This is going to be so true for so many, so soon:
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Took a meter reading as the prices increase tomorrow, and I expect our usage will be lower in the next few months than the last few months (snow today excepted). No doubt it will be even more painful come next autumn.
Andrew
The unfortunate thing about the gas and electricity price increases is that even if you try to cut back and save, the energy companies are massively increasing the daily standing charge, mainly for electricity at the moment. I will make a prediction, the next price rise is around October this year, that has already been announced. When that hits the energy companies will probably put the big increase on the Gas standing charge – just in time for winter.
Because of the standing charges on top of the unit price going up it is difficult to save anything. I’m currently using little to no gas at all, I’ve even turned the boiler off and only put it on when I need some hot water. I’m not saving anything though because of the standing charge, or standing con as it should be called.
Now, wouldn’t it make sense to have some kind of pricing policy that actually encouraged us to save energy? No chance under the Tories in their nice big homes, no doubt getting a nice dividend from their energy company investments.
Not sure if the previous comment got through so trying again:
I sympathise, MarP, I really do. Pulling on the thermals and an extra jumper only goes so far. And people with prepay meters face the highest charges.
As I understand it, the jump in the electricity standing charge arises from the costs incurred in dealing with customers of the failed electricity sellers (I don’t want to say suppliers, because they are just middlemen). If no more fail in the next 6 to 12 months, perhaps it can go down again? But I’ll believe that when I see it.
For those of us on prepay the combined rise is just over 65%. We were already charged a higher price because ‘prepay costs more to administer’, but those admin costs have NOT risen.
I have been fortunate enough to be able to use my small ’emergency cash stash’ (appliance needing replacement, pet needing vet), i have to hope that sse honours the fact of buying power at the prerise price – as they would honour a fixed rate contract. According to Martin Lewis they may not. Luckily i do not have ‘smart’ meters – turned ’em down flat several times.
Good luck
The odds are being stacked against you wholly unfairly
Thanks Richard. It’s been very clear throughout the tory ‘reign’. They really do seem to want those of us at the bottom of the soc-ec heap destitute and/or dead. Core aim of their policy design imo. Tory extremists running the show.
We are rightly I think deluged with stories of those at the bottom of the income ladder and their plight in the cost of living crisis.
But the issue I’m having problems with is what should I feel?
I am told that I should feel ‘privileged’, ‘lucky’ , ‘fortunate’ etc., in comparison yet I too as a public sector worker have seen the value of my labour reduced since 2010 and have had to tighten my belt. I drive around in a 14 year old Mondeo; we make most of our own food to save money; we hardly eat out and have a one week family holiday per year. Our income is now needed to get two kids through university; we have a house to maintain.
Yes – there are many who will not even get that – yes I know?!!
Yet I see these poorer people interviewed and somehow I’m supposed to feel what? Guilty? Or am I supposed to see them as a drain on my taxes as the Tories intended? No way BTW!
As far as I’m concerned I do not feel guilty, I do not feel privileged. I feel lucky and fortunate to have two healthy kids who were born into this world – the only two things I have those feelings for. Because that can be lottery, a big step into the unknown.
But the rest I’ve worked bloody hard for all these years – I’ve even swallowed the self-improvement pill and studied during work to further my career and employment prospects; paid my taxes and even volunteer in my community every year to raise money. I keep myself reasonably healthy . My partner does the same. I’ve even had low paid jobs in the past too as we all have had at some time.
We have dim and cruel politicians making these things happen and yet I’m expected to feel bad because I’m not as badly affected as someone else? I’m expected to carry the guilt for THEIR indifference?
What is the aim of that? What is the result? To make me self-conscious of what I have to the point where I can be made to feel that I should accept less to assuage my guilt?
And yet still I’m supposed to feel guilty about something? What exactly?
Instead of feeling guilty what I really feel is rage – for me, my children, as much as those who have much less than me. It doesn’t need to be like this at all.
The world seems to have gone quite mad; it seems to delight in hurting people and dividing us by making us starkly different to each other socio-economically, thus setting us up to be further divided by other identities. To be exploited.
I just feel that we are being manipulated as much as informed; that crisis is being normalised and that the reason why these people are poorer is because we are less poor in comparison. That the suggestion is ‘You be happy with your lot because you could be like these people next’.
I don’t see those at the bottom as there by their own choice; I don’t blame them for it or cast judgement on them not at all.
But whose fault is it?
As I said – it’s hard to know what to feel sometimes. How to react.
Sorry to sound off and no doubt some will see me as a privileged jerk but I can’t help but feel that all that is being sowed here is division and confusion and I’m not going to fall for it.
Or have I?
