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.

>>453656

To try and balance the doomerism ITT, I was reading in the FT that there's a chance of a sudden fall in energy prices if gas is less scarce than expected and Germany's storage is up to scratch. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking, but if true, further price rises in January may not be guaranteed.

>>453668

Ukraine can win the war if we keep sending them enough guns, but it'll take them a while. That wouldn't necessarily open up the taps on Russian gas imports. A well-planned Western operation could have tanks rolling into Moscow within a fortnight, but there's the obvious nuclear threat.

From our own self-interested perspective, the immediate crisis ends when we rebalance supply and demand in the absence of Russian imports - cranking up production, beefing up our efficiency measures and cutting back on unnecessary use. With our current plan, that won't happen before 2025. We could probably get it done before next winter if we really pull our finger out, but I'm not sure that we will.

>>453672

There's certainly a chance, but I wouldn't bank on it.

>>453673

>A well-planned Western operation could have tanks rolling into Moscow within a fortnight

At the start of the conflict we all thought it'd be Russian tanks rolling into what we were all still calling Kiev within a fortnight. Modern weapons systems put all of that to a halt. We haven't seen proper, conventional militaries fight like this since the second world war, and a lot has changed over that time- But if Ukraine is anything to learn from, we're very much in a WW1 type situation where the technology has outpaced our strategy.

I don't see any reason to expect Western military operations to invade Russia would go any more smoothly; and besides that, it's not merely a nuclear threat. If we start rolling tanks towards Moscow, there will be nuclear war, of that I am quite certain.

I think the approach here is going to have to be a deal, and that deal is more than likely going to end up with Ukraine conceding territory. In return for that, we'll sign a formal alliance with Ukraine, possibly even get them in NATO, so Russia can't push any further, and maybe there would have to be some kind of demilitarised zone like with North and South Korea as part of the bargain.

What our leaders appear to want, however, is nothing short of complete destabilisation and regime change in Russia. They have scented blood and they're not going to settle for anything less, and we are all going to pay for it. If covid didn't finish your nan off, this winter will, but just remember- It is a noble cause.

>>453677
>Modern weapons systems put all of that to a halt.
No, a massive guerilla operation put all of that to a halt. The modern weapons systems arrived when the advance had already been stymied, and led to the pushback.

But ultimately this isn't going to resolve itself at this rate for some time without more direct intervention. And even Putin surely knows that if he goes for the nuclear option he's signing his own death warrant.

There's this new group that's popped up, that absolutely definitely aren't a CIA operation (honest, guv), but I'm not sure the failed attempt on a far-right oligarch is necessarily going to move the needle. In any case, Putin has put a lot of effort into shifting the balance of power in his relationship with the oligarchs in his own favour.

>>453678

>>Modern weapons systems put all of that to a halt.

>No, a massive guerilla operation put all of that to a halt. The modern weapons systems arrived when the advance had already been stymied, and led to the pushback.

A bit of both. Ukraine had been buying up and developing kit for years. The Stuhna-P is close to par with Javelin, it was designed and built in Ukraine and it has been a decent export success for them. We certainly didn't give them any Bayraktars, or the mountains of RPGs they had been stockpiling. They bought a COTS radio system from Motorola that has proved to be more effective than any purpose-built military system. Most of their body armour and a large proportion of their small arms were bought directly from the US civilian market, which was very shrewd.

The main thing is that the Ukrainians had been preparing for exactly this scenario for years, while the Russian invasion was hastily organised and poorly planned. The Ukrainians expected to be steamrollered but wanted to fight to the last; the Russians expected them to surrender against the might of the Russian war machine. Rampant corruption and propaganda meant that they severely over-estimated their own abilities.

We didn't have a huge amount of accurate data on contemporary Russian capabilities prior to the invasion. Sadly, the same can't be said of many NATO forces. We know exactly how well our vehicles stand up in the field, because we've replaced several generations that the Taliban blew up. If we can avoid pissing it up the wall over the next few years, we know that we have a body of men with exceptional counter-insurgency and FIBUA skills. Our armed forces have the institutional knowledge and experience to deal with the realities of sustained and brutal guerilla warfare.

We know that we'd smash Russia to bits, because the Ukrainians are holding a score draw against them with a fraction of our combat capabilities. Russia have thrown almost everything at this war and we know that there's nothing of value left in their stores. They're fielding vehicles taken from museums and artillery pieces from static displays, they're shipping out expired ration packs and rusty ammunition, they're sending untrained conscripts to the front. Even with the logistical advantages of fighting on home turf, they don't have any cards left to play.

The Ukrainians are begging for our kit because they know it works. They bought some of it, we gave them some, but they know what they could achieve with more of it. The Ukrainians still don't have air superiority, but we could give it to them in 12 hours and everyone knows it.

We know that in a conventional invasion, we could take the Kremlin quickly and with "acceptable" losses of men and materiel. Whether we'd have the political will to do it, whether we could hold it in the long term, whether we would know what to do with it once we'd taken it - those are all valid but separate questions.

>>453678

>No, a massive guerilla operation put all of that to a halt.

Ehh, not really. A guerilla campaign is where you let the invaders take control, then make it painful for them to hold on. What we've seen develop is a much more conventional stalemate. It's too costly for the Russians to push further, because despite lacking the tanks and jets and all that stuff we traditionally think of as military power, it turns out those things aren't really necessary.

I mean it as a deliberate comparison with WW1 because that was the same story with advancements in automatic weaponry and artillery at the time. Nobody had really seen what they were capable of at large scale, the last big conflict was the Napoleonic wars. This is what we're seeing now with drones etc. If the Taliban or Iraqi army had this kind of thing, our adventures in the middle east would have looked very different.

>And even Putin surely knows that if he goes for the nuclear option he's signing his own death warrant.

