The cost of living

[jdc]

It's extraordinary how little the commentary on the cost of living crisis addresses reducing consumption, especially of energy. 90% of moanfests don't mention it at all, of the remainder 90% give it the most cursory mention, and of the rest, 90% are utter shite. If anyone other than me has suggested an emergency redeployment of the economy into provision of home insulation, I've missed it.

Ahem, I've wittered on about it for aaaaages and was why I called Cameron a c.nt, if the 'green crap' had been implemented billions would have been knocked off the annual heating bill for the UK, along with associated carbon emissions.

lpm mentioned a national campaign to insulate Britain but I don't think anyone's read that post yet.

And boaf is always banging on about insulation - he's easily our most prolific insul* poster.

[Millennie Al]

Obviously consumption needs to decline. But the poorest in society are generally already using the bare minimum to avoid freezing to death in their poorly insulated homes.

No. They're not. And quite obviously so if you read about how things used to be. Firstly, a mere technicality, the poorest are living on the streets and have no homes to heat, but we'll ignore them, as is traditional.

If you read about how people lived in the 60s - before central heating - you'll find that homes were much colder than today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_temperature suggests that:

a 1978 UK study found average indoor home temperatures to be 15.8 °C (60.4 °F) while Japan in 1980 had median home temperatures of 13 °C (55 °F) to 15 °C (59 °F)

Furthermore, if you can wait for an hour at a bus-stop when there is snow on the ground, then you can certainly survive indoors in the same clothing with very little heat. Accounts from the 60s suggest that it was commonplace to wake up to find ice on the inside of the (single glazed) bedroom windows.

Suggesting that ordinary poor people would die in large numbers if they reduced energy usage is scaremongering (and rather patronising to them).

And profiteering is obviously a factor in pricing, as energy companies in the UK (but not everywhere - it's a political choice to allow it) are making record profits.

Citation required. And that does not include media stories which describe income rather than profit, not ones which describe totalprofit of major multinational companies which happen to include some energy generation or supply.

If that money were usefully redistributed some people could pay less.

That's the fallacy warned of in the story of killing the goose that laid golden eggs.

Democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others, and capitalism is the worst form of economic system apart from all the others.

[Millennie Al]

If anyone other than me has suggested an emergency redeployment of the economy into provision of home insulation, I've missed it.

That's where you said:

You'd think some of Matt Hancock's mates would be willing to diversify from selling substandard PPE at a 100% profit margin to selling substandard home insulation at a 100% profit margin.

Perhaps people assumed it was a joke. Substandard home insulation would be a monumental disaster. It might not work, while making it difficult to add insulation properly later; or it might cause damp problems if used inappropriately; or it might cause cracks in walls making houses dangerous or worse off than before.

Mmm. I can't find comparable data for electricity and gas consumption,

From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... icity-data we find electricity generation (GWh) in 1960 was 122,748 compared to 255,439 in 2020. Domestic usage was 33.68 TWh, vs 107.97 in 2020 (no, I don't know why they use different units for generation and consumption).

From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... fuel-input we have gas used for "Domestic" use in 1960 is 38,041 GWh vs 296,566 GWh in 2020

But, of course, there will be a decline in the use of coal (and probably wood burning) over that period, so it's not as big an increase as it appears. Those documents also contain some price information which might be of interest.

[Bird on a Fire]

What is fuel poverty?

We should all be able to stay warm at home. However, rising energy costs, low incomes and energy-inefficient homes are restricting people’s options, leaving them in impossible situations like having to choose to heat their home, feed their children or pay their rent.

As a result, around 6.5 million UK households are in the grip of fuel poverty, unable to afford to heat their homes to the temperature needed to keep warm and healthy. It’s a national injustice that sees those with the least money having no choice but to live in homes that are the most difficult and expensive to heat.

The government uses the Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) definition for fuel poverty in England (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland use different definitions). Under the LILEE indicator, a household is considered to be fuel poor if:

they are living in a property with a fuel poverty energy efficiency rating of band D or below
and when they spend the required amount to heat their home, they are left with a residual income below the official poverty line

The impacts

Prolonged periods when households struggle to pay their bills can lead to increasing and unsustainable levels of debt for households, resulting in a vicious cycle that can be difficult to escape from. It can also lead to unsafe energy rationing, where households try to use as little energy as possible, and even voluntary self disconnection by those with prepayment meters in a bid to spend less.

