To ask what the rest of (geographic) Europe are doing differently?

[CanIJustAskAnotherStupidQuestion]

I have friends and colleagues in Nordics, Spain, Italy, Germany and they all keep asking what the hell is going on in Britain, with double digit inflation and 80% increases in fuel costs. They don’t seem to be feeling all of this to the same extent.

So why is it happening here, and not so much elsewhere? I know that e.g. France hasn’t been hit with fuel bills for consumers because EDF is nationalised (but presumably that means they will get hit in taxes). But what about elsewhere?

Hopefully not Poland:

www.zerohedge.com/markets/beyond-imagination-polish-homeowners-line-days-buy-coal-ahead-coming-winter

France wasn’t in chaos while I was there although the usual far right political influences are strong that’s rather balanced by the Tories. The state has protected the people rather than the companies but we have the Tories who espouse the opposite..

What all this does show is how unready we are to switch to an all electric society. At least there are other options to heating, vehicle fuel and power generation at the moment.
Imagine if we were to rely on the national grid for vehicle power, home heating and other domestic supply.
The vulnerability of power generation has been blown wide open by recent events.
The U.K itself is in the current situation due to lack of investment in reliable power from nuclear, a large amount of old housing stock from the Victorian era and an economy that has been heavily supported by consumer credit in recent years.
There is now more consumer debit than prior to the previous financial crash.

Another weird U.K. bashing thread where if people actually looked at the stats they would see that inflation is higher in many other European countries than it is in the U.K.

@MarshaBradyo eldest two have skills and languages that can take them to a significant chunk of Europe also Canada and US is a job option in the short term for one.
we are fairly pragmatic and travelling and working abroad for periods of time is something both already do
cant imagine not having the conversation if I'm honest
Why would I not want to maximise their opportunities

The problem is the baseline. The UK never really recovered from the recession. Most other European countries recovered well, wages increased and went beyond their pre recession level. British people have been losing buying power for over a decade. Throw the current crisis on top of that and other countries are in better shape to deal with it - economically and socially.

The UK is now again the sick man of Europe though chart attached

I'm in Ireland and we are being braced by the media anyway for a tough winter. Articles advising us to put on our dressing gowns over our clothes at home, I did that last year.

Interesting that France will be protected from the price hikes

Uk unemployment rate 3.8%

How many countries in Europe have worse unemployment?

UK isn't worse off for everything.
European Union (EU27)
6%
Spain
12.6%
Greece
12.3%
Italy
8.1%
Sweden
7.6%
France
7.2%
Finland
6.5%
Latvia
6.4%
Croatia
6.3%
Portugal
6.1%
Slovakia
6%
Lithuania
5.8%
Estonia
5.7%
Belgium
5.5%
Romania
5.3%
Cyprus
5.1%
Ireland
4.8%
Denmark
4.5%
Austria
4.3%
Bulgaria
4.3%
Luxembourg
4.2%

To be fair a lot of the UK doom mongering is based on things that were lower than Europe to start with going up.

My energy prices haven't risen that much (yet of course I'm aware of October) partly because I live in an area without gas and the decent offers were only ever open to duel fuel customers. In much the same way many of those on pre pay metres haven't seen the huge jump reported in direct debits. It is those coming off a really low rate seeing the biggest hike.

Yes help should be available to those on the lowest incomes but if recent Mumsnet threads are anything to go by lots of people have been in the very privileged position here of not even thinking about their energy use. This is not sustainable and this is bringing about much needed changes in behaviour (to be clear I'm not talking about those choosing between heating and eating already as they knew exactly what they were using and the cost but there have been endless threads from people with thermostats set to the high 20s, one was even at 30, and those thinking a fix was all you can use which given fixed rates have been around for a long time is worrying).

We all need to cut our useage. I do think we are facing some pain now before the real hikes hit to increase awareness and change behaviour.
I think they'll be intervention before October but it is a balance between forcing those who can and should be more efficient and not crippling those at the bottom.

The £400 we are all getting is a third of my energy bill (currently) and my direct debit went up 20% (to £130 a month) but I'm now £600 in credit so will have a thousand pounds to cushion it a bit.

So if someone from Europe asked me (on a low household income btw) I'd say things aren't too bad yet.
Food has gone up but diesel has come back down a fair bit to balance it out

Spain has applied a sticking plaster effect. It will have to be paid for by the tax payer in the years to come when they will face austerity for longer, even when other countries are out of this mess.

By not not having such an incompetent government who got rid of sensible and intelligent MP's and civil servants who disagreed with them. Have no clue how the other ninety per cent of people live.

Stats can tell you anything you want as long as you select specific time frames and exclude countries that go against the narrative you want to present.

I don't think the grass is green in the UK, but I also don't think its greener in many other places either

Spain does not have better politicians than us. Did you miss the bit were Catalonia held an independence referendum and then locked up the winners? Or the police and parliamentarians famous misogyny?

Only parochial morons think it is much better ‘over there’. These crises are global. Energy needs to be paid for somehow.

@poshme Low unemployment is not necessarily an indicator of economic health.

The UK currently has low unemployment because there is a shortage of workers, over a million EU skilled and willing workers having left since Brexit and another half a million older workers deciding to leave the job market after Covid made them re-assess their lives.

