To Our Friends in the UK How to Stay Warm

a reply to: Freeborn

as i see it Thacherism morphed into 3rd way Blairism, so by the time we get to Johnson there is little between the LibDems, Greens, labour or Cons, none of them are unionist parties.. In most con circles you'll hear Johnson framed as the fat Blair and Truss as a wet libdem Europhile & alongside Starmer hey are all framed as anti union or anti British..

remove the noise and the bottom line its impossible to see any party actually caring about the people on these islands or the union itself and this is the very worst outcome not just for the UK but also for the EU, the West or the US since it opens the door to extreme leaders in the vein of Mary 1 or Edward 6.

a reply to: paraphi

sometimes the simplest answers are the most effective..

as a young teen working on building sites in the 1980s, it took until my 2nd winter to get over all the blokes wearing their wives, sisters or mothers tights under their work clothes. the choices becomes simple when its between feeling silly and freezing your proverbial's off..

layers really do work..

originally posted by: marg6043
Wait, wait, what is going on? did not UK were burning because the heat just recently? darn global warming is really killing UK, these days, now they are to freeze to dead?

Wow.

No, it's about soaring energy bills here not climate change stuff:



BBC News - Energy bills: Middle-earners will need help with rising prices too, says chancellor
www.bbc.co.uk...

a reply to: Oldcarpy2

still Johnson's chancellor. for how much longer is debatable..

as i read it the £45k is combined incomes or single earner which would encompass more at the bottom rather than real middle earners, 2 * shelf stackers would be near that figure.. rather than 2 * middle earners on £37k each.. but generally even they are going to struggle since most people use every penny they earn to live with little to no latitude to absorb increases..

Things look bad if this poll gives right picture


Nearly one in four people in the UK expect to never turn their heating on this winter due to rising energy bills, according to recent poll

A new poll has revealed almost one quarter of the UK public are planning to ditch heating their houses this winter as a result of the significant hike to energy bills.

New Savanta ComRes polling commissioned by the Liberal Democrats reveals the public are planning to make heart-breaking decisions to cope with spiralling energy prices this winter.

A total of 2,120 UK adults aged 18+ were interviewed online between July 29 and 30 022 and were asked if they would switch off their heating to cope with the price hike.

The findings come after OfGem announced the energy price cap will result in the typical household energy bill reaching £3,549 a year from October 1.

Almost one in four (23 per cent) of UK adults plan to never turn their heating on this winter. This rises to over one in four (27 per cent) amongst parents with children under the age of 18. The polling also reveals those who are parents of children aged under 18 are increasingly likely to put more on their credit card (33 per cent compared to national average 23 per cent). The survey found seven in ten (69 per cent) will turn on their heating on less this winter and one in ten (11 per cent) will even take out a loan in response to rising energy prices. Those with children under 18 are again more likely to take out a loan due to rising energy bills (17 per cent).

originally posted by: nickyw
as a young teen working on building sites in the 1980s,

The world has certainly changed. Energy has got increasingly cheaper and we (the public) have become increasingly wasteful.

Maybe rising energy prices will reduce waste in the first instance, as people stop heating their whole house (inc. unused rooms), or just turning the thermometer down by a couple of degrees.

I think assistance should be directed towards those who genuinely struggle with energy bills.

It's not going to be that bad. People today are stirred into a panic by a media who are obsessed with doom-mongering and poor journalism that caters for sensationalism and the echo chamber.

a reply to: paraphi

In interesting article detailing how much some things would cost if they were increasing at the same rate as energy bills.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk...

Pint of beer - £33
Cup of coffee - £28
Full tank of peterol - £400-£500
20 cigarettes - £102

It currently costs approximately £1.02 to cook a Sunday roast.....come October it will cost £3.12.
Average size electric heater will cost 78p per hour to use.

The most needy and vulnerable in our society will definitely suffer.

Yes, there are savings that can be made and a bit of a reality check is required for some.....but the FACT is that this is going to hit hard and as usual its those that can least afford it who are going to suffer the most.

Liz Truss's plan for VAT reductions is laughable.

originally posted by: KindraLabelle2
a reply to: RAY1990

I didn't realize that in the UK many still depend on the pre-paid meters, over here, I haven't seen one of those in nearly 20 years.

Don't get me wrong, I grew up in a trailer, in poverty, I know what it's like.... lol, my mother used to burn furniture to save on costs, the fumes alone are horrible!!
I was talking about all the middle class that is panicking, for those living in poverty I hope we get a soft winter

They will need to use force to get me to give up my pre-paid meter , only idiots go for anything called smart? The ones who got the smart meters installed will be getting 40 + tarrif changes a day depending on what time they boil a kettle , understanding how these meters work and I am so tight I squeek when I walk .

They operate by a magnetic principal of a magnet and bar not exactly rocket science and I have 0 problems with my bills .

Anyone reading this with a top up meter put as much as you can afford in it now max £ 250 and it will lock it to the cheaper tariff until it is used up .

Ps Jagstorm it can get to minus 50+ centigrade here in a bad winter with wind-chill we are not all southern softies

Energy planning should be better . The green energy plan is just bad plan ,allways has been


British energy planning (a horror story)


The British Energy Horror Story

a reply to: paraphi

the problem is the captive monopolies pretending to be competitive when its just opens the door to profiteering, southern water or SE water, southern rail Gatwick express or Thameslink, EON EDF, these are all captive monopolies with a fake competitive veneers and we spend our money paying middle men to shuffle paper.. at the end of the day only 1 gas, water, electric line goes into your home from the same source..

