Contact Citizens Advice before the piss-tsunami hits and buy as much winter wear as you can now while there's still a bit of last year's stock going cheap.

As far as I can tell the entire economy might be about to blow up like the Death Star and absolutely no one is lifting a finger to stop it. I wish I had better news.

I've always been a tight arsed skinflint bastard when it comes to heating, so it shouldn't be hard to avoid the worst impact. But I'm guessing that means I'll be paying what everybody else normally pays, despite trying my best to barely turn it on. Anyway.

Like otherlad says stock up on winterwear- Long johns and warm vests to go under your clothes. Those are things most people seem to have forgotten exists these days. Get used to wearing a nice thick fluffy dressing gown around the house, I do this all winter long even when I can afford to put the heating on, because why wouldn't you? It's dead cozy. I've recently bought a couple of these hoodies with a fleece lining, and I bet I'll barely be taking them off this winter.

Only put the heating on one room at a time, don't heat the whole place. Try and spend most of your time in the smallest room, because it'll be faster and easier to heat. Put your gaming supercomputer in there too and that'll kick out some lovely warm air (if you can afford to use it). Get a thermal mug so your brew stays warm longer, that way you're not wasting energy chucking cold half-drunk cuppas out to make new ones, and having a warm drink will help keep you warm. Mostly psychological, but change up your diet to eat nice hearty stews and hearty soups and so on. I'm not sure how efficient slow cookers are, but I have a feeling it's cheaper to knock up a stew or casserole in the slow cooker than in the oven or on the stove.

In general just think about the heating differently- Don't put it on to warm the place up, just put it on for quick blasts to bring the temperature above unbearable. You can mitigate the worst of the cold wearing warm clothes, but you don't want to sit there with your breath condensing in front of you, hands turning numb.

I'm quietly hoping these headlines are a bit sensationalised based on a worst case estimation of "the average household", but we can only really wait and see how bad it's going to be.

>>453116
>I'm quietly hoping these headlines are a bit sensationalised based on a worst case estimation of "the average household", but we can only really wait and see how bad it's going to be.

I think they're actually underpaying it. That average of £355 per month glosses over the fact people will use far more in winter than summer, so bills in reality over those months will be much higher.

>>453117

That's just £4,266 divided by 12, lad. I don't know about you but I have an annual salary and £4,266 is a very significant chunk of it no matter how you spread it out over the year.

What I mean is, are they basing this estimation on a family with a 3 bedroom house, two kids, assuming someone who's always at home? Are they assuming the worst in terms of the insulation in that hypothetical house? How different would the figure be if they were basing it on a single bloke living in a studio flat on his own, and spending most of the day out at work anyway?

In other words it's hard to get an idea how much my personal energy usage compares to the "average", and how much that average is distorted by people at the high end of the scale who leave the heating on 24/7 in a huge house, versus people like me at the lower end who only turn it on when absolutely necessary in a small one.

Is this a conspiracy to get people back into the office? That somehow seems more believable than "we've decided to make more profit this year and nobody is stopping us"

>>453118
>That's just £4,266 divided by 12, lad.

Yeah, I know.

Apparently energy consumption is 35-40% higher in winter over summer so it's more like this "average household" would be paying around £295 per month in summer and £415 per month in winter to get to that £4,266 overall figure but obviously the cap will have changed again by this time next year.

>>453120
Yeah but a lot of people's payments are calculated to cover that in advance.

It looks like keeping our open fireplace wasn't such a bad idea after all. And with plenty of trees in the back garden here, our wood is about as locally sourced and sustainable as possible.

>>453123

>sustainable

How big is your garden? I don't know how much wood you have to chuck in daily to keep a fire going, but I find it hard to imagine trees grow fast enough to provide you with a renewable fuel source in your own garden.

How much money do you save up each month? I live like a tight bastard in many ways, but I do love heating my grisly shithole flat to a perpetually comfy degree. Even if I am fucked (currently, I won't be, but I fully believe that the government already knows how bad it's going to get and they're just gradually increasing the predicted price hikes over time so we don't all wig out when it goes from £1,000 to £12,000 in one go), a lot of people will be rioting in the streets before I find myself facing my own doom. If you currently have more than about £150 left over at the end of the month if you live frugally, I guarantee the government will be forced to step in before you're freezing too. And that's what I'm counting on to save me when I owe £1000 a month.

>>453124
Not him, but don't make me show you my woodpile.
The wind might howl around our hovels, but us bumpkins have a lot of stuff we can burn. Partly because bottled gas and heating oil have always been ball-achingly expensive. Also, air quality really isn't much of an issue, we just don't have the population denisty.