A society cannot lose that many workers without there being a detrimental impact on services and prices. The NHS and social care facilities have 250,000 vacancies. Bus drivers are changing jobs and becoming lorry drivers - resulting in a shortage of bus drivers. The food and drinks industry is short of workers across all stages of the production chain - from fruit pickers to packers and sorters, food factory workers and delivery drivers. All of this has a knock-on effect on prices and availability.

The Government keeps talking about growth, but the UK cannot grow if there are not the workers available, with the skills required, to facilitate this growth.

I think many people have forgotten that we are at the far end of supply chains. Over the last few decades the world has become far smaller than it was in say the 60s, 70s even. We have had free access to cheap everything, green beans from Kenya, cheap fuel from Russia, cheap cars from Korea.

And now, not because of Tories or Brexit, but because of covid and Russian actions, the world has got larger again and our geographical reality is becoming more obvious. Add to that the raising of the ridiculously low interest rates etc and we are living in the eye of a perfect storm.

Regardless of what we all think about it we are all going to have to tighten our belts, take proper stock of how we live, use a wide range of good and services and relearn the austerity measures of yesteryear.

And that will include changes in benefit packages, for better and worse.

I might have a slightly different perspective, but others here work in food banks too and will have seen and heard the same things I have heard from service providers and users alike. Many in greatest need are now being pragmatic rather than outraged. Are working together to discuss ways and means rather than looking to the government for help.

Lists of hardship funds, ways to contact utility providers, support with what to say, to ask for. Supplies of microwaves, slow cookers, all sorts of alternative cooking vessels are being sought, and often provided by individuals and organisations. Old fashioned blankets, jumpers, knitting sessions, yarn drops. We have really changed, added to what we do within our community hub.

It's scary, it's shit, but it is necessary. Sorry, I rambled...

The UK didn’t really go through the recession to the extent that Portugal, Spain, Italy or Greece did. Those countries had to overhaul their economies and lifestyle basically. Property devalued massively (UK housing costs have been on the rise for decades), simple things like eating out, paid-for leisure activities or holidays were off the table for low to mid-income families. Not just the poor.

The current 30 year olds in Spain grew up very differently to the British 30 year olds, who have had a higher level of disposable income throughout their lives. The standard of living is different. You still can’t afford to buy property as a young adult in Spain. There’s nothing to inherit because your parents’ house is now valued at 50k whilst they still have 200k left on the mortgage. All this talk of ‘house deposits’ on MN sounds like Japanese script to a Spanish couple in their 30s who’d like to settle down.

I do agree that socially some countries are better prepared to deal with it than others.

Easy. They actually have decent governments...

The UK has a bunch of psychopaths who only care about making themselves and their mates richer and let utility companies make massive profits and increase their tariffs to ludicrous levels.

The French government knows Full-time well that the population would bring the country to a halt and ultimately bring them down if they tried anything like the current Tory shower...so they kept the price increase low and the energy companies are owned by the state, not by private companies.

Same thing in Scandinavian countries.

I would say that in the main they have actual democracies run by people who are interested in the practical effects of their policies and systems on the ground, rather than being run by people eager to make themselves look good by fiddling statistics.

@Calmdown14 I think you're right about the dual fuel thing- our price rises are not as bad as some people because we have always had to pay more (no mains gas here so electricity has always cost more)

I can't cut back any more on usage. I found an old bill recently- we now use 3/4 of the electricity that we used 10 years ago, and far less than the average for the number of people/size of house.
Short of eating cold meals every day, I can't cut anything else.

Exactly this.

Being on holiday in a European country and living, paying your taxes to the same country are two very different things.
Almost all the serious issues facing us today are global problems.
Certainly individual countries deal with the same issues in varying ways, but its swings and roundabouts.
The important lesson is not to enact policies that penalise our children and grandchildren.
Creating artificially cheap prices to appease the electorate today will have to be paid for tomorrow.
This is simplistic, lazy and poor governance.

That’s how they always do it. And Italy too and France. Remember when Greece had to be bailed out back in early 2010s? There was then the real possibility that Italy and Spain would also go under and need to be bailed out.

Spain’s economy is one global shock away from bankruptcy. They simply do not make enough to money to justify what they spend. Hence why the unemployment rate never recovered after 2008.

I read that Germany were the country facing the toughest winter due to their dependence on imported gas, there were a few articles saying that they are turning back on coal power stations and also asking for a reduction in gas usage across the eu to share the pain of the restrictions to nord stream. I don’t think it’s all sunshine and roses anywhere at the moment.

Question about property. If we should expect going forward it becomes the norm for future generations to not own property and we should prepare them for this - then who does own it?Even if they rent, someone has to own the property for them to rent it from? How does this work in Spain where pp have explained that couples in their 30s etc cannot buy property. Who owns all these properties that they live in? If people cannot afford to buy property what happens when properties are left empty? It's just blowing my mind a bit trying to work out how we would adjust to the new norm being for the next generations to not own property - where will they live if no one can afford property to rent out? Will the government have to provide more council houses again?

I can see that renting will increase but surely we still need people to own the properties to rent out? Is this where the rich can come swooping in and mop up properties and rent out at extortionate prices??