To be so cross at the government

[Hillary17]

I honestly have no idea what we’re going to do next year and it’s now keeping me up at night worrying about our financial situation. We’ve been sensible and cut back as much as possible, got rid of all the luxuries people on here suggest to cut back on but there’s still a massive hole forming in our finances. Ours savings have been wiped by buying our first home and general cost of living over the last six months. We saved for ten years to buy our first home together, worked incredibly hard and sacrificed. It’s hardly a mansion either, your bog standard first house! Currently paying around £750 a month on the mortgage. We fixed for two years due to our jobs being a bit in flux and not sure if we’d need to move - this runs out next year and have just been quoted £1150 for our new price. How can this even be possible?! Where do the banks and government think people are going to find this extra money? We can’t even sell up and rent because there’s a huge crisis in the rental market near us and sales are bombing; we’re absolutely trapped here for god knows how long. We’re not extravagant, just comfortable middle earners who wants a normal life. I know there’s people worse off than us (I’m terrified for them because I can’t even explain the rise in our food shop or household bills) but I’m genuinely starting to think nobody cares about the middle income families. We work really hard, earn a decent amount but still won’t be able to afford to put the heating on this winter. I know I’m going to get bashed for this but I’d expect to at least be able to afford a bloody takeaway on a weekend without being in a state of panic. How is that even a situation in 2022?! I’m just so furious with the government honestly. No point to this post other than to say god help everyone who is a low income earner because if things in the middle are this bleak I dread to think.

This is the most finically incompetent government for the past 25 years.

It will only get worse! They want use to loss our houses… so their rich friends can buy them … becoming bigger landlord barons

Spot on @1dayatatime

No I'm in the north so had no idea about that, it's historically been affordable here!

@Ineverwannabelikeyou

The average salary to average house price in London has increased from around 3.5 in the early 80's to 11 times average salary today.

The be fair politicians don't get elected if they want to actually fix problems such as the banking crisis- they get elected by (as you correctly point out) by kicking the can down the road, except we are starting to run out of road.

We need a general election and get Labour in. However, doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon. We were lucky as our mortgage deal ended at the beginning of the year and we fixed for 2 years on a low interest rate, but it is ridiculous especially when we're all working our fingers to the bone for nothing.

I'm angry too. The decision by the Tories to not invest from 2010 has damaged every system and service, UK wages have flatlined whereas stronger European countries like Germany have invested and seen wages go up. Now we are going to have to cut we have already got nothing left - education, NHS, social care, police, youth services, courts - everything is down to the bare minimum anyway. I am worried about what is coming next.

COVID did not help but every country had that, so that is a weak excuse from the government - UK is struggling more than other similar countries.

Brexit is obviously an extra economic weight to carry.

@luckylavender

"I have to disagree with you about furlough payments. This is not about the rights or wrongs of lockdowns but realistically employees had no choice other than to resign and have no money. They couldn't say I'm coming to work anyway when businesses were closed."

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Actually it is still about choices. There was a choice to lockdown or not. Indeed initially the Government was looking at herd immunity and then quickly backtracked as this was projected to cause many more deaths. So there was a choice between a lockdown and the subsequent economic pain we are now in or no lockdown (herd immunity) and more forecasted Covid deaths.

Once the decision to go for lockdown was made then whether to pay for furlough or not and at what percentage was another choice. Of course if it was not paid or at much less than 80% then many workers (voters) would either have pushed for the lockdown to be lifted or simply ignored (where possible) and gone back to work or faced real difficulty.

Incidentally a fall in GDP (or recessions) does lead to a higher than average death rates and sadly even more so on infant mortality.

Whilst I would fully support a general election and a Labour Government, sadly I don't think that it would make much difference.

The deep damage has already been done and Labour would still have to deal with inflation, a £2.4 trillion debt and a massive recession.

In essence the problem started back with the banking crisis of 2008.

Most developed countries chose to fix the banking crisis and prop up their economies by borrowing large amounts of money and cut interest rates. In order to make sure there were still institutions keen on lending money to the Government or that the cost of such lending didn't go up the central Banks went into the market to buy back this debt with printed money (Quantative Easing or QE)

The problem with printing money is that is causes inflation so more recently the central banks were looking to stop QE and raise interest rates but ever so carefully so as not to spook the markets.

Then in comes Liz Truss with a headline grabbing massive tax cutting and spending splurge paid for with more yet debt that massively spooks the market and fucks everything up.

