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.

As there wont be a GE this year, the current wage demands & strikes are up to the Tories to resolve.

As for wages causing inflation, current wage rises are around 5%, inflation is expected to be 12% very soon and is at 13.8% according to Truflation, a new way of measuring CPIH.

Certain ime seems to be a lot more than the RPI of 9%.

Not really. There are plenty of stats about the state of public services and the effect of New Labour policies that objectively show that the country was generally in much better shape under its aegis.

No, people can't be arsed

The amount of people who don't seem at all phased by paying £500 per month just to have some hot water is very alarming...

Remember when people said exactly the same and that nothing would happen two weeks before lockdown?

I wish you all the best of luck for October.

I thought the jobs market was booming? It was until recently. Has that changed?

Why the wide eyed faux naïveté? The poster has lost her job and is worried sick about lack of advertised posts in her field. The ‘I thought the jobs market was booming’ is a rather unhelpful comment.

@Rustydress - good luck with the job hunt. Redundancy sucks

Yeah there are loads of jobs but the pay is shocking and for most they are better off not taking them. Disgusting that someone can work full time and still not have enough money to provide for themselves and their family.

I also remember the posters who went on about society collapsing with omicron…

My DP (late 50’s) has been made redundant twice in the last 2 years. It’s took approximately 6 months for him to find a job each time. Neither pay well. Our local Morrisons are short staffed but aren’t recruiting, they are relying on overtime. I know a couple of delivery guys who say the same.

@XingMing Thankyou for clarifying this. As I own my property outright and grow much of what we eat on our own land, am contemplating solar panels for my home and a solid fuel heating system and have the funds to do so I am not remotely riles.
I am very concerned for those who aren't in such a fortunate position as I am and shit scared of the agenda 30 plans.

And many of us did not, and Iraq was not the prime reason.

He opened the floodgates to mass globalism and the global race to the bottom so that the richest could profit. Pushed deregulation so that the richest could profit more. He privatised everything that was left, that even Thatcher had not dared to touch, privatising profit and enabling public debts. He continued with the destruction of the public sector by mucking about with funding and creating targets systems that had little reality behind them, so that the public sector became a box ticking exercise. He also hated the idea of lower paid echelons being paid, so scrapped the middle and shrank wages of the lowest, causing a two-tier society to emerge. Private landlords were pushed throughout his time; there were so few before he virtually recreated the sector single-handedly, again enabling the rich to get richer and the poor poorer. There were benefits true, but those of us who were young then and trying to work our way up found ourselves stymied again and again as wages fell and costs went up; meanwhile we were constantly told crap such as ‘we’re all middle class now’ and that we were imagining crap about housing costs soaring. We paid for all those benefits, not the rich or baby boomers who ensured they were all right jack, taking public money into their purses and then slamming doors in our faces.

Blair’s time is when intergenerational inequality started and soared, when two tier society came back and heredity and social connections became more important than working and competence. This is fact, not opinion, and that is Blair’s legacy. He was a neoliberalist following in Thatchers footsteps and a traitor to the working classes.

Oh yes, he loved his stats. All those targets that the upper echelons twisted into shape to make themselves look good instead of actually doing the job that was needed. Lies, damned lies, stats, government stats, British government stats. It’s all lies.

Oh dear @ParsleySageRosemary. 😂

@ParsleySageRosemary Blimey! you have attributed an awful lot to Blair, globalization was happening, is happening and he went along with it, as would any Govt would have.

I and everyone i knew (inc the low paid) got decent pay rises, in an era of low ish inflation.

Did he xxxx up? most certainly but even with Iraq, that war was going to happen with or without the UK.

My beef with him is that he didn't reverse the housing policies of the Tories, which is what really did for our housing market and the debacle which is private rented.

However, we've had 12 years of the Tories, what Blair did or didn't do is irrelevant, its the Tories that have totally failed to fix anything at all, in fact most things are far worse than when they came into power.... but as usual we keep getting "But Labour...."

@MyrtlethePurpleTurtle

It was a genuine question. I see reports in the press about high employment rates and I wondered if they are maybe massaging the figures. Sorry if it came across as insulting.

Thanks Parsley

Well summed up

I would be more concerned about what your lot are doing or what they are not doing, rather than focusing on a PM that stepped down 15 years ago.

The question is what will Labour do differently to the Tories. And we already know. Bugger all.

Generational inequality is a historical fact. Naturally the families, those who benefitted and became hereditarily well off, want to see those times back so badly that they are prepared to ignore the huge stretches of towns inhabited by huge numbers of people with no opportunities, no way of climbing broken social ladders, no investment and no hope. Naturally their actions and lacks are all their own fault, whereas the prime minister of the country who set these trends in motion was just a victim of the world’s trends.

There are a lot of people who are neither employed or unemployed but are economically inactive.

Unemployment is low but the percentage of people who are economically inactive (ONS definition) has increased since the pandemic. The percentage of people employed in either paid employment or self employment has decreased but people have shifted from self employment to paid employment

"The UK employment rate increased by 0.4 percentage points on the quarter to 75.9%, but is still below pre- coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels."

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/july2022

This is what Johnson keeps failing to mention.

The question is what will Labour do differently to the Tories. And we already know. Bugger all

How do you know that? have you seen the future? which current Labour front benchers were in Blair's cabinet?

You ve clearly not bothered to read up on any of Labours current policies or ideas, so like any loyal Tory, you seek to tar everyone with the Tory brush of deception, you know you ve been a total disaster, with PM that is another Trump, a terrible Brexit, a wrecked economy, an awful pandemic response & now having more parties and a leadership race instead of addressing the nations needs.

But apparently Labour are the same......

Blair ran up £300 billion of PFI debts for infrastructure projects that were only worth £54.7 billion. PFI contracts also include “facilities maintenance”. One hospital was charged £52,000 for a job which should have cost £750.

Makes a few pounds on decorations and treehouses seem a bit of a bargain.

You do know PFI started with Major?

Christ this was all years ago. Not relevant to today. The tories have been in power for 12 (long!) years!

So what ideas do they have? Are they going to revitalise councils and bring back real local government, with powers and responsibilities, not a celebrity mayor with personal contacts to government? How are they going to undo all the hard work spent tarnishing the images of accountable local authorities? Are they going to pull out all the foreign capital pushing up house prices out of the reach of wages? How are they going to compensate those of us who had to spend 20 years paying private rent (no inheritances) until we finally had to pay the inflated market prices with a collapse lurking? How are they going to undo gaming of markets and statistics everywhere, nudge, PR, and similar manipulations, and the cynicism of the middle classes and return to honest work and information? How are they going to restore the idea of one law and justice for all, not just those with money? How are they going to give us a national unity back with an inflated population split into ‘communities’?

Corbyn, or more specifically McDonnell, would have tried. It’s now not possible. Not without the efforts and talents of Gladstone, Attlee and Lloyd George combined. You think Starmer is the next Lloyd George?

Fwiw on the internet, I have never voted Tory in my life. I was brought up in an old Northern mining area cursing Thatcher’s name and we don’t tend to. That was a pathetic swipe.

Tbf it’s Labour supporters bringing up Blair too

If people want to discuss previous government then it can be interesting too