>>453126

Well, a woodpile is all well and good, but like. If I live in a typical semi-detchached suburban house and I've got say, a birch or two in the garden, chopping them down for firewood isn't exactly going to be "sustainable", know what I mean? I'll just run out and then have nowt.

What I'm asking is how much tree you need to be fuel-independent and cast off the shackles of Big Gas.

>>453127
To a first approximation, I would expect to get through two decent sized trees a winter. Probably about 5-8 tonnes? Dunno, never weigh it.
If you're planning to cut & burn your own trees this winter, drop them and cut them up now. They still won't be properly dry, but far better than burning green wood, where far too much of the energy goes into boiling the internal water, and then out the chimney, if the bastards even stay alight.
Also, hire someone with a wood processor to cut & split your logs if possible, it's a shit job that automation does well. Unless you're a 'firewood warms you three times' sort of a masochist, in which case, enjoy your blisters.

>>453124

It's probably not something you can keep up twelve hours a day all winter. And it's only cost effective if you have a way of not paying retail price for your wood, e.g. if you own a section of proper woodland.

So whatever we've got growing here is only going to take the edge off the rising gas and electricity prices. It's not going to be a full replacement.

I was going to do the maths comparing wood and gas heating pound-for-pound, but I can't be arsed today. Google says a cubic metre of hornbeam wood, one of the best kinds of firewood, contains around 2300 kWh of energy, so you'd have to take it from there and factor in the usually poor heat efficiency of open wood fireplaces which is somewhere around 25 percent, compared to up to 90 percent on the most recent generation of natural gas boilers, and nearly 100 percent energy efficiency of space heaters.

>>453129
self feeding wood burners exist, and aren't insanely expensive. Ideally, though, you'd have a heat store, so you can run the fire intermittently and tap off hot water for use or for heating when you need it.
All needs a fair amount of space and money, compared to just burning gas on demand.

>>453129
self feeding wood burners exist, and aren't insanely expensive. Ideally, though, you'd have a heat store, so you can run the fire intermittently and tap off hot water for use or for heating when you need it.
All needs a fair amount of space and money, compared to just burning gas on demand.

>>453113
>In all seriousness, how do I not die over the winter?
The government needs to come up with money to stop it happening.

That's it. That's the solution. Anything else will have people dying and those that survive facing an economy that's fucked every which way. The cascade effects of doing nothing, or ineffectual measures like £50/month when bills have gone up more than five times that, can potentially make the mortgage crisis of a decade ago look like nothing.

>>453118

>What I mean is, are they basing this estimation on a family with a 3 bedroom house, two kids, assuming someone who's always at home? Are they assuming the worst in terms of the insulation in that hypothetical house? How different would the figure be if they were basing it on a single bloke living in a studio flat on his own, and spending most of the day out at work anyway?

The number is calculated based on the median household consumption - line up every household in Britain in order of energy consumption and pick the one in the middle.

Actual consumption will of course vary greatly compared to this average, but the efficiency of a house is far more important than the size or the number of people in the household. A well-insulated house requires about 90% less energy to heat than an average British house. Most of your gas bill is wasted.

>>453120

The vast majority of consumers on a direct debit have annual averaged payments, so they pay the same amount every month - more than their actual consumption in summer, less in winter. The real worry is customers on pre-payment meters, who don't get to benefit from this averaging and are also least able to afford it.

>>453129

Solid fuel is becoming an appealing option, although I wouldn't want to rely on wood. A tonne of smokeless fuel is about £500 at the moment, which is a 20% increase on a few months ago but pretty good in comparison togas. Open fires are miserably inefficient, but modern solid fuel appliances are much better. You can have a simple stove with a back boiler plumbed into your existing central heating system for about £1500. Most households could get through the winter on two or three tonnes of smokeless fuel, so it's an investment that could pay for itself in less than two years if gas prices stay high. Of course, you will need somewhere to store all that fuel. Automatic gravity-fed boilers are more like £5k, at which point you'd probably be better off looking into a heat pump.

>>453133

>Open fires are miserably inefficient, but modern solid fuel appliances are much better.

We've had an offer by a door-to-door salesman to convert our fireplace into one of those more modern enclosed wood heaters, but the layout of our fireplace would have made it awkward to install, because it's a corner fireplace that's 40 centimetres above the floor and the actual firing portion of it is only 55 centimetres tall.

Also though, screw energy efficiency, your modern newfangled contraptions will never beat the feeling of watching an actual open wood fire burn in the middle of your livingroom.

