What extra support measures or regulations do you expect the government to bring in this winter?

Max68

Then there are those of us who earn between 14,000-16,000!! 

fallen121

What concerns me about Liz Truss is that if she wins the Tory leadership election, she proposes to use taxation to "put more money into people's pockets". This is all very well for people living in England and Wales, but with the exception of reversing the National Insurance hike, benefits the people of Scotland not a whit.

Now I expect that most of you are English and don't give a stuff about the Scots and Liz herself hasn't made any secret of her dislike of Nicola Sturgeon. But the fact is, using a Cost of Living Crisis to deepen divisions between England and Scotland and leaving millions of Scots (who pay higher utility bills anyway because our weather is so horrendous) worse off than their English counterparts because of an accident of geography is about as fair minded as giving free school meals to kids on the basis of skin colour.

Contrary to what many of you may think, Nicola Sturgeon is loathed by many Scots and a lot of us actually WANT to remain in the Union. We are very aware that our economy is being propped up by Westminster and unlike our illustrious leader, are mostly grateful for this. Yes, there will be some Scots in this forum who are ardent SNP supporters and will shout me down for daring to suggest that we aren't all rabidly keen for independence. But the fact of the matter is the SNP can't balance the books now, have zero capability to fund an independent welfare state and health system and don't seem to recognise that we don't meet ANY of the criteria for joining the EU. We are basically stuffed, the English hate us and want us to break off so they don't have to keep paying for us anymore and we don't have enough taxpayers available to fund ANYTHING from PAYE receipts.

So to know that Liz is just going to compound the issue by giving the English and Welsh tax breaks to help with utility and food bills whilst we stand on the sidelines and watch whilst Nicola gleefully reminds us that this is just proof of how the evil politicians in Westminster don't care about us is no comfort at all. Because Nicola and the SNP aren't going to help us, either!

Evan3020

The Scottish people get more per head of government spending than the English and devolution means your first minister decides what it is spent on.
Free university education is one of the things the extra money goes on that the English dont get.

fallen121

Evan3020 said:

The Scottish people get more per head of government spending than the English and devolution means your first minister decides what it is spent on.
Free university education is one of the things the extra money goes on that the English dont get.

I don't disagree with ANY of this. And to know that the SNP receive all this money and STILL can't balance the books is hard to stomach. There's massive corruption, very little accountability and the people who SHOULD benefit from this largesse invariably don't.

What gets me about the "free" university education is that it's actually almost impossible for young Scots with perfect A grades to get into a decent Scottish University because most Scottish Universities don't WANT the Scottish students because they only receive £1,820 per annum per student from the SNP. They would much rather have an English student who will pay £9,250 in fees or an American who pays £15,000 - £26,000. The £475 a month loan which is the maximum Scottish students get if their parents earn over 34k combined PRE TAX HOUSEHOLD income (and that includes many teachers, nurses, binmen - just ordinary people in regular jobs) doesn't even cover the cost of accommodation for most students. And the loan is capped at that level. You can't just borrow more. My daughter is at Glasgow and her rent alone is £850 a month. That's before food, books and clothing. The Bank of Mum and Dad are expected to fund the rest. So it's not really "free".

The_Green_Hornet

Mstty said:

So some cold hard numbers.

£31,400 is the average family household take home pay after regular tax deductions.

Fuel poverty is judged to be at 10% of take home pay.

If the news about £4200 price cap in Jan and £4400 in April come to fruition that's 14% of take home pay on the average energy use 12000kwh gas 2900kwh electricity.

That's is a crippling amount given rises in interest rates, car fuel and food shopping to name a few.

The 10% of take home pay figure is a nonsense.

The official definition uses the the Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) and the Low Income High Costs (LIHC) indicators which can be found in the Fuel poverty statistics methodology handbooks.

Mstty

I don't think it's nonsense at all. 

I quite like it as an easy measure across the board plus it is much easier than the normal calculations for the wider public to consume and acknowledge.

MattMattMattUK

The issue with the 10% of net income becomes a problem because it completely ignores how some people use energy. Some people are incredibly wasteful, that can push them into "fuel poverty", but the reality is that they are choosing to use huge amounts of energy whilst earning a perfectly reasonable income. Others will not meet the definition of fuel poverty despite low incomes because they use little energy whilst spending most of winter shivering and showering only a few times a week to save money. 

tghe-retford

Extra support measures for energy companies and the Police - statutory instruments to fast-track the installation of smart meters or to set them to pre-payment mode for non-payers and debtors as well as bans on public gatherings to prevent civil unrest and protest as the Government does not want to repeat what happened with the Poll Tax.

tghe-retford

I also suspect that if fracking is allowed to commence, measures will be quickly brought in to compulsory purchase or even seize land and private property where gas deposits have been identified.

brewerdave

tghe-retford said:

Extra support measures for energy companies and the Police - statutory instruments to fast-track the installation of smart meters or to set them to pre-payment mode for non-payers and debtors as well as bans on public gatherings to prevent civil unrest and protest as the Government does not want to repeat what happened with the Poll Tax.

tghe-retford said:

I also suspect that if fracking is allowed to commence, measures will be quickly brought in to compulsory purchase or even seize land and private property where gas deposits have been identified.

...And this is after Putin has taken over ?? The Tories are already worried enuf about their fate in ~ 2 years time at the General Election. Your measures would result in the largest Labour majority in history !