To think Britain is heading towards economical and social collapse

[Cheesecakeandwineinasuitcase]

It feels like we are living in strange times, having come out of a global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and now the cost of living crisis and the added pressure from Brexit.

Ive barely slept tonight, worrying about what might happen with energy prices. I’ve heard the energy price cap is expected to rise to £3,850 in October. A few months ago I’m sure they predicting it would be £2,400 and that was horrifying enough.
Now I’m seeing people on the energy support Facebook group talking about monthly energy costs of £900 per month. It feels like this is escalating out of control very quickly and the Government are allowing us to sleepwalk into a disaster.

I realised tonight that if the price cap does keep increasing at the rate it has then what will happen to all the businesses once people can’t afford their energy bills anymore? They will probably increase their prices to try and cover their costs but that will drive down sales even more as people won’t have as much money to spend anymore. Eventually it will only be the essentials that we can afford so that surely means that all the other businesses won’t be able to afford to keep going?

Then what? Unless our government actually get their heads together about this then the whole country will end up in financial ruin and we will see the breakdown of society. Why so much focus on the leadership contest, surely that must take a back step.

Ive just checked the parliament website and the House of Commons has now gone into summer recess so they won’t meet again until September! I think this is an emergency situation and that they should be called back to focus on this. They get paid enough.

I think it’s outrageous that they can claim for utility bills on their expenses when there are people out there with young children who are worried about being cut off and put onto a prepayment meter.

Indeed- we need to crack the storage issue before we can completely rely on renewables.

It's crazy. I know that people are looking at ways of storing electricity in another form of energy that can be used for when it's needed.

Some countries have giant battery farms to store energy for when it's needed.

I certainly will not be able to pay £8/900 in power per month! We're totally fucked.

Can you clarify why you think you will have to pay £8/900 per month? The current prediction for an average household is a bit over £300?

Oh yes I know, but they are maybe less likely to leap up and move around a lot in order to warm up.

I KNOW that lots of people will not be able to do this because they are ill/old/disabled before anyone points it out. You read about it - shameful accounts of frail elderly people dying of hypothermia in their own homes because they have just been sitting there, cold, for ages. Horrendous.

Going for a brisk walk if you are able to, warms you core up and this extends to your extremities. It's hard when it's the last thing you want to do on a cold dark January day. It must be harder still if moving vigorously is a struggle because you are very overweight. No I'm not fat bashing or shaming, nor do I think that exercise will solve the cost of living crisis.

Getoff Can you show something to back up your statement that U.K. are world leading in renewable energy?

as far as I was aware New Zealand Brazil and Norway were in top places

Sounds very nanny state telling people to eat healthily and to exercise so as to reduce their chances of getting ill and reducing their social cost to society.

I don't think it sounds nanny state at all. Healthy people are more productive for one thing - very Tory.

Government after government has completely brushed over the obesity crisis. It's a time bomb.

Going for a brisk walk if you are able to, warms you core up and this extends to your extremities. It's hard when it's the last thing you want to do on a cold dark January day

And then you come back in and the house seems boiling so you want to turn down the heating, much to the annoyance of anyone sat at home watching TV

(Talking from experience!!)

Tbh, it would help if it was admitted that we are actually at war with Russia. This is what economic warfare looks like - the West imposes sanctions on Russia and Russia cuts oil and gas supplies, blocks grain exports and tries to freeze and starve the West into submission.

Government after government has completely brushed over the obesity crisis. It's a time bomb.

I'd argue the ageing population is the time bomb that has exploded.

Good point.

In WW1 and WW2, the Germans used U-boats to starve people.

Now it's controlling energy supplies.

We had rationing back in those days.

I have just read an article that France is looking at rolling blackouts this winter so doesn’t really matter that their government has capped the increases if the electricity isn’t going to be available anyway.
Germany is already cutting their energy use in public buildings so is also at risk of winter blackouts.
not we have escaped the same risks as we too could be facing blackouts even with a reduced usage.

