Remember the old days when we used to compare holiday snaps?
Now the only thing we seem to be comparing is our energy bills.
“How much is your direct debit?” and “How much have your bills gone up by?”
Never have gas and electricity prices been such a hot topic.
While there are the lucky ones who claim their bills have not increased as much as they feared, it is safe to say that by January next year we will all be feeling the heat. Just not from our radiators as we won’t be able to afford to put them on.
We got an email from British Gas this week saying our annual bill was going up from £760 to £9,300! That must be a mistake because we aren’t suddenly powering the Blackpool Illuminations but it sent my blood pressure soaring. Blackouts this winter? I nearly blacked out there and then.
Money saving expert Martin Lewis says that this is a crisis on a par with the pandemic as average energy bills will soar to over £4,000.
With the pandemic, though, we could take precautions like wear a mask and wash our hands. We can’t not cook food or survive a bitter winter without putting any heating on at all.
The paltry £400 payment, which seemed quite generous a few months ago, is nothing but a drop in the ocean, and while we can just about survive the heatwave without fans and air-con, a cold winter will surely kill off the vulnerable – old and young.
Never mind heat or eat we won’t be able to afford to do either.
How has it come to this?
Meanwhile BP reports its biggest quarterly profit for 14 years hitting £6.9billion between April and June – that’s more than triple the amount it made in the same period last year.
In my opinion this has stopped being a cost-of-living crisis and become daylight robbery.
We need a real regulator, not a toothless tiger like Ofgem. What is it regulating exactly?
And we need a strong leader who will stand up for us and go after these fatcats.
