Anne Vivian-Smith spends her time checking her electric meter, “obsessively”. She has always paid attention to her consumption, but for the past few months, she has measured the slightest of her gestures: she makes fewer hot drinks, avoids turning on the television, turns off the lights as much as possible.
Living in Nottingham, in the north of England, severely disabled by a degenerative disease, this former magistrate cannot work and depends on social assistance, which has not increased for three years in her case. Her husband, who is employed at a university, earns around £1,000 (€1,200) a month and has only gotten a 1.5% raise this year, well below inflation. Their gas and electricity bill, on the other hand, jumped in April from £82 to £145 a month. “At the start of the year, we weren’t rich, but it was okay. Now our life has shrunk. »
Those extra 63 pounds monthly make a huge difference in their daily lives. Shortly before the summer, M’s brother-in-lawme Vivian-Smith, who lived in Cornwall, died. She couldn’t afford the train ticket to go to the funeral. “It cost £128, exactly the extra money we paid for energy over two months. »
The hardening of his living conditions is only the beginning. On Friday August 26, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), the British energy regulator, announced that bills would jump by 80% in October. Several times a year, it determines the maximum ceiling for an average household: in October 2021, this was 1,277 pounds per year; in April, it rose to 1,971 pounds; in October, it will be… 3,549 pounds. That is almost a tripling in one year.
No tariff shield
The sequel will be even worse. The next increases, scheduled for January and April 2023, are expected to reach 5,386 pounds and 6,616 pounds respectively, according to calculations by Cornwall Insight, an energy consultancy firm. That is a quintupling of invoices in eighteen months.
There is no tariff shield in the UK. In May, the government did announce £14 billion in aid, but that will only cover 47% of rising bills, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think tank.
In these circumstances, a wind of revolt is rising among the British. Within two months, little yellow and black leaflets started popping up all over the country. We see them pasted on bus stops in London, distributed in the streets of Sheffield and Manchester, or decorating the entrance to a fishmonger’s in Bristol. In big white letters, the text is simple and direct: “Don’t pay energy bills” (“Don’t pay your energy bills”).
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