>>453132

Government handouts will simply increase inflation because people will spend them on gas and they do nothing to increase the supply of gas.

In the medium term the problem will fix itself because people are finally being motivated to build proper housing, invest in renewables and fix leaky gas connections.

If the government want to do something they should subsidise these activities, because they will actually reduce the demand for gas rather than just reducing the purchasing power of the pound. The US just passed a massive spending package to do exactly this.

>>453136

Of course, all of that would have been much cheaper if we did it when interest rates were practically zero. It's the pandemic all over again - we have a government that reliably does the right thing only when all other options have been exhausted.

>>453136

>The US just passed a massive spending package to do exactly this.

Oh did they.

Just wait til you see what actually comes out the other side of that package.

700bn sounds like a lot, but then you realise it's over ten years. Then you realise that's barely even equivalent to the defence budget for one year. Then you realise the infrastructure deficit is estimated to be two and a half TRILLION.

70bn a year is a drop in the ocean. That bill is a loaday pish.

>>453136
Ah! So that's why it was called the Inflation Reduction Bill. I saw the Inflation Reduction Bill had passed, and they were saying it was going to be great for the environment, and I couldn't make the link. I guess the massive government expenditure to reduce fuel dependency will reduce the petrol and gas prices from inflating so much, even though it's the government giving people more money. Thank you for clearing that up. It's still an awful name, though.

civilisation is always fucking up because people are morons example no. 32573823

>Liz Truss has defended earnings at energy companies amid soaring price rises, saying profits should not be considered "dirty and evil".

>The Tory leadership hopeful said windfall taxes on profits - urged by some to fund help for households - were about "bashing business". She said cutting taxes was the best way to help with living costs over winter.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62513966

It's been nice knowing you lads.

>>453165
She's majestic, isn't she?
I still want to know ho owns her - or does it just take £20 and some flattery and she'll shill your position for the next 4 hours?

>>453165
I'm sure we only need to chase a couple of these fuckers with pitchforks and sickles before they'll understand how we feel. We only have ourselves to blame, for just being lazy.

>>453166
The more she talks the more I'm convinced she isn't bought, she's just thick and has no principles. Boris Johnson without the charisma and ability to blag it. Naked ambition. Her sole aim is to reach the top and she doesn't care how she gets there, she's got an unwavering belief in her abilities.

The fact that she refers to herself in third person as "The Truss" is enough evidence that she's demented.

>>453167>>453168
It doesn't have to one or the other.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/11/truss-2-kwarteng-164-wide-variance-in-ministers-declared-meetings
>Liz Truss declared just two meetings as foreign secretary in a three-month period in the government’s transparency register, compared with 51 by the Welsh secretary, according to an analysis showing wide discrepancies in declarations.

>>453169
What? What the fuck is a "Labour government"?

The sad reality is that we can't really do anything about it other than spread the cost out. The politicians can't fix it.

>>453172
Having someone else pay for it sounds like a fix to me.

>>453173
Ask your mum.

What if I started making my own energy?

I know you can use a bike to generate power, but there must be something more advanced you can do at home.

>>453175
you mean other than solar?(and maybe burning things for heat, if that counts?)
Generators, batteries and inverters, as big as you can afford?

>>453177
Anything really.

>>453172
Glorious Liz is going to save us by cutting taxes. Lower taxes will help us. So if energy bills are high for people on low incomes, I dread to think how high they must be for the rich. People on benefits don't pay any income tax at all; do you think Liz Truss is going to introduce negative income tax? That's the real Conservative answer.

>>453180

They pay VAT though.

Scrap VAT! That will solve inflation for dead sure.

>>453180
negative capital gains tax would prime the trickledown pump better, don't you think?

>>453116
>I've always been a tight arsed skinflint bastard when it comes to heating, so it shouldn't be hard to avoid the worst impact. But I'm guessing that means I'll be paying what everybody else normally pays, despite trying my best to barely turn it on. Anyway.

I've noticed this averaging is exactly what will happen with me - I'm not happy about it but equally I'm surprised to learn how much money people have been spending. I've become my father.

Where I'll probably feel it more is in the aggregate across my budget. Cost of heating and electric is going up sure but there's not a single area of my spending that will see a decline and things like food will track against it on top of whatever shortage will come next.

>>453119
It's going to have to go up an awful lot to justify that. My CEO was talking the other day of it being the opposite problem and people will reconsider going in because of the costs associated, transport certainly isn't getting cheaper anytime soon and you'll change out your crusty trackies because there's always one or two coworkers you wouldn't mind a go on. Obviously he didn't talk about the latter problem but I'm sure it was implied.