Cold homes can cause or worsen a range of serious health conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, bronchitis, and asthma. Each year, around 10,000 people die as a result of living in a cold home. Fuel poverty can also have a significant impact on mental health and is a known risk factor for suicide.

https://www.nea.org.uk/articles/what-is-fuel-poverty/

And those are the figures from last winter. Estimates are that numbers will double or triple, depending on who you ask, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... arch-finds

And yes, I too have lived in houses where I had to sleep in three layers, hats and gloves and scrape ice off the inside of the window and couldn't get my clothes dry and so on. It f.cking sucks. This isn't the 1960s and I doubt anybody really thinks it's a good idea to emulate them.

An intelligent person's energy strategy would eliminate energy poverty, not turbocharge it.

[Bird on a Fire]

And boaf is always banging on about insulation - he's easily our most prolific insul* poster.

Hell yeah! Including on this thread.

I even defended those idiots who were sitting in traffic a while ago.

Because let's face it, as daft and reckless as staring down traffic might be, it's not as daft and reckless as seeing an energy crisis coming months in advance and doing f.ck all about it.

[Grumble]

And boaf is always banging on about insulation - he's easily our most prolific insul* poster.

Hell yeah! Including on this thread.

I even defended those idiots who were sitting in traffic a while ago.

Because let's face it, as daft and reckless as staring down traffic might be, it's not as daft and reckless as seeing an energy crisis coming months in advance and doing f.ck all about it.

I wonder how much Grenfell has set back insulating by cladding in this country.

[Bird on a Fire]

In terms of reducing demand, one thing a lot of places are trying is lowering the cost of public transport. Austria was the first with its KlimaTicket, and Germany and Spain have followed suit recently https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -of-living

That kind of measure, like insulation, improves quality of life rather than diminishing it.

[Bird on a Fire]

Targets for rationing/extra taxation:
Outdoor heated pools
Patio heaters
Private planes
Frequent flying
Houses with lots of unutilised bedrooms
Rental properties with low energy efficiency
Commercial properties with lights and computers etc left on all night
New ICE vehicles
Beef and dairy production
Big TVs
Ostentatious Christmas decorations (v much looking forward to that discourse later in the year lol)

Reduce demand by:
Reducing unnecessary journeys - eg encourage WFH (in winter this trades off against domestic heating, though - could even be net negative some months?)
Improve efficiency of journeys through better, cheaper public transport and promoting car-sharing, safer cycling and walking, etc
Promote plant-based diets
Insulate everything and make other efficiency upgrades
Stringent rules for new houses and vehicles
Promote new renewables and storage (including domestic, which may give an efficient ROI if homeowners are fronting some capital)
Electrification will be very useful medium-term

[Opti]

"Decisions on energy consumption rightly remain a matter for individuals and we recognise households will have different energy usage needs wants" - a government spokesman.

So don't expect any 'nudges' from government, let alone sophisticated advice. The stupid f.cks who have voted for this shitshow will continue to put their selfish desires before any thoughts of sharing round a scarce resource for the benefit of all.

As regards the idea of a lower tariff for using high drain appliances during off-peak hours - well, we've had that in Spain for a couple of years now and, yes, it's a bit inconvenient to wait till midnight to put the dishwasher on and to f.ck the weekend by doing all the clothes washing then but saves a lot of money.

edit: Tariff hours

cnmc_billing_periods_0.jpg (173.81 KiB) Viewed 812 times

[bjn]

And boaf is always banging on about insulation - he's easily our most prolific insul* poster.

Hell yeah! Including on this thread.

I even defended those idiots who were sitting in traffic a while ago.

Because let's face it, as daft and reckless as staring down traffic might be, it's not as daft and reckless as seeing an energy crisis coming months in advance and doing f.ck all about it.

Truth brother!

You’d think insulation would be an easy sell to the electorate now. All the non Tories could call them out for being c.nts on the issue and run clips of grannies in warm well insulated homes with a barely ticking gas/leccy meter.

[Sciolus]

Ahem

Apologies, yes, several people hereabouts have made the same point at various times. But it's a tiny part of mainstream discourse and the government, as boaf has just said, is in full denialism mode.

[Sciolus]

Mmm. I can't find comparable data for electricity and gas consumption,

From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... icity-data we find electricity generation (GWh) in 1960 was 122,748 compared to 255,439 in 2020. Domestic usage was 33.68 TWh, vs 107.97 in 2020 (no, I don't know why they use different units for generation and consumption).

