{"id":63470,"date":"2022-09-07T06:27:23","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T11:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63470"},"modified":"2022-09-07T06:27:23","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T11:27:23","slug":"nobody-could-have-seen-it-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63470","title":{"rendered":"Nobody could have seen it coming"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nobody could have seen it coming<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Eighteen months ago, the UK average annual combined gas and electricity bill was \u00a31,287.\u00a0 Later this week, we expect to learn that it will rise to \u00a33,582 in October and to \u00a34,266 in January 2023.\u00a0 Not, in reality, that anybody is going to pay that amount.\u00a0 All but those at the very top of the income ladder will instead cut back on energy use, with those at the bottom forced to self-disconnect.\u00a0 The problem is far worse for business users, who are not \u201cprotected\u201d by the price \u201ccap\u201d imposed by the regulator.\u00a0 Energy is often the third largest cost \u2013 after wages and taxes \u2013 to businesses which have already been struggling with higher input and debt-servicing costs.\u00a0 What this is pointing to is a major affordability crisis this winter, with growing\u00a0concerns for public health<\/a>\u00a0and the likelihood of a recessionary\u00a0wave of business insolvencies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As with the 2008 crash, the Versailles-on-Thames establishment are keen to point out that \u201cnobody could have seen it coming.\u201d\u00a0 After all, \u201cPutin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine,\u201d coming just as the economy was staggering out of a two-year pandemic \u2013 itself arriving just months after the UK finalised Brexit \u2013 amounts to a combination of events which would have been considered outlandish in a work of fiction\u2026\u00a0 except that a work of partial fiction \u2013 a docudrama \u2013 accurately set out the main causes of the UK\u2019s current energy woes eighteen years ago.<\/p>\n

In 2003, BBC programme makers began work on a series called \u201cIf\u2026 ,<\/em>\u201d which aimed to explore the future crises which required political leaders to act immediately, using drama to make the point.\u00a0 The\u00a0three series<\/a>, which were broadcast between March 2004 and May 2006, tackled issues like the impact of obesity on public health, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and intergenerational conflict between the boomers and millennials…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobody could have seen it coming Eighteen months ago, the UK average annual combined gas and electricity bill was \u00a31,287.\u00a0 Later this week, we expect to learn that it will rise to \u00a33,582 in October and to \u00a34,266 in January 2023.\u00a0 Not, in reality, that anybody is going to pay that amount.\u00a0 All but those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[281,284,694,30640,31360,820,2080],"class_list":["post-63470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-russia","tag-the-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-tim-watkins","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63471,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63470\/revisions\/63471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}