The Winter of Discontent #2 Food, energy, transport, jobs, housing etc

[Mark81]

It's a complex issue, it's wrong to say there are no downsides to immigration etc or that every negative article is just propaganda, but yes you need to look deeper into it and the bigger picture too. One side isn't good and another bad, loads of grey areas and complex issues.

We also have to remember that for a lot of them it's our fault due to the west's foreign policy of the last 20 years. We have a moral responsibility after messing up their countries

 

[dancingqueen5678]

Omg drawing the curtain makes it look so dramatic too

I was thinking in the same thing. Was that really necessary

 

[FenellaTheWitch]

I think it varies from area to area. My local supermarket is fine. Only place shelves are empty really is bottled water. But everything else is fine.

I find it odd that bottled water is in such short supply in the shops when it is so readily available in the kitchen! Absolutely bizarre. It's nice to have to but essential.

I was so annoyed at an article in the Daily Mail today about people panic buying.

They were outside Costco on a Sunday morning where there's always a queue to get in and you can only buy in bulk anyway! You want toilet rolls/?you can only buy them in packs of 40. You want kitchen roll? A pack of 20.

The media really need to take some repsonsibility.

 

[Littleelf]

I did my big weekly shop in tesco on Friday for two adults and one child - just a normal shop nothing really out of the ordinary. Did not need to buy washing detergent or dishwasher tablets or anything like that that pushes the price up by about £10. I got some chicken breasts and some stewing beef that was the only meat. Fresh fruit very limited I only got grapes and strawberries.

There were no offers at all, I try to only buy things with the club card prices or if they are on offer when I'm in tesco.

It was £132. I have never spent so much during a weekly food shop in my life. And my fridge isn't even full. In fact the fruit has already pretty much been eaten. It worries me that 18 months ago I could do a food shop for the 3 of us for £60 a week and that has now pretty much doubled

 

[whathastheworldcometo]

This is really upsetting and BoJo's comments disqualify him as a political leader.

To have that many animals die in vain is a crime in my view. These are living creatures and if they are being killed they should at least be eaten.

Now 4,500 pigs face cull within days: Thousands are set to be killed

Some 600 pigs were culled on farms last week, however this is now being dramatically stepped up with tens of thousands set to be slaughtered and incinerated.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[smellsofbiscuits]

Just to add, I struggled to do our weekly shop for less than £140 this week. That's to feed 2 x adults, 1 x pre-schooler and 1 infant still on a box of formula roughly once a week. Oh and one dog too but she's small which helps in its own way. We do not eat meat but soya/oat milk is about £1.50-80 a liter which can eat into our shopping bill.

Our meal plan included cooking from scratch at least 2-3 times. It's half term here so had to buy extra snacks for the kids. But even getting our basics came in at £100. I do do online shopping as I can see how much our shop is as I go. If I did it at a store then I'd probably spend more

Shortages/subsistutes this week for us included:

Baby food pouches (again)
Frozen veg
Nappies
Sharing bags of crisps
Garlic bread

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@fireflies Can I make a tentative suggestion to invest in a slow cooker? I'll be batch cooking some recipes for the whole family using mine. It keeps energy costs low and it means you can leave it to cook away whilst you get on with other things.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

What's happening again? I personally don't think there will be another Lockdown.

I only watched ch4 news last night so don’t want to report misinformation as they were super super brief - basically only said the new O variant has been found in Essex & Nottingham(shire) and both cases are linked to the same family who’d been to SA? They’ve re-instated mask mandates for shops but not in hospitality, and there’s gonna be a fuller conference from the PM later today that pads out things a bit more?

The thing that upset me was they’re reviewing this in 3 weeks time - so week commencing 20th December, yet again we are potentially having our plans shafted at the last minute. Don’t get me wrong I’m lucky to be alive & thankfully no one in my family has died, but like fuck me how much heart ache can they put us through? I’d rather be told now Christmas is over than go through the motions and have it taken away less than a week prior. I’m not even a big Christmas or making memories hun and it hurts, I feel so sorry for mummys to older kids who are aware of what’s going on & having heart break they’ve got to manage. It’s SO cruelly done by the government, and needlessly so!

 

[emmer_moans]

I have often wondered what the pandemic would have been like if it had hot ten years ago. Even just WFH - ten years ago, my office was almost entirely based around desktop PCs. You had to specifically request a laptop and getting one was like winning the lottery. We had almost no videoconferencing software, and nothing on our own computers. I remember that we had just two meeting rooms in the entire office that had VC capability and actually using it was incredibly complex And unreliable. It was a different world and you just wonder what would have happened.

Exactly. Busniesses, schools and unis are lucky that software such as Zoom and Teams were ready to use straight way, 10 years ago it would have been a different story.

I’ve noticed my petrol doesn’t seem to go as far now it’s switched to E10. I only do about 70 miles a week but the half a tank I filled up about 10 days ago is almost gone, and I have a 1ltr engine.

 

[whathastheworldcometo]

I was talking about whether farmers cared about killing animals for no reason. Eating meat or not is a completely different conversation

I think they do care.

Think about your daily work - if you would work hard on something and it would then just be binned wouldn't you mind either?