Because we're just going to let him live when we take Moscow, right? The problem is if he's facing the real possibility of defeat, there's no reason for him not to say fuck it and fire everything. Realistically he's got the choice between that, or the Gadaffi treatment.

At that point we'd just be gambling that the people in charge of the launch wouldn't follow the order- The other problematic aspect of such an occurrence is that it means nuclear deterrence has failed. Suddenly all bets are off. India and laplanderstan go to war. China goes for Taiwan. Argentina has another pop at the Falklands. Team America World Police would be compelled to intervene, and then they've no incentive not to use their nukes...

And then, well, once the cat's out of the bag, we can only hope not to get caught in the crossfire.

>>453677
>If we start rolling tanks towards Moscow, there will be nuclear war, of that I am quite certain

That is most definitely certain; Russian military doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons to prevent territorial incursion. In this sense it is much more lenient than most countries (like us for example) who follow a doctrine of deterrent via MAD.

>>453680

>I mean it as a deliberate comparison with WW1 because that was the same story with advancements in automatic weaponry and artillery at the time. Nobody had really seen what they were capable of at large scale, the last big conflict was the Napoleonic wars.

I don't mean to disagree with your broader point, but this isn't quite true. Machine guns had proved themselves to be devastatingly effective across a number of colonial conflicts. The value of rapid fire was proven as early as 1877 in the Russo-Turkish war, when a number of major battles were won by heavily outnumbered Turks thanks almost solely to the Martini-Henry repeating rifle.

The problem wasn't that we were ignorant, but that we were unwilling to adapt our beliefs. Military leaders on both sides still firmly believed in chivalrous combat; they saw the machine gun as brutish and ungentlemanly, so simply chose to ignore it. Machine guns might have worked in the colonies, but those newfangled contraptions aren't fit for European gentlemen fighting in honourable combat. They may well have seen hundreds of fuzzy-wuzzies mown down by Maxim guns, but their world view simply couldn't accommodate the possibility that a white man would be so dastardly as to turn such an instrument of slaughter on his own race, that they could find themselves on the receiving end. Obviously I've phrased this in English terms, but the Germans were even more staunch believers in such a world view - their elites still have a significant tradition of duelling by sword.

We knew long before 1914 that charging a machine gun was suicide. Men of the officer class simply didn't know what they were for in an age of industrialised warfare, much as many working men lost their identities during deindustrialisation. Faced with the choice of certain death or revising their identity, they chose certain death, with many thousands of innocent working men dragged along for the ride.

The British had at least learned the value of Khaki from the Boer Wars after an awful lot of officers were picked off by sharpshooters; the poor bloody Poilus went into the First World War dressed in bright red and blue.

>>453680
>And then, well, once the cat's out of the bag, we can only hope not to get caught in the crossfire.
I really hope this happens.

>>453682

There was the Franco-Prussian war in the late 1800s, and the Russo-Japanese war in the very early 1900s, so even putting aside the colonial examples, there had been clashes of the "modern" countries before the outbreak of WW1. You're probably right that there was a lot of stubborn military pride to blame for it too, but I think the real issue was simply that they hadn't seen it demonstrated on large enough scale to beat the message in, and been forced to confront it. All those other conflicts were skirmishes compared to the scale of WW1.

Despite how we think about WW1 in popular imagination, they were pretty quick to adapt their strategy once the fighting got serious, and they started reading the kind of casualty reports that told them they'd physically run out of soldiers within weeks (even if their attempts at devising new strategies were often woefully inadequate). Necessity breeds innovation and all that.

Is there a more ominous sentence in the history of the modern English language than this headline from The Guardian?
>Liz Truss rules out energy rationing this winter at final Tory hustings

>>453700
It's not that scary, to me. But it does read like something you'd see in a montage in a film, spinning on a newspaper just after "Truss promises: Peace in our time" and just before " IT'S WAR!!!!!"

>>453700

Rationing would be a great idea, but there's no practical means to implement it. Ruling it out is the kind of irrelevant waffle that seems to characterise the modern Tories, because it was never an option to begin with.

Ovo Energy have come up with a better plan than anyone in Westminster.

https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press-releases/2022/september/ten-point-plan

>>453704
It's not perfect, but it is a plan at least. I bet it was Labour's plan which they have been refusing to announce in case the Conservatives just nick it again, and someone in the Labour Party probably leaked it because someone needs to do something.

>>453704

>scrap standing charges

Fuck me, somebody with common sense, that's wild.

>>453702

The (very good) proposal put forward by Fuel Poverty Action Group for everyone to be given a free basic minimum of energy sounds like rationing to me.

>>453704

Seems Ovo have also called for something similar.

>>453707

Forgot to post the link (and I'm being told this is not one of my posts so I can't delete...): https://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/campaigns/energyforall-petition-everyone-has-a-right-to-the-energy-needed-for-heating-cooking-and-light/

Giving everyone a free minimum amount of energy, and then charging any usage beyond that at a huge premium to discourage waste, sounds like as near to ideal a solution to the crisis (beyond ending the war and/or magically transitioning to renewables overnight).

>>453708

Ovo's proposal is slightly less radical, in that a) you'd get subsidised rather than free units up to a certain level of consumption and b) we'd repay that subsidy through energy bills over a number of years rather than writing it off to general taxation.

There are really two concerns over such a scheme. One is making sure that proper support is provided to people who legitimately need to use a lot of energy - large families, people with medical needs etc. The other is making sure that the scheme doesn't have unintended consequences regarding consumption; we need people to radically reduce their consumption and the price signal is the best way of doing this. Neither problem is insurmountable, but this government could cock anything up.

IMO the really striking thing from Ovo's plan is point 9 - bringing back the Department for Energy. For seven years, nobody in government has had a direct cabinet-level responsibility for energy policy. Kwasi Kwarteng has responsibility for both energy and industrial relations, which is a totally excessive workload for one minister given the current circumstances.