Then you need to factor in that most people are just plain daft. For example my colleagues are always buying coffee and getting expensive lunches, even turning their noses up to Sainsburys meal deals because they only come in once or twice a week. I'm starting to consider SBUX a buy because I doubt people will cut back on small consumer luxuries in the coming recession.

>>453180

>do you think Liz Truss is going to introduce negative income tax? That's the real Conservative answer.

I'm honestly not sure if you're joking or not, but a negative income tax was debated as one of the proposals for the Beveridge Report and has been knocking about in heterodox economic circles for decades. We sort of implemented it through Tax Credits, but botched it so badly that we ended up with all the worst aspects of means-tested and universal systems.

>>453185
To answer your question, I started out joking but became convinced it was the perfect answer while I was writing that and now I want it to happen. So it.probably isn't really the true Conservative answer.

Why we would all benefit from feeling the odd hunger pang

Despite it being nothing new (Dr Michael Mosley has been speaking about it for years), the word “fasting” seems to strike fear into people. People say to me, “Oh I could never do that, I would pass out” or “I just hate being hungry.” However, new research is now showing that fasting or simply “giving our bodies a break from food” for short windows of time is something we should all be looking into if we want to live longer, ward of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and defend against diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

There is so much research into the benefits of giving our bodies a rest from food, yet I’m aware that most people would rather stick pins in their eyes than go hungry. But I would call getting “safely hungry” is what the experts say we need to do (obviously we know that extreme hunger isn’t good for us). Dr Wilhelmi de Toledo would argue that “feast and famine” is part of who we are as human beings. “Our body is naturally equipped to switch from eating to fasting since the fasting is programmed in our genes,” she says. Let’s face it, cavemen and women would never have had three regular meals a day, care of an Ocado van or a Tesco Metro.

Fasting aside, on a daily basis one of the best things we can do for our health is to stop eating all day long in order to allow our digestion to do its thing, without piling more food on top. It’s our snack culture of frothy coffees, mid-morning “health bars”, 4pm pick-me-ups or the late-night indulgences that is also causing rising obesity levels.

Obviously there may be some people who, for health reasons, shouldn’t go for sustained periods without food, but the majority of us need to stop being afraid of a hunger pang. Recently I’ve been trying hard not to eat between meals. What I’ve found is that it definitely makes mealtimes taste better, and when I feel my tummy rumble I tell myself that it’s OK to be a bit hungry.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/nutrition/diet/why-would-benefit-feeling-odd-hunger-pang/

This is Britain in 2022.

>>453333

It sounds reasonable when you think that for most of our evolutionary history, we were predatory hunter-gatherers who were constantly on the move. Not only did that require a far greater calorie intake than our modern sedentary lifestyles, but if you wanted to eat, you either had to hunt down a mammoth or gazelle or spend all day looking for ripe fruit. Ancient humans probably felt almost constantly hungry, which in turn was the key driver in making them go back out and find more food. When we feel hungry for a bit before the next meal nowadays, we should realise that that's a small inconvenience compared to what our ancestors went through almost every day.

What all those anti-fat shaming campaigners forget is that our bodies just aren't equipped for the kind of body weight that overweight modern humans all too often carry around with them. With all the effects of covid, I'm only about two to three stone above my ideal weight for my height, but already it has its effects in that my knees have started to hurt when I climb up several flights of stairs in one go. This is not a good way for me to be, so I'm actively looking at cutting my calorie intake and getting more exercise at the moment.

Being (significantly) overweight just isn't healthy, as per the design of our bodies. And no social media shitstorming is going to change that.

>>453334
It's more the timing of publishing an article about it being good to feel hungry when people are going to struggle to afford food if their energy bills keep shooting up.

>>453335

Doesn't strike me as particularly bad timing. Maybe even the opposite.

It occured to me yesterday that a lot of people might end up being laid-off over the Winter as businesses realise they can't afford their own energy bills. Is this uninformed paranoia or yet another layer of disaster we're all about to experience?

>>453338
service companies are going to be hit by higher costs, less disposable income for their customers and increased wage demands from employees.
If your local nail bar isn't a money laundering operation, I'd expect it to be struggling for a while. Amazon will be fine, so don't fret for Jeff.
Buy / convert yourself a baked potato wagon, staff it with a couple of Latvians (or, hell, even brits), sell spuds, weed and watered down ethanol, get rich. No fucker will be able to afford to go to the shops or run their cookers.

>>453338

>>453338
I've seen quite a few pub landlords say they're already struggling so this winter might be the final nail in the coffin for many of them. They weren't exactly doing well before covid happened.

