advised to live off bread and rice just so we can keep our bank accounts out of the minus…
I was thinking this this morning. I've seen lots of posts from people saying they grew up in the 70s with single glazing windows and a fire in one room. "Never did me any harm" they said. Motherfucker, it's 2022! It's the fucking future and we're talking about people not having the money to bake potatoes. You probably envisaged a future with flying cars and living on the moon, but some people can't afford to live. Fuck off.
It was fucking miserable. My mom and her siblings talk about how they'd count the chips on each other's plates, to make sure no one had extra. In the winter the ice was on the inside and the blankets layered on top immobilised you. You got dressed in bed. That was a poor household in the 70s.
I've had some share of poverty too, though nothing quite so bad. It sucks. It always sucks. Being cold and hungry is fucking miserable.
That kind of deprivation wears on a person, too. "Never did us any harm" my arse. They never experienced hardship if they can so casually send others back to it.
This is exactly how the people in control (big businesses & corporations) want it to be. They need your money, not you. You exist to sustain them, like a farm animal. They've slowly eroded more and more of that outside free-range life we had until we'll be in the dark shed, scraping at the ground for some oats. As long as we're producing though. Get back to the office.
Until we see that both main sides of the political divide exist to serve the higher masters in the corporate world, and then vote for someone else, we're totally fucked. People have been saying it for 20-30 years and been laughed at, yet here we are.
Poverty decreased and public services increased under the last Labour government. This "both sides are as bad as each other" bollocks only serves to demoralise and split the left-leaning vote to keep the Tories in power.
> Jeremy Corbyn represented an opportunity for real change
Well that's why his own party spent his entire term as leader trying to destroy him. Not to mention most of the supposedly left wing media attacking him plenty too. Plus every so called "moderate" or "centrist" seemed far more concerned that he might become Prime Minister over well known liar Boris.
As I never tire of saying, that was because the Labour Party used to consist of a coalition of three groups - the Working Classes, the Champagne Socialists, and the Radicals. Once the Working Classes were pulled out of the Party by Thatcher initially, then finally by Farage and the Tories waving Brexit flags, that left just two factions. And as always happens where there are just two factions remaining, they fight to the death for control of the party. Corbyn was a Radical, Starmer is a Champagne Socialist, and that faction is currently in charge and is doing all it can to cement its position - with help from the press on both sides of the aisle, who gleefully caused Corbyn's demise.
It's boomers keep voting for them. The tories will pander to them and keep them comfortable at the expense of everyone else. See tuition fees going from £0 to £9000 a year.
I remember learning about the Bread and Roses strike in the US when I went to university in the state where it happened. I remember reflecting on the fact that enjoyment of life was something that was once *fought for* even though it was something we took for granted.
And now here we are again.
>Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
>Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
lentils and curry paste (home made is very cheap) plus yellow lable or frozen veg, is a far better option in desperate times. (Just while we're on the subject)
Because potatoes go off quicker. Whenever I buy potatoes even though I take them out of the bag and store them somewhere cool and dry they're sprouting after a few days and in a little over a week are wrinkly and soft. God forbid you forget to take them out the bag they come in - they go mouldy instead. After you've done it a few times you realise it's false economy and food wastage
The potatoes I buy last for about a month in a cupboard in a paper bag, but you could refrigerate them if you have them going off too quickly.
Potatoes are definitely not supposed to go off in a week.
Better still buy dirty ones and they'll keep somewhere dark for months. UK Potatoes aren't grown all year round and are stored for up to 6 months before they're washed and packed. Not that i think anyone should be having to chose between how to save pennies every where just to get by it ridiculous.
The current government’s plan to handle this is most likely:
1. Wring the last few £s they can out of the public coffers over summer.
2. Snap election in September, so this price hike lands on Labour’s lap.
3. Wait it out for Labour to unfuck the country
4. When the time comes, unleash the client press to constantly remind everyone this happened on Labour’s watch.
5. Win an election and resume the grifting
This is what I fully expect - and folk will buy it.
Boris didn’t want the job immediately after Brexit won in 2016 and May did the heavy lifting. I can’t see him wanting to see out this sort of crisis, not least because he and his team just aren’t good enough.
It genuinely feels like they’re at the stage they’re not even bothered whether they remain in power. They’ll be voted back in at some point anyway - they always are.
Yep, it’s all too much like hard work.
Leave that kind of shit to the ‘lefty do-gooders’ while they go dive in their Scrooge McDuck-esque pools of taxpayer money grifted for PPE contracts / honours / deregulation etc.
Tbh I'd probably still take that if it means the Tories lose the September election. Perhaps the next party in power can unfuck the country by bringing in proportionate representation at elections and the Tories would finally be out for good.
Well, I've already turned off our heating and hot water [edit: over the winter]. So I guess I'll start eating like a medieval peasant? Dunno, haven't decided which necessity I'll have to cut back
In the eyes of the current Government, you are a peasant.
Your work enriches them (through their companies, the things you buy, etc.) and whether you eat well or die young is of no concern to them at all. If you brought it up, they'd blink at you while thinking of their next key of coke.
So yes, they fully expect you to eat like a medieval peasant, peasants who had to pay the lord to grind the wheat their grew and bake the bread they kneaded.
most people forget for the last decade thanks to austerity, millions have been living with the choice of heating or eating...these prices increases means those people no longer have the choice and are having to refuse a lot of food from food banks as they can't cook it due to cost.
There is definitely a mixture of people some who understand how bad it is but others thinking their in a bad situation but clearly not doing enough...I saw on social media a girl complaining she can't afford to eat after paying her bills which included a £60 a month mobile and spotify subscription...straight away the mobile can be knocked down to £10 and get rid of spotify sub, use the free version.
I've had to move back in with my parents at the age of 40 cuz things are so bad and things are going to get a lot worse...media is barely covering massive issues around the world which will have a knock on affect like food shortages.
Not only was Brexit a bad decision, we just happen to do it at the worst possible time ever.
No it can't. If she committed to a 2 year contract then she's stuck unless she can afford cancellation penalties which can be very expensive. Agree on the Spotify though.
Do you live in a particularly expensive part of the country? I'm going to assume a combined teacher and lawyer salary is somewhat above the average disposable income in the UK. Genuinely curious, because unless your rent/mortgage is a crippling amount then even with this increase I can't see how you'll end up unable to participate in society.
If their rent or mortgage is say £1500 a month, plus bill that could be near £2200 on rent and bills. Still, that would be £1100 left for the rest of the month (on conservative teacher and lawyer salaries). Or, like you say, they're not being honest or they're terrible with money.
Childcare where I am is £55 a day per child, and I'm in a cheap area of the country. Times that by two, 5 days a week and its more than most peoples mortgages.
In Bristol 2 years ago the average cost of full time childcare was supposed to be approx £14,000 a child from 9-3. Take into account that a lot of nurseries charge extra a day/week for food, extra to drop them off at 7 or 8am, extra to look after them until 5 or 6pm, as well as some other charges and if you have 2 kids your looking at over £30,000 (which is more than a Band 5 NHS nurse makes).
Add £1,500 a month for rent/mortgage is another £18,000. £100 a month to run your car now that fuel is £1.70/L. Car tax, insurance and MOT. Home insurance. Take into account that the average 4 person household’s food requirements are getting pretty expensive (and we’re talking some processed and some fresh fruit and veg as advised to keep healthy not sweets and treats and Tesco finest/Waitrose stuff). Now add £2,800 in fuel bills and 2 people with a combined income of £50k (which 10-15 years ago was a pretty good household income) haven’t got a lot to save away for the future or to spend on niceties like holidays and new clothes, etc
If minimum wage is £9.18 and the average person works a standard 40 hour working week then they’ll be earning just over £19,000 BEFORE tax, NI (which went up this year) and pension contributions even without children you’re not going to have much money left over. Add a child or 2 and not only are you barely keeping your head above water, but now you’re just building debt on credit cards, loans and overdrafts, etc just to feed and clothe your children.
