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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
Sky News reports that high energy prices, caused in part by restrictions on Russian energy resources, are hitting vulnerable people in the United Kingdom. As benefits are withdrawn, millions of pensioners are forced to choose between necessities such as cooking, bathing, or heating their homes, signifying that one of the most powerful countries in the world is rapidly declining.
British pensioner Roy Roots, 90, told the outlet that following the authorities’ decision to cut energy subsidies, he would be forced in the upcoming winter to choose between turning on the heating to cook, heating his home, or taking a bath.
“Do I cook, or do I have my heating on?” he asked, adding, “It makes me feel horrible.”
Roots added that he is worried about whether he will be able to survive the winter, which will require taking “drastic measures” such as cooking for three or four days or “showering once a week to make ends meet.”
He told Sky News: “Before I had a shower, I had a bath, and I used to have it up to my neck and lie in it for hours. But now I might shower every two to three days – I just can’t afford to have it on.”
The pensioner said he is already thinking about how to save for the winter to cover the gap left by the benefits cuts. He is preparing to wash clothes at 10pm and turn on the heating only from November onwards.
According to the outlet, around 10 million pensioners like Roots in the country could face similar problems in winter after the government decided to cut fuel subsidies by £200 to £300 a year.
Meanwhile, industry regulator Ofgem announced that the marginal price of electricity for a single-person household will rise by another 10% in October to an average of £1,717 a year.
According to a statement from the charity Age UK, cited by the Financial Times, the price cap hike spells “disaster for pensioners on low and modest incomes or living in vulnerable circumstances due to ill health.”
In turn, the Secretary of State for Energy Security, Edward Miliband, acknowledged that this increase is “deeply worrying news for many families” but defended it, citing “the mess that was left to us in the public finances.”
According to the Financial Times, “the average bill hit a record high of £4,059 in January last year as wholesale prices surged” following Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, “forcing the previous Conservative government to launch a subsidy scheme.”
“The latest increase in the price cap is also connected to the war in Ukraine, with wholesale prices climbing over the past few months because of uncertainty over Russia’s remaining gas supplies to Europe,” the report added.
The UK has been one of the countries most affected by the energy crisis resulting from restrictions on Russian energy resources imposed due to Moscow’s special military operation. As of today, inflation in the country remains above the 2% target, while the British economy only managed 0.6% growth in the first quarter of 2024 after a brief technical recession.
Bloomberg reported last month that British citizens’ debt is rising due to energy costs, with households already owing a cumulative amount of £3.3 billion. Energy debts at the end of the first quarter of 2024 rose by £1.1 billion from a year earlier, according to data from Ofgem cited by Bloomberg. The report says that rising mortgage, food, and other expenses have meant that some households now regard energy bills – which remain well above pre-crisis levels – as a lower priority.
The Labour government has promised to reduce energy poverty dramatically, but “change won’t happen overnight,” Rachel Littlewood, director of consultancy BFY Group, told Bloomberg. She said the “debt position will continue to worsen” in 2024.
However, the energy crisis affects not only pensioners and struggling families but also businesses. Cornwall Insight found that a typical small business, such as a pub, restaurant, or independent retailer, is paying more than £5,000 extra a year on bills, about 70% higher than before the energy crisis began.
Craig Lowrey, a principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, said: “For all the criticism of the household energy price cap, it does provide a level of protection that businesses simply do not have. Given the impact of the cost of living crisis on consumer spending and high street trade, the government will need to seriously consider how to support businesses with their high energy costs if they want to prevent further closures.”
Nonetheless, much of the pain felt by households and businesses alike can be significantly alleviated if British authorities ended their masochistic anti-Russia policies that have only boomeranged and not collapsed the Russian economy as was delusionally expected. Instead of easing the depression and stress British citizens are suffering from the cost of living crisis, London instead prioritises support for Ukraine in the vain attempt to defeat Russia, which, two and a half years on since the start of the Russian military operation, is evidently not going to happen.
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just wait to see how bad it will be for ukroids in dec-feb; no heat, light, water or money. may they all join bandera in a place where no more heating will ever needed.
so might you.
britain is a gay little island…london is full of pederasts. i pity the celtic people, they are cool. and they are stuck with the english idiots
the world has always been gay. it’s just a fact mostly bisexual really the puritans made up the myth of family values
the world has always had sexual deviance since adam & eve — it is the original sin. but morality is not relative. there is right & wrong. and that also will never change
replace world with west.
remember the scottishlabour mps, tony blair and gordon brown? scotland has a parliament, northern ireland and wales have assemblies. england has nought, just gets the blame for everything. westminster, which is unofficially controlled by the city of london, is the parliament of the united kingdom.
