Are we taking bets yet on when mass civil unrest will begin re. Cost of living?

[UsernameInTheTown]

Having frozen my backside off these past two days as I'm terrified to have the heating on longer than an hour a day, I'm thinking that this will be utterly intolerable come next Winter. Will there be mass civil unrest and the guillotine rolled out while the affluent are targeted by the desperate and those with nothing left to loose?

I can't help thinking that it's all a huge wheeze to get our carbon footprints DOWN. Not coerced into the Net Zero program, just starved into submission.

EDF, owned by the French state, are bearing the brunt of that policy

Isn’t it the U.K. customer who is paying and bearing the brunt

Alternatively, they could tax the oil companies and prevent these distressing rises.

You'd be taxing profits. We should but most of the rise is wholesale cost, so it would raise little compared to the price rises.

"The Tories have lost the North again."

I sincerely hope so. I grew up in the north east. With a couple of honourable exceptions like Leeds and (only just) Newcastle, I thought they'd all collectively lost their marbles for voting the way they (apaprently) did in 2019.

What part of "The Tories always have despised you, you poor Northern peasants; they always will; and they are lying through their sphincters" wasn't blindingly obvious?! (So, er, how IS that levelling up agenda going, then?!)

It's often made me think of a very harsh saying I recall from my childhood, "Were yous all dropped on yer heids as bairns?"

As for how utterly fantastic and wonderful the Tories were during the pandemic...if they'd actually bothered to read the pandemic plan that was already in existence, or even acknowledge that a pandemic was the highest natural threat identified several years ago and put contingency plans in there; if they'd listened to the medical science and not the political version; if they'd not systematically run down the NHS since 2010 in the name of "austerity"; if they hadn't been partying while people were dying due to the rules that were imposed on us; and if they didn't all have whacking great "interests" in so many of the PPE and other companies, just to mention a few of their self-interested machinations, I might be slightly more willing to listen.

As it is, much of the pandemic seems to have been a cynical money making and/or donation machine for them and their rich business mates.

@PurpleFlower1983

The energy companies need to be held to account. Their profits have been huge over the last few years, the should take the hit now.

They need to be nationalised.

What can the government do.
What have other government done.

@donquixotedelamancha

Alternatively, they could tax the oil companies and prevent these distressing rises.

You'd be taxing profits. We should but most of the rise is wholesale cost, so it would raise little compared to the price rises.

Have you seen the dividends they’re paying their shareholders? Their profits are obscene.

It’s how we got rid of Poll Tax and brought Thatcher down. So yes I bloody hope so.

Taxing oil companies won't lower their prices.

And of course the war in Ukraine is impacting. They normally grow huge amounts of wheat there. The impact on Ukraine isn't just bullets. Lack of food production will be a big issue for them both in food and income. This will impact on grain futures. Russia is also a huge producer of fertiliser used here and it takes a lot of energy to produce fertiliser so that has pushed up prices hugely here which again pushes up the price of food production everywhere. That is already happening because of the war. Germany and Austria are talking about rationing gas to their populations as they and Russia have a stand off as so much of their gas comes from Russia.

Maybe not yet but give it a few months as prices go even higher and something will have to give.

Hope so.

I support Labour’s proposal to impose a one off windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas producers. The government can then use the money to give it the public to go towards their gas and electricity bill whilst gas and electricity wholesale prices are so high. I am aware energy suppliers have to buy off the wholesale gas and electricity market but energy producers are raking it in (and speculators on the commodities market) and can share some more of their huge profits. Windfall taxes have been done before by both Thatcher and Blair’s governments.

The energy producers will of course threaten to increase their prices in response. This article in the FT, not behind a paywall, believes “windfall taxes can be justified when it is reasonable that those drawing up tax legislation did not foresee extreme circumstances that subsequently make them necessary.”

www.ft.com/content/d5ec54bb-5995-4a27-9056-cb04de9333c7

@BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation

We need to be more like the French.

Fully agree Their gov is absorbing the cost of the fuel

@ivykaty44

EDF, owned by the French state, are bearing the brunt of that policy

Isn’t it the U.K. customer who is paying and bearing the brunt

As a recently forced EDF customer (RIP Zog😥) I'm pretty sure we British consumers will actually be subsidising the French. I used to get an itemized bill every month with Zog, from EDF? Sod all except "advice" to increase my direct debit. It's easier to make it up as they go along if the customer is kept in the dark, pun not intended.