>>453709
>Kwasi Kwarteng has responsibility for both energy and industrial relations, which is a totally excessive workload for one minister given the current circumstances.
I doubt he's felt overworked.

>>453709
>>453710
There is talk that Lizard Trussington (to give her full title) will be putting Jacob Rees-Mogg in charge of that once she takes over.

We're all going to die in this, aren't we?

I feel this is a very strong catalyst for some challenging times. Enjoy a nice cuppa while you can lads.

>>453715

Lads sometimes I think about the story of the man who harvested and stored for the winter each year, whilst his peers drank the wine made from the summer grapes with abandon. Come winter they had none and the harvester had enough for his family. In a final drunken desperation they killed the harvester and took his harvest but once gone they slowly starved to death.
More than 2 years ago I knew what was coming. I suggest reading Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.

>>453715

Bro can I have my calculator back pls.

>>453757

This crisis is essentially economic, but the roots are entirely political. We were naive enough to trust Putin, or stupid enough to fail to realise that Putin exerted this level of power. I'm not convinced by the latter, because Donald Trump was smart enough to figure that out years ago. Putin always had the power to turn off the gas, we just implicitly assumed that he wouldn't. Even the countries with generous stockpiles of gas didn't actually have a plan for this scenario, despite the obvious risk.

Personally, I think we fell into a sort of docile post-cold-war complacency where bad things only happen to other people in far away countries. 9/11 was an attempt by eskimoc nutters to pierce that complacency, but I think it ultimately backfired - we engaged in two long and futile wars simply to restore the status quo of bad things happening far away.

We still haven't got our heads around the fact that peace and prosperity are the exception, not the rule. It takes an immense amount of technical, logistical, political and economic expertise to maintain the kind of lifestyle we take for granted. Wealth, health and peace are fragile states, because they aren't the default - it takes continuous effort to maintain them.

>>453758

Where demand exceeds supply, prices rise. The reasons for this should be self-explanatory - faced with the choice between paying more and going without, people usually choose to pay more. Normally the upper bound would be when people run out of money, but governments are starting to subsidise gas in various ways and governments have functionally limitless funds until their economy collapses.

Prices will keep going up until supply and demand are brought into balance. We know how to do that, but no politician is willing to support the kind of measures necessary. Until they show willingness to take serious measures - shutting down entire industries, banning certain activities, imposing rationing - the prices will keep going up.

You can point at a forecaster who didn't get things exactly right, but that doesn't alter the fundamental causes for rising gas prices. They might rise a bit faster than we expect, they might rise a bit slower, but they will not stop rising until we take action.

>>453759

Yes, T rump warned Europe about the dependency on Russia and they said orange man bad.

>>453764
You ever hear the fable of the boy who cried wolf? It's usually used as an example of why you shouldn't tell lies, but more broadly it's why you ought not be a complete dickhead.

>>453764

I certainly didn't mention Trump to praise him. It was utterly, blatantly obvious that Europe's dependency on Russian gas was dangerous. The remarkable thing isn't that Trump pointed it out, but that no-one else did.

>>453761

>Where demand exceeds supply, prices rise. The reasons for this should be self-explanatory

Government furlough reduced production with no supply. There was still demand without supply, Borrowed money from Bank of England so at debt to cover furlough and cover demand. Bank of England 'printed' money (not in tangible paper way, just added a few numerical figures in a database).
This leaves the government in a downward debt hole economically - the magic money tree.
What helps in regards to high government debt is high inflation. It's a desperate measure akin to being on a lifeboat. I predicted 20% inflation 2 years ago so lived like a monk, saved like a squirrel and moved savings ex fiat.

>>453767

>The remarkable thing isn't that Trump pointed it out, but that no-one else did.

Trump could have found a cure for cancer, the media would be
Living with cancer, it's not bad
Cancer - how we all die naturally
More people die from road accidents than cancer, why Trump weaponised cancer for votes
It's ok to identify as cancerous

>>453769
>Trump could have found a cure for cancer
Let's be honest here. No, he couldn't.

>>453770

And so it goes, point proven. Rest my case.

Libertarians should kill themselves.

>>453773

There's lot of yanks on /sentry/ today.

>>453767

Plenty of other people did and have been for years, I did a quick google to see if I was being Mandela-effected about it but no, it's definitely been in the news cycle a few times over the last several years.

>>453769

If Trump had taken a hard-line stance on covid I'm pretty sure the Yank press would have been all about how he's unnecessarily restricting their freedom because he's a Russian/Chinese plant, depending who was the enemy du jour that day.

Trump was a remarkable political figure in that he caused a level of panic and disruption in the liberal establishment the like of which hasn't been seen for years. And the thing is, it's not because he was an evil far right lunatic Nazi, he was a bit of a populist and obviously a total moron, but no worse than are Boris. It's pure and simply that he had done the unthinkable, and wrestled control away from the people who are supposed to be in charge.

It really doesn't matter what part of the political establishment you are from. The way the establishment itself rose up to unilaterally work against him, like the immune system fighting off an infection, should be instructive to anyone who wants to see genuine, systemic change at the higher levels of society. If that's what happened to an outsider on the populist right, just imagine what would have happened to a Sanders or a Corbyn.

>>453113
keep yourself warm by burning an abandoned factory?

>>453786
Give a man a burning abandoned factory, and he is warm for a day. Teach a man to burn down factories that are being used, and they will keep us warm for as long as we need.

Panic over, lads.

>Liz Truss has promised to announce a plan to deal with soaring energy costs within a week if she becomes prime minister on Tuesday.

>The Tory leadership hopeful, the favourite according to pollsters, told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg she would "act immediately" to help with bills.