Why dont you think farmers dont care about their animals? Because they are being killed to be eaten? They can still care about them and want them to live as good as possible and for their lives to have had a purpose

 

[Maid22]

We've been renovating our house for years, lack of money, ill health has made it a slow progress. We've not had central heating or hot water for 10 yrs ( we have an oil fired burner, 1 leccy heater and blanket, a small immersion water heater in kitchen, leccy shower) It really isnt that bad, I just layer up and have a snuggly throw!

 

[WilmaHun]

My other half has got one of them electric heated jackets as he works outside a lot. I wore it last night when we nipped out and oh my god it's nice. Might start wearing it round the house to save putting the heating on.

 

[IngressUK]

Completely agree, if we want to “level up” we need to improve accessibility to communities

There are about three rail schemes i can think of in the SE that should be done. Apart from that more should be done in Devon, Cornwall, Wales, the Midlands, NE and NW UK.

The Welsh Government are continually dithering on a new, much needed north-south rail link in Wales, why?

London still wrongly receives the Lions share of investment.

Sadiq Khan whinging about TFL services having to be cut by a fifth if ANOTHER bail out isn't forthcoming.

So what! Khan needs to understand there is more to the needs of UK transport than just continually bailing out a badly managed TFL. Why should local and rural communities see their services cut further just to subsidise London.

As I've said before. If Khan wants more money for TFL, the best way is to start introducing more rigorous enforcement of people actually paying for their journeys. There have been many times now that I could gave gotten away with not paying - if I was that way inclined.

TFL don't even rigorously enforce ticket checks on the new Elizabeth Line - a line that is still not complete and has cost us billions so far. There are many barrierless stations in which to cheat the system.

Why should Khan get another X billions just to allow a rather lax TFL to carry on as usual.

Edit: I live in the SE, however strongly agree that most of the rail budget should be spent elsewhere in the UK.

 

[Tatooine_legend1]

I've noticed increases in lidl's meat and fish, as well as things like tesco charging 2.50 for a sleeve of pringles and 2quid for most share bags of crisps.
The money definitely doesn't go as far now on weekly shops now.

It actually makes me only buy food I should be eating rather than snacks. I guess that's one benefit to price increasing on junk food haha.

 

[Instashamous]

I don’t shop in Primark; because i’m fortunate enough to have the means to make more sustainable choices. There’s absolutely a need for lower income households to be able to purchase clothing at an affordable price- what boils my piss is seeing people who can absolutely afford to make more sustainable choices choosing not to because they’d rather have shitloads of stuff.

There also seems to be this odd trend (which I feel seems to be changing slowly) that it’s preferable to dress in something new and cheap than purchase second hand.

 

[dancingqueen5678]

Public transport prices are outrageous. They want people to do their bit for the environment but make it possible?! Whenever officials discuss transport I feel like it’s very London/big city centric. There’s never a thought to those who live semi rurally (i don’t even live rural!). A bus from my house to my local town is 1h and 10m. It takes me 15 minutes in the car!

 

[HoGi]

It was last year too.

Caused by the then rising covid pandemic, pre vaccination. Most people weren't going anywhere and so demand for petrol and diesel fell through the floor. Fuel companies were sitting on massive reserves they couldn't shift fast enough.

Fuel is a price volatile product, with prices highly dictated by supply and demand. This is why I have been somewhat angry with people panic buying it. Their actions have just caused a price spike, for which we are still suffering from, even now - not to mention causing unnecessary shortages for those that genuinely did need to fill up.

Definitely was 99p last year in lockdown. As a key worker I was one if the few still getting fuel regularly.

A tank of fuel that last year in lockdown I could get for as little as £38 is now costing at least £52 and that's at the cheaper petrol stations.

 

[emmer_moans]

I get that prices will inevitably go up for food because of shortages/delays in production etc, but so many people are already making sacrifices in their trolley, going for the cheapest options/bulkiest options in order to feed themselves. Doubling the prices of most things is essentially meaning we will be having to choose what to miss out. We will have people skipping breakfast etc, and less people likely to afford takeway treats and restaurants. I know if I have a tight month, we rely just on the supermarket for food, we don't eat out.

I agree we can stock up the odd multipack of tinned soup but you can't hoard fresh stuff, so prices will hit us all whether we like it or not. Our wages won't go up to cover the price rise either, I bet.

 

[WilmaHun]

We finally had out smart meters fitted, but I can already see myself becoming obsessive over checking it. I might have to put it out of sight somewhere, all weekend I've been bugging the life out of Mr Wilma "It's gone up 20p! Have you left a light on upstairs or something?"

I've also noticed in the last 3 weeks my food shopping has gone up quite a lot! I'm not buying anything out of the ordinary, and I'm not particularly precious about brands and do tend to buy a lot of supermarket own brand stuff already so I am a bit worried about the prices going up!

 

[CatCafe234]

It seems crisps are the new petrol/diesel

Genuinely, that would panic me more than a petrol shortage!

 

[Tublet83]

What are peoples thoughts on the HS2 NE being scrapped?. A friends gf has spent the last few yrs relocating wildlife from the proposed route. What an inordinate waste of time/money.

Whilst I absolutely agree on a programme to improve rail infrastructure in the north the entire project was such such a gravy train and waste of money!