Division is quite emphatically the aim
Why do you think you are ‘supposed’ to feel guilty? I absolutely agree you should feel rage. Rage on behalf of those whose suffering, in this country, is about to increase. And rage on your own behalf thatall that you have achieved has resulted in comparatively little (if your coparator is with those who have done nothing but be born to the right parents.
But don’t get sucked into the blame game that is intended to divide those who ‘worked hard all their lives’ and those ‘layabout scroungers who have never lifted a finger’.
Incidentally has everyone noticed how pensioners have always ‘worked hard all their lives’, despite the fact that those who have never been able to work (for absolutely valid reasons) also receive the full state pension.
Honestly Cyndy, I just don’t know what to think anymore sometimes and that’s the truth.
I am surrounded by people telling me to count my blessings instead of considering how we got into this situation in the first place.
We are told to suffer over the little that we have in comparison to others.
But not ask too many questions and accept the status quo.
It’s anti-intellectual and anti-Enlightenment. It’s slavery for all. It’s self defeating too and I can’t stand that.
I don’t feel guilt, just a deep-seated and burning anger at the sheer bloody arrogance of a party who seems to think that this country is theirs to do with what they will and be damned to the consequences. A party who forgets that the majority in this country don’t vote for them, not even a majority of those who vote! A party which daily, demeans politics and democracy itself and with its dishonesty and corruption demeans ideas of trust, honesty and integrity.
My particular anger however is directed at those who continue to support the Tories in government despite the accumulating evidence that they have nothing to offer this country but division, impoverishment and an accelerated decline into irrelevance. I confess that those friends who I know continue to support and inflict this wretched party on the rest of us are becoming acquaintances because there is far more to participating in politics than exercising the right to vote!
You are right to feel aggrieved. Those struggling at the bottom also rightly feel aggrieved.
I agree with Richard division is the tactic.
A key goal is misdirection :-
Whilst ordinary folk are busy aiming blows at each other, the focus is taken off the real transgressors and regressive dysfunctional policies.
I would like to see those energies harnessed and redirected back at source through coordinated action.
The gov is deliberately exacerbating problems for those who don’t have significant resources, and deliberately inflaming division by vilifying 1) public sector workers 2) disabled 3) low earners 4) civil servants etc etc
I would add that I personally try to live a life of gratitude and regardless of circumstances that can be therapeutic.
It can be a difficult line to hold, knowing ones struggles are largely avoidable and manufactured.
Again, doubling down on holding those who are actually responsible to account, is IMHO the progressive way forward.
[PS .. Line above prompts me.. have you engaged with Double Down Network aka DDN? Could be a great platform to extend your reach]
I have not been in touch with them
The problem is being finite….
Fuel hike day tomorrow.
Get your meter reading in right away if you haven’t already done so. It may avoid you having to pay the higher rate on fuel you’ve already used. (As I understand it).
This is a following extraction from an article by Abbey Heffer which i find enlightening especially after reading PSR ‘s post above.
” Individualism and the Conservative tendency to tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps converge in the following comments — which represent just a few of the thousands expressing similar viewpoints across my comment sections.
The basic argument seems to be that Am/Cons aren’t willing to, in their view, pay for the lives of those who do less work than they do.
Now, this is confusing on many levels, not least because this dynamic — the hard working having to pay for the lives of the lazy — is precisely how capitalism works.
This arrangement is enshrined in the economic setup of capitalism — hard working people labouring in exchange for wages or salaries, while the capitalist classes and the owners of businesses engage in the less physically and temporary demanding work of watching and managing said working people as they labour.
The arrangement has embedded itself in “capitalist” cultures, too. Have you ever found it odd that colleagues and competitors seem to engage in perpetual oneupmanship over who works the hardest, longest hours? Or that we define success by how busy we are and shame those who take a break from the cult of overwork? Why do we fetishise being constantly caffeinated? Why do we find it so damn difficult to say no, actually, I don’t want more money; I want more time ? ”
i have recently reduced my hours at work , as i move into my final couple of chapters of life but it seems that Capitalism has decided to bleed us all dry nevertheless and even make this a fruitless experience before i pop my clogs !
i am always angry at Capitalism , not individual people in General.
Well, thank you to those so far who have answered my howl!
I feel that I have triangulated my position somewhat I can see matters much more clearly and that is reassuring.
The Tories are leaving us to look after ourselves whilst they rob the country blind.
That is no basis to be in power at all.
Some more wisdom from Hannah Arendt:
“Rage is by no means an automatic reaction to misery and suffering as such; no one reacts with rage to an incurable disease or to an earthquake or, for that matter, to social conditions that seem to be unchangeable. Only where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise.”
“It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.”
The original is superior, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za0SCF5zksg