Energy Price Guarantee No Longer 2 years just 6 months at current level

TheBanker

wittynamegoeshere said:

Most people don't seem to understand the mess this country is in, and that the government is not able to decide what money it can or can't dish out. 

It seems one of those people is the Prime Minister, and another was the Chancellor until last week. Otherwise why announce all this stuff, without a plan to pay for it?

deano2099

It also depends on what the objective of the help is. Honestly I think the £400 and the cap were in place as much to help the economy along as to help individual people. Plenty of people could have afford the higher bills if they cut back significantly on leisure spending, but every in that position cutting back significantly at once means massive disruption and bankruptcy for businesses in the leisure industry.

I'm not saying we should be propping up the economy by doing that, but that's why the current "help" works how it does. Not because the government want to ensure they're being "fair". It's about more than ensuring people can afford power. Whether it should be or not is a question I won't get into!

Max68

wittyname  Agree with some of what you are saying but as EssexHebridean says in many cases people don't have the money to "keep some money back for the tough times".  Certainly, I don't have much sympathy with certain people.  I know someone who is off on a cruise next month, a tour of Canada and Alaska next year, and is still complaining about energy bills.  That tour next year would probably pay for their energy bills for a while so no sympathy from me!  Then at the middle end of the scale, not even at the lowest end, many have done as much as they can bar sit in a dark room wrapped in several blankets.  Possible predictions of how much it could cost in April is more than 50% of my wage and yet I have cut back by using only a quarter of the gas I used two years ago (if that) and half the electricity.

There is also a balancing act to be had.  You can't ask people to tighten their belts and spend to get the economy moving in the same sentence.  People suddenly panicking about hospitality, travel, entertainment industries for instance. You can't expect people to support non-essential industries if they need to tighten belts due to energy bills.  

Marmaduke123

Freebird53 said:

Sorry, i meant wholesale gas prices!

My Octopus app is showing 3.79p/kWh for yesterday. I'm on Tracker.

Elisheba

wittynamegoeshere said:

Most people don't seem to understand the mess this country is in, and that the government is not able to decide what money it can or can't dish out.  Fair or unfair doesn't come into it.  There isn't any money, we've been perpetually borrowing for years and our lenders decided we weren't worth lending to any more.  Basically the country was heading towards bankruptcy, and may still be.  Further cuts are much more likely than this being some blip before we get back to free money all round.

There won't be any return to the "normal" we've all become accustomed to, big government can't exist any more.

The future will be like it was before the snowflake years - people will have to earn money to feed themselves, if they don't then they're going to have big problems, and hard luck stories won't help.

Even a change of colour of the ruling party won't make much difference - if the other gang decide to lob money around then they'll get the same pasting from the markets as Kwasi/Truss did.

This probably is the return to normal, it was the last 20 years that were unusual.  There was a time before tax credits and the rest of the money for nothing culture, times when the entire country wasn't dependent on getting into ever deeper debt.

Fair or unfair, it's very unlikely there will ever again be anything like the subsidy we're getting for energy bills this winter.  Time to tighten belts and keep some money back for the tough times that are definitely coming.

I disagree with the majority of what you have said @wittynamegoeshere

A country borrowing money is not he problem, it is perfectly normal.  The immediate problem here is that what Truss etc. promised would have involved such massive borrowing that the markets (who absorb that debt in the form of government bonds or gilts) were not in a position to absorb it all at once, and didn't feel like it was a sound investment due to the lack of fiscal responsibility.  This in turn led to a situation where the interest rates on existing bonds was higher, making teh debt more expensive.  It looks tentatively as though yesterday's minibudget reversal has stabilised things slightly and the yields are decreasing again.

So lenders haven't decided we are not worth lending to any more  - they decided in that situation we were planning to borrow too much and it hadn't been budgeted for properly.  Going forwards, hopefully that will not be such a problem.  I agree governments cant 'lob money around' - as the current crisis has shown us they need to show fiscal responsibility in order to be able to borrow, 

And in regards to the so called 'snowflake years' which you seem to define as the last 20 years - have you forgotten the financial crash of 2008?  The massive government austerity in place until 2016 to pay for bailing out the banks?  As I work in the public sector, and we have had nothing but budget cuts and restructures since then I certainly haven't.  And while it was certainly easy to get into personal debt prior to 2008, since then it has been a lot harder to borrow money.  However, as capitalism relies on continuous spending and a throw away culture, so I doubt we will ever get back to a situation where debt is extremely unusual.

I do agree its unlikely we will ever get anything like the subsidy we are getting for energy this winter again, and that ideally people should be tightening their belts.

wittynamegoeshere

TheBanker said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

Most people don't seem to understand the mess this country is in, and that the government is not able to decide what money it can or can't dish out. 

It seems one of those people is the Prime Minister, and another was the Chancellor until last week. Otherwise why announce all this stuff, without a plan to pay for it?

Our Lizzy and chum were undoubtedly very foolish with their plans, but they probably only hastened what was going to happen anyway.  There was a good reason why many senior and experienced tories kept well out of the way of running to be PM.  Their best plan is probably to try and keep the plates spinning until the next election and hope that the public are gullible enough to think it's all labour's fault when everything falls down afterwards, then hopefully everyone will have forgotten all this by the next time and they can come back with their old responsible act.

We've been borrowing money just to keep living the lifestyle we couldn't afford, and borrowing more to pay the interest on the debts we already had.  If the nation was a household we'd definitely have got a firm telling off at one of Martin's roadshows.