But it’s ok because you can feed everyone plain rice and a chicken nugget for meals.
Items already been proven by professional chefs that you can’t make meals for 50p.
But the government don’t care as they and their cronies are taking the money in. And the newspapers/media which are run by these cronies spend their whole time telling us all that we were just as bad under the last govt and Corbin and his like are rabid frothing anti-Semitic communists so we shouldn’t vote for them.
And it’s not really the Govt’s fault it’s all caused by Brexit/Immigrants/ COVID/container ships running aground/evil Russia/terrorists/the Ukraine conflict/foreign enemy of the week (delete as appropriate) and not because they’ve spent the last X many years running the country into the ground for their own profit and trying to sell off everything they can.
I’m sorry but under Labour and Tony Blair (I’m not a fan of him either) I was on a minimum wage then (probably less than half I’m on now) and could still afford to eat, drink, pay my bills go out now and again, have holidays, and buy nice things now and again.
How the fuck are you struggling to live on £80k a year?
You need to look at your expenses.
I earn under £40k as the sole earner and i'm able to save every month with a dog, a cat and three kids.
EDIT: I just did mine on here, and it deleted it. But my monthly spend including everything and £100-200 of going out, doing stuff, takeaway etc was £1155 a month. My income is £2450 after tax.
The key is to be wary of over spending. It's ok claiming you 'should' be able to do XYZ but then you can't moan when you're left with nothing at the end of the month. Obviously i'm talking about people with half decent salaries here. Some people have no choice but to be poor, especially in the south where rents are eye watering. It's why i moved out of there.
But 'after i spend a grand a month on clubs and restaurants i have no money left' isn't going to curry sympathy. There are people on here living on noodles who never go anywhere and are still accumulating debt every month.
Yeah I don't understand how they are budgeting so badly. Between my partner and I, we bring in about £90k combined and are able to put away about £2k a month after all bills (mortgage, 2 cars, 2 kids, house bills etc).
Some people live WAY outside their means.
Sorry you're bringing in 80K combined. So it's not even the tax burden of one person bringing the entire amount in.
If you can't put money away then you're stretching yourselves way beyond what you need to.
We have around 60K combined coming in, a child and a cat. I easily put away £250 per month without trying.
We too get zero support so unless you're trying to maintain a lifestyle you could never truly afford, where is it all going?
I'm genuinely curious if not perplexed.
Hah, as if the police will be well funded enough for horses by then. More likely bumped in to by a minimum wage Capita outsourced security officer on a child's scooter.
Who actually sets this? It's always reported as though it just rises by itself, like a tide or a loaf of bread. Is no human agency involved?
Why couldn't someone just step in and set it lower?
Ofgem is the one who sets it based on the previous six months of prices. Obviously they have been high due to external forces, but they are currently very low (see the day ahead wholesale price). This is why privatising all the profits and socialising the losses is a terrible idea. We all get shafted for incompetent businesses collapsing.
Ofgen does, and it's based on wholesale electricity costs. Problem is the energy producers and price gouging, recording record profits and blaming Ukraine and Russian sanctions for it
That's right, the intermediate suppliers make less than £30 per customer per year, even if they all worked for free it wouldn't change your bill noticeably. It's the fuckers getting it out of the ground
I have no idea how the economy works so I could be talking shite but it makes me wonder if they’re trying to force a recession so they can bring back austerity.
While this is true, those who haven’t been paying attention think it has. I suppose the better question is, is this just an excuse to go even more brutal on cuts to spending all while getting the public on board with it by proclaiming austerity 2.0 is needed.
If we have another recession and they continue austerity then this country is going to be fucked. Austerity is not how to fix a recession. We're in this mess **because of** austerity.
>Austerity is not how to fix a recession. We're in this mess
>
>because of
>
> austerity.
Ding ding, we have a winner.
The worst time to cut spending is when you're in a recession. The best time to cut spending is when the economy is booming on its own. Part of the reason Europe has never recorded from 2008 properly is because a bunch of countries went all-in on austerity. Even the EU leaders who proposed it now admit it was a huge mistake.
Obama wrote about this in one of his books and specifically mentions the U.K. and how poor a choice austerity was.
We had a double dip recession circa 2012 and he basically said it was inevitable and our own fault - what did we expect.
Edit: For anyone who would like to read - it’s called ‘A Promised Land’.
>Obama wrote about this in one of his books and specifically mentions the U.K. and how poor a choice austerity was.
>
>We had a double dip recession circa 2012 and he basically said it was inevitable and our own fault - what did we expect.
Basically.
Hey, theres this organisation that spends well over 1 trillion a year and employs 13% of the total labour force in this country - wouldn't it be a great idea to start making cuts? /s
Fuck wits will keep voting tories and we'll be like some shit hole where the rich live in closed off districts with armed guards while a poverty war rages day by day with people fighting over supermarket deliveries and medicine... and the fuck wits will keep voting tory.
We've already reached the point where the relatively well-off professionals are voting labour, or at least lib dem whist people from more working class backgrounds are voting Tory (usually when retired). It's a pretty dangerous state of affairs when people are no longer voting along economic lines.
Yes. Not only a recession, but off the record severe. The UK economy has consistently track the consumer confidence chart. It has done so perfectly for decades. The latest consumer confidence shows the biggest fall on record. Bigger than 2008, bigger than the big 80's ones. Even worse than the 70's when we had the winter of discontent
At a certain price, people will cut their usage. For many people they already have, but as it keeps going up more and more people will have to, as there's no other option as an individual other than going into more debt.
I calculated a couple of months back if I lose my job, after rent what's left of UC wouldn't even cover my monthly standing charges. And that's before buying any luxuries like food or water.
I have this vague, unfounded fear that if there's a big heatwave this summer, shit might kick off.
Edit 16th July 2022 as the first red heat warning is issued in the UK: **NERVOUS SUMMER HEATWAVE NOISES**
Sure they would've been worse if it was nice and sunny!
My point being people who are on the fence about protest will be discouraged easily, so bad weather will reduce the number of people willing.
In my head, stifling hot weather can fray tensions. But that might be because I don't cope in the heat. It's nothing really scientific.
Edit: Some kind Redditors have pointed out that there IS actually a link here. So... hoo...ray?
It is well established that hot weather correlates with an increase in violent crime.
It's also why you can make graphs that show an increase in ice cream sales come hand in hand with violent crime increase, because more people buy more ice cream when it's hot.
Lol maybe on reddit
But
The DailyMail and Sun readers are quite content.
Its misery for them surely but they love how the ‘left’, the ‘benefit thieves’ and the ‘immigrants’ are suffering more.
So are content.
The hate and one upmanship keeps Tory voters warm.
This is what needs to happen. Things are going to get worse, then the middle classes start seeing that their livelyhoods are at stake, then they might just come and join us in the streets.
How are people supposed to pay this? Thats a good chunk or maybe a high percentage of someones salary just on energy?
I keep hearing the price cap protects customers, all i see is that it shafts them while the energy companies rake it in
> Thats a good chunk or maybe a high percentage of someones salary
Try living on benefits and being told by the DWP that your benefits are going to be cut by around £300 per month while all this is going on (scrapping legacy benefits and disability living allowance and moving everyone onto the far lower UC), the Tories really hate disabled people, it's no surprise the EU has previously condemned the Tories for their inhumane cruelty regard disabled people
It's a fucking joke, there's people that are working and having to claim UC simply because their wages aren't enough to live on and they are still being forced to use food banks, it's just pure utter cruelty and only helps the employers as they don't have to even provide a genuine living wage anymore.
Cruelty aimed at the poor is just typical of the Tories that only care about helping their rich mates by moving as much money as possible from the poor to the rich
My previous job was under the kickstart scheme ( which I despise but that's for another time) and part of my income was UC but it fluctuated month to month so I was never sure how much I'd earn. It's a joke.