From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... fuel-input we have gas used for "Domestic" use in 1960 is 38,041 GWh vs 296,566 GWh in 2020

But, of course, there will be a decline in the use of coal (and probably wood burning) over that period, so it's not as big an increase as it appears. Those documents also contain some price information which might be of interest.

I was specifically after data showing the change in demand in response to increases in price. But as I mentioned, that isn't going to be available yet. So I will rely on petrol/diesel sales to prove that people respond to price increases by moaning a lot, demanding tax cuts, and using just as much as they did before.

[science_fox]

In terms of reducing demand, one thing a lot of places are trying is lowering the cost of public transport. Austria was the first with its KlimaTicket, and Germany and Spain have followed suit recently https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -of-living

That kind of measure, like insulation, improves quality of life rather than diminishing it.

Manchester is trying a little bit. After a massive fight the mayor has imposed a bus journey price cap. https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk ... with-cost/

[lpm]

I was specifically after data showing the change in demand in response to increases in price. But as I mentioned, that isn't going to be available yet. So I will rely on petrol/diesel sales to prove that people respond to price increases by moaning a lot, demanding tax cuts, and using just as much as they did before.

I suspect it's impossible to notice thanks to pandemic effects swamping everything. A 3% fuel saving from driving carefully could be lost to less WFH or more UK holidays or ageing of national car fleet.

Humans are too slow to adapt to change. My guess is people who like saving have been driving carefully/less/efficient cars for years, while life's non savers need longer to respond to price.

Which is why a sudden painful shock to household finances will at least shove much needed change into behaviour and we don't want to blunt that pain.

[Woodchopper]

Targets for rationing/extra taxation:
Outdoor heated pools
Patio heaters
Private planes
Frequent flying
Houses with lots of unutilised bedrooms
Rental properties with low energy efficiency
Commercial properties with lights and computers etc left on all night
New ICE vehicles
Beef and dairy production
Big TVs
Ostentatious Christmas decorations (v much looking forward to that discourse later in the year lol)

As lpm would surely point out, these are all affected by price rises which make them much more expensive. So additional measures would need to focus upon examples where use wasn't affected much by increasing energy prices. Private jets are one example. Owners may be able to afford the fuel whatever the price is.

Another approach would be to remove subsidies (including where a product is tax exempt). That would affect things like beef and dairy production. However, doing so would be politically unpopular as it would increase prices paid by consumers.

But these are all long term measures. For example, splitting up a large detached house into separate apartments would be more energy efficient. But that's going to take a long time at a national level, especially as there are materials and labour shortages in the building industry.

Reduce demand by:
Reducing unnecessary journeys - eg encourage WFH (in winter this trades off against domestic heating, though - could even be net negative some months?)

Probably not much overall. If we compare energy usage in the UK in 2020 compared with 2019 there was a huge drop in the transport sector, but the domestic sector had a modest 4 per cent increase in electricity use and 2 per cent in increase in gas. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... K_2021.pdf

That said, about half of the 2020 drop in transport consumption was in air travel. However that might be less affected by people working from home rather than the office.

Also, reducing transport will affect consumption of oil products, but won't make there be more gas or electricity available (very little UK electricity generation from oil) .

Improve efficiency of journeys through better, cheaper public transport and promoting car-sharing, safer cycling and walking, etc
Promote plant-based diets
Insulate everything and make other efficiency upgrades
Stringent rules for new houses and vehicles
Promote new renewables and storage (including domestic, which may give an efficient ROI if homeowners are fronting some capital)
Electrification will be very useful medium-term

As with the above, these are good longer term measures. But they aren't going to have much effect over the next few months.

[IvanV]

I was specifically after data showing the change in demand in response to increases in price. But as I mentioned, that isn't going to be available yet. So I will rely on petrol/diesel sales to prove that people respond to price increases by moaning a lot, demanding tax cuts, and using just as much as they did before.

I suspect it's impossible to notice thanks to pandemic effects swamping everything. A 3% fuel saving from driving carefully could be lost to less WFH or more UK holidays or ageing of national car fleet.

Humans are too slow to adapt to change. My guess is people who like saving have been driving carefully/less/efficient cars for years, while life's non savers need longer to respond to price.

Which is why a sudden painful shock to household finances will at least shove much needed change into behaviour and we don't want to blunt that pain.

