Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; According to More In Common, the British expect “rocketing bills” will trigger misery, hardship, crime, and social unrest. But they blame energy company greed rather than Government Net Zero policies.
I PREDICT A RIOT
Worried Brits expect cost of living crisis to spark crime wave, deaths and riots
Jonathan Reilly
Kate Ferguson
21:01, 31 Jul 2022
Updated: 23:49, 31 Jul 2022WORRIED Brits expect the brutal cost of living crisis to spark a crime wave, deaths and riots, a shock poll reveals.
Families fear rocketing bills will plunge the country into misery and unrest.
Some 70 per cent of the public expect many to refuse to pay energy bills, 80 per cent expect more shoplifting and 51 per cent think riots will take place.
And three in four expect people will die of the cold this winter, unable to afford heating.
More than half of those polled (51 per cent) say energy and oil firms are to blame for the hike in costs — a day after Shell and British Gas reported record profits.
Nearly nine in ten (88 per cent) are worried the cost of living will directly impact their everyday lives.
…
Read more: https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/19379752/cost-living-riots-crime-poll-reveals/
Reporting record profits in the midst of energy bill misery is not a good look. But Brits are blaming the wrong people – British government policy is the real culprit behind the spiralling cost of living.
There is plenty the government could do, right now, to alleviate British energy bill misery. For example, WUWT has repeatedly reported on Caudrilla CEO Francis Egan’s dogged effort to bring cheap Lancashire shale gas to the people of Britain, and the British government’s refusal to issue permits and repeated threats to permanently shut him down.
Even small acts of mitigation were too much for the BoJo administration. The British Government has so far refused to cancel Britain’s green levy, which adds an estimated £153 / year to everyone’s electricity bills.
A year ago the British Cabinet actually discussed extending the green levy. According to Bloomberg Chancellor Rishi Sunak pushed to extend the green levy to Gasoline, but was blocked by the British Cabinet. Rishi Sunak is one of two final round candidates in the race to replace outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
I have hopes for Sunak’s opponent, Liz Truss, who has promised to scrap the green levy.
Until the British people wake up and hold the right people accountable for their pain, and demand solutions which address the real problems, there will be no resolution.
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NetZero is as much a debacle as the Energiewende, but the advocates will still push it.
They can never admit being wrong
Yes, Energiewende smacks of one of those “visionary” policy roadmaps.
Like Mein Kampf.
“So eating meat and milk and eggs is an indulgence we cannot afford”- Moonbat
https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/08/03/uk-environmental-activist-urges-shutting-down-animal-farming-altogether-because-its-one-of-the-greatest-causes-of-climate-breakdown/
“ONE of the greatest causes of climate breakdown”
Yes, right behind termite breath and climate activists pushing for solutions that actually hurt the environment a lot more than the fossil fuels they so irrationally hate.
I hope there are riots and the “elites” are dragged from their homes and torn limb from limb! They deserve it!
I am yearly becoming convinced that the French “Terror” wasn’t all that bad. Maybe I should take up knitting.
re: “Green Britain Fears Crime, Deaths and Riots Over Soaring Bills”
.
What – something the ‘Central Planners’ at the WEF didn’t anticipate – that *real* skin and bones people might object to manipulation and subterfuge and higher prices?
Perhaps it is Really just “A Part of the Plan” to reduce CO2 by reducing the population.
…
The WEF isn’t a conspiracy.
It never used to figure as a conspiracy theory either: now everything is apparently because of the WEF or WEF puppets…
? who decides on what the current lunatic conspiracy is? Is there a website?
re: “The WEF isn’t a conspiracy.”
Low IQ types, like yourself, often tend to think it is; Did you *just* find out differently, IOW, did you swerve into the truth? They have ‘plans’ for minions (used to call them ‘useful idiots’ or some such in the olde days) such as yourself too.
Are you totally unawares of what the Dutch farmers are going through right now, or are you isolated from world affairs too?
