2 days ago, British Gas announced that they were raising prices with immediate effect: +35% for gas, and +9% for electricity. This is clearly an outrage and adds yet another dimension to the current economic crisis faced by the UK and its poor people, especially pensioners. The point is that as you get older, you also get less mobile, thus decreasing your ability to self-generate bodily warmth. That’s why disabled people for instance who aren’t very mobile always need a lot of artificial heat in the form of radiators etc.
Now I’m lucky in that I am sorted – I’m not rich by any means, but it would take a much bigger crisis to drop me into any kind of financial difficulty. I’m not squeezed, I don’t experience this ‘credit crunch‘ and can withstand an even fucking worse economic situation (and believe me, I’m very happy about it, as I have extreme anxieties about money and have worked hard to get into a position where this fear is not part of my life).
However, I resent the fact more and more that the UK is such an expensive place to live, and to be. When I first came here, I was really shocked that everything cost about 3 times as much as it did in Germany, even then. Property prices are a complete and utter joke and would be unacceptable in any decent country, and the whole ‘buying on credit’ / ads on daytime TV to get even more money out of the gullible poor would be illegal in Germany.
In a way, this country is getting what has been coming for a long time. From a rational, German perspective it’s clear that it all had to go down the drain eventually. This time is now. I don’t think there’s an end in sight. What annoys me most is that it will hit old people most, because most of them were probably really good with money when they were younger (being brought up in a more sensible Britain), worked hard, and now are still facing the shit that another generation and a useless fucking government brought on (or in any case, didn’t reign in/deal with in time).
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