I wouldn't be surprised if companies started shutting their offices on certain days and telling their employees to WFH those dates.

>>453342
>I wouldn't be surprised if companies started shutting their offices on certain days and telling their employees to WFH those dates.
To think they could have accomplished this already by accepting the inevitable rise of remote rather than desperately trying to force everyone back into the office.

>>453352
I'd say it's more the case now that a lot of companies have moved to hybrid working but still have the office open 5 days a week and people split across these. It's likely that hybrid working will continue where possible this winter but they'll want everyone in or everyone out on the same day to save on energy costs.

>>453353
Hybrid working patterns always seemed pointless to me. Either you need to physically be somewhere or you don't. There's no business need for "remote with at least 2 days a week in the office".

One of the things that annoyed me about a previous employer was that the organisation was very clearly set up for distributed working, with people on multiple sites, standard loadout being a laptop and docking station, and meetings where everyone was in the same building being done online even when meeting rooms were available, and phones being discouraged in favour of voice chat, but the head of our department was insistent that everyone had to be physically in the office.

>>453354 Hybrid working patterns always seemed pointless to me. Either you need to physically be somewhere or you don't. There's no business need for "remote with at least 2 days a week in the office".

It sort of makes sense here - I have people working in the lab, and me going in a couple of times a week to guide / teach / smack them into doing things sensibly rather than flailing around stops projects stalling. They're much less experienced than me. Keen and smart, but oh so fucking useless sometimes. Not really their fault, it's an engineering discipline where experience counts for a lot.
OK, maybe I should go in every day, but fuck that. So, hybrid. It worked in the before times, and it still works now.

>>453354
>There's no business need for "remote with at least 2 days a week in the office".

There's no "business" need, but there are many practical benefits for hyrbid working. For very menial jobs that can be wfh like call centre operator or whatever, you do get benefits from office hours for training and meeting colleagues. For higher level jobs where you have decision making responsibilities or similar, you can do a lot of work from home but interaction with colleagues and seeing the physical work undertaken (if applicable) by the business is essential or you just stagnate.
Plus of course promotion within a business is mostly based off work interactions with your seniors and if there's no personal contact you end up in the same position as an outsider coming in for an interview when it comes to seeking a promotion.

My jobs a good example, I'm technical/quality control at a small factory, I COULD find enough work to keep me busy 100% of the time remotely, and if I did that I'd revert to being an antisocial sperglord. But as it is now I spend a lot of time walking round the factory and the warehouse helping people out in person and dealing with visitors and I'm far better off for it both professionally and mentally.

>>453353

>I'd say it's more the case now that a lot of companies have moved to hybrid working but still have the office open 5 days a week and people split across these.

The civil service sussed it out and massively downsized their offices, but JRM wasn't happy and now you've got people working full-time in offices that are only big enough to accommodate 20% of the workforce.

Hybrid does make sense in a lot of cases, sometimes it's just a sop to managers who want to be able to at least do a bit of in-person micromanagement, but it only takes one prick in senior management to start unraveling things. As soon as people get wind of the fact that the people who spend the most time in the office get all the promotions and people who spend the least time in the office are first on the chopping block for redundancies, you're back to the normal 9-5 within a matter of months.

Price cap up from £1,971 to £3,549. It's been nice knowing you lads.

>>453544


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knab9oQIMOQ

>>453548

This is the video of the pensioner playing GTAV from a while back.

>>453555
Thank you for your service.

Should I stock up on Thermos flasks? Maybe I could use them to keep my house warm.

>>453558

Buy two electric blankets - one for your bed and a single for your sofa. Get a thick fleece throw and a thin pair of fingerless gloves, preferably of the seamless knit variety.

A single electric blanket typically consumes no more than 50w of electricity. Even at the new prices, you can run one at full power for eight hours for 20p. Creating a bubble of warm air around you is much cheaper than heating your whole house.

I saw some hot takes in the last ten minutes of Newsnight just now. It's weird to think that I had not heard these already:

If the government helps people to pay their electricity bills, then effectively they're just handing taxpayer money straight to the energy companies who are already enjoying record profits. That's a terrible idea. Unless we do the windfall tax, of course.

Also, if Rishi Sunak (or indeed Liz Truss) pulled out of the leadership race, there would only be one candidate left and they could be Prime Minister already and start implementing their policies. For the good of the country, one of them (probably Rishi according to polls) needs to just give up and allow another coronation. By continuing the leadership battle, the two candidates are subjecting the people to a period of no government at a time when that really isn't advisable.

As Europe's energy costs skyrocket, Russia is burning off large amounts of natural gas, according to analysis shared with BBC News.

