Cost of living!

[mickeymegabyte]

It is obvious that most people will put up with whatever is presented to them without question. WHY !..... why do we allow ourselves to be sucked dry of hard earned cash/life savings.... without questions. All I am stating in previous posts is we ALL have a set budget to live on. You cannot give working people 2% wage rises and raise Gas/Electric by 54%....food by 10% per month.....reduce quantities and charge more, something has to give.

[C8RKH]

@mickeymegabyteduring the 10 years from 2011 to 2021 the average annual inflation rise has been 3%. In general, 

The year before that it was -0.5%, did you expect a pay deduction that year? Would you think it reasonable if your employer had imposed one? After all prices had fallen.

Inflation has indeed spiralled in the first 6 months of this year. Yes it's tough out there. BUT employers will be cautious as massive pay increases are impossible to reverse (see above example) and the current high rates could recede significantly in 2023 depending upon world events.

Let's improve our workforces woeful, lagging, productivity to make more profit to pay for better wages.

 

Yes, people need to make choices. Takeaway family meal for four or buy in season food raw and prepare a weeks worth of meals for the same cost?  My wife makes home made soup in batches. Lovely tasty stuff and works out about 75p a meal! 

Give up beer. Wine. Cigarettes and the daily/weekly bet. Stop spend £3.50 on a coffee at Costa. Etc 

Don't leave any devices on standby. Etc 

Personal action and responsibility first. What's wrong in that?

We could do all the above. Or we could just whinge about how unfair it all is.

By the way, average wages (outside of the heavily unionised public sector) are ramping fast due to the skills shortage. So it's not all bad.

Not saying it's a bed of roses, but a complex issue, which has been coming for some time, made worse by low interest rates lulling people into over committing on spending in many situations.

Also, so many people now working full time/part time from home has significantly reduced their going to work costs.

 

[Barrykearley]

16 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

Give up beer. Wine. Cigarettes and the daily/weekly bet. Stop spend £3.50 on a coffee at Costa. Etc 

 

Will you pack it in and just open another bottle of wine. I’ve only got a few pleasures left in life ffs.

[mickeymegabyte]

How far shall we go back ....1066 ....? when the Normans invaded.

I am not whinging and whining.....just stating facts.

I was an electrician for 25yrs and Railway Signal engineer 25yrs, I could not have worked from home......as many cannot today.

I care about the world my children will have to live in, not the past.

 

[march]

Just found out that Rail drivers average salary is £54,000.00 a year, which is over double the average salary in the UK. We are coming out of a pandemic and are now basically at war (at least with sanctions) with Russia so they think it is a good idea to hold national strikes!

[windymiller]

not to  worry its all "transitory" 😑

[pete]

It's a selfish politically motivated strike

[mickeymegabyte]

I think the  public are selfish in general.

Unions are unpopular today....but everyone who whinges about people striking for their rights and do not belong to unions still accept the pay rises that they negotiate for union members.....I would make it so that they negotiate their own rises.

I read somewhere that it is not the Train Drivers that are striking, it is other staff in stations etc....I may be incorrect.

Think of this example:

A man earning £20,000 per year has a rise of 2% his pay goes to £20,400.

A man earning £200,000 per year has a rise of 2% his pay goes to £204,000.

This gap will grow every year, imagine the difference in 10 years.

It is no wonder that some people are not affected by the rising cost of living.....they can still afford to party!

 

[scotty435]

1 hour ago, march said:

Just found out that Rail drivers average salary is £54,000.00 a year, which is over double the average salary in the UK. We are coming out of a pandemic and are now basically at war (at least with sanctions) with Russia so they think it is a good idea to hold national strikes!

What as Rail drivers salary have do with this dispute they are not even on strike. 96% of train drivers are members of ASLEF who are not in dispute. Misinformation yet again.

[oneshot]

1 hour ago, march said:

Just found out that Rail drivers average salary is £54,000.00 a year, which is over double the average salary in the UK. We are coming out of a pandemic and are now basically at war (at least with sanctions) with Russia so they think it is a good idea to hold national strikes!

Train drivers are not on strike. Over 90% of them are in ASLEF which is not striking. This is all the other rail workers - maintenance, station staff etc.

[C8RKH]

10 hours ago, mickeymegabyte said:

How far shall we go back ....1066 ....? when the Normans invaded.

I am not whinging and whining.....just stating facts.

I was an electrician for 25yrs and Railway Signal engineer 25yrs, I could not have worked from home......as many cannot today.

I care about the world my children will have to live in, not the past.

 

Now now, I just went back 10 years as a SENSIBLE reference point. No need to get arsey about it. The point I was making was that in general the high inflation is a 2022 problem - brought on by global issues. It's not about living in the past but having a baseline to measure against.

The private sector largely moved away from wholescale pay bargaining some time ago. People in general are paid what their skills command, usually based on performance appraisals etc, as opposed to a blanket pay rise for everyone, even the lazy scrotes that every else is annoyed at as everyone knows they do sweet FA. Hardly any fairer system than the one you mentioned to be honest. And don't forget many of the unionised industries have, still, gilt edged pensions and other benefits 

You say it is unfair the disparity re a pay rise of 2% on someone who earns £20k as opposed to £200k. But what if the VALUE of what the £200k worker produces is much higher? Should not they be rewarded for it?