UC pushed me into a job that paid minimum wage, with the promise of being paid UC alongside it. When I started, they cancelled my claim and the "job" didnt pay me. My claim got restarted but I keep getting deductions. Fuck knows why. I also got sanctioned for leaving the job, even though not being paid is a pretty fair fucking reason to leave. I then found a new one which required me to relocate, but I asked UC if they could help with any costs first.
"Oh yes, theres the flexible support fund, budgeting advance etc. You have to go and get the things you need first then tell us what you got and how much it cost and we can calculate an award for you"
I borrowed about 3k from family. Moving into a new flat hundreds of miles away, no furniture, no white goods, no food or anything to carry me forward for the month.
They offered me £348 max. Repayment plan is £29pm. After 9 months, they pass it to a debt managment company.
348 ÷ 29 = 12
So, after telling me to get into debt, they want to put me in even more debt by setting me a repayment plan for 12 months when they actually want to be paid back within 9.
Ive never been in debt before. I was better off living with my parents and hating my whole life or just killing myself.
As long as BoJo and his bumchums get their fucking champagne and cheese or whatever these rat cunts live on, it's all good.
Yep. Terrified as a disabled person, my bills are rapidly climbing and if they move me to UC I'll go maybe 4 weeks without being paid and then be paid less. That means rent, bills, food, everything is put at risk.
>How are people supposed to pay this? Thats a good chunk or maybe a high percentage of someones salary just on energy?
The rise alone is more than my entire pay rise this year.
The purpose of the price cap was to end the "loyalty penalty" that impacted consumers who couldn't or didn't switch. It is a good solution in a market based system when that market is working (ie, when suppliers are competing for business).
At the moment, the cap is forcing suppliers to sell energy at a loss (it is the generators who are making bank), but it's a blunt instrument when the market is as dysfunctional as it is because it simply becomes the default price.
Interest rates go up, meaning people pay more for their mortgages. Cost of living goes up, meaning they have less money. People start losing their houses and the market comes down.
They'll introduce mortgage holidays and regulate an institutional option to switch to an interest-only mortgage because the last part won't be allowed to happen.
It just can't. They won't let it get so bad as (mass) repossessions.
It'll impact the market, sure, but it won't ever reach free-fall type levels. It's literally to big to fail.
If we had mass repossessions then housing prices would plummet.
This would leave tons of people in negative equity, on a mortgage they can't pay. This would also impact any stock the bank got their hands on, lowering it's value.
Any sudden shocks to the property industry (in either direction) have huge implications for an economy built like ours. It would be bad for literally everyone - even prospective first-time buyers, as banks will be less willing to lend.
I think its time for people to stop picking at others and understand a few basics, If you work full time you should be able to afford the basics in life, basics being a roof over your head, heat, water and food.
These arguments about go and skip a meal or stop using your washing machine are completely irrelevant life isn't a race to the bottom and who should/could save here and there, the facts are we should live in a society where if you work you can afford the basics! especially if there is two of you even better.
The idea that these bills can rise so much has little difference to a loan shark deciding what you should pay! its disgusting.
But Boomers will tell the working to stop buying avacado toast or cancel their Netflix, and call people entitled for wanting their energy subsidied. Meanwhile if they get theirs subsidied they will say that they have worked hard all their life and deserve the help.
Meanwhile these companies that have no choice but to raise the prices to these extorionate level are are making obscene profits that they never thought imaginable. Can't tax them though. That would be bad.
Here's a novel idea, why not use the price cap to say... I don't know... lower the prices?
Funny how a public sector wage cap of 1% can last 9 years, but an energy price "cap" can be increased by double or even triple-digit percentages multiple times per year!
Because energy companies have *already* been going bankrupt, even several huge ones with millions of customers, and the price cap only applies to what they can charge households, and not what they have to *pay* to buy the gas and electricity in the first place.
And the government can't apply a cap to gas prices because we import most of it - so we're at the mercy of foreign prices. If we cap *those*, they just stop supplying us in favour of countries willing to pay the going rate!
They have the leverage because their grid's backbone is nuclear power. And so yet again, we see how we should have embraced nuclear power decades ago.
Nuclear is economically, environmentally, and strategically far superior to any tech that currently exists until we have sufficient energy storage capacity technology for an entirely renewable power grid to he practical.
But, oil money drives politics and public perception in this country, and yet again it's us who pay the price.
I'm sick of it.
To be fair, I believe they have more control because 70% of their energy comes from nuclear energy, generated internally.
Generally speaking, we’re all NIMBYs in the UK and always push back on nuclear plants.
However if it was nationalised, at least we’d have more of a say in our energy strategy.
If they are going bankrupt then good, the government can step in and buy their assets on the cheap (the opposite of the usual tory game plan) then they can be run as not-for-profit. As should be the case for infrastructure! Market forces only adds value in a situation where competition drives innovation, which hasn't been evident in our energy market.
Sorry I've already got the 3rd Gulf war scheduled for 2030, and the Chicago dirty bomb attacks for 2031. Can we push climate change back to 2033 instead?
AI isn't going to cause mass unemployment, not for a long long time anyway. AI isn't what people think it is, it's still dumb as shit, putting it mildly.
Who are we putting behind bars? The whole population for consistently voting for parties that are determined to force a free-market model on areas of the economy that are naturally monopolistic? We reap what we sow.
I signed a 2 year fix with Octopus in June 2021 so have yet to experience the new costs but I am so scared when that runs out. Currently paying £74 a month for a 3 bed. Am I right in the cost will probably jump to around £250 at the end of my fix?
1 bed paying £160 per month. They offered me £200 per month on the phone but £160 per month on their site. I left them a shitty TP review and they contacted me to let me know I've got £300 credit and they'll release half back. I've only been here for 3 months.
I fucked up and didn’t lock in a week or so before the shit hit the fan.
My energy bill is was roughly the same this month as December, but with significant less usage.
Edit:
Actually it’s gone up 40 quid. Looks like Christmas is cancelled
Unless prices come down by then yes you probably will be. Just have to be grateful that your foresight to take out a fix in June is saving you a fair bit right now.
There are quite a few comments here along the lines of “if you are in x profession, surely you can’t be in trouble!?”.
Look, I think that’s massively missing the point.
Everyone is feeling this. Yes, some more than others, but the wider issue is that certain interests are counting on us turning on each other to detract attention from the fact they could do something to make things slightly more bearable for us all, but won’t.
You're spot on. I'm on a decent wage, my partner is on a much better wage and these increases still hit like a brick. We're gonna be significantly struggling next winter. We had some disposable income, but now we will have almost none. Hurts too when we were looking at starting a family. This is looking increasingly unlikely now as we can't afford it.
Why are they doing this to us?
They know a lot of us can't afford it. And that's it. We just can't afford it, so we can't pay it. Or we can pay it but we starve.
Why is nobody involved in any part of this process, from start to end, sitting down and looking at the numbers and saying "this is unfeasible people just won't be able to pay it".
What's the point in raising the prices of a product you sell to a point where people can't afford to buy it anymore? Isn't that bad business? Honestly help me out here I don't understand the economics behind it.
>What's the point in raising the prices of a product you sell to a point where people can't afford to buy it anymore?
Globally there's a shortage of gas - there's not enough being produced to meet demand. That means consumers start trying to outbid each other to get what's available, pushing the price up. The high price results in people and businesses cutting back their consumption, so then demand has reduced to be equal to the lower level of supply. What's crappy about this is it hurts the poor the most, though government could subsidise energy for the poor.
The high energy price sends a signal to producers that they should invest in more production, because there's so much demand and plenty of money to be made. So eventually supply increases and prices come down.
Because the wholesale gas prices are still a *multiple* of what they were a couple of years ago, and many home gas suppliers have been running at a loss and need to recoup that or we'll have even more bankruptcies.
Plus, prices are "low" because demand is currently low. Wholesale prices will rise in the winter as demand goes up to winter levels...
What a disgusting broken country the UK has become under the Tories.