They say the plant, near the border with Finland, is burning an estimated $10m (£8.4m) worth of gas every day.

Experts say the gas would previously have been exported to Germany.

Germany's ambassador to the UK told BBC News that Russia was burning the gas because "they couldn't sell it elsewhere".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62652133

Fucks sake. Let me buy the gas if no one else will!

>>453565

For once I wish governments stuck to their free market principles and left it to individual choice whether we'd like to consume Russian gas or not. Those who really care whether Ukraine is ruled by Russian or Ukrainian kleptocrats can then choose to boycott it without forcing everyone else to freeze to death with them.

>>453565

What are you, some kind of KGB sleeper agent? Remember, it's your duty to freeze this winter because evil communist nazi Putler must be stopped, and this is going to do it. Any minute now.

>>453567

I just fear how bad things will get when we stop buying oil from the Saudis because of their bombing of Yemen.

>>453566
That's not really how sanctions work.
>>453567
Hey, wait a minute. Is this site finally popular enough to attract Russian troll farms?

>>453568
You sound real at least. Imagine the top bants if Saudi Arabia started sanctioning us for all our arms dealing. They could do it; our weapons clearly don't actually work. You could probably conquer Yemen with the population of your local football stadium.

>>453569

Don't worry lad, you won't be able to put the heating on this winter, but you'll have the most fun you've had on Twitter since anti-maskers and lockdown flaunters when ordinary people start questioning the narrative on the war.

>>453569
>Hey, wait a minute. Is this site finally popular enough to attract Russian troll farms?

There was definitely a number of highly questionable posts when we had the Syria megathread, which were either made by Russian trolls or Coebyn fans their useful idiots.

>>453569

>That's not really how sanctions work.

That's the point. Get rid of the sanctions and let people choose whether they'd like to virtue signal themselves into a frozen grave.

>>453589

When did we become a nation of soft cunts?

I hope there's a survey or study at some point about people's income level and their opinion on Ukraine.

I would expect that much like the covid measures, the people most in favour of intervention are the ones with a comfortable level of padding, and the people for whom it has a much more drastic impact are the one's who'll start to have diverging opinions, and subsequently find themselves getting shouted down by sanctimonious cunts belonging to the former category.

It's always about class. Always.

>>453604

Is this the Royal "we"?

>>453608
Right

>>453608

I've had a look at YouGov's data on COVID, which seems to suggest that there wasn't much of a class skew. Women and older people were much more cautious about COVID and much more in favour of intervention, but the difference in sentiment between ABC1s and C2DEs was basically negligible.

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/4hdbxyt780/Internal_Furlough_210923_V2_W.pdf

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/8qnjej0fh8/Results_lockdown_snap_poll_210222_w.pdf

>>453611

Maybe we've put the wrong Boris in prison.

>>453604

We need to freeze Europe's poor to death to prove how hard we are now?

>>453623


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

I don't know if it's just Sunday drivers or people trying to cut fuel costs, but cars were definitely going slower on the motorway today. I was doing about 67-69mph and overtaking most cars on the M1.

>>453623

No. Prices are rising because demand outstrips supply. Russian imports account for about 30% of European consumption. We need to collectively reduce consumption by a similar amount. As soon as we manage that, prices will rapidly return to normal. Doing that equitably is a serious political issue, but we're not trying to achieve the impossible.

We need to be having serious conversations about what we can do to reduce our consumption. We need to do it anyway, because gas is a finite resource. Even if you don't care about Ukraine, don't care about the security of Europe and don't care about half of the east coast becoming part of the north sea, the transition away from gas is inevitable and unavoidable, because we're running out of wells to drill.

We know how savings of that magnitude can be made. Nearly all of our housing stock is under-insulated and a large proportion of it is practically uninsulated; a warlike effort to insulate lofts and replace inefficient old boilers would get us a large part of the way there.

The next Prime Minister's first action in office could be to convene a European energy crisis summit. We could draft a treaty agreement and set binding targets on gas consumption. We could pass legislation to ban all sorts of wasteful activity - heating swimming pools, patios and half-empty offices, lighting up the outside of public buildings etc. We could furlough energy-intensive industrial activities immediately and indefinitely, working with suppliers from outside Europe to increase our imports of commodities like ammonia and steel.

Of course we need to protect the poor, of course we need to make sure that the impact is fairly shared out, but business as usual is simply not an option. There are too many compelling reasons to wean ourself off gas and too many dire consequences if we don't. Boris Johnson is a priapic moron, but he's a national hero in Ukraine because he was prepared to do the right thing before anyone else and forced many of our allies into action. Our next prime minister can and should do the same, taking leadership on the European home front. We used to be a serious country and we can choose to be a serious country again.

