Cost Of Living Crisis (COLC) - How fucked are ye?

[poo]

Currently transitioning to a sort-of minimalist lifestyle. Basically aiming to own just a set of gymnastic rings and a dildo.

[Buelligan]

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/first-step-towards-a-general-strike-enough-is-enough-campaign-launches-331884/

Thought this was really great and needs more attention, click the link, watch the short vid, powerful and important shit, right there.

"It's time everyone in this country who's got a rotten landlord, who's got a low wage, who's got in-work benefits, who's going to a food bank, stood up together and said enough is enough."

https://twitter.com/i/status/1556560251360579585

With added Mick Lynch, Zara Sultana, Ronan Burtenshaw, Dave Ward and Eddie Dempsey.  Watch it.  Share it.

[Ray Travez]

Does anyone have any tips for beating despair? I'm struggling with finding the world very bleak at the moment and only seeing worse times ahead. I guess the obvious answer is to disengage from the news and focus on my life/finances/career and the small patch of the world I can effect (renters union, volunteering). I just seem pathologically incapable of not feeding the doom.

Despair is a rational response to this crisis, as is fear, depression, anger, and so on. The war is a reality, crushing  inflation is a reality and both look likely to continue to be so. We have people at the helm who (as ever) do not appear to know the best way to solve these problems, and indeed may be making them worse. Feelings of despair are a natural response to this, coming from a vulnerable part of ourselves that is understandably distressed. Things look out of control. To deny this is to push away a part of ourselves that is seeing the situation clearly. I suggest being gentle with yourself, and I'd echo Fr.Bigley, spend some time in nature, in the fresh air. Maybe also look at the reasons why you are compelled to revisit the news in a way that you say, 'feeds the doom.'

My wife disagrees entirely. She says, 'everything is futile. What about climate change? We're fucked. Spending time in nature is the most depressing thing you can do, it reminds you how fucked everything is.'

[Alberon]

Energy bills will hit £4,266 for a typical household by January next year, warns consultancy Cornwall Insight.

That's a rise of £650 for households in England, Scotland and Wales compared with its estimate just last week.

In its latest report, Cornwall has also increased its forecast for this autumn's typical domestic energy bills to £3,582, up from its previous prediction of £3,358.

[TrenterPercenter]

Despair is a rational response to this crisis, as is fear, depression, anger, and so on. The war is a reality, crushing  inflation is a reality and both look likely to continue to be so. We have people at the helm who (as ever) do not appear to know the best way to solve these problems, and indeed may be making them worse. Feelings of despair are a natural response to this, coming from a vulnerable part of ourselves that is understandably distressed. Things look out of control. To deny this is to push away a part of ourselves that is seeing the situation clearly. I suggest being gentle with yourself, and I'd echo Fr.Bigley, spend some time in nature, in the fresh air. Maybe also look at the reasons why you are compelled to revisit the news in a way that you say, 'feeds the doom.'

My wife disagrees entirely. She says, 'everything is futile. What about climate change? We're fucked. Spending time in nature is the most depressing thing you can do, it reminds you how fucked everything is.'

Great post.  I love space and see the incredible wonders of the universe as something to gawp and be in awe about, making my problems quite small in the grand scheme of things.  My other half finds space terrifying and unfathomable so finds no solstice here, she prefers a glass of red and big "FUCK YOU" at the world.

You gotta just find something that works for you but rumination on everything that is bad in the world becomes self-defeating at a point.

[Buelligan]

Does anyone have any tips for beating despair? I'm struggling with finding the world very bleak at the moment and only seeing worse times ahead. I guess the obvious answer is to disengage from the news and focus on my life/finances/career and the small patch of the world I can effect (renters union, volunteering). I just seem pathologically incapable of not feeding the doom.

I also think remembering to feel the positivity even in the dark times.  Check yourself, return to the seed of beauty and wholeness that lies within.

I have been tried, these last couple of days.  Without reminding myself of my own strength, my own courage, the ocean of peace we can all touch at will, I might have become quite desolate. 

I had a very special motorcycle, we had travelled the world together, shared enormous adventures.  Unfortunately as well as being beloved, she was also rare, beautiful and valuable.  Right through my most desperate days, living on the clippings of tin, when my friends all pointed at her, I would not sell.  I would not have sold her for anything less than world peace and socialism.  I couldn't afford to run her or insure her.  I kept her in a friend's secure garage.