>But she offered no details, saying she would need time in office first in order to finalise exact proposals.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62786065

>>453793
Said she'd act immediately but would need time. Christ. Not even trying to lie convincingly.

>>453794
Let's do something you should never do and give a Tory the benefit of the doubt, viz.:

Is it not conceivable that only once she becomes Prime Minister and understands precisely how much of a mess we are in that she can formulate a detailed response?

>>453794
Her grand plan will be fracking. What she's going to spend this week doing is coming up with the right phrase to sell it with. She needs her version of "long-term economic plan" or "strong and stable" to win the public over.

She also told Kuenssberg the reason we've had low economic growth is because there's been too much focus on income distribution, so it's only fair that we tax the rich less because it's holding our country back and if the economy grows it'll benefit everyone.

>>453795

Then that's not acting immediately, is it? She could offer to do one or the other but not both.

>>453795
Rishi Sunak said he hadn't seen all the numbers either. He was the fucking Chancellor. I think there are new numbers, the most up-to-date numbers, which the winner won't see until they become Prime Minister.

>>453795

She's a cabinet minister. Except for the most secret matters of national security, she has exactly the same access to information as the Prime Minister. If she called the Cabinet Office or BEIS and asked to be CCed in on everything to do with energy they would undoubtedly oblige, if they haven't already done so of their own volition.

She doesn't know how much of a mess we're in because she doesn't want to know. She doesn't have any idea what to do and is just cheerfully ambling towards the precipice. Perhaps she is hoping that when she takes over in Downing Street someone will bring her a plan, but that won't happen.

>>453801
surely many people will bring her plans. I'm sure that nice Rees Mogg fellow will have something prepared? It'll be in a shiny leather folder and everything, with those little 'sign here' postit notes.

>>453768

What did you put your savings into?

>>453773

Is this in response to >>453768 having read babby's first libertarian fairytales masquerading as 'economics' and thinking it's something to be smug about?

My girlfriend's going a bit nuts. She's spent ages working out how much each cycle on the washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher costs and has started sitting in the dark rather than putting a lamp on to save a few pennies but, by my reckoning, in the past week or so she's blown at least £100 on frivolous shit we don't really need.

>>453811
I've noticed myself doing that a bit recently, since I'm buying a house and will struggle to afford furniture once I have it. My personal maddest thing has been my refusal to buy a £3 snack before deciding to go to the pub and spend £20.

>>453813
Have a lodger pay for your furniture.

>>453813
You'll be able to scrounge enough from charity shops, Gumtree and Freecycle.

>>453815
What charity shops? British Heart Foundation certainly ain't cheap.

>>453816
Charity shops in general are run more like a business nowadays than the traditional places to scrounge up cheap stuff.

>>453815

Freecycle and Gumtree are good bets but like the others allude to, charity shops now only really sell stuff in new or like-new condition for near full prices. Anything cheap they send to Africa to rot in huge piles.

>>453816

The independent ones are usually the best value; my local hospice has a big furniture superstore on the industrial estate.

Gumtree, Freecycle and eBay are full of bargains if you've got a mate with an estate or a van. My house is filled with mid-century modernist furniture that cost less than Argos flat-pack. It'd sell for a fortune in some boutique down south, but a lot of people who are tasked with clearing out their nan's old G-plan or Ercol gear just see it as old-fashioned junk.

I'm convinced there's a major surplus of furniture in this country. Loads of people just want shot of something that's cluttering up their spare room or their garage. They'll often accept a lowball offer if you offer to take it away immediately. If I see one more advert for a "Chester Draws", I will deck the Secretary of State for Education.

That video of Holly Willoughby and Phil Schofield offering call in contestants the opportunity to get their bills paid for them with the Wheel of Fortune set up is bleak as fuck

>>453839

>>453839
ITV in general is bleak as fuck.

>Prime Minister Liz Truss is understood to be planning to borrow billions to limit the expected sharp rise in energy bills for households and firms.

>It is understood that a typical energy bill could be capped at around £2,500 with full details expected on Thursday. Currently, a typical household's gas and electricity bill is due to rise from £1,971 to £3,549 in October. The government's plans to subsidise bills means that customers will not be expected to repay the support.

>It is unclear how long the government support will last, but the overall government support package is expected to total around £100bn. The ultimate figure will depend on gas and energy price movements in the highly volatile international energy markets as well as how much additional support is offered to the most vulnerable.

>Ms Truss has pledged to "deliver on the energy crisis" - with details expected to be announced on Thursday. Energy bosses have insisted for some time that a government-backed superfund from which they could borrow to subsidise bills "is the only game in town".

>However, the government is understood to be reluctant to see money added to customer bills for up to 20 years so energy companies could pay back the loans. It is also thought to be reluctant to add the cost to general taxation, given their pledges to be a tax cutting government.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62801913

£100bn according to the BBC. £170bn according to the Telegraph once support for businesses is factored in.

>>453849
So we're just going to shovel cash at renewables companies who can't believe their fucking luck?
Same for fossil extractors?
And it's not comiong out of windfall taxes or anything, just taxation and future energy bills, to make sure we're locked in to paying these high prices for a decade or so?
I guess the upside is that it'll accelerate insulate britain II, and I'm sure Are Moggy has fired up his disaster capitalism cash extraction engine and it's running at full power. Hell, if we were as smart as him, and had a few million quid and an inside track into government plans, we could all be doing the same, we're just thickos doomed by our stupidity, who deserve to stay broke.

>>453851

On the one hand, Truss has just gone with the plan that the energy industry offered her. On the other, I don't know of any other option that would be politically palatable.

My main concern is that government-backed plans like this (which we're seeing several EU nations adopt) will just create rampant and self-reinforcing energy price inflation. At least Germany and Spain are making a decent show of trying to cut consumption.

>>453852
It's similar to what Labour and the Lib Dems were suggesting, however they were going to partially fund this through windfall taxes.

