Cost of Living - How are you handling it?

Stugene wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Buffalo wrote:Gordon Brown - incredibly - has been more credible opposition than Kier Starmer that last couple of days. Mick Lynch is the opposition, Ed Davey is the opposition. Starmer’s a watered down Tory who is hilariously unelectable.

twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1557627367421607941

Labour about to sink in the polls if they consider Gordon Brown too radical.

This really pisses me off with political plans for running an economy borrow the money (government can get it cheap - even cheaper when interest rates were 0% but we missed our decade long chance on that now), then buy gooseberry fool with that borrowed money and then we the taxpayer save over time and own a strawberry floating asset at the end of it. rinse and repeat with rail, power, libraries, nhs, schools etc

This guy just wants to give the money we would spend on the asset to someone else for a short term prop up and gaslight us in the process. Fiscally responsible indeed.

Doing that would reduce the financial burden on the poor and make them less reliant on the state - thus taking away a valuable propaganda angle for the hard-right libertarians in power. Selling off those assets and building the foundations of oligarchy are far more important right now.

England could have voted for Labour at any election since 2010 to prevent this, but here we are.

Renationalisation wouldn’t cost anything if they banned the cap increase and told the energy sector to tank the price increase. These companies would eventually go out of business making it cost the taxpayer £0 to buy up the shares.

BID0 wrote:

Sunak pledges £10bn to help vulnerable Tunbridge Wells with soaring energy bills
Rishi Sunak has said he would find up to £10bn to help people facing rising energy bills, as a minister backing his Conservative leadership rival indicated that direct support for the hard-pressed would be announced “in a considered way”.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/s ... r-AA10Adzu

Carlos wrote:

Stugene wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Buffalo wrote:Gordon Brown - incredibly - has been more credible opposition than Kier Starmer that last couple of days. Mick Lynch is the opposition, Ed Davey is the opposition. Starmer’s a watered down Tory who is hilariously unelectable.

twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1557627367421607941

Labour about to sink in the polls if they consider Gordon Brown too radical.

This really pisses me off with political plans for running an economy borrow the money (government can get it cheap - even cheaper when interest rates were 0% but we missed our decade long chance on that now), then buy gooseberry fool with that borrowed money and then we the taxpayer save over time and own a strawberry floating asset at the end of it. rinse and repeat with rail, power, libraries, nhs, schools etc

This guy just wants to give the money we would spend on the asset to someone else for a short term prop up and gaslight us in the process. Fiscally responsible indeed.

Doing that would reduce the financial burden on the poor and make them less reliant on the state - thus taking away a valuable propaganda angle for the hard-right libertarians in power. Selling off those assets and building the foundations of oligarchy are far more important right now.

England could have voted for Labour at any election since 2010 to prevent this, but here we are.

Renationalisation wouldn’t cost anything if they banned the cap increase and told the energy sector to tank the price increase. These companies would eventually go out of business making it cost the taxpayer £0 to buy up the shares.

I think you should re-read what you just posted and have a think about that scenario.

Carlos wrote:

Stugene wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

Buffalo wrote:Gordon Brown - incredibly - has been more credible opposition than Kier Starmer that last couple of days. Mick Lynch is the opposition, Ed Davey is the opposition. Starmer’s a watered down Tory who is hilariously unelectable.

twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1557627367421607941

Labour about to sink in the polls if they consider Gordon Brown too radical.

This really pisses me off with political plans for running an economy borrow the money (government can get it cheap - even cheaper when interest rates were 0% but we missed our decade long chance on that now), then buy gooseberry fool with that borrowed money and then we the taxpayer save over time and own a strawberry floating asset at the end of it. rinse and repeat with rail, power, libraries, nhs, schools etc

This guy just wants to give the money we would spend on the asset to someone else for a short term prop up and gaslight us in the process. Fiscally responsible indeed.

Doing that would reduce the financial burden on the poor and make them less reliant on the state - thus taking away a valuable propaganda angle for the hard-right libertarians in power. Selling off those assets and building the foundations of oligarchy are far more important right now.

England could have voted for Labour at any election since 2010 to prevent this, but here we are.

Renationalisation wouldn’t cost anything if they banned the cap increase and told the energy sector to tank the price increase. These companies would eventually go out of business making it cost the taxpayer £0 to buy up the shares.

Without being self sufficient in production though, it isn't going to help.

It's been a failure of government for decades. We need to actually start investing in wind, solar and tidal energy to supply most of our needs.

Of course, that's costly and is of no immediate benefit, so the government will do strawberry float all.

Quite a significant amount of our energy does come from wind, there has been a lot of investment over the last decade or so, but we definitely should be pushing further and faster than we are

I think about 25% of the total UK energy comes from Renewables at the moment, 50% is fossil fuels (Almost all of it gas) and the remaining 25% is stuff like Nuclear.

We've moved forward to an extent in terms of expanding our renewable production, but overall we have gone backwards in terms of self sufficiency - 20 years ago I think we were if anything a net exporter of energy

Jenuall wrote:We've moved forward to an extent in terms of expanding our renewable production, but overall we have gone backwards in terms of self sufficiency - 20 years ago I think we were if anything a net exporter of energy

It's weird. Sometimes at the moment we're having to import energy, then a week later we're exporting it to Europe.