How much of this is intentional, I wonder?
None of it can be blamed on either Putin and the price of Natural Gas for generation OR the £9,700 MW paid to the intertie with a healthy portion of KY and a “Please can we have some more?”
Saw this yesterday, relevant to this article – its an interesting talk with Michael Yon:
.
Jordan Petersen – DW interview with Michael Yon, Author, “Combat Correspondent”
.
“Pandemic – Famine- and War; A cycle”
.
https://youtu.be/R7gAEkzIgvw?t=1051
Yes, I also watched it and found it rather frightening.
I particularly liked Jordan Peterson’s description “That’s why Christ was a carpenter. . . . He wasn’t a PhD sociologist.”
We certainly need people in government who are respectful of the opinions and experience of those who get their hands dirty and make the country work, rather than those who play about with computer models.
Yup. And we’re seeing how it can play out on Sri Lanka. This Michael Yon individual has an interesting background in talking with all these farmers, too.
The UK population isn’t as stupid as the liberal elites like to claim. I wouldn’t trust the polls quoted in these reports at all — the questions are nearly always loaded and biased to provide the findings wanted rather than the actual truth.
Joe Public might not be happy with energy companies making the amount of money they are doing, but people largely understand the real reason is net-zero. Having been told for years that renewables are cheap they’re now asking why costs are sky-rocketing; and, surprise, surprise, neither politicians nor the left-wing media are prepared to admit it’s down to net-zero.
What’s happening in the UK is appalling. Millions will be pushed into poverty by horrendous energy prices. The world really does appear to have gone mad.
The majority voted for Brexit
They aren’t flavour of the the month
Does that mean something that has an intelligible translation?
Yes. We voted against our masters explicit instructions and so now we must be punished.
Flavour of the month is a way of saying something that is popular for a short period of time, similiar to the ’cause du jour’ idea. Not being flavour of the month is to fall out of favour, to become unpopular.
Flavour of the Month
derives from a marketing ploy for ice cream.
Still used by MacDonalds with burgers and ice cream
It does
I’m surprised it went over your head
Flavor of the month is a rather old expression. Its the total of the declaration that isn’t clear. I accept what was apparently meant — “so now we must be punished” — but that assumes a lot more ‘fill in the blanks’ than recognizing that particular expression.
Have you checked the Euro exchange rate recently?
It’s propped up by Soros and other manipulators who wanted the EU to outperform the US. The real value of the € is what it buys in 1000cf of natural gas, loaves of bread or dozens of eggs . Soros started by making a billion dollar profit, selling the pound short 30 years ago on a dongle trade.
oops ‘single trade’
‘Soros started by making a billion dollar profit, selling the pound short 30 years ago on a [si]ngle trade.’
What Soros learned back then was that he could make a pile by taking the other side of government stupidity. What he’s learned since is that by ‘investing’ relatively modest amounts in socialist causes, he can ensure that governments act stupidly more often than not.
he got china for a load as well and is persona non grata I gather, short sells n dirty deals his specialty
Is this really surprising? Not at all.
Consider the capture of the institutions, the civil service, education etc led by the media as the mouthpiece
Climate anxiety is rife in the affected. How does one even go about putting this right?
Defund the Universities that are pushing this claptrap and set a standard for scientific evidence that government funded research must adhere to, with financial penalty clauses for failure. Make sure that the MSM is held accountable for stories it publishes; long-term, unsubstantiated fearmongering must be some form of hate crime, mustn’t it? Get rid of the Green Levy, renewable subsidies and make it clear that nothing will be banned in favour of a ‘Green’ alternative; if it’s a better alternative then it will be more competitive and will need no government intervention to succeed. Make all COP junket attendees use green technologies to travel or use Skype.
I’ve probably missed a fair few but it’s a start, don’t you think?