Truss' plan, at least what was leaked to The Times, is to sign legally binding contracts with energy companies promising to compensate them for the difference between wholesale gas prices and whatever the government freeze the cap at. They're reporting the cost being £60bn a year and will cover at least this winter and the next one, while Iain Duncan Smith has said they may well be looking at up to £90bn.

If they're going to intervene in the market they should have decoupled electricity and gas prices, but I'm just an internet shitposter. It seems to me that the key aim for them is to stop businesses from going under because of the lack of support they've had so far; the boss of Iceland has said they've had to shelve opening new stores because their energy bills are up £20million.

>>453852
It's about to be a golden age of scammy incompetent government funded house insulation and cladding companies, isn't it?
Time to buy a fleet of fucked Luton vans and load them with rolls of rockwool, yeah? Get apprentices to do the installation and callcentre spamming, and off you go, then fold the company before the complaints and warranty claims start rolling in. Rinse, repeat.
Insulate Britain Ineptly.

>>453855
>If they're going to intervene in the market they should have decoupled electricity and gas prices
They can't do that until we stop using gas to generate half our electricity.

>>453856

>It's about to be a golden age of scammy incompetent government funded house insulation and cladding companies, isn't it?

Maybe, but I'm predicting a golden age of thermal underwear, fingerless gloves and burning pallet wood.

>>453856

If it's anything like the furlough scheme was, you needn't even bother going to all that bother. You just phone up the government and say "Hullo, I am an insulation company, I would like my insulation company money please." and they send you two and a half million quid, no questions asked.

>>453858
>They can't do that until we stop using gas to generate half our electricity.
Otherlad is right in this, in that the way generators sell electricity in the UK is through a demented scheme where they bid in advance to sell electricity in half hour slots.
It vaguely worked in the 90s when things were very different, but now we have a market where everyone knows how much everyone else can afford to sell at so they all just bid straight to the base price of gas except at times of very high wind when there's a real glut that allows gas generators to be turned off.

>>453868
>so they all just bid straight to the base price of gas
Do you have any evidence for this?

The market uses "merit order" pricing, which is a bit like a Japanese auction. Everyone puts their bids in, they all get lined up against demand, and the most expensive thing still switched on sets the price everyone pays. Right now, because gas generation is the largest single source, and isn't displaced by everything else, and gas is expensive as all hell, it invariably ends up setting the wholesale electricity price.

We can't "decouple" the prices because of the necessity of gas generation, and the high cost of gas generation is a direct result of the high cost of gas. The only way of doing that right now is to have enough generation from other sources to not need the gas turbines running.

>>453869

I think the argument around decoupling is that renewable and nuclear operators should be paid a lower price per MWh to reflect their lower costs. I'm not sure what kind of pricing mechanism people envision, but the logic isn't unreasonable. This does seem like one of those iron-clad cases where you really would be discouraging investment, by diverting money from the energy sources we want to develop and towards the sources we want to get away from.

>>453869

As a total layman, this system does sound fucking retarded. Surely that's all backward and we should be using the cheapest/most efficient generation source to meet demand?

>>453870
>>453871
The main reason electricity markets work that way is that if the producers get different prices, what do the buyers pay? Electricity is strictly fungible. On a grid connection, you can't buy electricity from a specific source. It's all just there. Retailers who claim to sell "only renewables" etc. are basically doing the same accounting trick as carbon credits - they're basically saying that if their customers' usage over the year is X GWh, then those producers will produce at least X GWh over the course of the year. AFAIK between all the different variations on that theme, there aren't anywhere near enough customers for there to be any risk of the grid missing its targets for them, so if you're on one of those tariffs all you're really doing is massaging your ego.

>>453871

One of the most important concepts in economics is marginal utility. The value of something changes radically when you cross the inflection point from "not enough" to "more than you need". This is particularly acute in a market for something like electricity, because you can't just pile up a load of electric in a warehouse - storing energy requires complicated and expensive infrastructure. The inputs and outputs on the grid need to be constantly balanced to prevent the voltage of the grid technically frequency, but let's not bog things down from going too low or too high.

National Grid are engaged in a constant struggle to maintain a balance between supply and demand. We don't notice it because they do a very good job, but in countries with less developed infrastructure it's very common to have blackouts or for electrical equipment to be damaged by power fluctuations.

The merit order pricing system is designed to prioritise reliability of supply, which in normal times is obviously entirely sensible - it's worth paying a slight premium to ensure that the lights stay on. The price for all of the electricity generated in any given half-hour block is set by whoever has the last remaining bit of supply needed to tip us over the threshold from "not enough" to "enough". Big industrial consumers of electricity are also charged on this half-hourly basis. It's the standard approach used by most developed countries, because a lot of quite complicated maths says that it's the most cost-effective way to maintain a stable market.

Everyone getting paid the same price is fundamentally good for the cheapest and most efficient sources, because it makes them the most profitable. We've seen a massive increase in renewable power generation for this reason - the government didn't really have to incentivise it, the pricing mechanism just automatically sent the signal to investors that they should be building wind turbines. Conversely, the pricing mechanism also incentivised generators to reduce the use of costly and inefficient sources, which has led to a vast reduction in the number of coal-fired power stations still in operation.

The problem is that while wind and solar are the cheapest sources, they're also uncontrollable. The amount of energy they feed into the grid is entirely dictated by the weather and the time of day. For brief periods on sunny and windy days during lockdown, the wholesale price of electricity actually went negative - consumption was exceptionally low, but those wind turbines and solar panels were still feeding electricity into the grid, so we were paying people to get rid of it.

