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.

You know absolutely nothing about me. If it’s a competition. I come from a hugely deprived background. I’ve been homeless. I was the PP child. I left home as a teen.

I now work with families and hopefully teach children there is more on their horizon. I’ve seen first hand through my job how devastating poverty destroys families and the parents so knot have the knowledge to see beyond their horizons. I really hope you don’t work with deprived families. Attitudes like yours are what leads to suicides.

For those worried that high energy prices are a very long-term thing, I have been looking at the results of the latest government auction for new renewables. Offshore wind will be supplied at a fixed price of 3.7p per kwh, on-shore wind 4.3p, solar 4.6p. This is compared to a retail price I'm paying at the moment of circa 30p.

Enen in the olden days before the crisis, the retail price of say 11p was a lot more than the wholesale price of 4-5p, so I'm not saying we will see retail prices of under 10p. Just that 30p (or more) may not be the long-term future of electricity prices.

UK has about 76 MW generating capicity, the target for wind is 50 MW by 2030. In 2020 we were already getting 24% of electricity from wind.

Auction prices below. I divided £/MWh by 10 to get p/kWh

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1088875/contracts-for-difference-allocation-round-4-results.pdf

(My understanding of how the price works is that the government guarantees to pay the price in question for 15 years, which allows the companies to plan to pay off their installation costs. However if the wholesale price is actually above the guarantee, which seems very likely in the near future, then the government gets paid the difference. In other words, it looks more likely that the government will receive rather than pay out money as a result of these contracts.)

How much were the Blair years propped up by the boom
part of the cycle which then went bust in a large fashion

I voted for him so thought he had good qualities - I liked his optimism which seems to be lacking from current Labour but he did have the global boom bust cycle on his side

Slimy Tony. There was only one thing in his head and that was his own enrichment.

@MarshaBradyo youre right - roast chicken is generally great - but it’s even better with a slither of real butter shoved under the skin and liberally doused in salt & pepper and then dipped into something oily and flavoursome - even a real gravy!

but, even though I’m one of those mythical chicken people (15 meals out of one chicken 😉), I’m cutting back on buying an entire chicken because it costs to put the oven on for a couple of hours and it won’t fit in my air-fryer. Yes, lucky me for having an air-fryer which allows me to cook stuff cheaper.

Ok thats why he introduced SureStart... which i'm sure the Blairs used for themselves.....

You'll have to remind me who shut down all those centres..... probably Corbyn.

l remeber the Blair years as richer and healthier.

Same although I was a child. We lived in a deprived area, single parent working a low wage job and I never felt "poor" like I see at my own children's school now? I mean as kids we had days out to the cinema, after school club, clarks shoes and even foreign holidays that I really struggled to afford when I was in a theoretically better situation (low mortgage, free family childcare, reasonable child maintenance) on a professional salary?

But I also wonder if that did a lot of damage in the longer term?

From what I understand (and my own experience) tax credits etc were pretty generous at a time when you could buy a house for 2 or 3 times your salary. And what happens when people have more money to afford things is prices go up.

It's like when we switched from one parent working (typically the dad) to two parents working. That would have been great initially as dad's salaries covered everything needed to raise a family and mum's could go towards savings and extras. But what actually happened was the economy shifted to account for this, so that 2 full time adult salaries were basically a requirement if you wanted to buy a house or support a family.

It feels like the arguably very generous benefits system under Blair has done the same thing in the long term. It kept wages at the low end low, and raised cost of living for everyone.

Nice attempt at deflection but Tony Blair hadn’t been in power for 15 years!

And the tories are supposed to be better at business and economics according to the received ‘wisdom’. If this is the case, why have those who have been in power for over a decade failed to invest appropriately in UK energy infrastructure? Businesses need energy security and decent infrastructure as much as individuals.

‘Grabby’😂😂😂😂

Christ, what wouldn’t I give for a Blair government now.

It’s more grabby wasting tax payers money on decorations, treehouses, mates. etc etc.

The cohntry was happier and richer under Labour. It’s like living in a third world country now.

I know but whoever is In government doesn't seem to do a very good job as far as I'm concerned

I think Blair and Brown did an amazing job. He was the most popular prime minister ever. So plenty of people though he was doing a good job.

How old were you under the Labour government?

I was in my late 20s with young dc and we struggled as he kept putting up interest rates. Dh didn't earn a fortune and we were only slightly over threshold itms

The global climate with Blair is very different to now

The up trend in that time was probably in US too

Trouble is it was fuelled by unsustainable debt which led to a heavy crash

Look at what’s going on globally now instead - pandemic, war, climate. The issues are huge. And global

Not sure if it was because I was a tween/teenager but I remember the 90s as so hopeful & exciting.

and i'm pretty sure professional salaries back then were similar to what they are now. At 17 I was earning approx £7 an hour in a clothes shop.

This thread is now a prime example of why the country is in this mess
People are not in poverty because they don't know how to cook and if they did they would be fine.
It's really quite offensive.

I don't think we've heard that the German team at the UN have wised up.

This thread is about economic collapse. Costs.

So yes it matters feeding coco pops instead of porridge.
And chicken nuggets.

You do have a point about the cost of cooking.

Yes it’s ridiculous isn’t it?

What?
It was very poor borrowing that lead to the Global Financial Crash & outside of anything Blair could have done to avoid it, no western country did.

The debt now is way way higher than anything seen in the 2000's

Some people will write anything to try and have a dig at Labour, usually under the guise of i'm a floating voter.

Oh god you again. Every time.

Read the post again. It clearly states he did have the global boom bust cycle on his side. ie Global

I think you just make up your own version which is odd so I’ll leave you to it

Moving on

Some posters have said Blair years felt better and they probably did for many

I wouldn’t draw a conclusion that it’ll be easy for Labour in a war climate rather than boom one

For a start Starmer is aware that strikes are an issue and won’t back them, whereas his MPs do.

He knows it will lose him votes or create inflation issues - there’s a reason why he’s doing it. If they get in those sort of pressures will bring their own problems. The 70s for example high inflation and strikes

That’s because if you were an adult between 1997 and 2010 you have a very selective memory.

We are in a high inflation and strikes situation right now.
The Global financial crisis of 2008 actually benefitted us. We had a tracker mortgage linked to the Bank of Englands base rate.
the interest rate on our mortgage was practically zero, 0.02%.
We didn’t reduce the mortgage payment, we carried on paying the same as before the crash, in fact we overpaid to get it paid off earlier.
Friends couldn’t understand us, they thought Christmas had come early, spending money like a man with three hands while we were throwing money at the building society.

Blossomtoes

I beg to differ

It's subjective isn't it