The string of good news on profits from Shell, Centrica and BP should see the cash rolling in for me as a shareholder especially after not receiving anything during the Covid years when these important companies had to keep going without any government assistance. I am sure a lot of pension pots will receive a boost. A good financial piece pointed out that oil and gas prices are set on global markets and are commodities that frequently fluctuate. Oil went as low as $40 a barrel as the Saudis and Russians tried to drive US fracking operations to the wall. The peak before then was around $120 a barrel. And commodities are driven by supply and demand. Currently due to idiots believing windmills and sun temples can reliably power a grids, demand for gas has soared driving the price up. The idiots at the same time have made life difficult for the gas industry not being able to see the consequences.
Plus Biden and his green, anti-fracking insanity.
Now that the big oil companies have made profits that enable them to pay back the losses incurred during the Covid pandemic, maybe the government should get them to start spending the remaining profits on further exploration and drilling for oil, gas and fracking instead, of extra taxes where they will disappear into a bottomless pit of governmental waste.
I have always thought it a bit pointless to fine a company for a misdemeanour, rather than making them spend an equivalent amount of money on rectifying the original problem.
I prefer the profits in my pension fund frankly.
What oil company in their right mind would “invest” in exploration and drilling when they are told that they will be legislated out of existence in 2030 or some such? Give your head a shake to clear the cobwebs: oil companies are a business which require profits and legal stability to move forward. Yet you propose to cancel both those requirements to satisfy some watermelon ideals.
‘…maybe the government should get them to start spending the remaining profits on further exploration and drilling for oil, gas and fracking…’
Hmm, government direction of privately-owned business? Sounds like the definition of fascism.
The only way to “get” the oil & gas companies to invest their profits in exploration Is is to convince them they will not be regulated out of existence. Since the governments tell everyone they *are* going to regulate them out of existence, the smart move is to leave it in the ground.
It was only in February 2021 when BP, Shell, Centrica all posted a loss, Exxon posted a loss in 2020. Unfortunately this didn’t make the headlines as it was seen by the establishment and MSM as a good thing as a step towards Net Zero.
Governments and politicians have successfully diverted attention form their misguided policies to “Greedy Oil Companies”.
One of my reasons for saying the Covid cure, lockdowns, would be worse than the illness was exactly this problem. When you shutdown economic activity it is very difficult to start it up again there’s a lot of inertia in getting oil and gas production up and running after a period of it being a pariah industry and then being shut down almost completely.
The other problem of inflation is a direct result of the Treasury under Rishi Sunak’s control printing money.
The inept UK government and media children will only be too happy to use the oil and gas companies as somebody to blame for their own incompetence and stupidity.
“The CFTC charged one trading house and two individuals for illegally manipulating oil prices during the price spike of 2008, when oil reached $147 a barrel, by creating the appearance of a shortage to drive up the benchmark for crude.”
Without that, I think it would’ve peaked in the $90-$110 range.
At the same time, there was a short squeeze in hard red spring wheat
(HRSW) on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGEX) that sent it >$25/bu,
~$10 higher than both soft & hard wheat traded in Chicago & Kansas City.
Squeezes & manipulation schemes can affect prices in ways other
than supply/demand would dictate.
https://shadowproof.com/2011/05/25/cftc-charges-oil-traders-in-2008-speculation-scheme/
…Shell and British Gas reported record profits.
_____________________________________
When more and more of your competition has been shuttered by the government, a seller’s market will ensue.
Even Calvin Coolidge could have figure that one out.
‘When more and more of your competition has been shuttered by the government, a seller’s market will ensue.’
That’s why big business actually likes to be regulated. The costs thereof keep the small fry from competing.
That escaped Griff and fellow greentards posting here when we pointed it out. As we say there never has been a successful prohibition policy on any substance and it always drives an illicit market.
How are the Greens going to handle the claims at COP27 from Africa for much more money to help them become green?