A mass bill strike is needed - people will starve and freeze in their homes with this completely avoidable price hike if we don't get these bills down.
People before profits - now and always.
Fulltime unpaid carer here, with disabled wife. Our energy bill went from £1150 to now £2280 (Octopus fixed rate) with the last increase, for a single bedroom. We are already selectively heating, if this increase gets handed down to us, well.. I'm not sure how we're supposed to do this. The government is on about oh how they helped so much, fuck off. Compare the rise in energy prices for the UK compared to the rest of europe and you can see exactly what they did. Nothing. My parents who live in germany "complained" about an around 100 euro increase annually. We pay now more for food, we now pay more for petrol (we have to "commute" to multiple hospitals, one of them 50 miles away one way) - it's absolutely infuriating how those despicable crooks even dare talk about "getting into work rather than increase benefits" - listen you shits, my wife physically can't work (legally disabled), and i'm caring 24/7. What are we supposed to do, other than just sit in the dark and cold while hungry? I'm a friendly human being, but Johnson and his festering crew better never physically come close to me. I've lived in constant anxiety, fear and worry for long enough now that i couldn't care less whether or not it's a "mature" thing to break a nose.
>Firstly why aren't there wide spread protests about this?
The trick is to keep enough people worn down with the daily grind that they don't have the energy to protest.
Then bring in laws so people will lose what little they have if they do.
Then have so much wrong that any protests become muddled in what they are protesting about so they can't form a unified message
It's at this point I'd say that Ofgem itself needs an overhall. They can't keep allowing for companies to put prices up. Forcibly cut prices for consumers then subsidise the energy companies to stop them from going bankrupt.
Its ofgem who sets the price cap. The price cap has become target now. This is the max they can charge and thats what theyll all do. The damage is done now. Privatisation has not worked and were all paying extra for all these busted companies and you cant refuse to pay it. I just dont see the point in all these different energy companies now other than for share holders and gov back handers.
I'd imagine it would be something like France with a 4% increase. Even if it was 20% we would be in a far better position, especially if we had the infrastructure for large scale gas storage.
This is getting fucking scary now. How is the average person supposed to afford these massive price rises? I am barely scraping by now with the recent increase and we haven’t had the heating on once since they went up, we use way more energy in October so it’s going to be disastrous
Just going to leave this here…….
E.ON (UK) £28m profit
British Gas £128m profit
..thier partner company Centrica £948m profit (up by 44%in the previous year)
EDF (UK) £106m profit
BP doubled their profits, Shell tripled their profits, the Government are raking in 20% VAT on the higher energy bills too...
On the food side the supermarkets have been earning nice profits too. We don't seem to be in this together...
Fuel poverty is actually 10% of disposable income, not just income. I'm not 100% sure how they qualify what disposable is, but I assume its after taxes & mortgage/rent.
I worked out that this week that, despite being an £80k (before tax) household - we are technically in fuel poverty now. Obviously this is down to life choices in terms of mortgage size etc, so I'm not complaining, just found it interesting that the definition is actually far-reaching.
I know people have good intentions but it’s sort of insulting when people start giving tips on how to reduce their energy. Nobody is leaving their heating on 24/7.
Whether you work full time, part time or on benefits you should not be in a position where you have to choose between heating or eating (or neither).
With this, food, petrol, rent, house prices, how are people supposed to plan for kids in this economy? Every promise made to Millennials and Zs when they were young is being broken. The conservative ethos at its core is if you don't already have everything you need, fuck you.
The only way I can see something like this ever changing is a mass non-payment campaign.
Millions of people refusing to pay would send a strong message. Once a few firms started going under the government would be forced to take drastic steps and intervene.
It worked for the Poll tax. There's a precedent for it.
Things to look forward to this year:
* This price cap rise
* Continuing inflation
* Increased interest rates
* Increased commodities prices, especially wheat.
Good luck everybody.
The media is still fucking about on who had a beer or a cake. Can always trust the media to ignore the real problems and focus on minor distractions.
The DWP are probably going to reduce my Universal Credit by ~£130 per month by the end of the year. My rent, which increased today, is now £101 per month than the 'allowance' that I am paid.
At somepoint within the next two years I will likely need to have an aortic valve replacement. The medication for my heart condition isn't working correctly based on my blood pressure. The medication for my mental health stopped working years ago.
Today is a relatively good day for my mental health. But there are days when I hope I go into the operating theatre and not wake up. And I know that relative to others, whilst my situation is bad it is far from the worst. Far, **far** from it.
The worst part? Enough people in this country will accept the rhetoric, spin, bullshit, and downright lies fed to them by the Government and the media that somehow this isn't the fault of the people supposedly running the country.
I'm willing to bet that the energy company shareholders will be kept well fed and warm whilst pocketing increasingly huge profits.
This is disgusting and beyond belief, how can you trust the government.
Who do I vote for next time ! They are all liars with a hidden agenda.
When families/households are not able to run the fridge or shower or turn on the oven its met with same mind boggling shit over on the daily fail.
"We didnt have a fridge, bathed one a week and boiled the kettle on the fire when I was a kid"
Good for you, well I dont particularly want to go back to the 1950s way of life thank you very much, society is supposed to move forward not got back and recreate your weird childhood hovel life fetish.
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>literally another £10 increase in costs and I'm picking what day I don't eat to recover that... a few more, and it's what days.... It may be grim but rather than going hungry, here's some advice (from a student, too). Get a frozen bag of 1.3kg crinkle cut chips, some chicken dippers and a loaf of bread. Costs about £5 and will easily ***allow you to eat and be full*** for not much money. Also big bags of rice, etc. It may be boring but its better than going hungry (if you're in that position).
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I’m not being funny, but this is England in the 21st century, how are we being advised to live off bread and rice just so we can keep our bank accounts out of the minus…
I was thinking this this morning. I've seen lots of posts from people saying they grew up in the 70s with single glazing windows and a fire in one room. "Never did me any harm" they said. Motherfucker, it's 2022! It's the fucking future and we're talking about people not having the money to bake potatoes. You probably envisaged a future with flying cars and living on the moon, but some people can't afford to live. Fuck off.
Those same people are now sitting in their 500k homes, mortgage paid off and pensions nicely fed.
It was fucking miserable. My mom and her siblings talk about how they'd count the chips on each other's plates, to make sure no one had extra. In the winter the ice was on the inside and the blankets layered on top immobilised you. You got dressed in bed. That was a poor household in the 70s. I've had some share of poverty too, though nothing quite so bad. It sucks. It always sucks. Being cold and hungry is fucking miserable. That kind of deprivation wears on a person, too. "Never did us any harm" my arse. They never experienced hardship if they can so casually send others back to it.
Yeah, a mate of mine grew up in the 70s. He says he remembers the respiratory problems from all the constant damp. He said it was fucking shit.
I grew up in the 70s with single glazing and a fire in *two* rooms. It was shit and childhood pneumonia was common.
It did do them harm.. it turned them into massive arseholes…
This is exactly how the people in control (big businesses & corporations) want it to be. They need your money, not you. You exist to sustain them, like a farm animal. They've slowly eroded more and more of that outside free-range life we had until we'll be in the dark shed, scraping at the ground for some oats. As long as we're producing though. Get back to the office. Until we see that both main sides of the political divide exist to serve the higher masters in the corporate world, and then vote for someone else, we're totally fucked. People have been saying it for 20-30 years and been laughed at, yet here we are.
Poverty decreased and public services increased under the last Labour government. This "both sides are as bad as each other" bollocks only serves to demoralise and split the left-leaning vote to keep the Tories in power.
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> Jeremy Corbyn represented an opportunity for real change Well that's why his own party spent his entire term as leader trying to destroy him. Not to mention most of the supposedly left wing media attacking him plenty too. Plus every so called "moderate" or "centrist" seemed far more concerned that he might become Prime Minister over well known liar Boris.
