Price Cap - Just announced

[swifttwist]

From £1971 to £3549. 80% rise. I have no words.

New figures:

Electricity
£0.52 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.46

Gas:
£0.15 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.28

I totally get not all pension lees are wealthy.

But I know of several older widows ( in their 80s) who live in big 3 bedroom houses priced about £600k in the suburbs , where they’ve lived for 40 or 50 years.
Got loads of money in the bank and get pensions.

The government giving money to people like this is a total waste. In this case they wouldn’t even miss the money, probably just sit in their bank accounts.

If Truss really does expect people to be able to pay 5 or 6 k a year on energy will
she be in for a shock when it happens?

How long will she last?

I give her to the New Year. It seems if this is how she intends to start her tenure, she won't suddenly get a clue later on.

If you nationalise, it reduces bills for ever more... then if/when Russia rejoins the fold and we get our act together on insulation and renewables, those part nationalised companies can be sold again, paying back the initial debt

It only reduces bills in the sense that the government can make them lower.

There will still be a vast difference between the what they are buying the energy for and what they are selling it at. This difference is then needs paying for. How can you not see this?

@liebig As no one actually knows the costs, how can you say?

Subsidising households to the tune of 5 or 6k per year (at least) for 2 or more years will be 4 x what furlough cost.

Firms relocating to Europe? help given to EU businesses is far higher (at present) so not only do they get help with energy, they have a better economy to work in.

But of course, most will just go bust.

The costs of extraction haven't risen significantly, so if the state owns that extracted gas, it owns the gas and can charge whatever it likes, it isn't "buying" anything or at least not buying the proportion of energy home produced.

I think you are confusing nationalising production with supply.

If you don't earn much and have children you should be entitled to the £650? I work full time and will be getting it. Though not enough if you are on the variable rate with everything going up at once..

@reesewithoutaspoon

@Sporty2022
Forget the above name, it wouldn't let me delete it.
The comment I meant to type was that the cost of sorting out who had what and how much, would take enormous amounts of money enact. What would be the cut off point? Why should someone in an £800k 4 bed house have no entitlement? They may be cash poor. That may be their children's inheritance. If it was YOUR inheritance she had to sell or take a loan out on, would you be happy?
How about people with second or third homes receiving financial help at all three addresses yet someone in a park home gets none? Where does it stop?

HS2 is a 30 year project. approx £30bn has already been spent so cancelling it doesn’t bring that money back. It would cost the govt at least £10bn to get out of existing contracts and around 30,000 people would lose their job.

so, stopping work on HS2 really wouldn’t help at all

tbh - the sacred cow that is the NHS has more scope for saving us all money, given that it receives £300bn+ every year

These last 50 comments really should be at the beginning of this thread.

Would have some pages of what is on here.

Sometimes I think, these types of things could benefit from people who actually work in the industry[and yes that would be mainly men]. Not meaning admin staff.
A woman at number 46 acadia avenue is not gong to know as much as some boardroom people at top companies in the industry.

I am old enough to remember some previous nationalisations.

I agree with most of the points Liebig makes.
Expensive, complicated, time consuming etc

I am old enough to remember some previous nationalisations

What would they be then? outside of banking, which was done very quickly, you have to go back almost 50 years and shipbuilding.

I agree with most of the points Liebig makes
Expensive, complicated, time consuming etc

Then the alternatives are 100's of billions of support or economic social collapse - Putin/Russia are not going to become a friendly state for many years, so a 100 billion per year, for how long?

This is all still keeping the present energy usage going when that is what needs to be cut. The EU propping up consumption this way all but guarantees they have blackouts instead.

The economic support only works if the resource is there. Instead of false signals saying people can carry on regardless, the price should be allowed to indicate to people that they have to cut back. Because it only delays an inevitable reckoning without a change in market fortune coming down the proverbial pipeline.

I think that is the big problem, it would be a massive job to sort it all out.

People can also fall into different categories, in my home I'm nearly 70 still working, DH bit older and disabled for many years, one child (grandchild) living with us due to family issues, we fall into retired/disabled/working/school age child. Tick lots of boxes but for now we can manage, on a fixed deal till next April but it will get tough after that.

I was thinking about this earlier today, it would be awkward to do but I wondered if there should be a discount on a set amount of kwh and then full market price so people would get help, everyone could afford a baseline amount of power but people would have an incentive to reduce usage.

This is why smart energy meters were pushed so hard , with water ones you can't send them back and eventually it'll be same with gas and electricity. Each household will have its own allowance they can use too I think : this hasn't happened with water , but I think it could become the norm for energy in a few years.

That's a good idea @ancientgran

What people seem to be forgetting while they're all currently losing their minds over all this is that there's a real risk of running out of gas and/or electricity over winter because it's in short supply.

That's why the price has gone up (supply and demand) and we all (including businesses) need to cut down on usage whether we can afford higher prices or not.

Maybe there should be hosepipe ban like 'instructions' like not heating or lighting unoccupied buildings, not heating houses at night or even ban the use of excessive Christmas light displays this year?

Plus grants and interest free loans for energy efficiency improvements like insulation, better windows, solar panels etc.

And a relaxation on listed building rules where it contradicts good energy efficiency measures.

Can I ask on this thread if anyone has worked out how much their american fridge freezer costs per hour at the moment.

Or let me know where to look.

I'm desperate to lower our usage.

there is a thread on here, the true cost of running electrical devices, that is very active at the moment

@BarbaraofSeville
Where did you get it from about short supply?

I am over 50 by the way!
Not the only one on mumsnet either!!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nationalizations_by_country

@JOFFCV according to Which? an American Fridge was costed at £120 per year to run back in June, so before the most recent rise.

www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-kitchen-appliances-use-the-most-energy-a6sig2H469Iv

@lightand

Seriously?

Has the war in Ukraine and Russia cutting off supply to Europe completely gone over your head?

We don't get much of our gas from Russia but Europe does and we get some of our gas from Europe so we're all directly or indirectly competing for a lot less gas. Plus we can't store gas any more as we got rid of the facilities.

Plus a lot of our electricity is gas generated because we have hardly any coal fired power stations any more and no-one wants any nuclear new build.