To have found increasing costs making a positive impact?

[Optimisiticcautiouslyso]

Increasing petrol costs - so I’m actively cutting driving and walking so much more than ever

Increasing energy costs - so I don’t think I’ve ever been more aware of lights off, putting on an extra jumper rather than spinning the heating upwards

Increasing food costs - much more mindful with what I’m buying and much more thoughtful with my cooking and eating

Anyone else?

We already meal plan to reduce waste and walk most places if it's feasible - I always find it depressing that so many people don't do the same. I am a bit crap at boiling the kettle and forgetting to make tea so having to boil it again though.

This thread really has turned up some very unpleasant comments hasn't it.

This thread provides a wonderful demonstration of why power companies using surge-pricing to flatten out demand peaks is such a shit idea socially and politically.

As so eloquently spelt out above, the price point required for it to even occur to the OP to consider her consumption, is a price point at which other people are already suicidal.

If we really want to reduce national power consumption (and we may have to, not just because of Ukraine), we should be discussing whether pricing is truly the mechanism we should be using.

Power is an essential good, like food.

There's even a recent example of how to manage essential goods in times of restricted supply. When lockdown struck, the supermarkets didn't use surge-pricing to manage the demand. Instead they kept prices the same and did a crude form of rationing per capita (eg max three of item X per order). It wasn't perfect, but they could have decided not to bother themselves with the faff of rationing at all: they could have let the shelves empty, or they could have surged prices.

Instead they chose to serve the citizenry the best they could, not merely profit from them.

@FourTeaFallOut

Because really, people who have no experience of poverty should be listening to those who have, not centering themselves and their experiences in a crisis in which their circumstances place them at the periphery

This comment would be fair enough if she dropped her observation in the middle of a thread concerning how those who are struggling will manage with further price rises. I think it's fair enough to start a topic with your own observation specific to those in the same situation -isn't it?

She can start a thread about anything she likes. But highlighting the positives in a situation that for a lot of people is truly terrifying, would be considered by many to be in poor taste, so she should expect some negative reactions.

No, I get that and it was inevitable. I just think that people are generally myopic though and there's a difference starting a post which is naive and fails to interrogate its own assumption and wading in to a thread of desperate posters with your PollyAnna hat on.

@AchillesPoirot

Sorry *@DrSbaitso* I’ve quoted you badly. It looks like I’m having a go at you and I’m not. I was agreeing with you.

That's fine, I understood what you were saying.

I remember the winter of 2010 too. Thankfully, that very very cold winter was after my worst period. I remember sitting in a warm house with a healthy bank account and thinking, "Thank God I'm not in that draughty, damp, cramped little flat and on that income in this winter."

This is true about any topic ever surely!
Someone has always had it at worse than you. And for most people, someone has had it better.

Such is life.

She can post about her experiences, which she clearly described, and be allows to do so.

Such is the British mentality! Fuck anyone who isn’t as badly off as me!

It’s genuinely a bit pathetic and most people I know in this situation (and it’s a lot) wouldn’t response with such bile.

And people wonder why we get the same government time and time again! So many buy into the divide and conquer rule and they absolutely count on this being the case!

@Optimisiticcautiouslyso

Linked to my Op but not directly

Does anyone feel guilty that a service you used to use, you no longer use?

I used to pay £6 for local company car clean. Now I’ve got my son doing it. I used to give toys etc to charity, this time I put them on marketplace and sold them. I don’t have a cleaner (a minority on mumsnet it seems sometimes!) but if I did, I would probably be reconsidering. It’s an uncomfortable feeling that savings being made are then negatively impacting others.

Yes. I understand this. I sometimes feel guilty about 'luxuries' (new clothes, takeaways, holidays etc) but remember that they also support peoples livelihoods. A lot of the economic impact during Covid was due to people NOT spending money, rather than blithely wasting it.

@purplemunkey

I'm sure it's lovely for you to be able to treat this as a 'mindfulness' experience. I probably would have thought about the impact it has on other people who aren't quite so lucky before posting something so silly.

This.

I understand where the op is coming from and I'm on min wage/ UC. I can't afford to refill the oil tank (1200 quid for 1000L of oil!) I spent ages yesterday gathering wood and chainsawing it into rounds. There is a benefit to being out and gathering what you need from nature.

Making the best of a shit situation is a good thing, appreciate there are people more fucked than me though.

It's a bit like telling someone whose relative passed away due to COVID that COVID has been a blessing since you are now flying less.