“UN Economic Commission for Africa says climate finance action has never been more urgent”
Perhaps the UK can print tons of money like Zimbabwe did during their hyperinflationary years and then send them wheelbarrows full of pounds?
Someone would steal the wheelbarrows.
And they’ll be Chinese-made wheelbarrows.
In Zimbabwe the wheelbarrows were worth more than the Zim dollars!
Every other Friday a guard at the wheelbarrow factory saw a worker coming out of the factory pushing a wheelbarrow packed with hay.
The guard searched inside the hay, found nothing and let the guy go. This ritual repeated over several years until a time when the guard was about to retire from the wheelbarrow factory.
When the guy pushing the wheelbarrow appeared at the gate he told him: “I know you are stealing something from the wheelbarrow factory. I am just about to retire and this is my last day here. I will not tell anybody, but, please, let me know what are you stealing from the wheelbarrow factory!” The guy smiled and answered, “Oh, I am stealing the wheelbarrows.”
The joke works better if you don’t make it a wheelbarrow factory.
One born every minute.
Neither of them are my favourite candidates, but Liz at least seems slightly responsive to energy bill pain. Sunak is a complete nut job on green IMO – too green even for Bojo.
I suppose one thing in Truss’ favour is that she didn’t come through the state education system up until University. At that point she went the Oxford-PPE route. My nightly prayer “Please Lord save us from politicians with PPE degrees”. Apart from that I have a feeling of impending doom, a bit like the “how would you like to die?” question.
Saving each house less than 200 quid on their electricity bill is, to use an old British saying, pissing in the wind as far addressing the cost of energy. Even cancelling the £54 billion National Grid upgrade to integrate renewables is only going to save a couple of grand (cost is going to at least double it always does) for every man, woman, child and transgender in the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62085297
My favourite comparison, is your mugger kindly giving you the busfare home.
This can’t be a surprise to anyone, surely? Joe & Jane Q Public are not much better than rotting cabbages when it comes to thinking for themselves and actually taking responsibility for their own predicament. Ask most folk in the street and they blame pretty much everyone for ‘ripping them off’ and ‘making a fortune at them prices’. I’ve had this argument over the price of coffee in a coffee shop- ‘£3 for a coffee? Bloody rip off! Making a bloody fortune!’ The fact that the cafe was empty and there were about 8 other cafes within walking distance went sailing over his head and into the sunset…and so it is with energy prices and everything else.
Maybe they could put up a wall around parliament! And maybe a trip to some foreign country to show how hard they are working. Or they could stop the threats and issue permits.
It won’t be long before their currency will be worthless. Then they will have all the green energy they can afford.
They blame the energy companies out of obedience and brainwashing
Because for years now, the best and only Government Advice on the face of rising fuel bills was:
Change Your Energy Supplier
National Jingoism and a really neat trick especially as all the Energy Suppliers are now foreign owned = blame Johnny Foreigner, esp the French in the form of EDF
The English and French have been at war since forever.
Just yesterday the BBC ran a News Front Page story about how Shell (I think) had made £6Billion profit this last year.
Unusually for the BBC, they opened ‘comments’ on the story and thus ensued a barrage of vitriol and venom directed at the Energy Companies.
(Over 3,000 comments when I last saw)
While they all totally ignore that UK Government plc has raked in that much over the last year simply via the increased VAT (Value Added Tax) on **just** petrol and diesel sales.
Buck Passing, Issue Avoidance and Rabble Rousing at its very finest = thank you soooo much Auntie Beeb.
Sorry hun but you are nothing but a cheap government whore and yesterday’s exposition, plus many more before, prove as much.
I commented as I have here but also ventured: Would all the commentors in that story rather the companies made a loss and went out of business?
What price then for a gallon pf petrol – how much did Mad Max pay for his ‘Motion Lotion’
Somehow, they all ‘deserve each other, they are all as rabidly insane as everybody else.
I have no sympathy – I just want out.