Labour's first intervention on the cost of living crisis is to pledge to outlaw the premium those on prepayment meters have to pay compared to those on credit meters, calling the practice outrageous. That's good!

What's less good is that they'll reimburse the difference for suppliers who do this. Plus it would ultimately save about £100 a year for each customer affected, which will simply not touch the sides of a £5,000 annual energy bill.

Cuttooth wrote:Labour's first intervention on the cost of living crisis is to pledge to outlaw the premium those on prepayment meters have to pay compared to those on credit meters, calling the practice outrageous. That's good!

What's less good is that they'll reimburse the difference for suppliers who do this. Plus it would ultimately save about £100 a year for each customer affected, which will simply not touch the sides of a £5,000 annual energy bill.

Why the strawberry float are they reimbursing the difference to the suppliers? Are they worried that suppliers will then just try to pass on that cost to everyone somehow? They're already charging the max they can under the price cap so they wouldn't even be able to do that. Just pledge to make it illegal to charge people on prepayment meters a premium and leave it at that.

Surely all this will encourage is suppliers to increase the premium so that they get more money from the government out of it.

Lagamorph wrote:I think about 25% of the total UK energy comes from Renewables at the moment, 50% is fossil fuels (Almost all of it gas) and the remaining 25% is stuff like Nuclear.

https://grid.iamkate.com/

This site is great for showing the live breakdown of what energy sources are being used.

The Times had an article about the break even costs of installing Solar panels, it can be less than 5 years now due to how expensive energy has got when previously it was about 3x as many years.

We're doing a lot of LNG exporting to Europe atm partly because we've got the required infrastructure to transfer LNG (Spain and Portugal have the terminals but their pipe work doesn't connect to the rest of Europe) and partly because a lot of the French nuclear power stations are down for maintenance or not at full capacity (their designs require water cooling and the drought in France is particularly severe).

The progress on renewable energy, particularly the falling costs of wind turbines and increased efficiency from better / bigger designs has been very impressive, the main downside is that battery technology hasn't kept pace and the best kind of storage requires favourable geography (basically pushing water up a hill).

Grumpy David wrote:

Lagamorph wrote:I think about 25% of the total UK energy comes from Renewables at the moment, 50% is fossil fuels (Almost all of it gas) and the remaining 25% is stuff like Nuclear.

https://grid.iamkate.com/

This site is great for showing the live breakdown of what energy sources are being used.

The Times had an article about the break even costs of installing Solar panels, it can be less than 5 years now due to how expensive energy has got when previously it was about 3x as many years.

We're doing a lot of LNG exporting to Europe atm partly because we've got the required infrastructure to transfer LNG (Spain and Portugal have the terminals but their pipe work doesn't connect to the rest of Europe) and partly because a lot of the French nuclear power stations are down for maintenance or not at full capacity (their designs require water cooling and the drought in France is particularly severe).

The progress on renewable energy, particularly the falling costs of wind turbines and increased efficiency from better / bigger designs has been very impressive, the main downside is that battery technology hasn't kept pace and the best kind of storage requires favourable geography (basically pushing water up a hill).

Pushing water up hills works pretty well. Do it at night when there is surplus nuclear derived electricity and release it during the day to drive turbines to create more energy. I thought Wind accounted for about 25% of the electricity in the UK at the moment, but then a significant amount of that would be off-grid.

Just done some calculations on energy costs over the next few increases.

Currently paying £139.06
October - £251.69
January - £299.52
April - £314.51

Literally writing it down makes it seem a lot more real and more scary.

This is literally horrific.

poshrule_uk wrote:Just done some calculations on energy costs over the next few increases...
...Literally writing it down makes it seem a lot more real and more scary...

I'm not even checking my electric account at the moment... I don't wanna know the amount I'm in debt for nor what the new monthly charge is gonna be . Just sticking my head in the sand .

I’m currently paying Sainsbury’s £92 a month for gas and electric, and I’m £370 in debit. They said in my latest statement that being in debit is “nothing to worry about” but how much is too much I don’t know.

My account is £291 in credit and I'm building a buffer but it feels like that will go in a month!!!

We've still got £400 credit from previous supplier before they went under so hopefully will cover us a bit.

Boss told me I'm getting a small pay rise too. Every little will help especially with baby turning up in a few months.

BBC News - Energy bills: Current support is not enough, says Boris Johnson

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62516772

You are still prime minister you cretin, do something about it

Curls wrote:Are there battery packs available that you can charge that take normal plugs? Not just little USB batteries, but bigger proper ones so i could plug in say a monitor or a telly?

We sell massive truck jump packs at work, they come on wheels like a grannies shopping bag.
But they have mains and USB outs on them, so theoretically you could use it for anything.

Costs about £1100 for the smallest one though, and I'm not sure of Costa will let you charge it in their cafe during the day

LewisD wrote:

Curls wrote:Are there battery packs available that you can charge that take normal plugs? Not just little USB batteries, but bigger proper ones so i could plug in say a monitor or a telly?

We sell massive truck jump packs at work, they come on wheels like a grannies shopping bag.
But they have mains and USB outs on them, so theoretically you could use it for anything.

Costs about £1100 for the smallest one though, and I'm not sure of Costa will let you charge it in their cafe during the day

Maybe a bit of goldilockes going on here, that sounds too big, USB one too small. We need one that's justtttttt right.