The poor will freeze to death in the UK.

originally posted by: UpThenDown
a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Errr ok sure I have been feasting on MSM

Let me correct myself

Dam you Biden it’s all your fault, nothing to do with the record profits announced by the energy companies

Dam you Biden !!!!!

What do "record profits" have to do with, in the BEST case, some of the worst diplomacy in recent memory to head off a legitimate proxy conflict between NATO and Russia that has Ukraine caught in the crossfire, or in the WORST case, a manufactured crisis that both distracted the public from the sudden evaporation of mandatory vaccination and lock-downs ("Sorry for giving you the "vax or be fired!" ultimatum, our bad"), as well as serving the interests of the "green" energy/climate change nutters, all in one go?

I think you have the causation of market economics bass ackwards.

The "record profits" don't materialize out of thin air. When supply exceeds demand, such as during the global slowdown from the pandemic, then the price of oil falls. When the inverse occurs, demand exceeds supply, then the price of oil RISES.

Russia, as you might know, is the #2 oil exporter in the world, behind Saudi Arabia. NATO going to war with them over arming Ukraine would INEVITABLY lead to an energy crisis, either through sanctions (the scenario we are in now) or the simple mechanics of supply disruption from, e.g., sh!t blowing up and pitched battle and so on.

I will once again post two tidbits of context that I find very salient and topical to the current situation regarding the "energy crisis" and the market conditions leading to "record profits" that folks seem to somehow (erroneously) link to the looming specter of heating oil/gas shortages and planned blackouts in the UK.

This quote from the U.S. Secretary of Energy under President Obama (whom many in the U.S. believe is actually setting policy behind the scenes for the current rudderless Biden administration), in 2012:

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said that Energy Secretary Steven Chu's testimony today before the House Science Committee reveals that he remains thoroughly committed to his comment in 2008 that somehow "we have to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." When Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) asked Secretary Chu at the hearing today if he would retract his 2008 statement he refused. This comes just days after Congressman Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss) asked Secretary Chu if it was the Administration's goal to bring down gas prices. His answer was "no" and he went on to say, "The overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil; to build and strengthen our economy and decrease our dependency on oil."

Keeping in the mind the inevitable chain reaction of supply disruption and price inclines from a conflict involving the #2 oil producing nation in the world. This interview from newly-elected U.S. President Joe Biden, in early 2021:

Biden sat down for an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, who asked: “So, you know Vladimir Putin. You think he’s a killer?” Without hesitation, the president replied, “Mmm hmm, I do.”

The president described a tense phone call he had with Putin in January in which Biden warned him that he will “pay a price” for his attempts to interfere in U.S. democracy. Biden’s comments were broadcast a day after the U.S. chief intelligence office released an unclassified report accusing Putin of orchestrating efforts to wreck Biden’s election campaign.

The president also confirmed that, some years ago, he was alone with Putin in his office and he brought up the topic of Putin’s lack of a human soul. “I said, ‘I looked in your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul,’ and he looked back and said, ‘We understand each other.’ The most important thing of dealing with foreign leaders... is just know the other guy.”

I can't lay it out any more clearly than that for you.

The political and economic (early green energy investors) interests that are Hell-bent on forcefully shunting global energy consumption off of fossil fuels are not going to directly state as much, and permit the spread of a narrative that depicts the likes of Obama, Boris Johnson, the Biden administration, the EU, as unilaterally turning off oil/gas spigots to "save the world from cLiMaTe ChAnGe!". The optics of that would be so dreadful, tantamount to political suicide should planned blackouts/heating supply shortages come to the West.

Instead, the oil price increase that the Obama administration was pining for over the past decade has unfolded in such a way as to portray "us", the West, as innocent victims of the capricious whims of a mad dictator (nothing to do with persistent and needless NATO expansion into Eastern Europe though).

Even worse, it seems, that some have been duped into blaming the energy companies for fuel shortages and supply disruptions that the POLITICIANS instigated, again, either by gross diplomatic negligence OR completely according to plan (SEE ABOVE).

It simply amazes me how, armed with bits and pieces of the puzzle but not the entire full portrait, folks continue to lay the blame for this mess at the feet of the Big Oil bogeyman. BELIEVE ME when I say, I have no vested interests in fossil fuel companies, no skin in the game, other than investment equity in some oil companies as part of a broader portfolio. The oil companies are not entirely innocent, they are not "The Good Guys(tm)", but neither are they devious, insidious schemers whose avarice will cause the UK to potentially resort to planned blackouts in the upcoming winter. Lay the blame for that, should it pass, at the feet of the appropriate parties, which would be whomever folks like Steven Chu and the husk of Joe Biden take their ahem "advice" from.

originally posted by: nonspecific

It's possibly my fault as for some reason my avatar gives the impression that I'm some kind of Rees Mogg esque tory monster.

originally posted by: McGinty
a reply to: nonspecific

Fair enough - guess I was triggered

Well, there is that

a reply to: andy06shake
The Kids were ripped off but the Miners got it way worse.
2nd.

originally posted by: Freeborn

Many of the problems the UK currently faces can be traced back to Thatcher and her policies.
Her abandonment of the mixed economy that had both collecivism and private enterprise operating side by side to one obsessed purely with the generation of profit for a small elite completely transformed the UK.....mostly for the worse.

The trickle down economy was perhaps the greatest confidence trick ever pulled on the British people; the workers will make the bosses rich and those riches will loop back in to the economy, into wages and make us all wealthier. Instead they took all that money, hid it in offshore tax havens and told the workers to shut up and work harder if you want to keep your job so you can pay your expanding living costs with your shrinking pay packet.