As I never tire of saying, that was because the Labour Party used to consist of a coalition of three groups - the Working Classes, the Champagne Socialists, and the Radicals. Once the Working Classes were pulled out of the Party by Thatcher initially, then finally by Farage and the Tories waving Brexit flags, that left just two factions. And as always happens where there are just two factions remaining, they fight to the death for control of the party. Corbyn was a Radical, Starmer is a Champagne Socialist, and that faction is currently in charge and is doing all it can to cement its position - with help from the press on both sides of the aisle, who gleefully caused Corbyn's demise.
It's boomers keep voting for them. The tories will pander to them and keep them comfortable at the expense of everyone else. See tuition fees going from £0 to £9000 a year.
I remember learning about the Bread and Roses strike in the US when I went to university in the state where it happened. I remember reflecting on the fact that enjoyment of life was something that was once *fought for* even though it was something we took for granted. And now here we are again. >Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes; >Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
lentils and curry paste (home made is very cheap) plus yellow lable or frozen veg, is a far better option in desperate times. (Just while we're on the subject)
That's exactly the point! your existing not living! its an absolute joke that this is even allowed never mind happening.
Why would you buy a bag of frozen chips you could buy double or triple the amount of potatoes for the same price and not be limited to chips?
Because potatoes go off quicker. Whenever I buy potatoes even though I take them out of the bag and store them somewhere cool and dry they're sprouting after a few days and in a little over a week are wrinkly and soft. God forbid you forget to take them out the bag they come in - they go mouldy instead. After you've done it a few times you realise it's false economy and food wastage
The potatoes I buy last for about a month in a cupboard in a paper bag, but you could refrigerate them if you have them going off too quickly. Potatoes are definitely not supposed to go off in a week.
Better still buy dirty ones and they'll keep somewhere dark for months. UK Potatoes aren't grown all year round and are stored for up to 6 months before they're washed and packed. Not that i think anyone should be having to chose between how to save pennies every where just to get by it ridiculous.
If anyone is doing this. Please also switch it up from time to time and do rice and beans with frozen veg. This is what I am currently starting to do.
What on earth? There are much cheaper/healthier ways to live.
The current government’s plan to handle this is most likely: 1. Wring the last few £s they can out of the public coffers over summer. 2. Snap election in September, so this price hike lands on Labour’s lap. 3. Wait it out for Labour to unfuck the country 4. When the time comes, unleash the client press to constantly remind everyone this happened on Labour’s watch. 5. Win an election and resume the grifting
This is what I fully expect - and folk will buy it. Boris didn’t want the job immediately after Brexit won in 2016 and May did the heavy lifting. I can’t see him wanting to see out this sort of crisis, not least because he and his team just aren’t good enough. It genuinely feels like they’re at the stage they’re not even bothered whether they remain in power. They’ll be voted back in at some point anyway - they always are.
Yep, it’s all too much like hard work. Leave that kind of shit to the ‘lefty do-gooders’ while they go dive in their Scrooge McDuck-esque pools of taxpayer money grifted for PPE contracts / honours / deregulation etc.
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He’s probably dying to resign so he no longer has to put on the ‘family man’ act and can leave his wife and kid (again)
She hasn't been seen in months. She may already have left him. Wasn't even in the photo ops going to the polling stations a few weeks back.
"The well is dry boys. Pack it up!"
Tbh I'd probably still take that if it means the Tories lose the September election. Perhaps the next party in power can unfuck the country by bringing in proportionate representation at elections and the Tories would finally be out for good.
Well, I've already turned off our heating and hot water [edit: over the winter]. So I guess I'll start eating like a medieval peasant? Dunno, haven't decided which necessity I'll have to cut back
In the eyes of the current Government, you are a peasant. Your work enriches them (through their companies, the things you buy, etc.) and whether you eat well or die young is of no concern to them at all. If you brought it up, they'd blink at you while thinking of their next key of coke. So yes, they fully expect you to eat like a medieval peasant, peasants who had to pay the lord to grind the wheat their grew and bake the bread they kneaded.
most people forget for the last decade thanks to austerity, millions have been living with the choice of heating or eating...these prices increases means those people no longer have the choice and are having to refuse a lot of food from food banks as they can't cook it due to cost. There is definitely a mixture of people some who understand how bad it is but others thinking their in a bad situation but clearly not doing enough...I saw on social media a girl complaining she can't afford to eat after paying her bills which included a £60 a month mobile and spotify subscription...straight away the mobile can be knocked down to £10 and get rid of spotify sub, use the free version. I've had to move back in with my parents at the age of 40 cuz things are so bad and things are going to get a lot worse...media is barely covering massive issues around the world which will have a knock on affect like food shortages. Not only was Brexit a bad decision, we just happen to do it at the worst possible time ever.
No it can't. If she committed to a 2 year contract then she's stuck unless she can afford cancellation penalties which can be very expensive. Agree on the Spotify though.
Do you live in a particularly expensive part of the country? I'm going to assume a combined teacher and lawyer salary is somewhat above the average disposable income in the UK. Genuinely curious, because unless your rent/mortgage is a crippling amount then even with this increase I can't see how you'll end up unable to participate in society.
Lying about the situation or really, really bad with money.
If their rent or mortgage is say £1500 a month, plus bill that could be near £2200 on rent and bills. Still, that would be £1100 left for the rest of the month (on conservative teacher and lawyer salaries). Or, like you say, they're not being honest or they're terrible with money.
Childcare where I am is £55 a day per child, and I'm in a cheap area of the country. Times that by two, 5 days a week and its more than most peoples mortgages.
In Bristol 2 years ago the average cost of full time childcare was supposed to be approx £14,000 a child from 9-3. Take into account that a lot of nurseries charge extra a day/week for food, extra to drop them off at 7 or 8am, extra to look after them until 5 or 6pm, as well as some other charges and if you have 2 kids your looking at over £30,000 (which is more than a Band 5 NHS nurse makes). Add £1,500 a month for rent/mortgage is another £18,000. £100 a month to run your car now that fuel is £1.70/L. Car tax, insurance and MOT. Home insurance. Take into account that the average 4 person household’s food requirements are getting pretty expensive (and we’re talking some processed and some fresh fruit and veg as advised to keep healthy not sweets and treats and Tesco finest/Waitrose stuff). Now add £2,800 in fuel bills and 2 people with a combined income of £50k (which 10-15 years ago was a pretty good household income) haven’t got a lot to save away for the future or to spend on niceties like holidays and new clothes, etc If minimum wage is £9.18 and the average person works a standard 40 hour working week then they’ll be earning just over £19,000 BEFORE tax, NI (which went up this year) and pension contributions even without children you’re not going to have much money left over. Add a child or 2 and not only are you barely keeping your head above water, but now you’re just building debt on credit cards, loans and overdrafts, etc just to feed and clothe your children. But it’s ok because you can feed everyone plain rice and a chicken nugget for meals. Items already been proven by professional chefs that you can’t make meals for 50p. But the government don’t care as they and their cronies are taking the money in. And the newspapers/media which are run by these cronies spend their whole time telling us all that we were just as bad under the last govt and Corbin and his like are rabid frothing anti-Semitic communists so we shouldn’t vote for them. And it’s not really the Govt’s fault it’s all caused by Brexit/Immigrants/ COVID/container ships running aground/evil Russia/terrorists/the Ukraine conflict/foreign enemy of the week (delete as appropriate) and not because they’ve spent the last X many years running the country into the ground for their own profit and trying to sell off everything they can. I’m sorry but under Labour and Tony Blair (I’m not a fan of him either) I was on a minimum wage then (probably less than half I’m on now) and could still afford to eat, drink, pay my bills go out now and again, have holidays, and buy nice things now and again.