Also, the £20k worker will pay around £2.8k in tax and NI, the £200k worker £85k. A chunk of that £85k goes to the lower paid worker in benefits were claimed.

So just as you say people happy to take the pay rise when others have striked, people deride high earners but rely on the taxes they pay. It's a circular economy.

[PaulCP]

The common sense behind strikes is largely beyond my comprehension and is usually just an ego trip for the union leaders.

Strikers don’t get paid, some may get a small amount from union funds but that can’t last forever. Do these strikers ever calculate that when they eventually win an extra 2% pay rise after striking for 10 days they have in fact already lost more than 2% of their annual salary. Do they ever ask their union leaders if they are forfeiting pay during the strike? I recall the Scargill actually moved house into quite a mansion during the long miner’s strike and the miner’s still never twigged how he was using them for his own personal gain and political ends.

I read this morning that the unions are now saying that the strike is not about pay but about compulsory redundancies and changes to working practises. The article went on to highlight that current working practises requires 6 men to change a piece of electrical equipment (ok there may be a safety issue here but it would appear that all safety issues could be covered by reducing to 4), but more alarmingly engineers refuse to share vans going to call outs and insist on each using a van.

Sorry, I have no sympathy for strikers, they usually bring about their own downfall!

[mickeymegabyte]

I am going to add one final comment and leave it at that.....excuse my shouting.

"WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE TODAY.....YOU ALLOW ANYTHING AND ACCEPT IT IS RIGHT".

CRAZY !!

[pete]

Aslef,the train drivers Union IS on strike today

[pete]

39 minutes ago, mickeymegabyte said:

I am going to add one final comment and leave it at that.....excuse my shouting.

"WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE TODAY.....YOU ALLOW ANYTHING AND ACCEPT IT IS RIGHT".

CRAZY !!

Which Lotus do you drive?

[C8RKH]

1 hour ago, mickeymegabyte said:

I am going to add one final comment and leave it at that.....excuse my shouting.

"WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE TODAY.....YOU ALLOW ANYTHING AND ACCEPT IT IS RIGHT".

CRAZY !!

You need to take a Prozac and lie down 

I'm very happy with my lot right now, not my fault you're not. 

My kids are doing OK too actually, so I guess not everyone is as unhappy as you lol.

[TdM]

My issue with the strikes is that in my job (private sector) we drive for efficiency. You get onboard and you do what you can to automate and cut down on time wasted. If that means trimming out your own job, you do that and then move on to another job or try to find something else internal, which you will usually get because you just helped make efficiencies.

In this particular instance it seems that workers are largely striking to keep things running inefficiently and asking for more money to do so. The rail companies can't give ever more money whilst ever less passengers are travelling on trains when ever higher percentages of workers vs passengers are required to keep them running. If you want more money, you need to let the rail companies become more efficient so that the workers who remain get paid more and the others can move on to do something that is beneficial to the economy elsewhere, which makes the whole country better off including in the long run the majority of those who have to move on.

Not only that, but I believe one of the things that the train drivers are complaining about is 'cameras' in the cabin which are IR cameras to stop people falling asleep, the same systems that have been installed in the Croydon trams to remove the risk of it happening again. So not only hindering efficiency but also safety.

The one area that I would support is either the train company or the government helping with upskilling and job migration as that would help all sides and the country as a whole. It's money well spent, once people see it working it will reduce the amount of strikes you have, increase efficiency and productivity and place more people in value enhancing jobs.

[MJON]

Find it ironic that people including the media like to knock the higher paid. “It’s okay for them” or “their increase is bigger than…” Of the £916 billion of tax revenues collected, 42% (£389 billion) is from personal tax and NI contributions alone. With the top 1% highest paid contributing a whacking 29%. It’s got to come from somewhere/one and they are it.

[C8RKH]

@MJON and @TdM totally onboard with your comments.

But we'll get trolleyed for seeing the other side of the argument. After all, it's all a conspiracy to keep the working class and public sector suppressed (I'm from a council estate, comprehensively educated, no higher education - oh, guess that's me then) init! We're all lemmings for not seeing that.

pretty ironic we're discussing it on a site dedicated to relatively expensive sport car toys too. Jeez, I'm so dim I don't get it.....

[Rebelk2]

On 03/02/2022 at 22:50, Bibs said:

Petrol is up 27%, energy bills up £700 pa, NI up, interest rates up, Council Tax up, household inflation at 8%. 

The average household will be around £3k worse off. Just guessing but a great deal of people, can they afford these extra costs? Are we going to have a big bust up and lots of repossessions again? And how does the BoE raising interest rates help? 

At least my car insurance came down this year!

In the meantime, the govt have written of £5bn in covid loan fraud (which seems pretty easy to recover, surely £500m spent on getting it back would be a good investment?) and £8.7bn on shit PPE including overpaying to the tune of £4.7bn and £2.6bn's worth which was useless and couldn't even be used. 

