To think that very few people can manage £4200 energy bills

[Butterflyfluff]

news.sky.com/story/energy-bills-forecast-to-rise-even-higher-than-previously-thought-12668906

This simply isn’t manageable for the majority of people.

Where’s this going to end?

We are currently paying £137 for our town house (4 adults) up from £119. The cost per month is very dependent on your house type, insulation, how hot you like it and how wasteful you (your fellow occupants!) are. Dp was paying £290 a month in 2019 for his former marital home because his ex liked the thermostat up to Caribbean level! He was amazing I paid under £100 for a larger older building (I'm mean with heat!)

Less meals out and holidays will lead to job losses in hospitality and tourism which will mean more people struggling.

It won't just be tourism and hospitality that suffer either, it will be non-essential retail, the licensed trade, the motor trade, entertainment, arts and crafts, pretty much anything that is not essential will suffer decreased revenues and the people working in them will suffer reduced bonuses/profits, cuts to their hours and job losses. Meaning they have less money to spend too.

This spiral is a recession and could go on for years. We need bold action from government urgently.

I genuinely cannot get my head around how someone on the UC single persons amount of £389 a month who already has to often find a small amount of rent plus other living expenses will be able to pay an extra £100 or whatever it is. It's mathematically impossible for them to actually survive.
What on earth is going to happen

we have 2 children with complex needs and we have to have a warm house and run shed loads of medical equipment to keep them alive .we are already paying nearly 6 grand so after oct and then january rises we will be paying around 9 to 10 thousand.
it is madness but we have no choice and I have cut back on everything I can including not using the tumble dryer and am doing washing on cold etc but with incontinent clothes and bedding etc it is hard to know what more we can do.
A lot of families like ours will struggle to cope .

This. We are a service industry and if people can only afford essentials you have a problem. Beauty, hospitality, pubs, cinema, restaurants, takeaways, investments, retail, trades, builders, plasterers, car showrooms, any manufactures left for products in this country. Even food retail. I know of a huge food retail chain already cutting hours (my child’s pin money job). That’s food retail which is pretty essential.

The knock on effect of people not being able to spend in a service based economy will be catastrophic.

I can afford to pay for my own but I would have to help out my MIL too (and she lives in a draughty victorian terrace). I am not sure I can do that plus move to a bigger flat. Sigh.

Isn't that the price cap though? Apologies if Im wrong but wont most people be below that? Still a worry I agree.

People questioning the amount, and saying that 'no-one could possibly use that much' that is the price for the amount of energy that, less than 2 years ago, cost about £100 a month, which most people could afford and were fairly happy to pay.

So unless people significantly reduce their usage, that same amount of energy will now cost around £350 pm.

Of course, a lot of people will choose or will be forced to cut back, but many might not until it's too late, when they get a bill after winter next year, and they've already used the energy so need to pay for it.

Definitely worth planning how to get through winter using less and having serious discussions with family members who light unoccupied rooms and spend longer in the shower than necessary.

I think compared to many many people my family is reasonably comfortable. But we have already let the cleaner go because we can’t justify the cost, already cutting back on meals out/takeaways, Christmas will be lean and we won’t carry on with home improvements either. So that’s a lot of money we’re not spending. Certainly not suggesting we will suffer - all of these are ‘nice to haves’

£4200 price cap I think is £350 per month and about treble what we were paying a year ago (big family, modern detached house)

My question is, why isn't the government doing anything? Boris has buggered off and doesn't care (not surprised to be fair) Truss cares more about making civil servants work for nothing and Sunak is more concerned with obliterating the arts and making sure his mates in Tunbridge Wells are ok! Don't forget this when it's time to vote in 2024!

Or seems to me that the world is heading in a direction where people will work, pay bills and that's it.

The foreign holidays will become too expensive. New car sales will plummet.
House sales will slow as people stay.puy.insyead of the costly moving.
Cafes and such will close as people can't justify £3 on a coffee anymore.
Takeaways will see business drop as people don't want to spend £30 on a single dinner.
So on and so on.
Poverty will become the reality for the previously comfortable.

@BigWoollyJumpers we are also with Bulb. DH manages the energy bills and has been moaning about the monthly cost. They put our direct debit up last year sometime. No idea about our actual usage. DH takes readings every now and then and submits them. We don't have a smart meter. I'll ask him to check.

Part of it is that they're only concerned with the membership vote at the moment, but the other part is they literally can't comprehend this kind of fuel poverty.

Yes, it’s based on an average 3 bed property I think, so there will be those paying more and less.

Fair point about a lot of people being physically able to afford it - but it will be at the expense of other things, which, as others have pointed out, has a knock on effect.

If you are a 40% rate tax payer - which a lot of people are, but not by much, and are not particularly wealthy - the top £10k is needed just to pay for your energy.

And goodness know where low income households are going to find that kind of money

@spanishsummers part of the reason wholesale gas prices have increased is because Putin reduced gas supply to Europe.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that the suppliers - that sell you your energy, aren’t the ones making profit. Lots of them will be making a loss (although a minority are making profits, but their profits are limited by the price cap) and it’s expected more will go bust this year. It’s the producers that are making the billions in profit that grab headlines.

Or seems to me that the world is heading in a direction where people will work, pay bills and that's it.

Capitalism can't function on that basis though. Even the most right-wing capitalist would agree that the plebs need to keep buying new stuff!

Yes the trickle down impact from employers will also be huge

I work for a university, we have 30K students, 10K staff, 3 campuses. I can't even imagine what the energy costs are, heating these giant buildings, all those computers and lights.

I assume there will be a lot of redundancies, programmes cut, everyone else forced to work insane hours to cover, with no pay rise to cover their own soaring energy bills.

Surely the government would start to listen to employers and business, if not to ordinary people?

What is the actual point of Ofgem at this point? They regulate fuck all.

It's a huge amount. Many will not be able to afford it. The price cap basis is not fit for purpose - I'm particularly shocked that all customers pay for the failing energy companies losses & costs (market failure) - that is unjust!

We are fucked.

I can't understand why the population hasn't stormed Downing Street, if we were French then God knows what would happen.

The government are sleepwalking into an utter disaster and the warning lights could not be flashing any brighter.

Yes I would like to know if there is any non-ideological reason for not nationalising, i.e. any economic reason not to do it (not just because the Tories are allergic to nationalising things)

@SleeplessInEngland exactly! They can't relate to the average working person in this family, let alone those on the poverty line! Sunak saying he's wearing the same suit that he wore at the furlough press conference is a prime example.... and another MP coming out saying he needed a second job to pay for childcare, because his £80k salary didn't stretch that far! (Yet they still don't want to address the problem)!

The so called government do not give a fuck. And the two would-be Prime Ministers, Truss and Sunak, have mentioned next to nothing about the financial crisis.

*this country not family! My angry typing got the better of me haha

there was another thread where the OP was saying that people can't really be broke as they have iphones?