To think £6,000 a year energy bills are completely unsustainable

[Butterflyfluff]

Following on from this thread but quite unbelievably the projected figure has gone from £4,200 to £6,000 now.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4607670-to-think-that-very-few-people-can-manage-ps4200-energy-bills?page=40

Where will this all end?

@Angelofthenortheast I'm hoping it's more like a conspiracy to bring emissions down, which it will. Hopefully we all start spending more time I nature as opposed to committing suicide. Although at this point a suicide of a poor person is just one less poor person to the tories.

It wasn't incompetency on the part of the government. It was corruption. That's why they don't want to put effort into recouping it. They gave the contracts to their friends.

I think this government has truly totally and utterly ceased to function. There is effectively no prime minister at the moment.

the regulator has clearly failed.

even once there is a leader - they will have to be seen to do something - but even if they wanted to do something good these issues can’t be resolved over night and certainly not by winter

it is an abject failure of the political and regulatory process

And therein lies the problem - the media have colluded with that corruption. Because why aren't our media holding the government to account? I can't stand the man, but why isn't Piers Morgan shouting out about it?

The sheer level of wastage that was created on that fiasco is so mind boggling, it's almost impossible to compute. And the man who signed those cheques for that £37 BILLION thinks he's the right person to be the PM? I mean you can't make this shit up!

That plan is neither comprehensive nor fully costed. They would be in breach of international law because they would be taxing companies on profits generated elsewhere. That's unsustainable, because effectively every country could levy tax on multinationals to the point where they tax bill is greater than the company's value.

e.g. if the UK charge Shell 20% tax on profits, and so did the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, Australia it would quickly become impossible for them to pay their tax bill.

Also why shouldn't prepay meter customers pay more? It's more expensive to supply energy that way, more infrastructure is needed.

@thelongconmom im not sure how spending time in nature will reduce emissions, but I agree that it's an essential solution for mental health.

I would say you're average person's energy consumption is: heating water to wash themselves, washing their clothes, keeping food fresh, and lighting and heating their house from the time it gets dark (so 4pm in winter). There's no way anyone can realistically cut down on these things in this freezing cold country.

Ultimately, businesses should cut back before any of us do. When I worked in a high street shop, we had the heater on full power all day because the doors were propped open to be more inviting to customers drifting in!

We’re currently paying £150 by Direct Debit for a one bedroom house.

DH works from home but even when the prices increase it’ll still be cheaper for him to do so as his energy usage is minimal, just a basic laptop plugged in and in the winter he’ll wear layers.

I cannot help but think by the time the government step in it’ll be far too late for millions of households.

If electricity does, as predicted, go up to 92p per kwh come April, the economy is fucked, let alone gas prices. Average electric bills of £4k? Businesses won’t survive either.
I’m seething at my fix of 57p kwh / £2000 a year but at least we can afford it.

As an aside, DH is contracting in a pie factory, they leave the numerous gas ovens running 24/7, even when not producing, instead of having them on timers to fire up 2hrs before use, he reckons they are wasting over a million £££s a year of gas and that is ONE factory. He asked them if they wanted him to do an energy audit to save them money, the answer was no. They are making so much money they don’t care, however the waste of energy is unforgivable. They also installed a false ceiling with energy saving led lights throughout, only trouble is, the old lights under that ceiling are still running because nobody knows where the main breakers are! He could save them a fortune (and earn a nice consultancy fee) but they aren’t interested.

I think they want workers back in the office. Well, I know they do. Look at JRM and his snide post it’s. But I think people who work from home might be a bit too happy and comfortable. Stressed people will throw money at their leisure time, because ‘they deserve to enjoy their time off and it’s worth it’. Happy people, being more productive at work but also able to be around more for their families and keep on top of their household chores through the week might contentedly stop spending billions of pounds to add value to their downtime or time saving gadgets and gimmicks and stop lining Tory pockets. People who work at home eat and drink at home, not in coffee shops, supermarkets and cafes. They cook at home, not grab takeaway and prepped food on the way back. They don’t spend as much on childcare, transport, office wardrobes and grooming when there at home more and judged more what they produce than how they present. They aren’t having after work drinks. They spend money on their homes, but they stay in them a lot more. They even have time to go to local independent shops and businesses, instead of frantically ordering from Amazon or getting everything at once from Tesco’s.

I realise this is a rose tinted view of working from home, but for a lot of middle income people, I think it’s a fair summary. There’s a reason workers love working from home and JRM hates it.

Best find another way to squeeze them, then.