I personally witnessed it. In essence, banks were giving their favorite business owners free money when they called them. Donald himself claimed to guarantee every loan, but the only thing he vetoed was the inspector general's oversight, indicating that everything was set up for fraud. The people who most needed it were not recipients of what was arguably the largest government redistribution of wealth in our nation's history.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Rebelk2

[Bishmma]

On 03/02/2022 at 22:50, Bibs said:

Petrol is up 27%, energy bills up £700 pa, NI up, interest rates up, Council Tax up, household inflation at 8%. 

The average household will be around £3k worse off. Just guessing but a great deal of people, can they afford these extra costs? Are we going to have a big bust up and lots of repossessions again? And how does the BoE raising interest rates help? 

At least my car insurance came down this year!

In the meantime, the govt have written of £5bn in covid loan fraud (which seems pretty easy to recover, surely £500m spent on getting it back would be a good investment?) and £8.7bn on shit PPE including overpaying to the tune of £4.7bn and £2.6bn's worth which was useless and couldn't even be used. Here is a guide about cost of living in Canada.

Guess who really controls the government in a capitalist society. Money controls the current world we live in, and those with the most of it have the ability to influence decisions that benefit them. I hate to say it, but public outcry or revolt is the only way to change this. Obviously, the nuclear option, but if the cost of living continues to rise and the majority of us are thrown into deeper poverty, it will happen. History demonstrates this.

[C8RKH]

3 hours ago, Bishmma said:

but if the cost of living continues to rise and the majority of us are thrown into deeper poverty, it will happen. History demonstrates this.

Right, I'm coming off the fence. I know it's not like me, but ...

We have had 12 years of low inflation. Cheap money through interest rates and a general rise in wages due to a general shortage of workers, not just skilled ones, across the economy.

During that period people have generally (not all)been flexing their muscles as consumers, buying everything from expensive watches, to cars, to 2nd homes (the number of which is at an all time high) and spend scandalous (in my opinion)amounts of money on holidays etc. Ask yourself this question. During these good times, how much did I take the opportunity to save and/or invest for the tougher times that undoubtedly follow the good?  Did I save and/or invest at all, or did I piss it all away living a great life impressing my neighbours with my ability to spend and holiday? I think for a lot of people, they've taken advantage of the cheap money and partied till their brains hurt.

We then have a 2 year pandemic, where the Government funds millions of workers to be furloughed in an attempt (valiant in my opinion)to protect jobs.  Some people who were under declaring their income to avoid paying tax and NI were pissed at the Government as their furlough was lower than their actuals. Boo hoo, tough shit you skanks! Some business owners, SME and large took the piss and took free money loans - sales of Rolexes etc exploded. Twats! At the same time millions of workers stayed at home. Had no travel to work costs and the opportunity to save thousands through not being a dickhead and paying £3.50 for a coffee and £4 for a posh sandwich from a Costa/Nero/Starbucks etc.

We've now got a situation in the last 12 months, but since January for certain, where due to external factors like a major special operation (invasion, war, etc as to your own views) in Ukraine, the restarting of manufacturing driving demand for energy etc at scale, and some stupid energy strategy decisions by Governments red, blue and yellow (SNP) we are seeing global energy prices spike, exacerbated by a falling pound against the dollar (thank whatever you don't use Euros as your currency as that is no worth less than a dollar!) as most carbon based energy is priced in dollars.

So based on some of the comments on here. We've had 12 good years were people spent like billy-oh, saved little when times were good. But now that they are suddenly hard, it's all the fault of the rich and capitalism and a conspiracy against everyone 

Of course, nothing to do with the individual decisions people make as these days most individuals absolve themselves of any accountability or responsibility.

So, my summary is what utter shite some people (aimed generally not at an individual)are spouting. 

I am of course not pointing any of this at the millions struggling on benefits, as it really would be taking the piss if those said benefits meant they were toying around in a Lotus.

I think people need to look back over the last 12 years and ask themselves some hard questions re spending and saving.

Thanks for listening to my rant, you must have better things to do surely 😂🤣

 

[LotusFella]

I totally agree apart from said Good times.  the world in my view has lurched from one crisis to another since 2001 world trade centre crash.  So in summary we've been f**cked over by the "Global controlling party" for 21 years!  Oh and I fortunately did save as I'm such a tight arse! 😂 and got some solar panels so currently my elecy bill is not too bad.

[pete]

Problem is a lot of people think the last 12 years is the norm and think it is their right to maintain the same standards year on year. Business is as bad ,instead of investing their profits they have taken them all out. I know people who have gone into overdraft to take the profit. As Harold Macmillan said in the sixties  "You have never had it so good"

[march]

I agree with all of the above but what I don't get is all the moaning etc.. about the cost of living when house prices in Devon have been shooting up at ridiculous rates due to the demand (many still not even making to the market before they are sold) and people continue with their expensive holidays. Last evenings flights over the North Atlantic (and don't get me started on who is responsible for all the greenhouse gases 😡):

Edited July 14, 2022 by march