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Tug Boat
Posted: 27 August 2022 09:12:25(UTC)
#79

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Dan, who is a chef in a local pub, lives in a one bedroom flat in a grade 2 listed building.

Solid walls, sash windows which don’t close properly and all electric. No insulation, single glazed facing north.

His fuel bills are higher than mine and I live in a 200 sq. m. house.

I think Insulate Britain have a point, pity they are a bunch of numpties.
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andy on 27/08/2022(UTC)
Keith Cobby
Posted: 27 August 2022 09:15:41(UTC)
#74

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Dennis .;236227 wrote:
Aged 74 I recall as a child growing up in the Midlands in the 1950/60s that we only had a coal fire in one room of the house and that in the mornings in winter you would find ice on the inside of the single glazed windows. This was not unusual and my father was a skilled factory worker so not on the lowest wage. The house would be cold in the morning as the fire would have gone out overnight and we bought a portable paraffin heater to warm the kitchen.. I don't recall people complaining about mental health or other hardships. They just got on with life.
I don't advocate going back to this but perhaps young journalists can't understand what it was like for ordinary people, What has happened? Are we hooked on a dependency culture?


Haven't been following the news much whilst on holiday (a few days in Herzliya followed by a sea voyage around the eastern Mediterranean - they're not worrying about heating bills over there). Agree with Dennis, growing up in the 1960s all we had was a coal fire in one room. People have become very soft, with other priorities for their cash.
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Captain Slugwash on 28/08/2022(UTC)
Aminatidi
Posted: 27 August 2022 09:16:43(UTC)
#78

Joined: 29/01/2018(UTC)
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Dennis .;236227 wrote:
Aged 74 I recall as a child growing up in the Midlands in the 1950/60s that we only had a coal fire in one room of the house and that in the mornings in winter you would find ice on the inside of the single glazed windows. This was not unusual and my father was a skilled factory worker so not on the lowest wage. The house would be cold in the morning as the fire would have gone out overnight and we bought a portable paraffin heater to warm the kitchen.. I don't recall people complaining about mental health or other hardships. They just got on with life.
I don't advocate going back to this but perhaps young journalists can't understand what it was like for ordinary people, What has happened? Are we hooked on a dependency culture?


I expect Dennis it's simply that times change as do standards of living and people get used to a certain standard of living.

In the 50's and 60's people aged 74 were probably recalling how they were sent to work in the mill as a child and it never did them any harm. They just got on with life. But it's not something anyone should aspire to return to.

A comment from a Charlie Munger speech leaps to mind.

"Take the Munger dog, a lovely, harmless dog. The only way to get that dog to bite you is to try and take something out of its mouth after it was already there."

People get used to things and being able to afford to be warm when you want to be warm just isn't something that most people would consider a luxury in a G7 economy in 2022.
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Tim D on 27/08/2022(UTC), Sara G on 27/08/2022(UTC), andy on 27/08/2022(UTC), Lindisfarne on 27/08/2022(UTC), gillyann on 27/08/2022(UTC), lenahan on 05/09/2022(UTC)
Tim D
Posted: 27 August 2022 09:47:17(UTC)
#75

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Keith Cobby;236234 wrote:
People have become very soft, with other priorities for their cash.


Hmmm... not sure it can be both. But as a nation we are about to perform a big socioeconomic experiment to find where priorities actually lie.

If people really have gone soft, then they'll dump those other expenditures to keep warm.

If the other priorities win out, they'll turn the thermostat down and harden up before they cancel the streaming subs, fancy phone, avocado toast etc.

We'll see. Either way I'm sure there'll be a lot of noise and complaining.
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Nigel Harris on 27/08/2022(UTC), bill xxxx on 27/08/2022(UTC), bédé on 28/08/2022(UTC), ANDREW FOSTER on 28/08/2022(UTC)
andy
Posted: 27 August 2022 09:49:42(UTC)
#9

Joined: 11/03/2010(UTC)
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magic beans;236218 wrote:




1. Octopus have not to date made a profit.
I had an accountant like that when I was running a business.

2. The price of electricity is based on the price of gas - a market set up by the government
But the standing charge is set by the supplier. Octopus are charging me full rate for electricity and gas.
It varies according to the area you live in yet Hinkley Point is some fifty miles from where I live. London has the lowest standing charge. I haven't checked the mileage to their nuclear power station. Perhaps green energy is more expensive to transmit?

3. Jackson has repeatedly said it is wrong that the price is set by gas - and to make matters worse that there is additional cost on top of that when the price of renewables is the cheapest on the grid.
See standing charge above.

The problems are purely ones of the UK government's making. They have been warned about this is all summer and are having a squabble about who is party leader.
Don't get me going on this end of the pier show.

I too had an email from Jackson. I think it began 'Hi followed by my first name which always gets my back up. It detailed all the problems that he and 'the team' were working hard to overcome. It also included details of the electric blankets it was supplying and other money saving ideas. The one and only thing that I saw that made sense was that I could hire a thermal camera from them. I followed the link now that their website is allowing me access only to find that it was fully booked.
This is what comes of not checking what is going on in your company and just cutting and pasting form last years round robin.