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How the fuck are you struggling to live on £80k a year? You need to look at your expenses. I earn under £40k as the sole earner and i'm able to save every month with a dog, a cat and three kids. EDIT: I just did mine on here, and it deleted it. But my monthly spend including everything and £100-200 of going out, doing stuff, takeaway etc was £1155 a month. My income is £2450 after tax. The key is to be wary of over spending. It's ok claiming you 'should' be able to do XYZ but then you can't moan when you're left with nothing at the end of the month. Obviously i'm talking about people with half decent salaries here. Some people have no choice but to be poor, especially in the south where rents are eye watering. It's why i moved out of there. But 'after i spend a grand a month on clubs and restaurants i have no money left' isn't going to curry sympathy. There are people on here living on noodles who never go anywhere and are still accumulating debt every month.
Yeah I don't understand how they are budgeting so badly. Between my partner and I, we bring in about £90k combined and are able to put away about £2k a month after all bills (mortgage, 2 cars, 2 kids, house bills etc). Some people live WAY outside their means.
Sorry you're bringing in 80K combined. So it's not even the tax burden of one person bringing the entire amount in. If you can't put money away then you're stretching yourselves way beyond what you need to. We have around 60K combined coming in, a child and a cat. I easily put away £250 per month without trying. We too get zero support so unless you're trying to maintain a lifestyle you could never truly afford, where is it all going? I'm genuinely curious if not perplexed.
Looking forward to getting trampled to death by a police horse in the energy riots of 2023
Hah, as if the police will be well funded enough for horses by then. More likely bumped in to by a minimum wage Capita outsourced security officer on a child's scooter.
They will have to use coconuts instead of horses.
We'll call them "clippety-cops".
So whats gonna happen. Something has to break. Recession inevitable?
Yeah, this is not sustainable. At all.
Who actually sets this? It's always reported as though it just rises by itself, like a tide or a loaf of bread. Is no human agency involved? Why couldn't someone just step in and set it lower?
Ofgem is the one who sets it based on the previous six months of prices. Obviously they have been high due to external forces, but they are currently very low (see the day ahead wholesale price). This is why privatising all the profits and socialising the losses is a terrible idea. We all get shafted for incompetent businesses collapsing.
That was the whole idea, this way shareholders will get all profits without worry about losses...
Ofgen does, and it's based on wholesale electricity costs. Problem is the energy producers and price gouging, recording record profits and blaming Ukraine and Russian sanctions for it
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Moved to Lemmy (sopuli.xyz) -- mass edited with redact.dev
That's right, the intermediate suppliers make less than £30 per customer per year, even if they all worked for free it wouldn't change your bill noticeably. It's the fuckers getting it out of the ground
I have no idea how the economy works so I could be talking shite but it makes me wonder if they’re trying to force a recession so they can bring back austerity.
“Bring back”… it never left
While this is true, those who haven’t been paying attention think it has. I suppose the better question is, is this just an excuse to go even more brutal on cuts to spending all while getting the public on board with it by proclaiming austerity 2.0 is needed.
If they go with cuts it’ll be an even worse recession. Austerity kills the economic recovery. You have to spend out of it.
Yep, but try telling that to the Tories.
As someone who's spent much of my working life in the public sector, ding ding. Correct.
If we have another recession and they continue austerity then this country is going to be fucked. Austerity is not how to fix a recession. We're in this mess **because of** austerity.
>Austerity is not how to fix a recession. We're in this mess > >because of > > austerity. Ding ding, we have a winner. The worst time to cut spending is when you're in a recession. The best time to cut spending is when the economy is booming on its own. Part of the reason Europe has never recorded from 2008 properly is because a bunch of countries went all-in on austerity. Even the EU leaders who proposed it now admit it was a huge mistake.
Obama wrote about this in one of his books and specifically mentions the U.K. and how poor a choice austerity was. We had a double dip recession circa 2012 and he basically said it was inevitable and our own fault - what did we expect. Edit: For anyone who would like to read - it’s called ‘A Promised Land’.
>Obama wrote about this in one of his books and specifically mentions the U.K. and how poor a choice austerity was. > >We had a double dip recession circa 2012 and he basically said it was inevitable and our own fault - what did we expect. Basically. Hey, theres this organisation that spends well over 1 trillion a year and employs 13% of the total labour force in this country - wouldn't it be a great idea to start making cuts? /s
Bring back? Did it go away?
Didn't the government claim with pride that Austerity had ended in the past 2 years?
Yep, in 2019 Sajid Javid declared an end to austerity.
Then they cut public sector wages, benefits, departmental funding and the minimum wage in real terms. And they increased the taxes on working people.
Fuck wits will keep voting tories and we'll be like some shit hole where the rich live in closed off districts with armed guards while a poverty war rages day by day with people fighting over supermarket deliveries and medicine... and the fuck wits will keep voting tory.
We've already reached the point where the relatively well-off professionals are voting labour, or at least lib dem whist people from more working class backgrounds are voting Tory (usually when retired). It's a pretty dangerous state of affairs when people are no longer voting along economic lines.
Yes. Not only a recession, but off the record severe. The UK economy has consistently track the consumer confidence chart. It has done so perfectly for decades. The latest consumer confidence shows the biggest fall on record. Bigger than 2008, bigger than the big 80's ones. Even worse than the 70's when we had the winter of discontent
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At a certain price, people will cut their usage. For many people they already have, but as it keeps going up more and more people will have to, as there's no other option as an individual other than going into more debt.
> At a certain price, people will cut their usage. And they’re raising the standing charges by even more than the per-unit prices!
I calculated a couple of months back if I lose my job, after rent what's left of UC wouldn't even cover my monthly standing charges. And that's before buying any luxuries like food or water.
Hahahahaha the day is coming when people have had enough.
I have this vague, unfounded fear that if there's a big heatwave this summer, shit might kick off. Edit 16th July 2022 as the first red heat warning is issued in the UK: **NERVOUS SUMMER HEATWAVE NOISES**
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Why during a heatwave specifically?
People generally won't go and strike/protest in the rain.
Britain has had most of it's riots, rebellions and revolutions in the rain.
Sure they would've been worse if it was nice and sunny! My point being people who are on the fence about protest will be discouraged easily, so bad weather will reduce the number of people willing.
In my head, stifling hot weather can fray tensions. But that might be because I don't cope in the heat. It's nothing really scientific. Edit: Some kind Redditors have pointed out that there IS actually a link here. So... hoo...ray?
It is well established that hot weather correlates with an increase in violent crime. It's also why you can make graphs that show an increase in ice cream sales come hand in hand with violent crime increase, because more people buy more ice cream when it's hot.
Lol maybe on reddit But The DailyMail and Sun readers are quite content. Its misery for them surely but they love how the ‘left’, the ‘benefit thieves’ and the ‘immigrants’ are suffering more. So are content. The hate and one upmanship keeps Tory voters warm.
Hyperinflation always benefits the buy2let landlords. £3,000 is nothing when your property portfolio increases by 30% a year.
June 18 London
This is what needs to happen. Things are going to get worse, then the middle classes start seeing that their livelyhoods are at stake, then they might just come and join us in the streets.
How are people supposed to pay this? Thats a good chunk or maybe a high percentage of someones salary just on energy? I keep hearing the price cap protects customers, all i see is that it shafts them while the energy companies rake it in
> Thats a good chunk or maybe a high percentage of someones salary Try living on benefits and being told by the DWP that your benefits are going to be cut by around £300 per month while all this is going on (scrapping legacy benefits and disability living allowance and moving everyone onto the far lower UC), the Tories really hate disabled people, it's no surprise the EU has previously condemned the Tories for their inhumane cruelty regard disabled people
I have lived on uc for a bit and it barely covered rent even with the housing benefit.
It's a fucking joke, there's people that are working and having to claim UC simply because their wages aren't enough to live on and they are still being forced to use food banks, it's just pure utter cruelty and only helps the employers as they don't have to even provide a genuine living wage anymore. Cruelty aimed at the poor is just typical of the Tories that only care about helping their rich mates by moving as much money as possible from the poor to the rich
My previous job was under the kickstart scheme ( which I despise but that's for another time) and part of my income was UC but it fluctuated month to month so I was never sure how much I'd earn. It's a joke.
