Surely they can’t expect us to pay 240 per month for power!

[Ellie198712]

Just read Martin Lewis’s latest email and it’s predicting average bills of £2900 per year!! Surely the government will need to step in and subsidise this cost. Our current bill is about 100 per month, and this just seems untenable for the vast majority

It’s terrible and I sympathise.

I benefit from living in a concrete house (1950s). It’s so much cheaper to heat than a brick house, really retains the heat. We use very little gas as the heating gets up to temp very quickly and the house retains the heat. Our gas bill is very low.

However, our electricity use (both wfh) is high and we’re trying to get it down but it’s difficult.

@HereComesSpringAgain

£240 a month is equal to our sky tv and mobile phone costs

so its a choice we will need to make

But you cannot get out of the contract on either of these so you can’t just stop having them

I hope this encourages the government to invest massively in insulation and renewables. This will help with energy rollercoaster prices plus climate change. Shame that successive governments didn't already invest in these but here we are.

@ChiefWiggumsBoy

I only have the heating on for an hour in the evening. I don’t really want to and don’t think in 2022 ANYONE should have to go back to seeing their breath indoors and their arse cheeks sticking to the toilet seat. I don’t think in a country as rich as the U.K. parents should be having to make a choice of which room gets heated this evening.

This government is chronically mismanaging everything to the detriment of the ordinary person, it is a disgrace.

There are going to be families up and down this country living in cold, damp homes, having to use food banks while the likes of Boris and his cronies recarpet their second homes in silk and velvet at the tax payers expense. An absolute disgrace.

It’s the lack of action from them that gets me. There is no urgency. In fact they’ve failed to act on many things when they had the opportunity to. I hope this costs them dearly at the polls. The problem is I don’t think Labour are a strong opposition against them. So they aren’t being held to account. They will just blame it on the war. Our children will be the ones who suffer. It makes my blood boil.

This decade so far is like a fucking nightmare we can't wake from. Pre 2020 we just moaned about the weather, bleh snow, bleh heat, and not enough good telly. 2018 was great with its lovely long hot summer and the world cup, and we were coming out of the effects of the credit crunch. Things were looking up. 2019 had a lovely hot spell and people were enjoying life more, having nice holidays, and wages were rising, and the cost of living was bearable/reasonable.

Since 2020, things have turned to shit, and this is another kick in the bollocks. How the FUCK is anyone able to pay THREE THOUSAND POUNDS a year for the gas and electric? It's like a bad joke. It's not even like it's £250 a month til august say,... this is IT now. I can't believe no-one is stepping in to stop this, especially as a pp said, with SHELL and BP making 10s of billons of £££ profit!

And re people can drop SKY and Mobile phone costs, I don't know anyone who spends £240-250 on mobile phone costs and SKY TV. We don't even HAVE SKY TV, and we have a mobile phone each that cost £79, and a £10 a month phone plan.

For the privileged yummy mummies on here, (who are saying 'mehh we pay that anyway') - to many others, this is devastating, and they just simply won't be able to pay it. This can't happen. Someone needs to intervene.

We have had an electric blanket from the range. It’s fab for when you are on the sofa watching a bit of telly. We didn’t have central heating until I was about 12 but we did have a coal fire. I remember being frozen . I have been in a few homes where people are sat in short sleeves with the heating on full blast. I think we are going to have to get knitting jumpers. If only we had our own gas reserves… oh wait.

In France the government have made the oil companies pay the increase not the people

Our house is on a prepayment meter (new builds all have them where I live) and we’ve been topping up so so much more often now than we used to. The only saving grace is because it’s a new build, we literally don’t need to turn the heating on at all from the end of April until late September. So any gas usage is purely from having a shower and using hot water in the kitchen tap. Our house heats up quickly and holds heat well.

If I didn’t have young children I’d hugely minimise the amount of time we have the heat on for, but hopefully the weather will start to warm up soon.

