101–110 of 259 posts
6K seems reasonable for a family's annual energy bill. Frankly, it seems on the lower end for such a climate. What's really absurd in the UK is property prices. You'd be able to afford all the energy you desire if you weren't paying 10x what it should cost for housing.
Three things: 1 Renewables: The solution exists already but no gov't (in particular the UK) is implementing it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy 2 The UK gov't rather is arresting people demonstrating for housing insulation. This is probably the dumbest thing a gov't can do, since insulation is a "bipartisan" issue and everybody would profit from it. 3 On top of this the UK is on the verge of p…
I live in the north of England where temperature varies from 38F in Jan to 57F in August. It's pretty chilly for me, so I tend to spend a considerable amount of gas throughout the year. I'm renting a house, so deep work like insulation gets complicated. My point is that even with a comfortable salary, I will feel ~£600/month in energy. I can only fear for people that earn much less than me.
With two candidates for the next UK PM having polar opposite views on how to fix the economy, who do you think is more correct in their proposal: Sunak or Truss?
Care to explain the opposite views? They both come from the same party so presumably have lot in common as opposed to Labor and LibDems.
Sunak thinks taxing businesses and the well off so that we can fund support to the less well off is the right approach.
Labour and Lib Dems are further left in that they want to cut off any growth in electricity prices and maybe nationalise electricity firms.
Inflation aside, does anyone think that they’ve really screwed with society with the lockdowns, the money printing, the vaccine mandates, and the work from home mandates? Everything feels very broken. Nobody wants to work. Even people who have been asked to come to the office are screwing off at least 1-2 days of the week and no one is able to do a thing. A massive group of people are essentially walking around with…
True since at least 1894 https://twitter.com/stephenlautens/status/155123736437847654...
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That's definitely a contributor, but, as you say, it's generally worse in the UK than in other large European countries. This whole thing is a bit of a perfect storm for the UK.
Have you heard of the plight of an even larger European country? Hint: it rhymes with Burmany. It's bad in the UK, to imagine it's the worst in the UK vs Europe is to show your ignorance.
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The problem with the approach of "tax this and tax that" is that it often ends up hurting the lower and middle classes the most. I am very skeptical about any new taxes aiming for wealth distribution that are not very explicit about who should pay that tax.
This is basically an inverted 'trickle down economics' argument which has been shown time and again to be bunk. Taxing rich folk more doesn't hurt poor people who don't pay those taxes.
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Tax those who can afford it to help those that can't. At some point if the rich continue to demand sacrifice of the poor to prop up their gathering of wealth, it'll be guillotines in the streets. Historically Britain's upper class has been sensible at offering compromise to avoid extreme change, but it appears the current crop think their control of the media is enough to keep the population placid while they suffer.…
>Tax those who can afford it to help those that can't. So...tax those whose income is higher than Latty's income - 1 pound? I am sure you can afford it. A new progressive tax regime requires a lot of research, consultations, political capitals, and most importantly, time. We don't have a lot of time right now.
We don't have a lot of time, that's a reason to start now rather than delaying the solution even further: people will suffer the longer we pretend we can have the country function as a funnel to the wealthy instead of a place for people to live.