Vehicle fuel was relatively expensive in the period 2011-2015 (Graph, actual price, not inflation adjusted). Traffic did fall, and roads were noticeably less congested. Moreover speeding reduced - more than traffic reduced - as it seemed that more people did drive more carefully to conserve fuel.

There is a lot of discretionary driving - trips that you don't need to take, or which you can shorten, and people will do that when they are feeling the pinch. Median household income is £31,400, so there's a lot of people who do have to be a little careful with their money and think about how they spend it, and will definitely be feeling the pinch after their energy bill went up by £2000 a year, or maybe even rather more if we are to believe Citibank's forecast published yesterday.

No doubt many of the numerous people who you see driving Land Rovers and big Audis, etc, in the wealthy area I live in will just pay and carry on, because they can afford to, and driving a such a car is part of who they are. But ultimately it is a minority of people in this country who don't have to think so very carefully about whether their expenditure fits into their income. Even some Land Rover drivers might be living at the edge of their income to achieve that status consumption, and might have to change what they do when it pushes them over the edge of their income. For example, my well-paid former next door neighbour the gas trader (next door is a substantially larger house/grounds) discovered he was living to the edge of and sometimes beyond his monthly income after he had his 5th child during that higher fuel price period, and found he was at risk of running out of cash. So he down-poshed his main 7-seater car from Audi to Ford - he kept the Porsche - and that made a sufficiently large difference to his outgoings he fixed the problem.

People can take a little while to respond to price changes. They often need first to discover the need to economise, and then think about how they can do that most acceptably. It may need some random chance to push them into doing something they wouldn't have thought of, or had thought of but rejected without trying it. For example, when railway lines suffer an extended closure and people have to find another way of making their journey for a few weeks, quite a few of them find something they prefer and don't return to old habits when the line reopens. They are forced into doing something which they just hadn't considered before, or had considered but thought it would be worse until they tried it.

I did some work for a bus company in Glasgow about 20 years ago, and the manager told me that ticket sales respond almost immediately to an increase in fares. He said that he was aiming only to put the fare up in line with inflation, but inevitably they went up in steps from time to time, roughly yearly. Demand adjusted downward in steps to the immediate increase, but then would have recovered by the time of the next increase. So, for the kind of very cash-constrained people who are material proportion of those who use local urban buses, even relatively modest price increases on a regular outgoing can have an immediate effect on demand.

[IvanV]

I was specifically after data showing the change in demand in response to increases in price. But as I mentioned, that isn't going to be available yet. So I will rely on petrol/diesel sales to prove that people respond to price increases by moaning a lot, demanding tax cuts, and using just as much as they did before.

I wonder whether you made this comment because you suffer from the syndrome mentioned in this article, that many people on substantially above-average incomes think that they are only average. So such people might tend to think that their own relative comfort in coping with these price increases was normal.

I doubt it. But it was a good excuse to mention this interesting fact I hadn't come across before just now. By random chance when I googled UK median household income just now, to write my previous post, that was the first article that came up.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Thought it might be fun to revisit this post from LPM back in 2020:

Seriously, I know August is often wet, but this isn't normal is it? Certainly it seems the wheat harvest is f.cked.

For our ancestors, that would be frightening. The worst harvest for 37 years meant hunger.

The increase in food prices will be buried by Brexit. Poor people won't be going hungry because of the harvest, but because they elected a bunch of funds.

It's not wrong, but it's interesting how things pan out: Brexit + Ukraine War = f.cked

[JQH]

And boaf is always banging on about insulation - he's easily our most prolific insul* poster.

Hell yeah! Including on this thread.

I even defended those idiots who were sitting in traffic a while ago.

Because let's face it, as daft and reckless as staring down traffic might be, it's not as daft and reckless as seeing an energy crisis coming months in advance and doing f.ck all about it.

I wonder how much Grenfell has set back insulating by cladding in this country.

Nothing wrong with insulation by cladding in principle. Obviously helps if it's not highly inflammable.

[Grumble]

Hell yeah! Including on this thread.

I even defended those idiots who were sitting in traffic a while ago.

Because let's face it, as daft and reckless as staring down traffic might be, it's not as daft and reckless as seeing an energy crisis coming months in advance and doing f.ck all about it.

I wonder how much Grenfell has set back insulating by cladding in this country.

Nothing wrong with insulation by cladding in principle. Obviously helps if it's not highly inflammable.