It's just a perfect storm of things all coming together though isn't it ? Covid and the enormous amounts spent furloughing people. Our whole office was furloughed needlessly because it was a job that could easily be done from home and was vital at a time when vulnerable needed more help. But CEO ( charity ) thought it would save them money so they were all furloughed. Now covid has to be paid for, hospital wait lists have to be brought down or there will be more needless deaths. There's just huge amounts of debt that need paying for and no easy answers. I detest this government but apart from the Liz truss fiasco I'm not sure what others would have done differently.

Come the GE, people will vote accordingly as is their democratic right 👍

Post GE, the next Government will then spend the early years in power blaming the previous incumbents 😳

People wonder why I don’t trust politicians of any colour to get things right 🤨

I despise the tories, and every arsehole who voted for them. This is their fault, and I won’t forgive them, or the brexit idiots.

Yep, lots of people don't understand stuff like this though and so don't factor it in. It is a shit situation not sure of exactly what the government can do though, economies are screwed across the globe.

@1dayatatime - more broadly we did what most other Nations did when faced with a nouvel virus. No one knew what would happen. And herd immunity has been proved to be a non starter as people can catch COVID more than once. But my original post was about furlough. No one could refuse to accept being furloughed, it really wasn't possible. What we should criticise the government for is the billions they wasted on Track and Trace, the VIP lane PPE disaster & the fraudulent COVID loans.

You have my sympathy but the government did not invent Covid nor did it invade Ukraine.

@OhSunnyMorning

"You have my sympathy but the government did not invent Covid nor did it invade Ukraine"

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Very true - but public opinion, voters and the Government did make a choice on how to react to Covid and how to react to Russia invading Ukraine.

Really, I just wanted to moan about the bloody insanity of it all and how absolutely miserable my life feels these days. Honestly I know this is a perfect storm of things but it doesn’t make the day to day any easier to manage. We were impacted by covid too - our savings were hammered. I was furloughed (and grateful for it) but husband was made redundant with a shoddy pay off. We were renting at the time and those payments didn’t stop or decrease; the fact we still even had enough money to buy the house was a miracle. We cut everything back for those two years to cling onto the security of owning our own home.

I’m not completely naive; we knew our mortgage rate may increase but did we expect it to be over 4x higher, petrol to go through the roof, the food shop increase by around 30% or not be able to put the bloody heating on? No we didn’t and we’d have made different choices. Can we still afford to pay the mortgage and physical survive? Yes. My point is, I’m an above average earner and so is my husband. On paper we should be doing amazing. I’ve got a decent job, working hard, I did all the things society tells me to do and what for? So I can scrimp and cut back just to survive the winter.

As I said, we will be okay and will cope. I grew up dirt poor, hungry and cold so I know people will be much worse of than we will be. We used to live abroad and honestly coming home feels like the worst mistake of my life.

Agree. So many are more stressed dealing with this. 7 million on nhs waiting lists causing stress to them and their families. I walked around Tesco this evening looking for something slightly interesting but cheap for lunch tomorrow for me and the kids, failed. Having to say No more and more when dc ask for things and they don't ask for much. Tories have destroyed this country.

GBP wouldn't have tanked so badly therefore imported goods such as fuel and food priced in USD would be cheaper than they are and inflation would be lower than it is. Interest rate rises could therefore be less aggressive as less need to prop up GBP.

We also wouldn't have had to absorb losses of £40bn per annum due to deliberately erecting trade barriers so there would be fewer cuts to public services and tax rises needed.

All economic effects of Brexit that were clearly set out as highly likely before the referendum.

But a mortgage on very, very low interest rate is only going one way. I don't understand why banks have lent to people if they can't afford it when rates rise.

They did stress tests, to quite a high level. But nobody factored in this level of external pressures and economic mismanagement that combined would - in the space of a year or two - lead to people also facing 10-20% real terms paycuts, alongside tripling of energy bills, 25% increase in food prices, etc. It is a perfect storm and the stress tests use "reasonavly likely scenarios". Unfortunately we have had globally very unfortunate scenarios compounded by Brexit and a useless Government who have made things worse therefore outcomes are in some cases outside stress test levels. If stress tests were set based on these extremities and all other applications declined then very few mortgages would have been approved at all.

No stress test could have predicted Liz Truss as PM and her mini budget that the OBR didn't get to sanity-check. Without the BoE pumping billions in, all pension funds would have been wiped out! Our media have failed us too.

The media have a lot to answer for in all of this in my opinion.

THIS. So much this.

If I have to listening to one more lockdown lover whinging on that printing money so they could sit at home and bake banana bread with their fam a lam to "make memories" has fucked us all over I'm going to scream.

Usually these are the same people who so patronisingly told me that I shouldn't be finding lockdown difficult (in a flat by myself, working 12-15 hour days) while they chilled in their gardens.

It's so hard to keep the I fucking told you so in. And it's getting harder.