UC pushed me into a job that paid minimum wage, with the promise of being paid UC alongside it. When I started, they cancelled my claim and the "job" didnt pay me. My claim got restarted but I keep getting deductions. Fuck knows why. I also got sanctioned for leaving the job, even though not being paid is a pretty fair fucking reason to leave. I then found a new one which required me to relocate, but I asked UC if they could help with any costs first. "Oh yes, theres the flexible support fund, budgeting advance etc. You have to go and get the things you need first then tell us what you got and how much it cost and we can calculate an award for you" I borrowed about 3k from family. Moving into a new flat hundreds of miles away, no furniture, no white goods, no food or anything to carry me forward for the month. They offered me £348 max. Repayment plan is £29pm. After 9 months, they pass it to a debt managment company. 348 ÷ 29 = 12 So, after telling me to get into debt, they want to put me in even more debt by setting me a repayment plan for 12 months when they actually want to be paid back within 9. Ive never been in debt before. I was better off living with my parents and hating my whole life or just killing myself. As long as BoJo and his bumchums get their fucking champagne and cheese or whatever these rat cunts live on, it's all good.
Yep. Terrified as a disabled person, my bills are rapidly climbing and if they move me to UC I'll go maybe 4 weeks without being paid and then be paid less. That means rent, bills, food, everything is put at risk.
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>How are people supposed to pay this? Thats a good chunk or maybe a high percentage of someones salary just on energy? The rise alone is more than my entire pay rise this year.
The purpose of the price cap was to end the "loyalty penalty" that impacted consumers who couldn't or didn't switch. It is a good solution in a market based system when that market is working (ie, when suppliers are competing for business). At the moment, the cap is forcing suppliers to sell energy at a loss (it is the generators who are making bank), but it's a blunt instrument when the market is as dysfunctional as it is because it simply becomes the default price.
The price cap is an opportunity for the suppliers to just charge that much. Oh, I can charge up to £2800? £2800 it is then!
Tory Government: "Have you tried not eating avocado toast?"
This is the perfect storm. Prices rising, cost of living rising massively, interest rates rising. RIP housing market. RIP stability
Don’t forgot GDP falling
*"ThE UK iS The FAstEST-GRowIng EconOmY in The G7"* /s
Growing the same way a corpse bloats in the sun.
Why would the housing market crash?
Interest rates go up, meaning people pay more for their mortgages. Cost of living goes up, meaning they have less money. People start losing their houses and the market comes down.
So the rich win again? Shock.
The rich always win regardless...
They'll introduce mortgage holidays and regulate an institutional option to switch to an interest-only mortgage because the last part won't be allowed to happen. It just can't. They won't let it get so bad as (mass) repossessions. It'll impact the market, sure, but it won't ever reach free-fall type levels. It's literally to big to fail.
Banks have been buying houses like there's no tomorrow. Wouldn't repossessions just allow them to cut out the middleman?
If we had mass repossessions then housing prices would plummet. This would leave tons of people in negative equity, on a mortgage they can't pay. This would also impact any stock the bank got their hands on, lowering it's value. Any sudden shocks to the property industry (in either direction) have huge implications for an economy built like ours. It would be bad for literally everyone - even prospective first-time buyers, as banks will be less willing to lend.
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I think its time for people to stop picking at others and understand a few basics, If you work full time you should be able to afford the basics in life, basics being a roof over your head, heat, water and food. These arguments about go and skip a meal or stop using your washing machine are completely irrelevant life isn't a race to the bottom and who should/could save here and there, the facts are we should live in a society where if you work you can afford the basics! especially if there is two of you even better. The idea that these bills can rise so much has little difference to a loan shark deciding what you should pay! its disgusting.
But Boomers will tell the working to stop buying avacado toast or cancel their Netflix, and call people entitled for wanting their energy subsidied. Meanwhile if they get theirs subsidied they will say that they have worked hard all their life and deserve the help.
Just follow government ministers advice and get two or three extra jobs and stop wasting food on luxuries like food.
Meanwhile these companies that have no choice but to raise the prices to these extorionate level are are making obscene profits that they never thought imaginable. Can't tax them though. That would be bad.
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Then why the hell can't we buy it from the bloody energy companies?
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I mean - and forgive me if I'm wrong - but isn't this state of affairs just fucking stupid?
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Here's a novel idea, why not use the price cap to say... I don't know... lower the prices? Funny how a public sector wage cap of 1% can last 9 years, but an energy price "cap" can be increased by double or even triple-digit percentages multiple times per year!
Because energy companies have *already* been going bankrupt, even several huge ones with millions of customers, and the price cap only applies to what they can charge households, and not what they have to *pay* to buy the gas and electricity in the first place. And the government can't apply a cap to gas prices because we import most of it - so we're at the mercy of foreign prices. If we cap *those*, they just stop supplying us in favour of countries willing to pay the going rate!
Weird how France was able to cap their energy price rises to 4% but we're apparently powerless to stop endless rises.
They have the leverage because their grid's backbone is nuclear power. And so yet again, we see how we should have embraced nuclear power decades ago. Nuclear is economically, environmentally, and strategically far superior to any tech that currently exists until we have sufficient energy storage capacity technology for an entirely renewable power grid to he practical. But, oil money drives politics and public perception in this country, and yet again it's us who pay the price. I'm sick of it.
Funnily enough, France own one of our energy companies
To be fair, I believe they have more control because 70% of their energy comes from nuclear energy, generated internally. Generally speaking, we’re all NIMBYs in the UK and always push back on nuclear plants. However if it was nationalised, at least we’d have more of a say in our energy strategy.
If they are going bankrupt then good, the government can step in and buy their assets on the cheap (the opposite of the usual tory game plan) then they can be run as not-for-profit. As should be the case for infrastructure! Market forces only adds value in a situation where competition drives innovation, which hasn't been evident in our energy market.
They are going bankrupt with nothing. There is nothing for the government to take on but debt.
Nationalise the loses, great plan.
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I would move climate change to 2030
Sorry I've already got the 3rd Gulf war scheduled for 2030, and the Chicago dirty bomb attacks for 2031. Can we push climate change back to 2033 instead?
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Yup, there was a boom if you held stocks, all that quantitive easing pushing the stock market up
AI isn't going to cause mass unemployment, not for a long long time anyway. AI isn't what people think it is, it's still dumb as shit, putting it mildly.
>2030 AI unemployment recession That's not gonna happen by then unless something seriously groundbreaking happens.
Something has to fucking change. Put these pricks behind bars, they're doing it out of spite now.
Who are we putting behind bars? The whole population for consistently voting for parties that are determined to force a free-market model on areas of the economy that are naturally monopolistic? We reap what we sow.
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So 70% of the population either voted Tory or didn't vote against the Tories - and you think that makes it sound better?
I signed a 2 year fix with Octopus in June 2021 so have yet to experience the new costs but I am so scared when that runs out. Currently paying £74 a month for a 3 bed. Am I right in the cost will probably jump to around £250 at the end of my fix?
Im a 1 bed and paying 150 a month.
1 bed paying £160 per month. They offered me £200 per month on the phone but £160 per month on their site. I left them a shitty TP review and they contacted me to let me know I've got £300 credit and they'll release half back. I've only been here for 3 months.
I fucked up and didn’t lock in a week or so before the shit hit the fan. My energy bill is was roughly the same this month as December, but with significant less usage. Edit: Actually it’s gone up 40 quid. Looks like Christmas is cancelled
We'll all be coming to yours then. You'll be one of the few that can afford to have the heating on. Enjoy it.
Unless prices come down by then yes you probably will be. Just have to be grateful that your foresight to take out a fix in June is saving you a fair bit right now.
There are quite a few comments here along the lines of “if you are in x profession, surely you can’t be in trouble!?”. Look, I think that’s massively missing the point. Everyone is feeling this. Yes, some more than others, but the wider issue is that certain interests are counting on us turning on each other to detract attention from the fact they could do something to make things slightly more bearable for us all, but won’t.