Folk think this latest cost of living crises is new, but it's history repeating. If the scam still works of course they'd run it again.

a reply to: Cymru

She destroyed entire communities there Cymru and consigned generations of men to the scrap heap, i don't think worse even begins to cover what Thatcher and her ilk did to those people.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Randyvine2

You just have to go with the flow buddy.

And make hay while the sun shines so to speak.

Yeah, let's stay positive, don't be our own worst enemies, be a team player, you gotta play the game if you wanna win, you gotta make hey, the old cynicism needs to be gone...

Sleeeep

a reply to: McGinty

Need to play the game if you want to eat and keep a roof above your head McGinty.

Good movie all the same.

I think a remake would probably come out terrible but it might make a great series "They Live" that is.

originally posted by: nickyw
a reply to: McGinty

the middle class...

The thing with the 'middle' is that it's impossible to accurately define and when moments in history get close to a practical definition the demographic shifts.

In practise the 'Middle' is merely another aspect of the divide and conquer phenomenon that insulates the 1% from the masses. The Middle is an ever in flux collection of individuals and families always on their way up, or the their way down. Always fighting for purchase, for status and assets. Always pouring hot oil over the ramparts of their little castle to stall the progress of those climbing their coat tails.

This endless skirmish ensures that none will scale to the dizzying heights of the 1%, but instead be trapped in the cycle of generations doing well to generations doing not so well. None of them really know any better.

Academics know better, but the brave ones who have spoken up in the past are usually gunned down by a convenient idiot or madman. And now not even guns are necessary because social media's been weaponised with junta tools such as facebook launching algorithms to cancel anyone that presents a threat to the status quo.

a reply to: andy06shake

It's a dilemma for sure! I'm not revolting (if you know what i mean), but i wish someone bloody would.

And yeah, what a great series it would make. I read that Carpenter might be coming out of retirement to direct something. Of course i prey for a new movie, but the first couple of eps of a They Live series would be very welcome and entirely appropriate. Although it might just as well be a documentary

a reply to: McGinty

It's a dilemma for sure! I'm not revolting (if you know what i mean), but i wish someone bloody would.

Sounds like a plan, but real change requires blood in spades.

Canny just tare it all down and put it back together again at the drop of a hat without significant implications.

There are after all no bloodless revolutions.

Politics is broken all the same, seemingly by design no less.

It's a predicament and a half really, class-war raging, and the divide only getting wider as the days go by.

Far to few haves, far to many have nots far as i can establish.

a reply to: McGinty

that sounds an incredibly Americanised viewpoint for the English the lines are somewhat simpler and tribal, the Normans aligned tribes and the poorer British, Angle, Saxon and Dane tribes..

there was a study looking at surnames of those who attended the prestigious schools and unis if you had a Norman aligned name even now your chances are 800x greater than the non Norman to go to uni, another study looked at inheritance going back to the Norman invasion and year on year they've got richer, with the real ultra rich houses of the last 1,000 years exiting stage left at the time of the US and French revolutions..

On that point there is some irony that the elite in the Americas tend to track themselves only to the Norman aligned tribes as there is almost nothing Anglo-Saxon about them, the presidents do the same tracking themselves to the Angevin king, john, while the queens line tries to claim Anglo Saxon roots..

thus in an English context class is also a substitute for tribe.

The hate many people still have (including myself) is often underestimated.

A bloke I know won't even allow Thatcher's cider in his house, I've seen him make another mate take it outside and drink it on the road he hates her so much lol.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Cymru

She destroyed entire communities there Cymru and consigned generations of men to the scrap heap, i don't think worse even begins to cover what Thatcher and her ilk did to those people.

a reply to: nonspecific

Well, it's better than White Lightning, Thatcher's cider that is, although i don't think they make the former any longer.

As to the woman, im not a fan myself nonspecific.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Cymru

She destroyed entire communities there Cymru and consigned generations of men to the scrap heap, i don't think worse even begins to cover what Thatcher and her ilk did to those people.

Passions still run high.
In one scene from a local Comedy Film, one of the characters when trying to avoid arrest kicks the copper square in the nuts and proclaims "Thats for the Miners!"
A throw away line but does serve to illustrate the damage the old bint did. (Not to mention a strangle hold on the Rave culture)

a reply to: anonentity

most of the uk population live in the south where it's a temperate climate for most of the year. So actually freezing to death indoors seems unlikely for about 80 percent of the population, and the people who live in the colder parts tend to have backup heating such as fireplaces or oil burning Stoves.

I lived in Swindon in the south west of England and one year when we had no money for heating the water in the toilet froze and broke it and a bottle of mouthwash froze as well.

It gets a bit nippy regardless of where abouts in the UK you are.

originally posted by: AaarghZombies
a reply to: anonentity

most of the uk population live in the south where it's a temperate climate for most of the year. So actually freezing to death indoors seems unlikely for about 80 percent of the population, and the people who live in the colder parts tend to have backup heating such as fireplaces or oil burning Stoves.

a reply to: nonspecific

LOL, I remember waking up in the morning in our old Yorkshire farm house with frost on the bed.

Now, in Canada, where it can go below -40, that would be unheard of. All our homes are well insulated with central heating. Still need money though. A few months last winter saw our utility bills total nearly a thousand dollars.

The old British stone homes are very chilly and damp and would be tough to keep warm in a cold snap.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

Ironically the Sunshine coast in Sussex is also where you find the UKs most deadly avalanche not the mountains of Scotland or Wales.

a reply to: NorthOfStuff

When I was in student digs in Manchester a bottle of milk on the bedside table froze overnight.

a reply to: nickyw

When was that?