[EricBurnett]

> My mum owns a small café in Leicester. Her electricity bill has just jumped from £10k ($12k) a year to £55k ($64k) a year.

> Callum's mum may try to avoid shuttering her doors by raising her prices by more than 5x but that will result in $13 chocolate crossiants and $20 iced lattes.

What kind of flawed reasoning is this? The net prices will only have to go up 5x if the price is the product originally was 100% covering the cost of electricity. In practice, it'll probably need to go up something <2x to maintain the same profit margins, with other costs (e.g. wages, property) trickling up at a slower pace (years) as the overall economy adjusts. Which is material, no doubt, but let's not lose ourselves to hysteria here.

[LatteLazy]

Brits love a good moan, and exaggerating issues by at least 10x is standard.

Source: I live here. :(

[ZeroGravitas]

The UK is getting hit much harder than other countries.

People talk about Germany being dependent on gas but for heating I think they're about 50% gas while in the UK it's more like 80% and the UK is far behind in insulating homes to be cheaper to heat.

Combine with a government that doesn't actually want to help (which may explain why the houses are so expensive to heat in the first place) and it'll hit much harder.

Combine with a political system designed to let a minority keep control plus Brexit and things could get bad.

Note, I don't think the problem is unsolvable, I just think a lot of the people responsible for solving it will be looking for ways to make themselves money from the chaos.

[LatteLazy]

Yeah, I find the whole nations issues sort of confusing though. We have spent the last 10-15 years voting to make things worse. Our political systems are shit, and we decided NOT to change them. Our PM is a joke and won by a landslide.

Now everyone is acting surprised that the place is getting worse, the government are incompetent and nothing can be done about it.

I am sorry for people who didn't vote for this (including myself), but I have to admit we are a minority and we should really just emigrate...

[ZeroGravitas]

"Landslide" in this context meaning nearly 44% of the vote, translating to 56% of the seats, meaning they can overule the "will of the people" usually.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2019-t...

[LatteLazy]

I think its more accurate to exclude Scotland and NI which makes those figures worse, but yes. That is a landslide and guaranteed Bojo basically unlimited power under the British system. And people voted 2:1 to keep this system back in 2011

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...

This is the problem the UK has: we choose to fail and then complain we're failing.

[ZeroGravitas]

They only got offered one other option though. Because the research suggested a true PR option would win, so they didn't offer it, then they could claim they'd tried and the people had rejected it.

Same trick used in the Scottish and Brexit referendums. Worked out for them with the first two, blew up in their faces on the third go.

[rewrewrewqf]

>The UK is getting hit much harder than other countries.

I don't understand this narrative. Germany will have its gas supply from Russia literally turned off for the next three days!

>but for heating I think they're about 50% gas while in the UK it's more like 80%

I saw that Guardian article too! A further 25% of Germans heat their homes with oil, and another 14% use district heating (which will be fossil-fuel powered).

Germany imports 98% of its oil, 95% of its gas, and a large amount of its coal, with a total of 63% of all energy being imported.

On the upside, the premature end of this age of exceptionally unreasonably cheap energy will hopefully teach us all a thing or two about what sustainability really looks like.

[ZeroGravitas]

The problem is gas (and electricity) are a market and have prices set by that market. If a British company can make more money shipping gas out of the country, they are going to.

If a Norwegian company can make more selling to someone other than the UK, then they will. And those profits go to the Norwegian government, which isn't the case in Britain.

There are some limits due to transport but countries with more links to suppliers and storage can ride it out better even before getting into political responses.

[rewrewrewqf]

I understand that. However, the political aspect will be the dominant factor. You can have all the links to international suppliers, but it won't help if they won't sell to you. Russia has already decided to f** with Europe, and in a way that I can't see making any (short-term) financial sense for their own economy. France may decide to stop exporting quite so much of its nuclear-generated electricity. The UK could decide that it needs to slow exports of its gas, and keep it back for its own citizens. Germany will basically have to turn back to its own brown coal reserves for electricity generation, although that won't help its citizens heat their homes.

[ZeroGravitas]

None of that really helps though, it's just a type of "Beggar-thy-neighbour“ game theory failure:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggar_thy_neighbour

Working together obviously makes it easier for everyone. But we have whole political parties built on ignoring that principle and blaming foreigners for everything.

What does help, is everyone using less natural gas.

edit: some green Tory ideas that accept that reality:

https://www.cen.uk.com/press/2022/8/16/green-tories-propose-...

[Mindwipe]

Ultimately if the UK were to start protecting it's gas output then a) the value of British currency would likely drop even further, pushing up inflation and prices further and b) the UK can't cover it's peak electrical supply, and it is unlikely the rest of Europe would continue to sell it electricity to cover peak if the UK was entering into that sort of protectionism.

[shapefrog]

Chocolate crossiants and iced lattes in Leicester - is she having a laugh ...