The announcement came this morning and the whole country winced with pain. Cap on average annual energy bill from 1st Otcober will be £3549. That is a 80% increase on the summer annual cap of £1971. And that in turn was an upward leap from the January cap of £1277. It could even increase to more than £6000 in January. How can thousands on benefits and low incomes or state pension afford that? Although the figure was expected, yet millions are in agony, sick to the pit of their stomachs, as they consider their options. What cannot they afford? What to drop? Ibiza? Take away food? Netflix account? School uniform? Christmas presents? Visiting gran in the country? New shoes? A dilemma for all, but the well off.
Albina is already saying we won't use any heating this winter. At least until February when we leave on our world trip. This latest price rise just smashes the current welfare fabric in the UK into smithereens. People are anxious, are hurting. There will be mental health disasters and suicides, people staying at work to keep warm, small businesses, and especially pubs and restaurants, going bankrupt. There will be rent strikes and gas bill boycotts, and one young lady who advocated a bill payment strike on Sky TV was promptly blacked out as she spoke. It is as critical and momentous as the covid scare. So where are the parade of ministers and wealth experts (as opposed to health experts) to calm people down, to reassure and to promise that a proper relief package is on the way, as happened during the covid crisis? Nowhere. Still fighting over the succession for a hollow thorny crown. And that remorselessly stupid and non-empathic Thatcher clone, Liz Truss, mouthing inanities, cutting green taxes, feeding the inflation cycle with tax cuts, humiliating the Scots and insulting Macron, and glorying in being able to push the nuclear button, all to Tory cheers. The last the public heard from the Prime Minister was to hear the link between the war in Ukraine and the energy price hike. That will only put off support for Ukraine in this war. God help us!
At least, a normally timorous Labour Party could say it found a temporary imperfect solution with a 6 month cap freeze at the current annual cap of £1971 and a windfall tax to fund it. Nothing concrete though from the Tory government. Nothing from the normally garrulous Tiggerish clown pretending to be a PM. He's in Greece, or pretending to be the hero in gullible Kyiv, with his bare arse stuck firmly out against the British people. What a country! The infrastructure is crumbling. Raw sewage in streams and rivers, and flushed out to sea; cutbacks on climate change despite the heat wave; roads flooding during downpours; trains, legal aid and post offices on strike; millions on hospital waiting lists; massive shortages of care workers; parts of the country with no NHS dentists; while 18% inflation lurks around the corner early next year. Still have 5 months to go before we can get away from it all, but having to pay all those massive spring bills will haave to come first.
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