It’s just ridiculous that we are having to deal with this in this day and age to be honest. I wasn’t a student too long ago but I will never forget the few nights in December where our boiler broke and how bitterly cold it was in the house (old terraced house, mould everywhere and no real insulation). We went to bed in 3 sets of pyjamas, a dressing down, a thick duvet, a bed throw and a hat, slept under all the sheets and had towels around every gap on the windows/under the door and it was still fucking freezing. People should not be expected to live like that. It’s barbaric.

I currently pay £72 for my gas & electric. It may not seem a lot in comparison to other people’s but this just recently went up from being £39 a month. I’m honestly DREADING the email from SSE telling me what the price of my new monthly bill will be. We should all just remove our direct debits and see what happens😭 they can’t take us to court all at once!!

I dont even use the heating, it hasnt been on since Christmas when my dd was home and I feel sick at the thought of the bill.

Other then that ive been using the slow cooker more and cooking double batches so last night I made a big pan of spaghetti sauce, I used half and added a load of spices and beans to the other half to make chilli and cous cous. I only use the oven when it's filled too and usually make two meals at a time.
It's such a worrying time for everyone.

On ITV now, Martin Lewis programme about the cost of living

The problem is that many business will also put up their prices to try and take back some of the loses from the price increase of energy. Not just gas and electric but fuel too. It’s predicted to almost double compared to a year ago. So those prices will have to be passed onto the consumer for everything. Food, drinks, clothes, furtnoture litterally everything.

A lot of construction projects were priced a year ago or longer based on what they thought would be a reasonable price for materials, labour and fuel costs. Those costs have no almost doubled, so there would be no profit In Building whatever it is… a house/school/windfarm/shop whatever. So they increase the quote, and thT gets passed on to the customer, who in turn passes that onto their customer, and so on. Until the get to the end of the chain. It’s frightening.

It’s litterally going to get to a point where only the rich can afford anything, but in proving people out of buying things, cats for example, the value actually decreases as the demand drops. Then: recession. Big. Recession. Like we saw in the 80s

In all seriousness tho, I can just about afford to throw away £72 as a single parent. Anything higher is just going to ruin me

They don't cut people off anymore but you will get into debt, meaning you can't switch provider. They might try and get you on a pre payment meter and then people self disconnect when they run out of money.
Avoid pre payment meters at all costs if you can.

@lovescats3

In France the government have made the oil companies pay the increase not the people

The difference is the French Government actually cares. Ours doesn’t.

@OfstedOffred

Oh and all those lockdown hot tubs will be going too.

I think there's going to be more and more green living and not by choice.

Every cloud.

I wonder if they will tax the rich more

"They" are the rich. Pretty unlikely they'll tax themselves more.

Are many people using the oven less?

Just upped our direct debit to £330pm. The heating doesn't go above 18 now (was 21) and over the longer term we're going to get solar panels, a new boiler and swap our ancient gas oven for electric to try to get our energy use down.

It's a scary sum to be pissing up the wall on energy. Decided to put out direct debit up straight away though so we could start building credit during the summer months.

I’ve seen comments on a Facebook page saying that people are having to resort to that Frollop. What a time to be alive ☹️

The difference is the French Government actually cares. Ours doesn’t.

The French wouldn't take it though & would strike/revolt.

Gas for last Jan-Feb
904kwh used. Bill £39

Gas for this Jan-Feb
800kwh used. Bill £66

How?!

Until there is a peace deal in Ukraine I can only see prices going up further.

Oil prices are currently less than 1980 and 2008.

I know is shocking here also. I have separate gas and electric bill with same company here and Electric is ok manageable but nearly screamed out loud when I got my last gas bill as so low over summer (no heat on) was shocked was 325 for just 2 months. Lucky have not got direct debit and could ring the company to set up weekly payment plan but it will be going up again and our government also need to do something as food prices gone up also. Plus will keep going up while they are raking in so much in tax. They promised us here 200 for our electric but still waiting but cannot get it for our gas bill instead. Just shocking the cost of living now and everyone is affected. The carbon tax on my bill alone was 40 euro was shocked. The stupid green party think by taxing us it will save the planet. Carbon tax going up again. Think we all need to be out protesting like they do in France as we let government away with everything.