When the UK government has to justify and show us all how they plan to get to Net Zero – and they will have to in order to appease the watermelons (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/20/uk-high-court-net-zero-policy-violates-the-climate-change-act/ ) – they won’t be able to hide the sacrifices needed to get even remotely close to their BS targets.
The chickens will come home to roost and the sooner the better!
Net Zero at any cost? NO THANKS!
“More than half of those polled (51 per cent) say energy and oil firms are to blame for the hike in costs — a day after Shell and British Gas reported record profits”
BP and Shell Director’s are legally responsible to shareholders and no-one else.
If companies like BP and Shell did not make profits our pensions would be much poorer. And what are they supposed to do – NOT make profits? Its not like they don’t invest huge capital sums in a risky business from exploration through appraisal, development and production. In the UK the corporation tax is currently 19%. Unless you are North Sea producing oil company in which case its 30%, plus you pay about another 30% in other taxes – 60% taxation.
Meanwhile at the fuel pumps the government rakes it in without having to put any captial at risk whatsoever.
In 2014 oil price crashed and stayed low until 2020. Oil companies made huge losses.
BP Net Income 2010-2022 | BP | MacroTrends
The supply chain was all affected and it triggered huge rounds of redundancies in the oil service industry especially the large upstream contractors for seismic, drilling, logging etc. Western service companies have, through redundancy, cut their staff counts by 60-70% and this has not come back since, partly because budgets for next year have not been set. In the UK the estimate is 135,000 high paid oil sector jobs have gone and, given government policy, likely permanently.
We didn’t ask for nor expect government bailouts, handouts or whatnot. We pay our own way as every good business should.
Where were the politicians and the public when the oil industry was struggling? Silent and ignorant and uncaring. You’ll miss us if we are gone, shivering in the dark.
Excellent comment…we in the oil industry have been much maligned and yet we continue on, paying our taxes, developing cutting edge technology and keeping modern society going…..
Well said.
Too bad the idiots who run the asylum aren’t listening.
This comedy is playing out in the Eastern States of Australia with politicians and greentards trying to blame the end result of there policy on FF companies and generators. The real comedy now is the FF generators are refusing to play ball with the new government and regulator.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/consumers-warned-of-looming-nightmare-as-aemo-reports-record-wholesale-electricity-costs/ar-AA104PSW?fromMaestro=true
What is even more fun is the gas shortage forecast for next year and the AEMO trying to use federal law to stop export.
https://www.energymagazine.com.au/accc-forecasts-massive-gas-shortfall-in-2023/
What will be amusing is if another state like Western Australia contracts to buy Eastern State gas over which federal export laws can not be used. You could see a situation a WA company could buy Eastern States gas somewhere between WA domestic and export price then mix it with it’s local supply and export it. The ES seller gets higher than domestic price and the WA seller makes a nice profit. All the Feds could do is deem the gas must be sold locally at the price it would otherwise be exported at which takes them right back to where they are.
This is the problem with trying to use Federal Laws on export rather than State Laws at source 🙂
Brits are blaming the wrong people
The propaganda is working.
Energy companies are being blamed because the government is instructing media to run persistent articles on radio and in newsprint ‘discussing’ the energy companies greed.
It’s deliberate and malicious. Not that I have any sympathy for energy companies but, it’s notable no one was being directed to sympathise with them when Oil hit rock bottom, and at one time went negative.
“Worried Brits expect cost of living crisis to spark crime wave, deaths and riots”
While the elites spread the propaganda to blame the energy companies behind security guards, the majority of the citizenry is virtually defenseless against the criminals.
Their only option is to wake up and vote the vile propagandists out or overwhelm them with masses of people ala Sri Lanka.
I have been saying this for a year or more. I have even said with “100% certainty” this Green tyranny is over (pitchforks and torches in the streets). I think I’ve had a comment or two censored.
“There is plenty the government could do, right now, to alleviate British energy bill misery.”