I also wonder if this isn’t Russia flexing its economic muscles. Obviously, Putin doesn’t feel he can chance war with the entire world (or I hope not!) and he’s got some weird thing about Ukraine anyway, but maybe it’s just an excuse to remind the world that Russia controls a lot of energy, which is a lot of power and I wonder if Putin felt people might be forgetting that in their dealings with him. Not Boris, of course, because he doesn’t care about anything but having his name over the door and his personal comfort, but the rest of the West.

It is not a 'failure' it is a Tory party choice that we are in this situation. The Tories have chosen to both allow and exacerbate the multiple crises (energy, inflation, health) crises we now face.

I really do think that Something Will Be Done.

Not because this current Westminster shower gives a fig, but because it’s an issue that’s affecting the middle classes and they have become vocal.

If “just” poor people were struggling, this topic would barely be making headlines beyond the left wing press and Martin Lewis. But the chattering classes are impacted and they’re … well … chattering about it!

There will be an election in 2024 and middle class votes will be needed by the Conservatives. This cohort must not be allowed to feel poor.

I agree that Something Must Be Done. Not because the Tories care about poor people but because there will be an election in 2024. Once the middle classes and older people (who both tend to vote Tory more) start complaining they will take notice as it will lose them votes.

The government themselves can’t afford the bills at that level. By that I mean they won’t be able to pay the bills of public buildings and offices. Businesses that rely heavily on fuel like large scale food manufacturing and pretty much anything that employs large conveyor systems to move products around will be looking at a quadrupling or more of their bills. Small scale businesses will go bankrupt. It is this that will drive government to act, not joe bloggs struggling to pay their domestic bill.

People hoping the government will step in don't understand Tory ideology, particularly this incarnation of the Tory party. There aren't many one nation types or those with left leaning instincts within it anymore. Most of those with any sense of morality were purged for opposing the no deal Brexit we have.

They are wedded to the idea that the market will decide and that energy firms need to be able to set their own price and ensure profits. I honestly think that if they had their way they would scrap Ofgem and remove the price cap altogether.

The problem is that we have to wait a couple of years until the general election.

The government need to provide more support for sure. It’s unacceptable that any person will be unable to afford to use heating or cook. And there should be a special energy allowance/benefit for people who need to use more for medical/disability reasons like there is for the elderly.

But if MN is anything to go by, so many people are using far too much energy. We cannot expect to go around in T-shirts in winter, use a tumble dryer multiple times a day, leave computers and consoles running 24/7 etc and not pay handsomely for that privilege.

What I don’t get is the proposed discount on energy bills if you used energy off peak in terms living in flats/tenements. I simply cannot program my washing machine to run at 23:00 or later, it’s just not on in terms of good neighbourly relations (I live in a Georgian tenement flat in Scotland). ☹️

I applaud you for your restraint.

Sorry if this has already been asked and answered, but how is the standing charge set?

Ahh yes I saw an article about that just after I posted. It says though in order to do that you would need a whole new gen of smart meter, which I definitely wouldn't be daft enough to apply for! It's just sickening that this is going on at all.

I’m not sure how some businesses, especially in hospitality and beauty, will survive.

They are going to be in a perfect storm of

• Rising and uncapped energy costs


• Rising cost of serving debt


• Lower consumer demand

There are millions of highly skilled workers in UK who won't consider giving up their well-paid full time job, to go on benefits "because why bother being full time". That's a ridiculous generalisation based on zero facts.

^ servicing debt

Whilst I do agree with you about this Tory party I think this situation is different than even a normal recession, it reminds me more of a depressionary situation to be honest.

The Tories won't want to intervene majorly but I think they are aware that large chunks of the economy is going to be gone (much like covid).

I think they will take a similar line to the covid crisis, that they will want to save as much of the economy as possible, especially as a great number of strong business will fail once the demand is gone due to peoples spending power contracting severely.

Basically them doing nothing of note will condemn Tories to a 15-20 year wait in the wilderness like the 07-08 crisis did for Labour.

They won't survive, leisure, tourism, hospitality, retail. Depending on how severe things get even the banking sector might struggle once people start to struggle to pay mortgages on a widespread level come the 2nd half of 2023 and most people are being hit with either higher mortgage costs or higher energy, or maybe both.

I suspect behind closed doors the government are saying things like
"What are they all complaining about? Why don't they just winter in the Caribbean like normal people and stop moaning?"

It's all getting a bit
"Let them eat cake"
And we all know how that panned out <hopeful>