In the UK, nearly all of our variable supply comes from gas. Nuclear just generates power constantly at the same rate, renewables constantly fluctuate depending on the weather, but a gas turbine power station can be "switched on or off" not really, but close enough for the sake of argument in a matter of minutes. We have a little bit of pumped water storage capacity to deal with very brief fluctuations, but if the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, we turn to gas. That's obviously a serious problem when there isn't enough gas to go around and everyone is frantically out-bidding each other on international markets to secure their supply.

We could have cheap electricity back tomorrow if we all reduced our consumption. If we aren't willing to do that, then we'll have to think very carefully about how we change the market to reduce costs without also affecting reliability.

>>453875

What about if we nationalised it all, then built loads of windmills and solar thingies all over the place so that there's a massive oversupply, but we controlled the voltage to the grid by having just a big fancy machine designed solely for the purpose of wasting electricity? Something like a bitcoin farm. That way electricity would be essentially free, steady, and any excess not used by the grid would generate free money via crypto magic we could use to ease the burden on taxpayers.

Has Liz fixed it yet?

>>453886>>453886
Fixed at the higher price cap for two years.
Free to double after it along with the tax increase to pay back.

>>453887
I can see it being extended to cover winter 2024/25 so the can is kicked down the road for the next general election.

At least there's no more green levies. Take that, wokies!

>>453886
I can't believe you'd be so callous. She has a very difficult job and we all need to get behind her instead of all this asking why things are so bad. I hope you get deported to Rwanda with all the infant daft militant wogs who attack our shores in their little rafts. You horrid monster. She was elected freely by all the people who are allowed to vote, and yeah okay I'm kind of running this into the ground now.

>>453885

>What about if we nationalised it all, then built loads of windmills and solar thingies all over the place so that there's a massive oversupply, but we controlled the voltage to the grid by having just a big fancy machine designed solely for the purpose of wasting electricity?

Not going to work I'm afraid, because the weather tends to be fairly similar across the country. Even with an oversupply ratio of something like 100:1, we'd still have blackouts if we had a few windless days in winter.

We can fix the grid and get off gas, but it requires a decent whack of new nuclear to cover our baseline demand and a few massive dams to provide storage. We know what needs to be done, we know that it's affordable and will save money in the long run, but it'll take at least 10 years if we start today. We should have started 10 years ago, but I have a horrible feeling that even if we decided to make it a national priority, we'd get bogged down in NIMBYism and spend years pissing about.

We do, however, have tides, which happen regularly enough and can provide power on-demand by holding the water in using a system of locks/dams. Just close the Thames Barrier at high tide then let the water back out through waterwheels it's not hard.

>>453906

>it's not hard

We're currently building a tidal plant in the Pentland Firth. It is substantially behind schedule and over budget. The first four turbines have spent more time in the repair shop than actually generating power. The SNP see it as an important part of their vision for becoming "the Saudi Arabia of renewables" (their words, not mine) but it's looking increasingly like a white elephant.

A large tidal lagoon project in Swansea Bay was abandoned in 2018 on cost grounds. The business case for the project was based on the fact that it might have been cheaper per MWh than Hinckley Point C. That isn't particularly impressive when you consider that Hinckley Point C is the most expensive nuclear power project ever, by a considerable margin.

The basic problem is of fouling, corrosion and maintenance. Offshore wind turbines have a really hard life in harsh conditions, but at least the working parts are above water. The blades on a tidal turbine are constantly getting clogged up with barnacles and seaweed and the seals on the rotor housing are constantly being attacked by seawater. The only way to maintain them is to either send down a very specialist team of divers, or send out a very specialist boat to winch it out of the water. Tidal projects start out expensive and just get more expensive over time.

So, just out of curiosity, does anyone know how much it would cost to actually nationalise the energy companies? Because £150 billion is a lot, and while I don't know for certain, my suspicion is it's the kind of sum that would go a substantial part of the way towards buying at least a couple of these companies outright.

I might be miles off the mark with that, but regardless. I don't get it with the Tories. They're supposed to be all about fiscal responsibility, when they've really no problem splashing the cash- Just as long as they can do it in the most wasteful way possibly imaginable when they do. It's fine to throw public money around, as long as you ensure there's absolutely no way the taxpayer will see a return on that investment or gain beneficial long-term assets.

Mark my words, next week we'll wake up to the headlines the BBC has been privatised by selling it to a bloke down the pub for a tenner and a scratchcard.

>>453989

"The energy companies" is the wrong way of viewing things. The energy suppliers - the people who you pay your bill to - aren't making any money at the moment. They aren't making money because they can only charge up to the price cap, but they have to buy their gas on the international wholesale markets. They're effectively selling at a loss, so nationalising those businesses would nationalise their losses.

The majority of the gas we consume is imported. We can't nationalise Norwegian gas companies who sell us gas extracted from Norwegian gas fields, nor do we have a particularly strong negotiating position when buying that gas.

We could nationalise North Sea gas extraction, but that probably wouldn't help much. We already tax North Sea profits at 64%. We could take steps to decouple the price of that gas from the international markets, but that kind of protectionism could badly backfire. We need to import gas and we can't afford to piss off the countries who sell it to us. If we turn off the taps to Ireland and the Netherlands (who import gas from us), they're going to go straight to the EU and demand action. Norway isn't in the EU, but it is in the EEA.

There are exactly two solutions to this crisis - reduce demand until it matches the level of supply, or force regime change in Russia. Everything else is just kicking the can down the road, because prices will continue to rise indefinitely if demand is greater than supply.

>>453989
The fact that we're borrowing an unspecified sum that's around £170bn, and the excess profits of energy companies (>>453993 I mean energy producers not energy providers) is exactly £170bn too, strikes me as a massive coincidence that I don't know what to do with.

