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?

The funding comes from the social and environmental levy

www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-and-social-schemes

Ah I see.
I had a Google and found:

Who pays for it?
The energy companies fund the discount, with the money coming from customers’ bills. The sums put in are mandated by the government. This year suppliers have put in a total of £350m, which has added about £14 to bills. Next year they will put in more – a consultation last year suggested £475m in total – which will cost customers £19. The Treasury does not currently add to the scheme.

so I bet what I read is what you've linked too.
Fascinating stuff. Supposedly expanded.till 2026, I thought it was finished..

But anywho..

It seems that the people eligible for that, core and broader groups, would likely be a good start for energy poverty support.

I would love someone to ask Liz Truss if she is happy removing the funding for the warm homes discount and support for people to reduce their bills by energy improvements. And if she doesn't want to remove it, how will she pay for it, given it's funded by 'the green levy'

Dunno if this has been posted previous but it is actually the solution to bills that don't add up:

wesayenough.co.uk/

I'm seeing a list of demands rather than solutions. Am I missing something?

Ordinary working people blatantly cannot pay the figures being bandied around here.

If you're on minimum wage even without paying into a pension, by the time you've paid your £120 council tax, your £900 rent on a two bedroom rental and your £500 energy you're already £400 in the red before you've even stepped out the front door and no amount of tweaking is going to change that.

That campaign is so flawed. Let’s reduce the tax on working people. Oh let’s tax the “rich”. The “rich” being some headteachers, doctors, dentists on 80k. The top already pay 25% of the countries income tax.

There also has to be a balance on how much you tax companies to remain competitive. If you don’t you’ll lose jobs, it’s that simple. It gives socialists a bad name.

Maybe.

To me, it makes sense.

Our government has had a meeting with the energy companies and come out of it saying that the solution is that people need to pay these prices. To people who are already millionaires.

So, if you want people to pay these prices you have to give them the means to do so.

They clearly are not going to be able to do so on £18k a year.

So you need to raise their wages.

And if you find that has an inflationary effect then maybe you could stop fucking printing money like you have been for the past fifteen years. And maybe that would bring inflation under fucking control.

Because right now the situation we have is that multi millionaires are charging people on minimum wage close to half of their take home just to heat and light their homes, and that obviously is not going to work, long term.

@Itisasecret have you even read the demands? Taxation is very low down the list.

Not sure about this. Its very simplistic.

But there are practical things that a government willing to put the interests of British people first could do.
As I said earlier, a tiered system where the first kWhs you use are cheaper than the last (not all that hard to implement, at least on a per household meter basis ) would help a lot.
Increasing basic benefits / living wages so that people at the bottom have enough to live on, and can decide how to spend it. If you just give someone money for their power bill, that leaves them with no agency and means that they can't work out how best to run their own lives. Instead of giving everyone £400, add £600 to the UC, and give everyone else below some reasonable level of income a cash bonus through the tax system.
Windfall taxes on the upstream companies that are milking this - BP and Shell (and all the rest) are essentially war profiteers and should be treated accordingly.

We can only hope the other political parties do something. Because so far the government are doing fuck all.

How prey do they think people will pay these bills ?

I honestly think many people will die. More than covid.

You mean these ones?

This can be done by introducing a wealth tax, raising taxes on corporate profits and on the top 5% of earners, closing tax dodging loopholes and abolishing non-dom status, increasing capital gains tax, and introducing new taxes on speculation.

And alongside that, we should be cutting the tax burden on working people, starting by reversing the recent hike to National Insurance.

@FredtheCatsMum I really don't think this will solve the issue. Which is that energy companies are going to charge working people £5000 a year when after council tax and rent they have £1000.

@Itisasecret and just exactly how many, to use your words, "headteachers, doctors and dentists" would be caught by that?

And, crucially, even if they were caught by it, how many would be catapulted into financial impecunity?

People are struggling now.

The numbers don't add up.

I mean blatantly, a person who earns £18k a year with £1250 take home cannot pay £10k a year on rent AND £1200 on council tax AND £5000 on fuel. And no amount of slankets or government UC grants will make it so. If you want people to give that kind of money to billionaires they need to be earning that money to start with.

Maybe companies should not be taxed as much but should pay their workers more so they can afford these price hikes?

So money still gets to the people who need it to pay their bills.

Companies are going to struggle if their workers are cold and hungry.

Joseph Rowntree knew this.

A lot. The top 5% of workers are not millionaires. They earn 80k and already pay higher tax.

I agree but the issue is the UC supports low wages by subsidy; there would have to be a planned withdrawal of top ups and a coordinated increase in pay. That would ripple across the board. If you have unskilled jobs paying 30k, you’d have to pay teachers, nurses, entry barristers, etc, etc more as they have gone to uni for some years. It will take years but needs to be done.

In the meantime taxing companies so much they leave is counterproductive it will also hit the smaller, family companies hardest.

Tbh at this point I'm tempted to say fuck it. The uber wealthy have had things their way for a long time. There is no way on god's good earth that people should be working full time and simultaneously claiming benefits in order that the money they claim in benefits goes to billionaires in charge of energy and fuel companies.

That is just wrong and is entirely a misdirection of funds.

100% it’s criminal that people who work full time need “top-ups” to live. This country has notoriously low salaries across the board, from the entry jobs to those which require years of study. It’s now biting us on the arse and it needs to stop.

I agree , the 400 we are getting will only go back to the energy companies anyway !
It's all just smoke and mirrors to keep people from staging riots.

Exactly.

This is money being paid to working people.

Working people shouldn't need benefits to pay their electricity bills.

And electricity companies shouldn't be getting state money for bills.

£15 an hour.

That is what you need to live on, in the UK, now.

That is what you need if you don't take state benefits. That is a living wage. That is what employers should be paying. If that's hard for them they need to go to the government and sort something out. But that is what employees need for their labour.

I agree as well. An easy first step would be to get rid of standing charges. Over a third of my summer bills is the standing charges so I am paying a higher price per kwh (total gas/electric bill including standing charges, divided by kwh used) than if my usage was doubled.

Presumably you'd give a rebate to families where people have disabilities that necessitate high energy use? Or would you have some other kind of guilt-based algorithm?

See, to me, a lot of the problems caused by this would be solved by just Paying Working People A Decent Fucking Wage. And another couple of grand on top for families with a disabled person.

And then none of us would have to get into this entire dog in the manger attitude bullshit about who is more deserving of benefits or not.