I am by no means defending this shambolic government but for those that are blaming the Tories, consider that Tony Blair holds the record for warfare in his time as a PM.
This is important to note because the money for sending troops comes from “special reserve” funds, the sort of money that the government can draw on when sh!t hits the fan.
Tony Blair sent the country to war in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan and a handful of other places like Kosovo. The Iraq and Afghanistan war effort has cost the U.K. something insane like over 30bn. and that debt was inherited by The Tories when they took over.
The pandemic measures like furlough meant that for awhile more than half of the adult population including furloughs, pensioners, claimants, and all public services, were subbed by the state. The coffers were not stuffed for this and this has been funded by debt.
Other decisions like brexit meant there was a deficit of circa 30 thousand lorry drivers and our over reliance on the US and China became evident when we couldn’t get all The Stuff.
We are now in a situation where the majority of the grains we use for animal feed, beers, bread etc that would normally have come from Russia and Ukraine is shortened so we will probably bend over and ask Uncle Sam for help with that again. Prepare for hormone chickens to arrive on your supermarket shelf.
The solution to this is not to smash up London and Manchester and demand that someone pays. With what? There is no money.

Tory true blues will keep voting Tory.

Deluded people who voted Tory last time 'cos Boris is a bit of a lad and will get Brexit done will go back to not bothering to vote at all.

The tories will stay in power. The turnout in elections in the UK is terrible. Except for the Tory old guard. They always vote and make sure that their cosy lives continue.

The fact that we have this type of market for energy is our democratic choice and can't be changed quickly (without radical political change and huge economic consequences)

Yes.

I have to admit there's a horrible side of my personality that is finding it difficult to empathise and is in full on shouting 'told you so' at the back of my mind. We've elected free-market consumerist governments over and over and been happy to live on the never-never for decades, buying houses priced way over their actual value, buying cars and luxury goods on tick that we honestly don't have the money for, and heating our homes like tropical saunas because of cheap fuel.

Well this is the chickens coming home to roost.

If you were happy to elect governments to run the country on borrowing so you could have an artificially propped up standard of living, you have a brass neck complaining when the entire house of cards collapses and you are left in the shit.

That's the nub of it really. Standards of living in the UK have been kept artificially subsidised by the public's deliberate insouciance when it comes to UK government intransigence and continual borrowing in order to mask decades of financial mismanagement. In short, we get the politicians we vote for, and the policies we deserve. This crisis is as much the fault of the UK public as it is the politicians themselves, because we've been happy to skim off the fat before now with no thought as to where in was inevitably going to end up.

Blaming Brexit and Covid doesn't wash either. The UK public voted for Brexit, and while it's not true that Covid could have easily been foreseen, a country that wilfully ignores all advice on Pandemic planning because of cost really deserves everything it gets.

I have never said this before in my life, but, I'm alright Jack.
And I have absolutely zero sympathy for the people who voted for this by voting Brexit and Tory and are now suffering the consequences.
Tory austerity deaths are estimated to be around 150,000 people over the last ten years, people whingeing now didn't give a shit when it was other people pushed into poverty, and just voted for more of the same, suddenly poverty is a big problem when they might suffer themselves.

I know plenty of ex drug dealers who will pick up their long lost trade.

How long do you expect to have the heating on @UsernameInTheTown ? All day ? We have our heating on for 1 hour in the morning and ditto in the late afternoon.

A choice of two is not a democracy. There are varieties of bread in a supermarket, than there are political parties. We don't live in a democracy, it's a representative democracy and it is broken imo.
So firstly, if no one voted in the next election that would send a very clear message that the political system is broken.
And then also another General Strike.
They work. They make the people with the money and the power sit up and take notice.

Crime is going to continue creeping up, there’s a real nasty under current in our society at the moment who are pretty untouchable due to budget cuts with police.

There’s going to be less money to give to charity, they’ll suffer as they’ll have rising costs as well.

The future is going to be very very bumpy.

Brits are too polite to riot

No because we’re not French

Gotta change FPTP system sometime soon, otherwise Tories will be in power forever more.

That system is so undemocratic and is not used by most civilised countries, the US is an exception, go figure.