I don't have the answers, I'm just pointing out that the govt probably can't make life comfortable for everyone, whether they want to or not.  People will have to do whatever they need to.  Downsizing, house-sharing or geting a lodger may be the answer.  Perhaps the days when a single person could run an entire house on one typical income are gone, this probably wasn't usually possible in the past anyway - perhaps we've all got used to an unsustainable way of living?

ariarnia

wittynamegoeshere said:

I don't have the answers, I'm just pointing out that the govt probably can't make life comfortable for everyone, whether they want to or not.  People will have to do whatever they need to.  Downsizing, house-sharing or geting a lodger may be the answer.  Perhaps the days when a single person could run an entire house on one typical income are gone, this probably wasn't usually possible in the past anyway - perhaps we've all got used to an unsustainable way of living?

again no problem with that in principle but where does all this cheap to run smaller housing come from? exactly the same problem as the bedroom tax to punish people for having a spare room when there aren't smaller houses to swap to or the smaller place would be unsuitable and more expensive. 

wittynamegoeshere

Elisheba said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

Most people don't seem to understand the mess this country is in, and that the government is not able to decide what money it can or can't dish out.  Fair or unfair doesn't come into it.  There isn't any money, we've been perpetually borrowing for years and our lenders decided we weren't worth lending to any more.  Basically the country was heading towards bankruptcy, and may still be.  Further cuts are much more likely than this being some blip before we get back to free money all round.

There won't be any return to the "normal" we've all become accustomed to, big government can't exist any more.

The future will be like it was before the snowflake years - people will have to earn money to feed themselves, if they don't then they're going to have big problems, and hard luck stories won't help.

Even a change of colour of the ruling party won't make much difference - if the other gang decide to lob money around then they'll get the same pasting from the markets as Kwasi/Truss did.

This probably is the return to normal, it was the last 20 years that were unusual.  There was a time before tax credits and the rest of the money for nothing culture, times when the entire country wasn't dependent on getting into ever deeper debt.

Fair or unfair, it's very unlikely there will ever again be anything like the subsidy we're getting for energy bills this winter.  Time to tighten belts and keep some money back for the tough times that are definitely coming.

And in regards to the so called 'snowflake years' which you seem to define as the last 20 years - have you forgotten the financial crash of 2008?  The massive government austerity in place until 2016 to pay for bailing out the banks?  As I work in the public sector, and we have had nothing but budget cuts and restructures since then I certainly haven't.  And while it was certainly easy to get into personal debt prior to 2008, since then it has been a lot harder to borrow money.  However, as capitalism relies on continuous spending and a throw away culture, so I doubt we will ever get back to a situation where debt is extremely unusual.

2008 should have been the beginning of a recession and a day of reckoning.  Instead, we just puffed up the economy with debt at low interest rates and have been papering over the cracks ever since.

What is happening now is what should have happened then, we've just been keeping the economy on artificial life support since then.

We used to make things and sell them, we had a concept called "Balance of Payments", where we tried to sell as much as we bought internationally.  Then we decided we could just lend ourselves money and import everything.  Obviously this wasn't a sustainable plan.

We produce next to nothing yet think we have a right to all have full bellies, flashy houses and fancy cars.  What exactly is our purpose in the world?  We need a new plan.

MattMattMattUK

wanoennogs said:

Typical uncaring tory government.

I would like the Conservatives out, I feel that there is little if anything that they get right and I hope that we don't have to wait until 2024 for a Starmer government, but I do not see this as "uncaring tory government", rather a practical approach to a difficult situation, albeit one partially of their own making. The only other country that has capped the price of all energy is France and they have the advantage of a huge proportion of nuclear generation, other countries have given handouts, or capped the price on a certain amount of energy, so that high users are encouraged to cut down. It seems that the current EPG will get everyone through the winter which is the high usage period, then something more targeted and designed to reduce consumption, either just for low earners, or an allowance of low cost energy before the full market rate kicks in, will be the method chosen going forward from April next year, both of those would be more sensible than the current system, the most sensible being the discount on a set amount of usage. 

wanoennogs said:

I work in mental health. We are going to see a massive increase in suicide, depression, and anxiety.

I am not sure we can do a huge amount about that. The economy is a mess, we are running a huge deficit with the biggest national debt since WWII, we cannot afford to throw money at badly targeted and implemented schemes, we need to spend it where it makes the most impact, that means a better designed scheme from April onwards makes the most sense, whether it ends up being better designed and works in practice does wait to be seen though.

wanoennogs said:

I hope we get a general election. 

We will not, mid to late 2023 is likely to be the earliest we get one, although if the polling numbers for the Conservatives do not improve it could well end up being January 2024.

wittynamegoeshere

ariarnia said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

I don't have the answers, I'm just pointing out that the govt probably can't make life comfortable for everyone, whether they want to or not.  People will have to do whatever they need to.  Downsizing, house-sharing or geting a lodger may be the answer.  Perhaps the days when a single person could run an entire house on one typical income are gone, this probably wasn't usually possible in the past anyway - perhaps we've all got used to an unsustainable way of living?

again no problem with that in principle but where does all this cheap to run smaller housing come from? exactly the same problem as the bedroom tax to punish people for having a spare room when there aren't smaller houses to swap to or the smaller place would be unsuitable and more expensive. 

As I said, sharing may be the answer.

After all, we've had large population growth over lots of years and nothing like the same growth in the number of homes.  So it seems logical that people who currently live alone may need to live with someone else.

I was a student back in the 1990s.  I lodged with two different lots of middle-aged people, this was all pretty normal back then.  I got a roof over my head, they got some extra money towards the bills.