I assume that in theory, a government could nationalise a company for free if it just seized everything. But that would discourage investment in the future for obvious reasons. Perhaps we should just declare war on Shell. Invade their oil rigs. That's the sort of political innovation the fresh new innovative Conservative party needs. Then we can encourage investment in other areas by lol you thought I had an answer instead of drunkenly rambling hahaha you're so gay

>>453994

I can't comment on a leaked forecast that isn't yet in the public domain, except to say that (based on the figures given in the press) the Treasury would see at least £78bn of that in tax. Both Sunak and Starmer have suggested extending the windfall tax further, which would increase the tax take to at least £110bn. Truss seems opposed to that, for reasons that are entirely opaque beyond a crude ideological attachment to cutting taxes.

Don't get me wrong, Truss is a fucking idiot, but there's a very weak correlation between the profits of a company like Shell and the prices being paid by British consumers. Shell choose to bank their profits here for tax reasons, but the majority of their revenues come from outside of Europe and the overwhelming majority from outside the UK.

>>453989
BP has a market capitalisation of £84.5billion. Shell is about £167billion. Centrica £5billion. EON £23.6billion.

>>453995
>increase the tax take to at least £110bn. Truss seems opposed to that, for reasons that are entirely opaque beyond a crude ideological attachment to cutting taxes

The largest donor, by far, to Truss' leadership campaign was from the wife of a former BP executive. The Tory party have also received substantial donations from energy suppliers.

>>453989
>So, just out of curiosity, does anyone know how much it would cost to actually nationalise the energy companies?
Nothing. We can say "national emergency, we're having that, thanks". And then we can just not give it back because if it requires state intervention when it fails it shouldn't be in the hands of an entity that can just disappear if it runs out of money.

>>454030

>Nothing. We can say "national emergency, we're having that, thanks". And then we can just not give it back because if it requires state intervention when it fails it shouldn't be in the hands of an entity that can just disappear if it runs out of money.

Do you want to become a failed state? Because that's how you become a failed state.

Britain is a tax haven. Our entire economy is based on the fact that we offer multinational corporations the opportunity to avoid taxes through a complex web of Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories. If that arrangement collapses, it takes the entire economy with it - a collapse several orders of magnitude worse than 2008. Arbitrary asset confiscation is the most extreme way imaginable of breaking that agreement.

Britain cannot feed itself. Unless we all go vegan, Britain is incapable of feeding itself, because we don't have enough land. Even if we sent all the foreigners back to where they came from, we still wouldn't have enough land. We didn't have enough land in 1803, we didn't have enough land in 1939 and we don't have enough land today.

Britain cannot keep the lights on. This entire crisis is rooted in the fact that we import most of our fuel. We physically cannot pump gas out of the north sea fast enough to keep the lights on and there's only about 20 years worth left in the ground.

BP and Shell aren't ripping off the British people, they're ripping off everyone in the world and giving a cut to the Treasury. We have a far higher standard of living than our economy would otherwise afford us, because we allow our government to make crooked deals with crooked multinational companies and take a share of the loot. We aren't China or the US, we don't have vast reserves of primary resources and immense industrial capacity. We're a crappy little island with about the same capability for self-sufficiency as a cruise ship.

If you want to create a new Britain that is honest, decent and utterly impoverished, that's your prerogative, but the system is going to protect you from your own stupidity. If you try to "confiscate" energy companies, you will very quickly discover that all you've confiscated is a fancy office building; The gas we want is buried deep underground in Norway, and the act of confiscating companies would cut us off from the global economic system that allows us to get that gas pumped into British boilers.

Liz Truss worked for Shell in a capacity to help that company not pay tax.

>>454030
We "could" but it would utterly destroy our entire economy because these companies aren't private property, they're public companies owned by real people and other companies around the world. A government stealing a company from the shareholders would send a shock through the investment market and money coming into the country would dry up, pension schemes who hold shares in those companies would collapse, and governments of other countries would be directly or indirectly affected and be able to take various actions against us.

>>454037
That's what accountants do.

>>454037

Shell used to be Royal Dutch Shell - half the privately-held Shell Oil, half the Royal Dutch Petroleum Corporation. The companies merged, then existed as a kind of Anglo-Dutch hybrid, then became a wholly British corporation. There is a reason why we entirely absorbed the largest Dutch oil company into our economy and it isn't because of our relaxed working culture and liberal cannabis laws.

>>454036

Sounds more like the sort of fairytale I'd tell myself to help me sleep at night if I was a right winger, but the reality of Britain's economy isn't even that glamorous I'm afraid. Switzerland is that, but we're not. Hong Kong is that, but we're not.

Britain has a jack of all trades economy with no particularly obvious strength, that leans towards services, but you're deluded if you think our banking sector is actually doing much for the rest of us. It's more like a malignant tumour than a teat we suckle on.

That's not to say seizing assets outright is a good idea, but good heavens lad. Get your tongue out of the monopoly man's arse hole.

>>454036
>Do you want to become a failed state? Because that's how you become a failed state.
No, that's not how you become a failed state. However, a really great way to become a failed state is to let out-of-control inflation wipe out millions of businesses, putting tens of millions of people out of work at the same time, in turn rendering them unable to keep a roof above their heads. You know, like what'll happen if we don't take some seriously drastic action by putting money in people's pockets.

>>454039
Great, maybe she can go be an accountant instead of a politician.

>>454036
Your description half suggests that Britain is already a failed state.
>Britain cannot feed itself. Unless we all go vegan, Britain is incapable of feeding itself, because we don't have enough land. Even if we sent all the foreigners back to where they came from, we still wouldn't have enough land. We didn't have enough land in 1803, we didn't have enough land in 1939 and we don't have enough land today.
We had plenty of land in the 1970s. As David Edgerton noted:
>Thatcher inherited, uniquely in modern British history, a nation self-sufficient in food, an exporter of wheat and meat (a point not noted in social democratic or left histories). She also inherited a nation which was about to become, for the first time since 1939, a net exporter of energy.
Now, I can't blame Thatcher for the oil drying up (Though I can blame her and her successors for squandering it so badly I half think we'd be better having never found it) so energy self sufficiency is sunk, but if we're no longer self-sufficient in food, well, that would appear to be a policy decision.