Maybe this is why everything is so shite. Jesus. Might as well move to Malta and not freeze to death this winter.

>>453626

I was thinking about this earlier- I remember maybe a year ago there was talk about how the UK has barely any gas reserves and they closed down that gas storage facility. It was causing a fair bit of a stir at the time, but funnily enough it's all but forgotten now, as we go into a winter of almost certain gas shortage.

I can't quite placehow long ago that was though- Was it before all the stuff with Ukraine kicked off, and it's been memory holed now? Or am I just going senile and the reason we were talking about it was because of the Russia stuff?

>>453633

The fuck is Ireland doing so far up that list, I thought they were on the bones of their arse? Likewise, how are Japan below us when they live 50 years in the future and have talking bogs? I don't think these kinds of numbers can really tell us much.

>>453634

The Rough facility at Easington represented 85% of our storage capacity. It was closed in 2017 without much controversy, but The Guardian and The FT did briefly cover the story and point out that it would seriously affect our energy security. It became a scandal last year when other, less prescient journalists started paying attention to our gas infrastructure.

>The fuck is Ireland doing so far up that list, I thought they were on the bones of their arse?

Tax avoidance. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon all have their European headquarters in Ireland, so their European profits all count towards the Irish GDP. The Central Bank of Ireland had to invent a new method of measuring national income, because their GDP figures had become totally meaningless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_as_a_tax_haven

>>453634
>The fuck is Ireland doing so far up that list, I thought they were on the bones of their arse? Likewise, how are Japan below us when they live 50 years in the future and have talking bogs? I don't think these kinds of numbers can really tell us much.

Purchasing power parity. It'd cost an American $107 to have the same standard of living in Japan that they could get with $100 back home

>>453626
>We could furlough energy-intensive industrial activities immediately and indefinitely, working with suppliers from outside Europe to increase our imports of commodities like ammonia and steel.

I agree with everything else you've said but this is dumb as fuck. Moving the problem elsewhere doesn't solve anything at all and just increases waste due to transport costs and extra political complexities at a time when the problems are to do with an over-reliance on imports to begin with.

>>453637

Strongly disagree. Russia have so much leverage because it's really hard to transport gas internationally. Outside of the established pipeline network, transporting gas requires very expensive liquefaction infrastructure. That infrastructure is already running at full capacity and any decision to expand it would take 3-5 years to implement.

We can't import any additional gas, but we can import products that are made using very large quantities of gas. Those products can be imported from dozens of countries, so increasing our imports would improve our resilience - we have far more options when importing ammonia or steel than we do when importing gas. Many of those exporters use coal rather than natural gas, so by buying from them we'd be reducing global demand for gas; even imports of products made using natural gas would allow us to shift gas demand away from the Eurasian market to markets that are less stressed.

We should be planning to shut that manufacturing capacity within the next few years anyway, because we need to replace it with new zero-carbon technology; mothballing it now will immediately reduce our demand for gas and we can bring that capacity back online if (for some bizarre and implausible reason) it becomes easier to import gas than sacks of fertiliser or billets of steel.

Reducing our ammonia production does carry the significant complication of also reducing our production of industrial CO2, but that isn't an insurmountable problem.

>>453626

>We could furlough energy-intensive industrial activities immediately and indefinitely, working with suppliers from outside Europe to increase our imports of commodities like ammonia and steel.

I'm not sure if continuing to outsource our production to the rest of the world is a sustainable solution.

Tbh I'm not sure why we didn't take the invasion of Crimea as a big cue to wean ourselves off gas. But it seems even more ridiculous that six months since the war as far as I'm aware we haven't done anything to materially reduce our dependence on gas. Back in March I was at an FT event where Adair Turner was saying we should be treating the electrification of the grid with the same urgency we approached the vaccine rollout. It would have taken at least a couple of years, but the sooner the better. Since then however we just seem to have done nothing but sat on our arses and embraced permanent crisis.

>We used to be a serious country and we can choose to be a serious country again.

I was mostly with you until this. What does it even mean? Are you just longing for the days when we were able to impose our will on the rest of the world?

>>453647

>I'm not sure if continuing to outsource our production to the rest of the world is a sustainable solution.

It isn't, but it's a useful stop-gap. There is a plan to transition those industries to zero-carbon production, but it'll take too long to have any appreciable impact within the next few years.

>Are you just longing for the days when we were able to impose our will on the rest of the world?