this is what happens when your government gives away your money to neo nazis in ukraine and illegal migrants. but the pensioners should also remember who they voted for.
this has been going on with a slow bleed like the vampire jacobites do for decades. they print more money and give it to themselves, and with the extra supply of money everything goes up in price. the same way they treat everything and everybody.
at the time money was a brilliant invention for everyone needing a convenient means medium of exchange. it still is. what you would suggest? trading in wives or children or drugs?
money is the means of exchange. the love of oneself above anything, represented as ‘money’, is the root of all evils. to be willing to sacrifice oneself for some good greater is goodness. at the end, everything evil and purely self-interested falls away. that is because of the infinite ineffable god.
no it s the love of money is the root of all evil. good is relative to ones programming unless an u educated instinctive child from pure parents all personality traits are innerited genetically as “engrams” people may be created by the same processes but they aren’t equal that’s a myth. they are born as the offspring of their ancestry, carrying the same atittudes as their class.
ah, but we have to look after all the illegals flooding in in their £80 a night hotels. because we have to keep them and mr. shlomo and israid happy. that takes priority over our pensioners. because those are our rules based democracy values and that’s just who we are and diversity is our greatest strength. who cares about stabbings and beheadings and a few tens of billions when you.ve got diversity?
who owns the hotels? look at england’s history from a foreigners perspective say an africans or indians or american indians or canadian indians or australian aboriginals or new zealand maoris i would include a tasmananians but they totally erased that entire race off the earth. so you know einstein, the past and present and future are all now cosmically it’s not forgotten.
the same people that the tax payer funds, through the ngo programme, bring in the newbies and no doubt, run many of the hotels that they are housed in.
over in the us, well new york, they have got the military guarding the hotels that are housing their new arrivals. the vets are homeless, out on the streets and the newbies have military protection
they’re the globalists agents in ukraine and iran they’re being used to catch russia into the wefs net too. it’s an entrapment they’re playing out.
the salvos here are dishonest and despicable i’ve known many workers at their so called charities.
the irony, is that they openlty support the nazis in ukraine. boris, not only waved the azov flag in parliament, complete with all symbology, but also let 3 of them address parliament. however, if the average person holds a fancy dress party, dressed up as a german national socialist, from the 30s, then the media completely freak out. the same media that fully supports ukraine, azov and zelinsky.
lets not forget that a lot of these old people in britain where demonstrating to combat climate change and now they get the final bill suddenly have a change of heart.
they will simply be attritioned out of the equation. they’re disposable.
they steal so much money with their printing press and taxes that people can’t even afford to eat with mass produced cheap food. the voracity of the self-proclaimed elite is unquenchable. pathetic to need to steal so much and pathetic of the people who put up with it.
yes they are pathetic and that’s how they’re born.
haha but suckingham palace is warm and well fed i guess.
and what are the odds that the supply of young children to abuse has dried up there? even one of the butlers was in on the abuse before, running child porn and caught. the bodies around royal estates of young women. the bodies of young boys in royal orphanages, saville and ghislaine with prince andrew in the palace and on and on and on and on. god’s judgement will fall on all those who turned a blind eye too.
people like saville, epstein and maxwell hang around the royal family like flies round a dustbin.
look apparently according to scholars god would have had a very hard time finding a virgin back on the day because people weren’t so precious about preserving children’s childishness
not forgetting their other best mate elton john.
read some history. pedophilia was just normal behaviour before the puritans. globally too. only with really small children and infants was it considered vulgar. pederastery was totally ordinary.
starmer is about to jack up taxes and slash benefits. why? – zelensky and his cronies have borrowed hundreds of billions from any suckers foolish enough to lend it to them. they have no intention of ever paying it back and have already defaulted. but these “loans” are guaranteed by the uk and eu. so they are on the hook for all the billions that have been siphoned off. uk pensioners will have to freeze and starve to pay the lenders.
no so the eu and uk can reposses ukraine and russia. they always cry poor and now they have divided the people they can crush them. i said the minute the wall was taken down that’s it, now they can crush the whole world like bugs they have no, even though it was fake anyway, competition from communist ideology to pretend to be better than.
uk is a toilet. always was.
watch international aid rise, which pays for things like integrity initiative trolls/bots, to man comments sections. watch aid to ukraine rise, paid for by the pensioners and disabled of the uk. national socialist party in germany, back in the 30s was led by adolf. 21st century national socialist party in the uk is led by starmer. the human rights lawyer, who led the cps, when they declined to prosecute bbc treasure james sav ille.
the result of green energy policies pushed by neo liberal western politicians and governments a winter cull of the elderly and the poor. with thousands of small businesses closing due to the massive increase in gas oil and heating costs the uk like the rest of western europe is in the process of collapse