Having been there in a very precarious position in the early 90s right up to 1995 following my divorce I do genuinely get the desparate feelings of knowing you can’t pay bills, have to count in your head going round a supermarket and in my case I took a job as a live in nanny for a while in my early 30s as I knew at least I would be housed and fed— and the family were pretty horrible and extremely up their own arse. However what is not ok is when those who are struggling on here suddenly get very bitter and quite nasty at anyone who dares to mention they are cutting back but isn’t poor — yes it’s not the same as being very hard up month in and month out and it’s a choice to cut back- personally I think the post title was a poor choice of words — but many of us who do get by ok at the moment or are comfortably off have had bad times too at various points and do genuinely understand — i have read so many postsxwhere I’m in tears at someone panicking about what they can feed their family on as only have £8 for a week etc— that’s why these days I’m way more political— even if it might bore people!!! . As @Quincythequince says— you have to be careful though with the ‘have you ever been really, really poor’ or it starts to sound like a race to the bottom and we aren’t allowed to comment if we haven’t —some of us start to feel bad for currently ‘getting by ‘ —

Jeez, ease off on the OP bashing! There’s not much balance on the thread purely from the backlash I suspect should someone dare to say, actually OP , yes we’ve been a bit more aware. Take your anger elsewhere and not out on the OP.

Yes I agree.

A lot of us were that mindful without needing to be cajoled into it. I don't think you can call it mindful when it still comes from a selfish need, rather than actively thinking of the environment.

YouHaveYourFathersBreasts
I think if you can see the rising costs as making a positive impact on your life in any way then you are very lucky.

Maybe it’s wrong of me but this kind of post leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Mainly because I know I won’t be able to afford to put the heating up in actual winter. I never put the heating on at this time of year anyway.
If you know you are not going to be able to afford heating this winter what are you going to do to try a help with the cost?

Genuine question.

You've got 6months before you will need to start thinking about heating. What are YOU going to do

Dunno. See if someone wants to buy one of my kidneys on the black market maybe? Short term solution. I’ve spent my entire life either struggling to afford to live, watching my mother struggle or just being on the cusp of it. I’m quite fed up with it all now.

Judging by this thread how many other people are struggling along with me and my family no one can afford my kidney, so I suppose it’ll be lots of jumpers and early nights and as much over time as my boss will give me.

I presume you came from Greece with a thirst for knowledge?

Did it seriously take a crisis for you to do the bare minimum for the environment that most people have been doing for years? I don't think that's much to be proud of, especially when others are struggling.

@Quincythequince

This is true about any topic ever surely! Someone has always had it at worse than you. And for most people, someone has had it better.

Such is life.

She can post about her experiences, which she clearly described, and be allows to do so.

Such is the British mentality! Fuck anyone who isn’t as badly off as me!

It’s genuinely a bit pathetic and most people I know in this situation (and it’s a lot) wouldn’t response with such bile.

And people wonder why we get the same government time and time again! So many buy into the divide and conquer rule and they absolutely count on this being the case!

Its not really about having it worse though, it's about having it at all. People who will face the cost of living crisis knowing there is no risk they will be hungry, cold or lose their homes, are not on a continuem with those who might; they are totally different from them, so the division already exists, and always has. Suggesting that the division is something poor people create out of spite or jealousy towards rich people is very unfair. Division is created out of inequality and lack of understanding. The only way to increase understanding is for the more fortunate to stop talking for a while and listen to the experts.

This is utterly tone deaf.
Why do people use this disablist term so much. It's inappropriate. Say something else instead like "read the room".

Good god! This thread.
Now it’s turned into slating the OPs green credentials - a (slow clap) comment is made (by me) and it gets deleted!

The posters on this thread honestly!

It’s your attitudes that keep the Tories in power. It really is. Nobody has a bought into the ‘them and us’ better than you.

Well done (another slow clap).

Some of the PPs are incredibly bitter. OP is allowed to see the brightside in a crappy situation. Yes many are struggling but that is always the case.

Personally I have made any changes yet. I living in poverty for years and as mine and DHs circumstances changed we didn't really let the lifestyle creep set in. I buy clothing secondhand, love a carboot sale and only put the hearing on if the house gets below 15 degrees. I have been looking into getting an electric bike, we are in a village so a significant distance from work. I am scared of cycling on the road but if fuel prices continue to rise then it will be the push I need.

I have never voted Tory in my life and I never will.