IIRC some countries capped the amount that could be charged, and some decoupled their local supply costs from the international prices. Both of which we could do, but apparently we'd rather keep the profits of the energy companies protected and add to the national debt. I'm not a lefty, but god this lot are clueless.

Posted by: @driver8

The FT is rated as centrist >

... and rated "unbiased" and "highly factual" >

The FT: Britain’s energy package puts its economic credibility at risk
The new chancellor’s plan is poorly targeted, too generous and overly dependent on public borrowing

BBC: Treasury refuses to publish UK economic forecast

iNews: Treasury won’t publish forecasts for UK economy and debt as tax cuts are rolled out in mini-Budget this week

I guess in our advancing years (!) most of us only have small mortgages remaining by now?

The increase in mortgage rates is being drowned out by everything else! I'm really unsure how Truss expects her mini-budget to address this, and increase growth by encouraging spending!

Samuel Tombs @samueltombs > Chief U.K. Economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Ranked most accurate forecaster of the U.K. economy by Bloomberg in 2021 and Refinitiv in both 2020 and 2021.

https://twitter.com/samueltombs/status/1574429056593977344

Wow ! #nailedit

Child hunger highlights Britain’s gross inequality

I now live in a country where

those with very little are donating to those with even less,

just so that those who already have plenty can get even more.

Posted by: @arthurfowler

↑

It's one of the biggest deals ever over on HUKD.

Good grief, that thread is mental! 5000 posts and counting ...

But it's obscene that there seems to be only the 1 company (with its 1 scheme) that is doing what all the energy suppliers should be doing ... charging fairly!

From the FT, and reposted on his blog - 

- average real earnings have fallen by 7% in 1 year, and earnings will take 5 years to recover to 2022 levels.
- real household disposable income per capita has barely increased for 15 years.

This is not normal! Since 1948, spending power reliably doubled every 30 years. Had the pre-crisis trend continued, the typical Brit would now be 40% richer.

Nowhere in 260 years of data is there a sharper shortfall from the previous trend. The past 15 years have been a disappointment on a scale unimaginable by previous generations of British economists.

Is life in the UK really as bad as the apocalyptically bad economic numbers suggest? Perhaps so.

- A decade of squeezed public services, despite rising taxes (37% of national income, 4% higher than the past four decades).
- debt should be low and falling, but debt is high, with the highest public interest payments in 40 years.
- median incomes in the UK are well below those in Norway, Switzerland, USA.
- incomes of the poor (10th percentile) are lower in the UK than in Slovenia.

https://timharford.com/2023/02/is-life-in-the-uk-really-as-bad-as-the-numbers-suggest-yes-it-is/

 The next thing to hit will be mobile and broadband price rises - just had this from Virgin.

Calls, Data and Text will go up by 17.3% -- which is RPI at 13.4 + 3.9 (for reasons?)

Hence an £8 tariff will go up by £1.38 - so those on more expensive tariffs will be hit especially those written as "free phone" but £30 a month for 2-3 years....

Yeah, this really irritates me. New customers pay £x, but after a year they'll pay £x + RPI + 3.9%. But new new customers still pay £x. How is it more expensive to service existing customers? I know you can usually just ring up and they'll price match the new customer again, but they've just made that a tad more difficult as they detect you're coming to their site from a VM BB and then won't show the new customer prices.

I'll probably sack off the TV and landline as I never use either and it is cheaper now to just have BB (bundles were the cheapest way before).

Virgin broadband are particularly good / bad at it - new users get much better deals - and they make it harder to swap - we did one where o/h said she was moving out to end contract and I'd take it - we both got a £50 voucher as part of it - but they did pester her - where are you going - can we supply at new place...

Also check bundles - oddly Virgin again can be cheaper to take phone / tv and broadband over just 1 or 2 items

It's all about customer retention, as most people never change - inertia and familiarity set in, and it's all to complicated to change.

Same as the banks offering you +£200 to open a new account ... hold on a minute, where's my £200 for being a loyal customer for 25 years ??