This new gas price proposal is bonkers

[whenwillthemadnessend]

Tying us into a possible 20 year loan at a cost of 90-130 billion with no guarantee of future gas prices and no incentive for people to change behaviour to save gas save money and save the planet

I may be dead in 20 years and my kids will be paying this off for ever plus covid.

It's the worst idea ever!!!!

But why should we the taxpayer hand yet more cash to the comanies who are already making unexpectedly huge profits?

Why won;t Truss do as Labour suggested and use company profits to fund the price cuts? Oh yes, because Truss is on the side of the energy companies, not the side of the ordinary customer.

No one mentioned demographics when l was paying for it. I didn’t even know l was paying for it until l was about 40.

Nonetheless demographics were very different. We now have an ageing population & I do think there is too much burden placed on the young when you look at education costs, pension costs & housing. Not to forget the years of wage stagnation.
How is the NHS & social care going to be funded adequately?
Im just grateful my dc have European citizenship.

i would prefer a multi approach so some price tiering, incentives for solar panels etc, windfall tax & some borrowing.

if it’s capped I’m turning the fucking heating on.

People. We’d to realise that a £2,500 cap is NOT the maximum you will pay. That is a calculated amount based on the average household usage at a capped amount per unit. If you use shedloads of gas/ electricity you will pay more than £2,500.

Despite this cap many of us will have to be very careful.

There's always something to pay for, every generation will have to pay the price for the one that came before it, thats just the way things are.

As for the climate - it's too late now - it's fucked anyway. Without governments and corporations doing their bit, anything individuals did was pointless.

Agreed

I'm sure I saw something that said we only officially finished paying for the compensation paid to slave owners following the abolition of slavery in the last few years.

What choice do the government have? If people need to spend their entire income on fuel and have no other income to spend, the economy will collapse.

It 100 percent is the right thing to do although should be combined with part borrowing part windfall tax. People have already looked at ways they can reduce energy consumption lots of people will still try to use less as the cap is still high and will be uncomfortable still for a lot of people but it shouldn't be life threatening now. It is a shame it's not targeted though as crazily the biggest people to benefit from this will still be richer people who have bigger houses and will use more heat et or those with second homes.

It is a shame it's not targeted though as crazily the biggest people to benefit from this will still be richer people who have bigger houses and will use more heat et or those with second homes.

it's not a surprise though is it

You see, I couldn't shake the feeling there were these puritanical voices in the mix, gleeful at the idea that people were paying some eco penance for their sins with the inflated fuel prices - the ones happy to throw the poor, the elderly and the sick into the collateral damage pile set against the greater good. At least you were honest enough to say it. How disappointing for you.

I've cut my usage, I've been overpaying to build up credit and I was still terrified of turning the heating on this winter. If the prices are frozen at todays rate I'll survive, if they go up then freezing is the only option along with the additional health issues of living in a cold damp house. Some of us can't cut down on usage without suffering

What like the Tory Party members and their voters?

I think this is a good move. As a society we are in the brink of calamity if we don’t take drastic action now. This is essentially flattening the curve again — we have an unexpected peak induced by a war with a madman (Putin) and we need to flatten it and distribute the costs over a longer period.

Aside from people keeping warm and being able to eat it also should also massively lower inflation. Without intervention we were heading for 20% which is nuts.

I’m reading the cap will be set at £2500 for the next two years. So still a bit higher than where it is now. I think most people will be unlikely to burn energy profligately at those prices.

And then we are required to add the extra costs from 2022/23/24 onto our bills going forwards - even though we have no guarantee that base energy costs will be lower.

So another unwanted shitty loan or a massive amount of borrowing for me as a taxpayer to pay off - when the cost could be carried by taxing the businesses currently exploiting us all

The UK government debt is already at 2.7 Trillion. Read it works out to be something like 43 thousand per citizen and 75 thousand per tax payer. Plus the inflation increase has pushed interest payments on the UK debt to a record high. The interest on the government debt is more than 5% of all government spending. It is scary the burden we are putting on the future generations.

The party of economic responsibility

@whenwillthemadnessend It went up 54% in April, that's unaffordable for alot of people who probably already had no energy waste.

And alot of people cut out the waste to get their bills back to the pre rise cost.

It's only the rich and ignorant who won't have already reduced their usage.

Also those who can afford the current bills could use the 'saved' money to get solar or insulation.

The burden should be shared some windfall tax some loan and a tiered tariff including a social tariff.
We don't need to protect corporate juggernauts we need to look after our society.

@Ilovelindor The Govt could use windfall taxes.
It's the proposed price cap on Russian oil that has meant Russia is not going re open Nord Stream 1 which is where Germany gets its gas from. Result gas prices go through roof .
So our economy is going to be trashed plus many other poorer countries because Russia and Ukraine 8 yr war that no one seriously tried to sort then or now and because Germany relied too heavily on Russian energy.

Bear in mind the UK is self sufficient in gas and we supply Ireland, Belgium and Holland. Plus the UK has massively upped production to fill Europe's storage tanks. So I am totally against Truss's mad proposal which is just us and our children paying for all their fecking mistakes and a war I don't support.

Yep a loan for our children and great grandchild to pay off rather than limiting the business owners which no doubt bank roll the tories

It is daunting after all the Covid spending

I just have to disengage now from the numbers, too much and a bit ill making

I do think it would be a shame for businesses to go under after all that happened though, so I prefer anything to keep them in mind not just customers

@SummerBummers i very much DO understand that a cap is not an energy-buffet. But if my cost per kWh is 45p as opposed to £1, it means I’ll manage somehow. The devil is in the detail and I’ll need to know the unit cost.

please don’t assume we’re all thick as mince - or sitting around in t-shorts with the heating cranked up to 30. Where I live it hasn’t gone above 17 degrees any day this year.

Who is making these huge profits, though? There’s already a windfall tax on British based oil and gas producers. A big chunk of supply (some 50%) has been taken out of the European market. We are looking at blackouts over winter, irrespective of pricing. Some renewables companies are doing very well out of this as their pricing is fixed to gas prices — but that’s arguably not a terrible thing as we desperately need those companies to build more renewable infrastructure, because that, in the long term, is how we get past this.

You're not being unreasonable. Socialise the extra costs through government debt and leave the energy generators with huge excess profits?! WTF?! 😡🤬

At least there's no pretence that 'we're all in it together'. Corporations always win. Why can't we have meaningful energy market reform.

I hope those of us in areas not on the gas grid get help, lib dems have been campaigning for help for those using heating oil to get help or included in a cap, but nothing so far.