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UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

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Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#161

Post by mathverse »

Latty wrote: post #124
mathverse wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not seen this done correctly anywhere. I have only experienced taxes getting higher and higher with nothing much to show for it. Meanwhile the really rich folk are also getting richer.

The NHS is great. I've lived my life with access to it and in a society provided for by it, and wouldn't trade it for anything. Taxes have paid for it, and should continue to do so. What alternative are you offering? Not taxing anyone much leaves us with a society that simply doesn't function, we see that right now. FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant when we are already in a situat…

> FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant

This is not FUD. They always tax the wrong people. We as a society can do many, many things but we simply cant coordinate to do them. And indeed we should consider this lack of coordination (for a lack of a better term) as something we should take into account when making decisions.

I honestly dont have a solution to this problem.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#162

Post by chrisstu »

azangru wrote: post #56
chrisstu wrote: post #27

A looming catastrophe in the UK and the government is doing nothing. I've seen some crazy stuff here over the last 12 years but this is next level.

> and the government is doing nothing. What do you think the government should do?

Read what numeric83 said. I couldn't have put it better myself. The longer they leave it the worse it gets. But human nature means they won't act until the train hits them in the face.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#163

Post by AlexandrB »

gruez wrote: post #133
minimaul wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses. We already don’t have AC in summers which are growing more and more extreme (regularly over 90F, and sometimes over 100F) - there’s nothing there to turn off. Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and s…

> This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses. Advocating for "market prices" doesn't necessarily mean letting everyone fend for themselves. You can provide grants/subsidies for the poor, while still keeping market prices so everyone is still incentivized to save as much energy…

Why bother investing at all when you can just buy back stock and make the owners/CEO rich[1]? If you think these companies are sinking their profits into investing for the future, you're dreaming.

[1] https://financialpost.com/investing/energy-firms-pay-record-...

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#164

Post by rich_sasha »

bko wrote: post #155
throwaway22032 wrote: post #54

We should probably ban loads of our low paid workers from entering the country, print a load of money and give it to people, tell the remaining workers to stay at home, change all of our working practices so that they don't match our infrastructure, and unilaterally sever trade with partners that sell us energy. What could possibly go wrong?

I agree with the printing a lot of money being a problem. But in terms of low cost labor, I don't think that labor expenses are a huge expense to energy production.

There are whole sectors of economy begging for employees, or curtailing services due to lack thereof. Some people are perhaps happy with that but it must be impacting inflation.

Childcare and retail come to mind if you like examples.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#165

Post by happymellon »

rob_c wrote: post #38
CommanderData wrote: post #9

We have a corrupt government and media that itch each others back. There's still a complete lack of urgency. A potential new prime minister trying to defend profits of energy companies recently on TV just shows you the Modus operandi of the political class. It might push people to riots in the streets.

Quoted post unavailable.

Which basic human right did they take away?

I've been able to go out, see anyone I've wanted to, write whatever I want.

I can even be guaranteed to drink the tap water regardless of where I am in the country. If I accidentally wander off a path I won't get shot. If I have the wrong coloured skin it can still be dangerous to be in the wrong neighborhoods in the USA.

American have a very strange perspective on "basic human rights". Have you been watching too much Fox and think that there are "no go zones" in London or other batshit insane things?

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#166

Post by Dma54rhs »

blitzar wrote: post #137
ak_111 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to factor in the cost of training them and their quality of service. For example European drivers usually have better English skills or have worked in similar coffee shops before, used to driving in Europe, familiar with cleaning and construction regulations, ...

"Of course foreigners steal your job, but maybe, if someone without contacts, money, or speaking the language steals your job, you're shit." ~ Louis C. K. But sadly yes, Europeans tend to have better English than the English.

Wealthier class makes in always incredibly difficult for foreigners to take the jobs. Through paperwork, qualifications and red tape. You can see how angry they get here when the topic of visas for Indian tech workers come up. Suddenly everyone stays they are cheating, bringing wages down etc.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#168

Post by makomk »

data_maan wrote: post #132
Reason077 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Renewables: The solution exists already but no gov't (in particular the UK) is implementing it" The UK govt has done better than most on renewables in the past decade. Wind energy in particular. In 2020, wind power supplied 24.8% of all UK electricity, and this will continue to increase as major new wind farms - some of the largest in the world - come online in the coming years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_…

You say "better" but you're not giving a comparison. The UK doesn't appear anywhere in the ranking on the Wikipedia link of countries with >90% electricity from renewables. You're last link also pertains to electricity only BTW (you make it sound like all energy is considered) and the UK aims for 2025 to have "periods" of fossil-free electricity generation, while other countries do that already today and not just for…

Countries with >90% of electricity from renewables are, almost universally, ones which have unusually good geography for hydropower combined a low enough population and energy demand that this meets their needs. This is not something that the UK or most of the world can replicate.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#169

Post by minimaul »

bko wrote: post #149
minimaul wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses. We already don’t have AC in summers which are growing more and more extreme (regularly over 90F, and sometimes over 100F) - there’s nothing there to turn off. Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and s…

> Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation. The largest gas provider in UK (British Gas) profits in millions of pounds: 2009 147 2010 226 2011 258 2012 291 2013 153 2014 96 2015 73 2016 43 2017 11 2018 8 2019 -5 2020 27 I couldn't find more recent data but please provide it if you have it. These are in millions of pounds. Suppose their profit jumped to 100 million pou…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-28/profit-bo...

As an example for more recent information.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#170

Post by makomk »

cirrus-clouds wrote: post #65
gyre007 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe Brits are capable of revolting against this. They did hit the streets in anti-lockdown protests though, which is ironic because in the grand scheme of things that (lockdown) was temporary, but this inflation wave will be madly felt for quite long.

Imagine if French citizens were facing energy bills as high as the UK (£5,816, €6850). French citizens would never tolerate such levels. From Reuters: " France has committed to capping an increase on regulated electricity costs at 4%. To help do this the government has ordered utility EDF (EDF.PA), which is 80% state owned, to sell more cheap nuclear power to rivals " (Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/…

France really feels like they're building towards serious trouble in the near future. The gap between the discounted electricity costs paid by consumers and the actual underlying wholesale prices is only widening (to the point I think they may even have the lowest consumer costs and highest wholesale prices in Europe, or at least not far off), and that basically all has to be subsidised by the government using debt. They're also part of the Eurozone which is founded on common agreements on government debt, and they're at twice the debt cap and rising. The general consensus is that they cannot stop doing this without serious civil unrest and likely widespread rioting which seems well founded in past events. Energy prices are not the only problem - they have more generous retirement policies than other countries, for example - but changing those other things is just as intolerable.
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