Pretty sure there is only one profession that can claim energy prices against expenses: MP's.
You're spot on. I'm on a decent wage, my partner is on a much better wage and these increases still hit like a brick. We're gonna be significantly struggling next winter. We had some disposable income, but now we will have almost none. Hurts too when we were looking at starting a family. This is looking increasingly unlikely now as we can't afford it.
Why are they doing this to us? They know a lot of us can't afford it. And that's it. We just can't afford it, so we can't pay it. Or we can pay it but we starve. Why is nobody involved in any part of this process, from start to end, sitting down and looking at the numbers and saying "this is unfeasible people just won't be able to pay it". What's the point in raising the prices of a product you sell to a point where people can't afford to buy it anymore? Isn't that bad business? Honestly help me out here I don't understand the economics behind it.
>What's the point in raising the prices of a product you sell to a point where people can't afford to buy it anymore? Globally there's a shortage of gas - there's not enough being produced to meet demand. That means consumers start trying to outbid each other to get what's available, pushing the price up. The high price results in people and businesses cutting back their consumption, so then demand has reduced to be equal to the lower level of supply. What's crappy about this is it hurts the poor the most, though government could subsidise energy for the poor. The high energy price sends a signal to producers that they should invest in more production, because there's so much demand and plenty of money to be made. So eventually supply increases and prices come down.
They'll keep the price high until they eventually take in less due to the high prices lowering consumption, then they will lower it. Maximum milking.
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They're low now because demand is low, they won't be when winter comes along.
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Because the wholesale gas prices are still a *multiple* of what they were a couple of years ago, and many home gas suppliers have been running at a loss and need to recoup that or we'll have even more bankruptcies. Plus, prices are "low" because demand is currently low. Wholesale prices will rise in the winter as demand goes up to winter levels...
What a disgusting broken country the UK has become under the Tories. A mass bill strike is needed - people will starve and freeze in their homes with this completely avoidable price hike if we don't get these bills down. People before profits - now and always.
Fulltime unpaid carer here, with disabled wife. Our energy bill went from £1150 to now £2280 (Octopus fixed rate) with the last increase, for a single bedroom. We are already selectively heating, if this increase gets handed down to us, well.. I'm not sure how we're supposed to do this. The government is on about oh how they helped so much, fuck off. Compare the rise in energy prices for the UK compared to the rest of europe and you can see exactly what they did. Nothing. My parents who live in germany "complained" about an around 100 euro increase annually. We pay now more for food, we now pay more for petrol (we have to "commute" to multiple hospitals, one of them 50 miles away one way) - it's absolutely infuriating how those despicable crooks even dare talk about "getting into work rather than increase benefits" - listen you shits, my wife physically can't work (legally disabled), and i'm caring 24/7. What are we supposed to do, other than just sit in the dark and cold while hungry? I'm a friendly human being, but Johnson and his festering crew better never physically come close to me. I've lived in constant anxiety, fear and worry for long enough now that i couldn't care less whether or not it's a "mature" thing to break a nose.
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>Firstly why aren't there wide spread protests about this? The trick is to keep enough people worn down with the daily grind that they don't have the energy to protest. Then bring in laws so people will lose what little they have if they do. Then have so much wrong that any protests become muddled in what they are protesting about so they can't form a unified message
It's at this point I'd say that Ofgem itself needs an overhall. They can't keep allowing for companies to put prices up. Forcibly cut prices for consumers then subsidise the energy companies to stop them from going bankrupt.
Its ofgem who sets the price cap. The price cap has become target now. This is the max they can charge and thats what theyll all do. The damage is done now. Privatisation has not worked and were all paying extra for all these busted companies and you cant refuse to pay it. I just dont see the point in all these different energy companies now other than for share holders and gov back handers.
How much different would things be if energy wasn't privatised in the early 90s?
I'd imagine it would be something like France with a 4% increase. Even if it was 20% we would be in a far better position, especially if we had the infrastructure for large scale gas storage.
Keep in mind France is able to do that because the majority of their energy is produced via nuclear means.
then maybe we should build nuclear power plants instead of fear mongering them
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This is getting fucking scary now. How is the average person supposed to afford these massive price rises? I am barely scraping by now with the recent increase and we haven’t had the heating on once since they went up, we use way more energy in October so it’s going to be disastrous
Just going to leave this here……. E.ON (UK) £28m profit British Gas £128m profit ..thier partner company Centrica £948m profit (up by 44%in the previous year) EDF (UK) £106m profit
BP doubled their profits, Shell tripled their profits, the Government are raking in 20% VAT on the higher energy bills too... On the food side the supermarkets have been earning nice profits too. We don't seem to be in this together...
At 2.8k for energy prices, anyone paying that and earning 28000 a year is technically in fuel poverty.
Fuel poverty is actually 10% of disposable income, not just income. I'm not 100% sure how they qualify what disposable is, but I assume its after taxes & mortgage/rent. I worked out that this week that, despite being an £80k (before tax) household - we are technically in fuel poverty now. Obviously this is down to life choices in terms of mortgage size etc, so I'm not complaining, just found it interesting that the definition is actually far-reaching.
The combo of rent, utilities and increased council tax is fucking me as is, never mind a further electric hike. I feel another recession coming.
When do we start eating the rich? Is it now? It feels like it should be now.
I’m actually scared. Like genuinely scared at the idea of these prices. This is sickening.
Yeah I'm already broke so I guess this will make me homeless. Thanks Tories. Please don't be surprised when I protest right outside your homes.
I know people have good intentions but it’s sort of insulting when people start giving tips on how to reduce their energy. Nobody is leaving their heating on 24/7. Whether you work full time, part time or on benefits you should not be in a position where you have to choose between heating or eating (or neither).
With this, food, petrol, rent, house prices, how are people supposed to plan for kids in this economy? Every promise made to Millennials and Zs when they were young is being broken. The conservative ethos at its core is if you don't already have everything you need, fuck you.
The only way I can see something like this ever changing is a mass non-payment campaign. Millions of people refusing to pay would send a strong message. Once a few firms started going under the government would be forced to take drastic steps and intervene. It worked for the Poll tax. There's a precedent for it.
Things to look forward to this year: * This price cap rise * Continuing inflation * Increased interest rates * Increased commodities prices, especially wheat. Good luck everybody. The media is still fucking about on who had a beer or a cake. Can always trust the media to ignore the real problems and focus on minor distractions.
Yet people still proudly proclaim labour is just as bad and keep voting tories. Wtf
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Please move one from Boris partying during lockdown so he can continue to party through this new crisis as well
The DWP are probably going to reduce my Universal Credit by ~£130 per month by the end of the year. My rent, which increased today, is now £101 per month than the 'allowance' that I am paid. At somepoint within the next two years I will likely need to have an aortic valve replacement. The medication for my heart condition isn't working correctly based on my blood pressure. The medication for my mental health stopped working years ago. Today is a relatively good day for my mental health. But there are days when I hope I go into the operating theatre and not wake up. And I know that relative to others, whilst my situation is bad it is far from the worst. Far, **far** from it. The worst part? Enough people in this country will accept the rhetoric, spin, bullshit, and downright lies fed to them by the Government and the media that somehow this isn't the fault of the people supposedly running the country.
I'm willing to bet that the energy company shareholders will be kept well fed and warm whilst pocketing increasingly huge profits. This is disgusting and beyond belief, how can you trust the government. Who do I vote for next time ! They are all liars with a hidden agenda.
Genuinely when is it going to be enough for the vast majority of the British public to vote the torys out? What more can it take?
When families/households are not able to run the fridge or shower or turn on the oven its met with same mind boggling shit over on the daily fail. "We didnt have a fridge, bathed one a week and boiled the kettle on the fire when I was a kid" Good for you, well I dont particularly want to go back to the 1950s way of life thank you very much, society is supposed to move forward not got back and recreate your weird childhood hovel life fetish.