It is very worrying times we are living in now and I am doing everything possible to make my home as energy efficient as I can within my means. I was lucky to qualify for government help to replace my boiler but I still had to pay £1700 but I did get free solar panels but my roof would only allow for 8 panels which does help during the summer months but I am not too sure how much I will get out of them during winter.

• by it's , I mean energy supplies are the way of trying to make a nation submit

I agree with this actually

The health of the population should be an element when talking about resilience

Society is held together by shared myths, one of the most important right now is Thatcher's famous "There Is No Alternative". Neoliberalism is viewed as being as essential to a society itself as DNA is to a human. If the way the market plays out then means that some people have to die for lack of food or heating, then so be it. It's not like you could do anything differently at a fundamental level that would have any other result. (Even though, as has been repeatedly pointed out and repeatedly ignored, in plenty of other countries they do.)

So society probably won't "collapse" - in that there'll still be a political entity called Britain (or at least England, after Scotland has got rid and Ireland has reunified) with a government, laws and a police force to enforce them. What there will be (what there is already, and all indications are it's going to continue getting worse) is a massive increase in inequality. Being in the bottom economic tier of society won't be signified by being unable to afford luxuries or holidays, living in council accomodation or your kids having free school meals. It will be signified by widespread malnutrition due to literally not having enough to eat, health problems from slum housing and inadequate heating, complete lack of opportunity to do anything beyond surviving and much shorter life expectancy.

Many have said "we've been here before" and that is of course true. Britain was exactly there for much of the 18th and 19th centuries, from the enclosure acts and beginnings of urban overcrowding and exploitative capitalism in the industrial revolution, until the the reforms pushed through largely by trade unions to address it a couple of centuries later. That's just how the working class lived. They've done it before they can do it again.

I’m a student, I get £10k student loan whilst doing a vocational course. It costs me about £50 a week in petrol to get to my placements. That’s even when we share lifts. My partner works and studies. He earns about £1k a month.

Our bills are currently £100 a month. I have £60 left in my overdraft. My parents are both pensioners and can’t help me. I also can’t help them. It’s crazy! I grew up in a home where we had no money and I went to uni for 5 years to try and improve my future. I’m scared but hopefully in a year or so I will be a lot more comfortable as we will both be working in jobs where we should start at around £30k. I’m praying we get through the next year. I know things are meant to be tight as a student and I’m lucky that there’s hopefully a way out soon. Student finance have also brought our loans forward due to the course running through the summer for placements so in a week or so I should have my loan.

How on earth is it right that households with 2 working adults might not be able to afford their bills soon? 😟I can’t imagine the stress of having kids to care for and council tax to pay on top!

if looking at health you need to also look at socio economics and live expectancy inequality

life obviously

What me, DS and DiL are doing (we live together) is not having the heating on this winter at all. No different to how I was brought up in the 1960s really, we didn't have double glazing then so it really was very cold.
We have oodies, warm clothing furry socks for us and heat pads for the cats and dog. We'll also spend a lot of time out going on long walks and exercise, go and sit in the library and read if we want a few hours proper warmth.
It won't kill us, we have sofa duvets too and live in a modern home with insulation and double glazing.
I feel sorry for the elderly and disabled who will be badly affected and I have no doubt there will be deaths this winter.

There is one clear piece of evidence that as far as I am concerned shows we are heading towards the collapse that OP alludes to.

Michael Gove did not stand for the leadership of the Tory party.

Micheal Gove had zero support. Has he worked up even one supporter he could have swooped in and saved the country from eternal existential misery!

I’m not up for that. Firstly I don’t think it’s right to damage things and injure people which is what, after all, one would be protesting against. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Secondly, I am a lone parent. If I take a stray half-brick the head, DD would be an orphan.

