Anger at forth coming COL crisis

[MyCheekyEagle]

Of course I understand that the ME war is going to have an impact on oil prices & that will get passed onto the already struggling families; but when things stabilise again & maybe oil prices reset the greedy corporatez never pass this saving back to customers fo they. They just think as we've got used to these new higher prices we'll just keep them there. This thought has given me the rage most of today!
Just needed to vent somewhere, thanks if you listened..

As an island, this is what we should be trying to develop - tidal power and storage. Unless the moon falls out of the sky, the tides will always turn.
I think the problem with this is mostly a storage one.

Thankyou!!! I cannot wade through pages of misinformation without losing my mind, so thankyou for your excellent fact-check and apologies to others who have maybe also said the below.

The one I know about professionally is oil. Forget North Sea oil. Anyone saying we should recommission, or start exploring or 'open the taps' is utterly misinformed or trying to win a facile (and nonsensical) political point. What is left of NS oil would require an ENORMOUS oil price to make economic, as well as a decade or two to bring on line. No company will invest in this. It has absolutely nothing to do with 'idiotic net 0' as I saw early on in this thread.

If we want to be energy self-sufficient we need to go mad for wind (yes, including onshore), solar and massive tidal projects that we would be absolutely incapable of organising in this country. Also improve our grid (boring, but very overdue) to allow all these bits of energy to brought online. And market restructuring.

Dull, complicated and difficult. But it is much easier to believe Farage and Badenoch and talk about our glory NS oil days.

What the hell has that got to do with what the poster has written.
Unnecessary irrelevant and antagonistic comment.

The Conservatives destabilised our ability to produce our own energy by getting rid of most of the green energy initiatives, leaving us depending on foreign powers for oil. Ed Milliband is getting this going again - but if we get a Reform government they're bound to cancel it and leave us massively exposed to any crisis in the Middle East again. Idiots.

Nuclear would be another option to explore. I strongly suspect we'll end up committing more strongly to this at some point.

How stupid do you have to be to privatise your entire infrastructure, leaving you at the mercy of foreign countries? Same with our food production/security.

Clear case of jam today, wipeout tomorrow.

Saying that, the planet would benefit from a drastic cull of humanity in general.

We wouldn't have lower energy bills because the oil is extracted by private companies. So they would sell the oil to "us" (UK consumers) at market rate. So when overall oil prices rise because of the Iran war their prices rise too.
Norway didn't privatise the oil industry in the 80s like Thatcher did. Instead they benefit from the ongoing profits and are able to invest in a sovereign wealth fund/spend it on public projects etc. Or they can use it to subsidise fuel for Norwegians or COL in times of crises.

Our water companies are also privatised. Hence the price gouging.

Thanks Thatcher!!!

@LiquoriceAllsorts2 .... and they also have HUGE expense accounts....

There are many who will be largely unaffected though, but the squeezed middle end up paying every time. The rich won't worry, the poorer will have supports, whereas the ordinary Joe/Josephine must work to barely exist now.

I know there is poverty around those who are unfortunate or ill etc. However, the net result is the same if not worse for low to middle income families. By the time they pay for food, fuel, council tax, water rates, commuting, mortgage/rent, childcare, and so on, they are rarely better off than those on benefits.

I'm not benefit bashing, just pointing out the reality.

WFH should be the absolute policy from now on for those who can. This idea of getting people back to the office is counter productive when you factor in the cost to the employee. OK if they want us back, let the firm/organisation pay for our commuting cost and extra childcare.

I'm ranting a bit, apologies!!

We took all the ingredients in and brought the results home.

Wasn't it under Blair's regime that we virtually stopped all new nuclear power stations being built??

Seems both major parties have screwed up.

@damelza

OK if they want us back, let the firm/organisation pay for our commuting cost and extra childcare.

A better idea would be for commuting costs and childcare costs to be an allowable expense against your wages so that at least you'd get tax relief and not be paying tax on your essential work related expenses.

The hysteria after Fukushima would have done for any nuclear programme - even had the UK had one.

In 200 years time, historians will detail the oil industry in the same we we look at the slave trade and ask "How on earth could humans have done this ?"

The cost of living crisis is driven by the high cost of housing. When I was born in 1953 around 10% of household expenditure was on housing & 40% on food. In 2026 it's around 40% of household expenditure on housing & 10% on food.

Free market economics over the last seventy years have driven down the price of food in the UK to about the lowest in the G20. There is no free market in housing as the supply is artificially constrained. If Labour really could facilitate the building of 300,000 houses a year that would start to address the cost of living crisis for everyone.

The highest number of houses ever built in a single year was around 400,000 in 1968 with around half from private builders & half from social housing. Private builders have never built more than about 225,000 because that's the number that gives them the highest price. We need to build council housing to make up the shortfall.

Between 1959 and 1988 approximately 7.5 million new homes were built whereas only 3.3 million new homes were built in the last 30 years. This suggests a total shortfall of at least 4.2 million homes.

How can you call it hysteria.
Would you like to live next door to it when that went tits up.

I’m taking it as an admittance that none of our energy is green after all (who would have thought 🥴), but I also refuse to believe that a three day war could have this much sway on our economy. All just an excuse for yet more price gouging.

Well despite "knowing professionally about oil" it's clear that there are businesses who want to invest, drill and produce in new fields in the North Sea.

Take Rosebank and Cambo for example.

The problem is that any new fields are mired in legal/planning challenges.

It does surprise me that any businesses do want to bother drilling new fields in the North Sea, but that's not because it's uneconomic or because there isn't any oil there. It's because the permissions and planning regime for it is currently a complete clusterfuck and their efforts are probably better focussed elsewhere.

Price gouging is definitely a thing but yeah a three-day war definitely can hit our economy hard given that the straits through which 20% of the world's oil passes are now closed. And this isn't going to last three days. It'll drag on - even though Trump will declare he's 'won' and take the troops back to America, leaving a far worse situation than when he started, until the next time he decides on a whim to bomb Iran again.

Some of our energy is green but only a tiny percent, because the Conservatives shut down all the green energy development schemes and left us massively exposed to any volatility in the world's oil markets.

Caused by a white man who will never have to worry about cost of living.

We once had to cook liver and onions. By the time I got the cooked dish home, my dad was able to bounce the liver on the ground outside! 😀

We are not a country that exists on a fucking geological fault line. There are fewer places on earth that are more stable than the British Isles.

I'd happily have a nice little SMR reactor in my garden, if permitted.

But then I did pay attention in science. All my life.

Until we find a real storage solution for energy, there will forever be a need for backup for those dark windless days.

And there is a good argument that if you have to have backup anyway, you may as well make it all your energy for starters.

Quelle surprise. Talk of slashing disability benefits. I will be applying for my child to have DLA and help increase our UC award because he is entitled it and I would quite like financial help to fix the damage caused because he has a disability.

Fully agree, op. The ME war and other crises see the corporate greed rocket. Every time.

me too - it is absolutely bonkers! Hoping it will calm down a bit soon before we need to refill - ever the optimist!!

We sold out our share under Thatcher. Doesn't matter about North Sea Oil, it will get sold at market price NOT reserved for UK customers at a discounted rate. Norway chose not to sell off it's oil fields but invest the proceeds in their economy hence they are have a Sovereign economy ie cash rich and they invested in hydro electric power