Absolutely, but when trying to persuade people to insulate old houses sometimes the only practical option is (internal or external) cladding and it’s fair to say that the cheapest options have a dubious safety image - I hope the actually dangerous ones aren’t available but I’m not betting on it.

[dyqik]

Competent installation is probably as big a factor in how dangerous a product is as what it is made of.

[Bird on a Fire]

I wonder how much Grenfell has set back insulating by cladding in this country.

Nothing wrong with insulation by cladding in principle. Obviously helps if it's not highly inflammable.

Absolutely, but when trying to persuade people to insulate old houses sometimes the only practical option is (internal or external) cladding and it’s fair to say that the cheapest options have a dubious safety image - I hope the actually dangerous ones aren’t available but I’m not betting on it.

The particular Grenfell type was banned, at last, a couple of months ago. https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/new ... l-projects

Meanwhile, loads of people are still living in buildings clad in the stuff, even though it's meant to be being replaced. My aunt couldn't sell her flat as a result (at least without dropping the price a lot, I guess).

[Bird on a Fire]

Thought it might be fun to revisit this post from LPM back in 2020:

Seriously, I know August is often wet, but this isn't normal is it? Certainly it seems the wheat harvest is f.cked.

For our ancestors, that would be frightening. The worst harvest for 37 years meant hunger.

The increase in food prices will be buried by Brexit. Poor people won't be going hungry because of the harvest, but because they elected a bunch of funds.

It's not wrong, but it's interesting how things pan out: Brexit + Ukraine War = f.cked

Actually quite a few food prices have been rising higher than the background inflation+Brexit trend due to climate-related issues: wheat, corn, coffee, apples, chocolate, chillis, mustard and wine are mentioned here https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -shortages

Durum wheat was up long before the war because of drought https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/s ... -for-pasta

The climate crisis is the biggest single factor in rising food prices, in the UK and beyond.

[lpm]

Thought it might be fun to revisit this post from LPM back in 2020:

Seriously, I know August is often wet, but this isn't normal is it? Certainly it seems the wheat harvest is f.cked.

For our ancestors, that would be frightening. The worst harvest for 37 years meant hunger.

The increase in food prices will be buried by Brexit. Poor people won't be going hungry because of the harvest, but because they elected a bunch of funds.

It's not wrong, but it's interesting how things pan out: Brexit + Ukraine War = f.cked

Since 2008 I've been repeating ad nauseam my "none of us are as rich as we think we are" line.

As a society, for years we've been over-spending on consumer stuff. And under-saving on our pensions, elderly care, NHS investment, education investment, and of course renewables and future-climate infrastructure.

And I've also always bored you about the Age of Brittle and how we're not building resilience into our systems. By now we could have had self sufficient and decentralised energy production.

Ultimately, most people in the UK ran things too thin in terms of personal saving and personal redundancy. If people today can't cope with a nasty economic crisis, how the hell are they going to cope with the worsening climate breakdown coinciding with ageing populations needing far higher healthcare?

I'm pissed off that the instinctive response from the progressive/left is so childish. The LibDem and Labour proposals are even worse than Truss's. The idea that government should provide for us, down to paying our bills because we failed to save and invest, is pretty repulsive. If we as a society aren't going to get personally resilient, then govt should take money off us and use it to invest in the future. Not hand it back so we can carry on our lifestyles.

The answer is to give people respectable pay (and benefits for those not working), then leave them to it. Not constantly bail them out when they've not protected themselves.

[IvanV]

Actually quite a few food prices have been rising higher than the background inflation+Brexit trend due to climate-related issues: wheat, corn, coffee, apples, chocolate, chillis, mustard and wine are mentioned here https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -shortages

Durum wheat was up long before the war because of drought https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/s ... -for-pasta

The climate crisis is the biggest single factor in rising food prices, in the UK and beyond.

A case can doubtless be made, but these articles don't really make it. Unfortunately there is too much in the way of anecdata and single bad years and specific varieties like durum or niche crops like mustard, which are only grown in limited places. A case involves trends over years and broader categories. Agricultural commodity prices have long been extremely sensitive to quite small changes in aggregate supply. So massive price changes from year to year for coffee due to bad weather in Brazil, cocoa due to civil war in Ivory Coast, wheat due to bad weather in Canada, etc, are nothing new.

And it's not very easy to do a proper job. If you look at global wheat production there is no evidence of a downward trend, rather the opposite, though plainly there are ups and downs. Doing a proper job involves thinking about land under production, productivity, population, etc.