I’m sorry Eric, but no! Even abandoning the entire shameful, dishonest and diabolical
green smokescreen for the Elites’ Global Great Marxist Reset can’t stop the horrors already baked in. The fallout from the Policy-Caused massive damage to the global economy, energy disruption, agriculture, manufacturing (and loss of jobs) mental health, everything (!) will take a few years begin to alleviate. We will have famine around the world, illness, social disruption, and violence. The Sri Lanka Model tells us this.
I believe you are referring to allowing fracking. Getting this gas delivered to homes and industry …pipelines, is several years off assuming they are successful (they better get Americans or Canadians to do the job. Chinese, Poles and others haven’t had success). They will also have to suspend all anti-enterprise legislation and regulations under a an Emergency legislation, say, adopt US regulations. Needed will be military policing with easy arrest and jailing for any resistance to development – make the charges treason!
I have begun Naming and Shaming the egregiously dishonorable mainstream climate ‘scientists’ who provide the rationale for this monstrous misanthropic disaster, which potentially ranks up there among those of the 20th century’s crimes-against-humanity megalomaniacs. Politicians, marxists strategists (world Ec Forum billionaires and ‘statesmen’) are the main culprits, but a the ‘elder statesmen’ of the consensus by their felonious behavior, moving goal posts, corrupting data, p-hacking, blocking alternate views, arranging to have sceptic scientists dismissed from employment, making litigious punishments for ‘detractors’…certainly are the loyal lieutenants and ‘camp guards’
This is Britain, only the left riot
The rest of us will mumble something under our breath, keep a stiff upper lip, and carry on stoically like we always do.
So the average Brit would rather die home alone starving and freezing in the dark than get publicly angry. Sad what a once great nation is reduced to.
There have been exceptions, England had a Peasants Revolt against a poll tax, then the UK poll tax riots in the time of Thatcher.
So there’s still hope
That was the lefties rioting. This confirms Redge’s statement.
Thatcher’s poll tax was a much fairer system than we had before and we have now. Under Thatcher’s poll tax each person paid their fair share of council services, with discounts and exemptions for the least well off.
Why should a one-person household pay 75% of the council tax than a family of 4 next door? Do they use more council services than anyone else?
Does a wealthy person use more council services than a poor person?
Or Perhaps…
The Beginnings
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the English began to hate.
Their voices were even and low,
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show,
When the English began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd,
It was not taught by the State.
No man spoke it aloud,
When the English began to hate.
It was not suddenly bred,
It will not swiftly abate,
Through the chill years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the English began to hate.
Rudyard Kipling 1917
I guess every 100 years or so?
We will be rioting in Australia they can put up our energy prices but they are going to put beer up by 4%
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/australia-faces-the-biggest-beer-tax-hike-in-30-years/ar-AA10fJIm?li=AAgfLCP
Time to riot
And when they do riot it will be against the wrong people. They’ll be more likely to attack a franchised petrol station than the virtue signalling politicians et al. Don’t forget this is the place where a mob killed a paediatrician.
No mob killed a paediatrician. The ‘incident’ was a sketch on a UK satirical show called ‘Brass Eye’ – it’s quite infamous. Amazing that you could confuse a tv show with reality.
I could solve their problems for them. Just quit being stupid and you won’t have those problems. These people really irritate me.
As they should. It seems to be the only thing that keeps current politicians from utter tyranny.
Remember to sign up with enviro groups before heading out to cause mayhem in order to get a free pass. You might also consider a name badge with the word Griff on it for extra protection. And remember not to protest or cause damage at Drax–must not slow down the burn rate of imported trees after all.
Now available at £5 a time… comes in green, deep green and green. See my agent…
(All UK green groups are anti Drax)
I think the social media misinformation teams working for Putin and Alphabet can skip the UK–its too chaotic already.
At least the police have got their priorities right.
“In Britain today everything is policed – except Crime”.
Mark Steyn