August Graham and Benjamin Cooper’s recent article “Household fuels bill to stay two and a half times pre-crisis levels” (Scotsman, 3 August) is the clearest attempt I have seen to try to bring home the reality of the tsunami of power price increases about to engulf us.
I will go further and quote my reality. I am a retired engineer approaching 80 with a reasonable hodgepodge of pensions. Most of these were index-linked, which does not actually mean they keep up with inflation but is better than fixed income. I pay tax of £2,000 per annum.
My dual fuel bill in the last year on a fixed-price contract was £1,333. My proposed replacement plan is £6,696. I am not going to starve. I am not going to spend. If I come unstuck and turn the heating off I will end up in hospital.
The economy is going to go down the tubes. All non-essential goods and services will disappear. The hospitals will be full as will the pockets of the energy-producing companies, such as those which own wind farms, which have no extra costs on last year. Their pockets will be full to overflowing.
The answer is to cap the charges of the wind farms etc, not give random one-off payments to those guessed to be in need. There are a great many needy people, the food banks are already struggling. People will starve as they did in America during the 1930s recession. The health service can hardly cope now – how will starving nurses work even harder?
We live in and age of lying, obscuring the truth, putting a gloss on every news item. If a hundred people are starving there will be a cat saved somewhere. Bury bad news in a hotter war.
You might think a lifetime of living with stupid politicians pursuing wild dreams, of the few billionaires making excessive prots at the expense of the many, has made me a cynic – surely not. We will all pay the price for these lies and deceptions, for greed, for war.
The economic tsunami is coming. Do what you can to save yourselves and your families, and save others as you can.
Ken Carew, Dumfries, Dumfries & Galloway
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