BUT I would definitely be up for the hitting some of these bastards where it really hurts. In the wallet. It’s effectively economic cancel culture, and it would require coordinated, targeted mass action. If everyone stopped buying at whichever petrol station has the highest profits until they bought them down, they’d bring them down, or go out of business (or be run at a thumping loss, I suppose)

The whole principle propping this up is the principe of competition and choice. That rests with the consumer. We have (at least in in theory) a choice in where to spend our money and which of ‘them’ we give the profits to. It would be mildly inconvenient for many people, and needs to come from the middle classes, because to put up with the inconvenience or to pay slightly more for something, you need to have a little spare in your budget, and not be working your arse off in two jobs already.

Amazon is a case in point. It’s raping the country by paying shit wages and minimal taxes, while finding its founder to drive giant penises on space joy-rides, and yet how many of ‘the people’ who hate this system and are suffering with poorer public services and austerity are merrily propping up it up by continuing to shop there? The whole brand culture hides the people making the profits and insulates them them from the consequences of their public actions. I bet I am unwittingly lining Jacob Reese Mogg or Boris Johnson’s pockets, somehow. Which is a horrible thought. I imagine it’s impossible to completely boycott an individual, but if it were possible to boycott anything he has an interest in, I would. And if enough people did, he’d be persona non grata pretty quick, and then either be forced to consider the poor as real people, or, eventually, become poor. If they didn’t own the bloody press as well, it would be easier. But it would take a specialist to track down an accurate list, a dedicated team to maintain it and a LOT of people to make a little consistent effort to actually do it. And they won’t.

I have no idea if this information is available, or how easy it is to get. I imagine very difficult, as the are so many shell companies and wotnot (by design, of course). I also imagine that anyone publishing it would be shot down pretty quickly. I mean, Brexit was purely about tax dodging buy the very rich, as the EU was planning to bring in laws that stopped tax dodging to some degree. And look what happened there.

I try to spend my money in places that have transparency about who owns them and where it goes. It’s not really totally possible though. Firstly, if I need a mortgage, I need the best rate I can get. I’m not rich enough to get one on the principe of who owns it’s parent company. And secondly, sooner or later you need something that can not now be provided by a local independent. You need energy, internet, petrol, the postal service etc. I had years of never setting foot in a supermarket, because I bought all my food from local farmers or indie shops. I can’t afford to do that now, and I don’t have the time and energy to make everything from scratch now I have a child. Also, as things become profitable (like anything eco) big businesses start to want a slice and gradually the fat cats start to get the their finger into all the pies. It’s hard work being ethical and families just don’t have the time, the energy and the money. It sounds like a tin-hat conspiracy theory, but the monied classes really do have a vested interest in keeping working people busy so that they don’t start wondering to hard how come all the money flows upwards. Most people know this really, but somehow nothing ever changes.

There is good reason why Boris is scarpering despite 14,000 con members pleading with him
to stay, and it isn’t because it all looks so rosy!!!! 🌹

YANBU. It's a complete shitshow. Ever since boris won a general election and was given a carte blance to strip all of the publicly owned assets to line the pockets of his friends and funders. People who made ridiculous amounts of money out of a pandemic.

The shelves in the shops are bare half the time. My fuel bill is currently a third of my monthly income (and that's in summer, who knows what it will be in winter). Millions of workers have been facing real pay cuts for years whilst we see the redistribution of wealth to the richest, public services have been slashed so badly and we're in such a dire recruitment/retention crisis, that people can't get an ambulance, gp appointment, dentist. So many people who are badly affected are sitting back in denial and allowing it to happen, whilst saying Boris did his best. It's no wonder that people who aren't affected so badly think it's all scaremongering and can't see past their own bubble.

I'm genuinely pleased that there are so many MN posters who will be untouched by real wage cuts, soaring inflation and the decimation of public services; it's great that you can afford private. But honestly you don't have to look too far to see that people are genuinely hurting right now. Children are going hungry in this country right now.

Just because 'Bob' on Facebook says we're going to be paying £900 a month on gas/electric doesn't mean it's true fgs. Stop believing everything you read on line. Even if my gas/electric went up by 100% (unlikely) it would still be less than £350 a month and that's for a 3 bed house.

KarmaKomma - How much is your fuel bill a month?