(Also: my vague recollection is that Britain is paying well over the odds for energy compared to other countries, even ones without any oil and gas of their own.)

>>454066

>Thatcher inherited, uniquely in modern British history, a nation self-sufficient in food, an exporter of wheat and meat (a point not noted in social democratic or left histories)

While Edgerton may be an eminent historian, he is also unfortunately innumerate. Britain's food self-sufficiency rate peaked in 1984 at 78%, due mainly to the Common Agricultural Policy. That rate doesn't mean that we actually produced 78% of the food we ate, only that we produced 78% of the calories we need. We still are an exporter of wheat and meat, but we were never a net exporter. We primarily export fodder wheat that is largely unsuitable for human consumption. We export a bit of lamb, pork and beef that we might otherwise eat (mainly premium products that sell at above-commodity prices), but most of our exports are stuff that we don't want to eat - chicken hearts and pig livers are practically worthless here, but are sought after in foreign markets.

Our agricultural production has fallen since then due to the negotiation of the rebate; the EU stopped hoarding mountains of inedible butter and undrinkable wine and we got billions of pounds a year. Thatcher was of the (not unreasonable) view that it would be economically preferable to receive massive amounts of money that we could spend as we see fit than to continue spending public money on a wasteful system of agricultural subsidies that didn't actually improve anyone's food security and created dangerous market distortions.

>my vague recollection is that Britain is paying well over the odds for energy compared to other countries

That certainly is true, due in large part to short-sighted decisions over gas storage capacity and energy diversification but also due to the vagaries of international energy markets. We have to buy most of our gas from Norway, because that's where our pipelines run; other countries have different primary suppliers. Likewise, our only source of electricity imports is France via a series of cross-channel interconnects, but we're currently exporting electricity to them because much of their nuclear capacity is offline for safety reasons. We are far from unique in becoming overly reliant on gas, but our political culture over the last two decades or so has become unusually short-termist; the austerity agenda has pushed us to run many aspects of our society "efficiently", i.e. operating everything at 100% capacity with no contingency plans. There is a world of difference between "just-in-time" and "not-quite-in-time" and wishful thinking is not an effective contingency plan.

Britain is a small and relatively crowded island. We have to cut our cloth according to our means. Our economy has been heavily oriented around trade for centuries, which is absolutely fine - diversification is an essential part of long-term stability. A trustworthy friend is as good as cash in the bank. That dependence on trade means that we can't do a Putin and tell the rest of the world to go fuck themselves, but there's no rational reason why we would want to do that. Being a vital hub in an international system of trade is a very secure position, assuming that you don't do something manifestly insane like leaving your biggest trade partnership on very bad terms for no apparent reason and with no plan for establishing alternative relationships.

This situation is actually mental. Companies post record profits of the same magnitide as the cost to the consumer. They project costs are going to increase to 7k. Government intervenes to reduce increase in cost to consumer to a max 2.5k(+100%) and takes out loans to pay the energy companies the difference (and they're keeping the profit).

Mind boggling. And no government activity will happen for the next couple weeks because some decrepit landowner snuffed it. Mental.

>>454162
Two goals have aligned - shovelling taxpayer cash to the energy companies, and killing off another tranche of the old and infirm, this time by depressing them to fuck then freezing them.
You'll not see this stop until pensions and healthcare balance, and energy companies say 'steady on, this looks a bit off, you know'.
Some time around 2050.

INFLATION BELOW 10%.

IN LIZ WE TRUSS.

>>454210
We must be approaching the one-year anniversary of inflation becoming a worrying issue. Since the numbers are based on comparisons to prices one year ago, inflation will soon level off just because prices are the same as they were 365 days earlier. Then we can all agree that wages don't actually need to go up after all.

>>454212

What I don't get right, is how when they say what inflation is right now, does that add up with the inflation from last month and the month before, etc? Does that mean when we've had 10% inflation for 12 months, it's gone up 120%?

Is it like that compound interest thing I didn't pay proper attention to in school?

>>454212
It was obvious that inflation was going to be an issue ever since we got out of the last lockdown but lockdowns kept the rolling 12 monthly figure artificially suppressed, i.e. until we had a full twelve months of post-lockdown figures we'd have, say, seven months of inflation suppressed due to lockdown and five months of relatively high post-lockdown inflation. Then of course Russia poured fuel on the fire and now it's seen as more of an energy crisis.

The dip to 9.9% is due to petrol and diesel prices falling, but it's expected to go back into double figures thanks to rising food costs.

>>454215

Inflation is calculated on an annual basis. 10% inflation for 12 months means that prices will have gone up by 10% over that period. That does compound, so 10% inflation for two years is a 21% increase in total - 10% of the original 100% in year one, then 10% of 110% in year two.

It's important to note that the headline rate of inflation is based on a basket of goods that represent "typical" consumer habits. Poor people spend a greater proportion of their income on food and energy, so they're experiencing a significantly higher rate of inflation at the moment.

Apparently the £ tanking against the $ this year means that petrol would be at least 11p a litre cheaper if the exchange rate was as it was in February.

I know it's fashionable to shit on rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk, but ever since inflation became an issue there's been an awful lot of performative hand-wringing along the lines of "I'm really worried about costs going up this winter. I'm earning enough that I'll manage but I really feel sorry for the poors as I don't know how they'll cope."

>>454470
Could I ask how you distinguish "performative hand-wringing" from genuine concern? My own mum has expressed almost the exact same sentiments regarding the current crisis. I'm quite certain she wasn't trying to farm rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk gold when she told me that a couple of weeks ago.