The gas we will burn will be north sea gas with some lng thrown in but we'll pay some exorbitant market rates for a fake market, like all the other captive monopolies its created a zombie market that exists to just profiteer..

i would take it a step further and the money printing since 20007/8 and more recent magic money tree thinking of covid has turned the west into a zombie economy fueled by both disaster capitalism and disaster socialism..

Stepping back its easy to see there is nothing real about the western economy. and the question is how do we fix it as come winter people will die from it, as even the captive monopoly NHS healthcare is, is in the same situation.. we are to a point you have A&E doctors writing articles telling people not to go to A&E this winter..

and no political party can fix the West we have all made the same mistakes putting us all into lockstep with each other to the same outcome, it makes no difference if next pm is pro or ani EU, left/right, Blairite, progressive or a terf as like 2008 none of them will have the courage to tackle the zombie economy as in doing so it'll destroy the West's faux capitalist veneer as we are back n the days of 70s price fixing.

originally posted by: nickyw
the problem is the captive monopolies pretending to be competitive when its just opens the door to profiteering, southern water or SE water, s

That's part of the problem, but not the whole problem. We cannot escape the fact that the cost of energy is impacting all consumers world-wide, irrespective of how and who provides energy.

In the here and now, we have a challenge that the price of energy has gone bonkers because of war and the aftermath of a pandemic. The media is in a frenzy to report the latest "worse case" that has been calculated by some unknown think tank... It goes up each day, with each prediction reported as fact by sheep-like journalists.

While I am not one to belittle the impact of raised prices, particularly to the elderly and vulnerable, I do think that - based on my own experience - we have become a society that wastes energy because it has become cheap. That's probably an unpopular sentiment, but hey ho.

a reply to: paraphi

Energy consumption in the UK has steadily went down over the last 15 years according to this link although we did reverse the trend after covid... Predictable.

link

Which lines up with modern technology and economics, I can run 3-4 refrigerators for 1 from the 80's. We're lazier and use more electronics but they're much more energy efficient and so is the system itself and our public assets. Improvements to be had? Sure but as long as there's lines there's waste and even if we had a perfect system it's at maximum a 10% saving?

If gas and oil companies faced the same prices as customers did they wouldn't bother extracting the damn stuff. Imagine paying £300 to extract a barrel of oil only for it to be worth £150 the next day... Its a cheap ride with an extortionately priced ticket.

It's really worth noting that the UK market might be buying at global prices but the majority of our gas is still our own and extracted at our own rates and cost. We can 'disconnect' but at the cost of private economics... It wouldn't even be protectionism because we're not exporters.

National security trumps financial security, things like offshore gas storage facilities and C02 production facilities shouldn't be allowed to go cold because they're uneconomical, certainly shouldn't be bailed out whenever they threaten swathes of people. I know, nationalising things is icky isn't it?

a reply to: RAY1990

I know, nationalising things is icky isn't it?

No mate, its absolutely necessary.

a reply to: RAY1990

as i understand it in aggregate the UK is a net exporter we only hear of the imports when the media want to crow about the cost, or when it feathers into an anti Brexit narrative.

How did the UK manage to double gas exports amid energy crisis

Government data shows that from September to November the UK exported 31,974GWh of gas

a reply to: Freeborn

I certainly don't think any captive monopoly should be in private hands but i also do not trust any political party with control either.

it'll be at this point the Democrats and Europeans will rage as they want to remain in control of the resources..

a reply to: paraphi

I get the exports and imports are dealt with on the global market but why should our own resources be priced according to whatever is the current acceptable level of profiteering, its as penalising as the green levies..

a reply to: nickyw

Good grief, I don't trust politicians of any persussion to control anything let alone something as vitally important as nationalised Utilities.
I am certain that safeguards, oversights etc could be put in place to prevent ministerial interference.
Allthough I support nationalising them I firmly believe they should be managed in a professional manner free from the nefarious practices that were so prevalent back in the 70's etc.

I can see it from both sides.

We wouldn't even be competing in the renewable sector if it wasn't for privatisation. We've always been leaders in energy technologies and nationalised companies (as well as in other fields) have always been a hindrance to progress.

To "off-topic" my own post it's the nature of thought, you can't have red tape and secrets between the thinkers, the makers and the doers and it helps a great deal more once you can involve educational institutes and the civilian sector in general... Did ya ever see a Concorde? Lol

Back "on-topic" whereas on the other hand we have a sovereign currency and most importantly we are energy sufficient, especially in the resource that's about to devastate parts of our population and our economy.

A middle ground can be found somewhere, I do ok at "what if" thinking and one that does call out to me is that all these gas reserves sit on sovereign sea bed belonging to Norway, Britain and the Netherlands... Back when kings and Queens could be remembered as great they used to do things like set grain prices on their lands to stop the peasants dying. Far flung idea I know.

About as likely as nationalisation is my guess. A blend of the two can work though, there's a level of EU-ness to wanting protectionism whilst wanting fluidity and our network is intricately locked with the Nord's and the Dutch. Economically and practically how could we close our system off if we did go the nationalisation route?

not to worry. The worlds leading money-saving expert has a solution.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

He also went on about the government knowing that people were going to suffer, not that they were going to do anything about it but that they KNOW as if that is some comfort when it is not.

He then said AFTER the crisis it would all be great, for whom exactly I wonder but definitely for the investors and managers of the power company's whose profits will have increased as a result of there always reticence to hand down lower wholesale costs when they come back to the customer.

Basically his argument was an exercise in incompetence, arrogance and disdain for the public at large.

He somehow manages to come across as still likable like a poison plant that wants to be eaten.