Sunday night, I found the doors wide, despite blinking, her Klingon cloaking device remained active and when I stood on her spot I understood she was gone.  I'm thinking about those unloving men cutting her apart without respect, reverence, without any idea of the brave and glorious life she'd led.  It fucking breaks my heart . 

The gendarmes just bollocked me for not insuring her, if I'd had her insured, she'd still be gone and they'd probably suspect me of insurance fraud.

This has made me extremely sad.  She is irreplaceable.  But I will still rise above this shit.  I will still continue to love my life and see beauty and do my fucking best because I will not permit evil to dominate my inner life.  I will move my mind to the calm ocean, to the unending ride, see the beauty of the sky and fill my heart with peace.

[Endicott]

That is very sad. At the end of the day a thing is still just a thing, but we make very strong emotional connections to some things, and some things are very beautiful and their loss hurts. I'm sorry to hear this.

[shoulders]

Spending time in nature is the most depressing thing you can do, it reminds you how fucked everything is

Fuck me, no, being in nature and being unable to switch off from how fucked everything is is the most depressing thing you can do.

I was out on Sunday near Ripponden. Saw every classic UK farm animal in abundance, also grouse, a bat flying by the river, gorgeous landscapes and scenes ranging from miles of open moorland to a beautiful harmony of centuries old stone and industry alongside the nature slowly reclaiming it. Plants were thriving, the weather was cheerfully sunny with a cooling breeze. We stopped at the Old Bridge Inn by, yes, you guessed it, a very old packhorse bridge and church, the pub was beautiful inside with exposed beams and rafters, crooked yet solid.

It isn't an act of denial but one of reinvigoration. Totally bizarre mindset to claim otherwise, in my opinion.

[Twit 2]

We stopped at the Old Bridge Inn by, yes, you guessed it, a very old packhorse bridge and church, the pub was beautiful inside with exposed beams and rafters, crooked yet solid.

What, right in the country?

[Pranet]

Despair is a rational response to this crisis, as is fear, depression, anger, and so on. The war is a reality, crushing  inflation is a reality and both look likely to continue to be so. We have people at the helm who (as ever) do not appear to know the best way to solve these problems, and indeed may be making them worse. Feelings of despair are a natural response to this, coming from a vulnerable part of ourselves that is understandably distressed. Things look out of control. To deny this is to push away a part of ourselves that is seeing the situation clearly. I suggest being gentle with yourself, and I'd echo Fr.Bigley, spend some time in nature, in the fresh air. Maybe also look at the reasons why you are compelled to revisit the news in a way that you say, 'feeds the doom.'

My wife disagrees entirely. She says, 'everything is futile. What about climate change? We're fucked. Spending time in nature is the most depressing thing you can do, it reminds you how fucked everything is.'

I've some sympathy with your wife. For example I used to really like nature documentaries, but now I just think, well all of this stuff isn't going to be there much longer, is it? and I get bummed out.

[All Surrogate]

I suspect a fair amount of it will outlast you, if that's any comfort.

[imitationleather]

I suspect a fair amount of it will outlast you, if that's any comfort.

Is that a threat?

[TrenterPercenter]

You know what? looking at this pile of cats, beavers and drift wood nailed together it is a bit depressing actually.

[All Surrogate]

Is that a threat?

It's more of a prediction with menaces.

[shoulders]

What, right in the country?

"i think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fish, butterflies - and to return to my own - toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future more probable, and by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship"

[shoulders]

It's pretty clear that if either party proposed public ownership of utilities and the other didn't, the one that did wins the next general election.

Yet neither will. Both will pretend it's unworkable, if it even enters MSM conversation.

And a few more people will start to get how politics and democracy really works.

[Buelligan]

I think you're absolutely right.

[Alberon]

First estimate for energy prices in April 2023 are in, and they're not good.

Energy bills will pass £5,000 next April, according to a grim new forecast.

Consultancy Auxilione said Ofgem may have to set the price cap at £5,038 per year for the average household amid elevated gas prices.

[Buelligan]

Meanwhile, Big Oil's quarterly profits hit £50 billion and Boris Whale is beached in Slovenia.  Starmer hides under a donor.  In France, we're expecting a 4% rise.  FOUR PER CENT as opposed to the UK's TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN PER CENT.  You are all being mugged.

