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Day 1 of the energy price hike went worse than expected. This morning I listened to a call to James O’Brien’s LBC show. Harrowing doesn’t do it justice. Listening to the lengths this person has had to go to stay alive was utterly heart wrenching. How can the fifth wealthiest country in the world have such desperate poverty? Because the cost of living in the UK is utterly broken. And Rishi Sunak is to blame.
You can listen to the call for yourself below. It’s a devastating indictment of Broken Britain.
The worst bit about all of this is that it’s before Friday’s hikes came into effect. A bad situation is soon about to become much, much worse. People who are already struggling are about to be pushed underwater. And it’s Rishi Sunak’s foot on their head.
Rishi Sunak is responsible for the worst peacetime crisis since 1945
I covered the causes of this crisis a few weeks ago, but I missed one. The callous, privileged and indifferent Rishi Sunak. Over the last few months he has actively made things worse. At best, it’s incompetence on an industrial scale. At worst, he is as self-interested and corrupt as the rest of Johsnon’s cabinet. Irrespective, his economic mismanagement is verging on the criminally negligent. Let’s recap some of his greatest hits, shall we?
- Has refused to remove VAT on energy bills, despite it being promised by his boss as a Brexit benefit
- Took £20 off Universal Credit, despite being warned it would lead to people starving
- Increased National Insurance at a time when living costs were already spiraling
- Allowed OFGEM to increase energy prices by 54%
- Told banks to turn off fraud checks, losing £5 billion to fraudulent BBLS loans
- Presided over a 128% increase in food bank usage
- Put in place a “not a loan” scheme that has been universally panned and will continue to penalise households for years
- Refused to target taxes at the companies profiteering off energy price rises, forcing households to accept the biggest price gouge in history
Chris Grayling may have a contender for most incompetent politician in history! Presiding over a sea of incompetence such as this would surely give the average person pause for thought? Not this pompous, entitled arsehole. When he was confronted with the impact that his decisions will have on the poorest he stated that he was comfortable with his choices. That a chancellor can be comfortable with facilitating the worst cost of living crisis the UK has ever seen is abhorrent. Then again, this man is so out of touch he doesn’t even know how a debit card works.
What can we do about it? #PowerOff
The cost of living crisis is impacting virtually every single living expense. But the most egregious by far is the disgraceful price gouging that OFGEM has allowed, with Sunak’s tacit support. I genuinely think that this is one of the most outrageous decisions by a UK Government in the last thirty years. So it was with keen interest that I saw the below idea from @karenbradyuk.
I am very much up for this! I’ve not looked into what happened in Spain, but if it warrants it I may pull together a summary at some point. Either way, the disruption that this sort of idea would cause would surely make the government take notice? A massive excess in supply for 10 minutes a day would cause untold chaos for energy companies. It may be extreme, but when one considers what the energy companies are doing here it feels like the best option. Make no mistake, people will die as a result of the unconscionable actions taken by OFGEM, the government and the energy companies. Lets make them feel some of that pain!