No, absolutely not. I mean "serious" in the most literal sense of the word. Our politics and our public discourse has become increasingly flippant and childish. We don't have the patience for long-term plans, we don't have the maturity for hard compromises, we don't have a sense of duty or mutual obligation.

Watch any current affairs programme from the 70s or 80s and I think you'll see what I mean. Journalists asked serious questions, politicians gave serious answers and the audience gave their attention to a serious matter. Nobody was trying to take cheap shots, nobody was acting like a clown to avoid having to take responsibility and nobody would tolerate that sort of behaviour. People in public life believed that they were there to solve problems rather than simply win the argument.

Maybe it was just a facade, maybe they've always been the same self-serving bastards underneath, but it was a facade that meant something. Trust in public institutions has been falling consistently for decades and it's easy to see why; without that trust, we can't make the kind of decisions that allow a country to thrive rather than merely survive.

>>453647
>I'm not sure if continuing to outsource our production to the rest of the world is a sustainable solution.
It doesn't need to be sustainable. It just needs to get us through the immediate crisis.

Though at some point we are going to need to figure out a better solution to Ukraine than just giving them guns and hoping they can deal with it.

I'm living in a shared house and the landlord is proposing to hike rent by £100 or north of 18%. They've sent a long, slightly patronising and poorly proofed email about it lamenting how the energy price rises are "unjust" but that "nobody can do anything about them".

£100*6 tenants*12 months is a £7200 annual increase. And this fucker reckons I should take comfort in the fact a section 13 increase can only happen once a year. I don't know how much energy the house consumes but I strongly suspect I ought not to be grateful to them for absorbing the pain here.

I'll just find a better room for less that's closer to work. Thanks for the extra impetus.

>>453655

>£100*6 tenants*12 months is a £7200 annual increase.

Unfortunately, that's probably about right. The average dual-fuel bill will hit £3,500 per year in October and will rise again in January by at least £700. Unless the government mobilises a full national effort to bring down consumption, we could be looking at average bills of over £6,000 by next winter. Obviously the consumption of a six-person household is likely to be well above average.

I wish I had better news, but you aren't likely to get a better deal elsewhere.

>>453656
What does the price of energy fifteen months from now have to do with the rent I'm paying today?

I can definitely get a better deal elsewhere. I've already looked.

Recession is on the way and will last until 2024, Goldman Sachs warns

Britain will plunge into recession before the end of this year and the economy will keep contracting throughout 2023, Goldman Sachs has warned.

The sharp downgrade on its previous predictions came alongside news that the number of high street stores closing continues to increase and that manufacturing insolvencies are soaring. In a research note, the investment bank said it believed that by the year’s end the economy will have shrunk for two consecutive quarters, the formal definition of a recession. Worse, the bank has flipped its previous estimates that the economy will grow by 1.1 per cent next year and instead is forecasting that it will contract by 0.6 per cent through the whole year.

Economists at Goldman led by Sven Jari Stehn said that “concerns around cost of living pressures in the UK have continued to intensify on the back of the worsening energy crisis. Real consumption is still likely to decline significantly.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/recession-is-on-the-way-and-will-last-until-2024-goldman-sachs-warns-htjw83qr5

Goldman Sachs warns UK inflation could hit 22% in January

Economists from US investment bank Goldman Sachs have warned UK inflation could hit 22% in January if soaring gas prices continue to rise. They also warned that the UK is set to fall into a lengthy recession in the fourth quarter this year, with the economy set to contract by 0.6% in 2023.

‘In a scenario where gas prices remain elevated at current levels, we would expect the price cap to increase by over 80% in January,’ Goldman Sachs’ economists said in a research note. ‘[This] would imply headline [UK] inflation peaking at 22.4%, well above our baseline forecast of 14.8%.’

https://citywire.com/new-model-adviser/news/goldman-sachs-warns-uk-inflation-could-hit-22-in-january/a2395976

Do you lads think we'll see inflation above 20%?

>>453658
Nobody has yet predicted a number lower than previous numbers. They're just climbing endlessly, and people are hedging their bets. Inflation could go as high as it wants, and I think some people already know that it will but they don't want to say that so they're just gradually increasing the numbers we talk about. I'd say the highest number anyone mentions this year will probably be around 30%. But I don't think prices will go up at the same rate next year.

>>453658
>Do you lads think we'll see inflation above 20%?
I hope so.

>>453654
>Though at some point we are going to need to figure out a better solution to Ukraine than just giving them guns and hoping they can deal with it.

That's the issue - it's difficult to know where the "immediate crisis" ends, or whether we are living in a state of permanent crisis.