Sign up today.

https://wesayenough.co.uk/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/02/big-oil-profits-energy-bills-windfall-tax

[Crenners]

"i think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fish, butterflies - and to return to my own - toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future more probable, and by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship"

I missed this the other day but this hit me. Good lad, Orwell.

[Mr_Simnock]

£5,000 price cap will see 40%-60% of the population unable or realy struggling to pay energy bills, either the tories do something before it gets there or they won't be in power for 20 years, this is like the winter of discontent but times 100. Be interesting to see how repossessions and bankruptcies in the millions will go do down at the next election. I can't think of a single part of the UK economy suddenly without customers if this happens. God help the cafe's and restaurants as they are forced to push prices of food up by 100% to cover their energy bills, UK manufacturing will be amongst the most expensive in the world due to this, it is going to be catastrophic. At £5,000 there won't be any illusion left of who tories are for and how they operate, I can see this easily bringing in a huge raft of renationalised utility companies. The energy market in the UK is utterly out of control, the whole privitisation push of the 1980's is now utterly laid bare as the huge lie and farce it was.

[Mr_Simnock]

I can't imagine the scale of the recesion if it's allowed to reach £5,00 for the price cap, 2008 will seem like the good old salad days of plenty.

[bgmnts]

Meanwhile, Big Oil's quarterly profits hit £50 billion and Boris Whale is beached in Slovenia.  Starmer hides under a donor.  In France, we're expecting a 4% rise.  FOUR PER CENT as opposed to the UK's TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN PER CENT.  You are all being mugged.

Sign up today.

https://wesayenough.co.uk/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/02/big-oil-profits-energy-bills-windfall-tax

I mean, you're still being mugged off in France as well to be fair, we're just being extra mugged.

Obviously the news is contributing to a lot of this but my existential dread has popped up randomly at times but with increased frequency, wondering how life is going to change irreversibly, after half a century of pretty sweet living in the west. Resource shortages and then soon wall to wall wars and then either nuclear doom or pure dystopia or both.

There is no good outcome for the human race is there? How do you not just sometimes go what the fuck is the point in spending your entire day doing something you hate to still not be able to afford basic human needs or life's little pleasures, and nobody to even commiserate with or make life seem worth it. I think soon a lot of people, the people who are sort of managing and maybe the petit bourgeois (the mega rich will never be affected or care obv) will feel it too and maybe something will change. Don't even care if it's violence.

[Buelligan]

It's not a competition. But I'm pretty sanguine about a 4% rise.  If I was facing 215%, I'd be sharpening my pitchfork yesterday.

[imitationleather]

First estimate for energy prices in April 2023 are in, and they're not good.

They may as well just make it £10k.

[Buelligan]

Obviously the news is contributing to a lot of this but my existential dread has popped up randomly at times but with increased frequency, wondering how life is going to change irreversibly, after half a century of pretty sweet living in the west. Resource shortages and then soon wall to wall wars and then either nuclear doom or pure dystopia or both.

There is no good outcome for the human race is there? How do you not just sometimes go what the fuck is the point in spending your entire day doing something you hate to still not be able to afford basic human needs or life's little pleasures, and nobody to even commiserate with or make life seem worth it. I think soon a lot of people, the people who are sort of managing and maybe the petit bourgeois (the mega rich will never be affected or care obv) will feel it too and maybe something will change. Don't even care if it's violence.

You edited.  Mate, bgmnts, it's not the West - the West has problems, sure - this is Britain though.  Think about it, would you be shitting it if your expected price hike was 4%?  You would not.

This is happening because of the way you, your country, is being governed.  Across the EU, the rise averages out at 41%, steep, terrible, but it doesn't even touch the sides of what's being done in the UK. 

Don't give up, don't despair.  Sign up to something like don't pay or Enough and use your energy to change the world.  Alone, you're fucked.  But you are not alone.  Join in solidarity and make change happen.

[Twit 2]

At £5,000 there won't be any illusion left of who tories are for and how they operate

Yes, there will.

[Mr_Simnock]

Yes, there will.

only for the utterly stupid

[AllisonSays]

I do think that the culture war posturing of the Tories will lose a lot of its freight when people can't afford to heat their homes, drive to work, do a weekly shop or go on holiday. What the consequences of that will be it's very hard to say.

[Psybro]

I think things will move very quickly on this once people in charge are back from their holidays and the fact we're waiting for that speaks volumes.