‘It’s relentless’: Britons react to April bill rises amid Labour’s benefit cuts | Household bills

25 comments

1. I don’t know.

   The ONS say average wages rose by 5.9% in the year to March, beating all these recent price rises.

   The Guardian of course finds 31 year old Robert, whose salary hasn’t risen in 6 years and struggles to pay for food and is now in deep shit.

   So really, the reader can choose to think life is getting even tougher because of poor old Robert and Graham and even Ben who they know in real life, or the reader simply thinks ‘Sure, they’ll always be winners and losers, but the averages look kinda’ ok tbh’.

2. I am more surprised on why the hell we have electricity bill rising when all those companies are making billions. We are already at the top of highest energy bill, no need to chase that No 1 spot anymore.

3. Someone is going to have to start taxing the rich and stop allowing them to move money offshore.

   This model we are following, it’s tanking on every front.

   We have picked the losing side in this century and it’s fucking embarrassing.

4. Question for older Redditors – has this never not been the case?

   Ever since 2008 I feel it’s continual doom & gloom. I expect with COVID we’d have some tough years after to pay for those years but even still..

   However I don’t think the news cycle ever changes financially – it’s rare if ever there’s good fiscal government news. Prices always increase- I’ve been working for years and seen that first hand with suppliers and products and such – and in other companies where prices go up almost like clockwork every April or on an annual basis.

   So is this news? Aside from the recent benefits cuts which I’m not referring too here – historically don’t prices just go up each year?

5. Starmer promised to freeze energy bills and council tax…..of course he lied.

   Rachel from complaints cratered the economy..wait until the effects really kick in.

6. The UK. A place where things will never get better and since I’ve known it a relentless news cycle of depressing news on how shit the place is.

7. Why is it everytime pay increases Bill’s always go up, do the rich not have enough or is this just a bad habit of theirs?

8. We can do nothing but complain I’m social media and do protest in the street. We live in a dictatorship where we are told when things are increased in place and we can do nothing about it. Before anybody says vote someone else when was the last time any politicians told the truth across any party.

9. As someone actively trying to get my own place in the near future, the constant price hikes just make it harder and harder when you’re trying to do it on your own.

10. The problem is that no-one seems to understand pay rises aren’t actually going to help.

    You could make minimum wage £1,000,000 per hour, but then when bread costs £2,000,000 it doesn’t make life any better.

    Profit needs to go down, so that pay can stay the same but prices fall. Of course this not something any business wants, so it won’t ever happen.

    Eventually businesses will realise that they are killing themselves in the name of profit, because having high margin means nothing if no-one can afford your product.

11. Why does *nothing* ever get better in this country, other than like… internet speed, and maybe energy moving to renewables? Those are legit the *only* things that I can think of that have improved in the last 20-something years. It’s fucking crazy.

    Food quality and prices, public transport and services, healthcare, population happiness, media quality (TV, movies etc), education, cost of living, wages, natural reserves, domestic and commercial waste, air quality, wealth inequality, pollution, the fucking weather – it’s all going to shit, none of it shows any signs of improving at all, despite the fact that we have the money, resources, and time, to **fix all of it** as a society.

    I realise many of those things are directly linked to one another and some of them can’t even be controlled but, man, why does *EVERYTHING* have to get shitter? Why can’t anything just improve anymore?

12. Local bridge and tunnel tolls went up by another 20p today too. Completely arbitrary price rises just for the sake of it, punishing anybody commuting to work.

    We’re a fucking spineless nation and nothings ever going to change. Keep calm and carry on everybody, just deal with the unaffordable cost of living and stagnant wages

13. Pay more and more of what little you get and less and less is given to you. Even worse if you’re poor or disabled, then your entire existence is labelled a waste.

    Now where do you think all the increasing amounts of money you have to give away go when at the same time you receive less (e.g. because of stagnant wages)?

    If you guessed “it gets siphoned off to the top and eventually disappears in untaxed offshore accounts, never to be seen again” then BINGO, your guess is correct!

    The enemy are the rich. Every other “problem” that puts strains on private and public purses can only exist because the rich (not just private individuals, also the entities they control) hoard the resources for solutions and refuse to dispense any. Mind you they can only profit well because insummountable little workers like you slave away daily for their gain.

    This is already sounding so cliché, so I’ll say bla bla, nothing to lose but your chains, bla bla.

14. It is now time we start encouraging those on low incomes to move to a country where their ability to earn better matches the cost of living.

    We cannot keep subsidising millions of people who don’t have the skilled to earn what is required to live in a country like Britain.

    Otherwise we are all destined to live in what would best be described as managed decline.

15. Ah the Great British Race to the Bottom…..

    Don’t forget to keep calm and carry on paying those extortionate bills.

16. The corporate manual states ever repeatedly “what are they gonna do ?”

17. Bills and interest rates just killing everyone at the moment, oh unless you’re a millionaire or billionaire

18. I’m so fucking tired of working harder and harder to stand still.

19. Water is nuts seeing actually how much they waist. Your paying for there leaks.

20. My water almost doubling from £28 to £50 is a disgrace.

    We are being fleeced, again and again. Despite 15k in pay rises I don’t feel any better off than 3 years ago.

21. Who do Labour voters back in the upcoming council elections – those places that are holding them, that is?

22. I spend a lot of time in March looking for cheaper deals, talking to customer services. Often cancelling stuff and then buying the same product or service as a new customer. Saves quite a bit.

23. Neoliberal cunts have been fucking our country over for decades now. However, after all the other shite we’ve been through, particularly since the 2008 crash, the plummet has been steep with no end in sight. Rent is extortionate, council tax is extortionate, all the other bills are extortionate… You’d think minimum wage was like 40k a year what with how expensive everything is!

24. Labour are a dire government. Just utterly awful.

    Anyone voting for them still is just hilarious to me 🤣.

25. Starmer was giving it to the Tories about the Windfall Tax yet hasn’t done so himself. Hypocrites, the whole lot of them.

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