If you dont like it - then as the right wing model is set up - shop around - go somewhere else. Ohhh - you can't - no one will take your money the market is that broken. The people who I talk on a daily basis with in France say yes prices have gone up significantly - however, its single digit percentages? Why - because EDF has been nationalised. Sweden? The government has stepped in and they had a small reduction (about 5%) this week. Germany? Far worse state than the UK - went up this week by about 500 euros a year. All. because the governments are doing something. The Scottish govt cant do anything as it is not a devolved matter - and the English government is too busy with other maters. Actually - what is the UK Prime Minister up to?
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Sara G
Posted: 27 August 2022 09:51:57(UTC)
#83

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I remember the paraffin heaters in my grandmother's house... I'd hate to go back to that. Heating a home/ hot water are justifiably seen as basic needs, although no one should expect to walk around the house in a T shirt all year. But there is something in the argument that a sense of entitlement to certain non-essentials has developed. Expensive TV packages and regular vacations abroad spring to mind. There's also a widespread, and understandable belief that progress only goes in one direction, and that it's down to the government to compensate all of us for any setbacks. That's fine in extraordinary circumstances, but not if it leads to demands for ever increasing government intervention and ongoing constraints on free markets.
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13 users thanked Sara G for this post.
andy on 27/08/2022(UTC), Peter59 on 27/08/2022(UTC), Keith Hilton on 27/08/2022(UTC), Nigel Harris on 27/08/2022(UTC), Martina on 27/08/2022(UTC), James Wood on 27/08/2022(UTC), Tim D on 27/08/2022(UTC), Jimmy Page on 27/08/2022(UTC), Sheerman on 27/08/2022(UTC), bill xxxx on 27/08/2022(UTC), ANDREW FOSTER on 28/08/2022(UTC), Guest on 28/08/2022(UTC), ty bgt on 28/08/2022(UTC)
Lindisfarne
Posted: 27 August 2022 10:29:10(UTC)
#88

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Dennis =="Aged 74 I recall as a child growing up in the Midlands in the 1950/60s that we only had a coal fire in one room of the house and that in the mornings in winter you would find ice on the inside of the single glazed windows"

Very true Dennis, but one perhaps disadvantage, is that most of us do not have a coal fire in the Lounge, which could be useful this winter.
Having had the gas fire in the lounge serviced this week; the engineer told me that it was far more expensive to light the gas fire(even the middle unit) than to run the combi for the whole house.
Combi shuts off at temp, whilst the fire just keep using gas. The boiler engineer told me the same 2 weeks ago.
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Sara G on 27/08/2022(UTC), andy on 27/08/2022(UTC), Guest on 28/08/2022(UTC)
Aminatidi
Posted: 28 August 2022 06:50:13(UTC)
#84

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Sara G;236247 wrote:
I remember the paraffin heaters in my grandmother's house... I'd hate to go back to that. Heating a home/ hot water are justifiably seen as basic needs, although no one should expect to walk around the house in a T shirt all year. But there is something in the argument that a sense of entitlement to certain non-essentials has developed. Expensive TV packages and regular vacations abroad spring to mind. There's also a widespread, and understandable belief that progress only goes in one direction, and that it's down to the government to compensate all of us for any setbacks. That's fine in extraordinary circumstances, but not if it leads to demands for ever increasing government intervention and ongoing constraints on free markets.


Whilst I agree with most of that I think it's a question of speed and scale here perhaps?

The scale of the increases is one where cancelling Netflix won't cut it and the speed of the increases isn't one that I think most people could have reasonably predicted and even if they could what could many have done in time?

Most of us on this forum are posting through a lens of seeing a month or so's living costs temporarily added or wiped out in the blink of an eye and we "struggle" with what to do with the odd spare few thousand quid.

Not quite the same as having to decide whether you can afford to put the heating on for half an hour because the kids are cold and if you do that maybe you have to go without food tonight so they can eat is it?

There's a strong case that people with the ability to do so should have been putting money away for a rainy day but when you have a Chancellor warning that even people on almost £50K a year are going to be struggling without Government intervention that points towards something having broken very badly very quickly.
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Sara G on 28/08/2022(UTC), Bulldog Drummond on 28/08/2022(UTC), Martina on 28/08/2022(UTC)
bédé
Posted: 28 August 2022 07:50:23(UTC)
#77

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Keith Cobby;236234 wrote:
[the eastern Mediterranean - they're not worrying about heating bills over there).

They are not talking about it on the coast, but it gets really cold in winter bac ka bit in the hills.
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Tim D on 28/08/2022(UTC)
bédé
Posted: 28 August 2022 07:54:07(UTC)
#76

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Tim D;236243 wrote:
But as a nation we are about to perform a big socioeconomic experiment to find where priorities actually lie.

What's the word for an arrow head? The danger of this "experiment" is that it may not be reversible.

People will always blame the government of the day. Those in power will always be tempted to be populist.
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Sara G on 28/08/2022(UTC)
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