(UK EURO THREAD) UK POLITICS MK2

[Keckers]

To be fair, most working people will have been contributing to a private pension for between 7-10 years now (when auto-enrolment kicked in for small and large employers respectively)

It's essentially fuck all in the grand scheme of things if you're complaining about inflation devaluing pensions while 40% of the population will be skipping meals to pay dividends to oil and gas shareholders. How much cash is tied up in auto-enrolment pensions? I know I was paying off more student loan debt than making contributions (another fucking millstone around the neck of a well educated generation with the fewest earning opportunities since the lightbulb became widespread)

[Sacul]

So what are people hoping to achieve by all these strikes?

The cost of gas isn't going down just because people refuse to work. If everyone wants/gets a pay increase matching inflation, guess what, we are back on square one and everyone wants another equal increase next year and nothing has been gained besides pension savings getting greatly devalued affecting everyone. Of course it is a benefit if you have a mortgage but that is probably the only good thing with inflation running wild.

Depending on the area of the country, between 50-75% of the population will be in fuel poverty (defined as spending more than 10% of your disposable income on heating and electricity costs) by October.

That is not a sustainable situation.

It's not down to individuals to come up with the solution, it's down to major employers and the government.

I know, I'm one of those 50-75%. Increased pay isn't the fix, reducing the energy cost is.

I mean I kinda feel like the energy prices are the straw on the camel of everything else going up in cost. Housing, food, everything we need is spiralling up in cost BEFORE most employees have seen a payrise.

This ^

Its not just a UK problem, its all over N/W europe, cant say much about south and east as i dont know except that countries like France are fully compensating the people on energy bills (also a few other countries).

[Smegs]

Unfortunately fuel is the one thing we all depend on, directly or indirectly in the modern world.

It transports us locally, our food and materials internationally and powers everything around us required to produce our commodities and live. So when the oil and gas companies/whole sellers/speculators feel like dabbling in a spot of massive co-ordinated profiteering it has a very direct and large impact on global inflation.

Due to the power of OPEC, Oil/Gas companies and oil/gas lobbying groups, and the fact that governments around the world very much in their pockets, they are another industry that is untouchable. Until the oil/gas companies are nationalised (or at least have nationalised competition), expect capitalism to do what capitalism does and continue trying to produce ever increasing profits within a finite economic system. BTW Brent crude was over $100pb for large parts of the last decade and yet fuel prices were approximately 1/3rd lower than today in the UK. The situation is entirely fucked up and it is simply due to greed.

[depili]

Not completely, the Thing is that refining and transportation are also part of the equation. One doesn't simply re-engineer ones refinery to a different kind of crude oil in a jiffy or produce alternative transportation for LNG (and provide plants for processing the liquid into gas again and feeding it into the pipelines) to replace imports.

[Smegs]

Not completely, the Thing is that refining and transportation are also part of the equation. One doesn't simply re-engineer ones refinery to a different kind of crude oil in a jiffy or produce alternative transportation for LNG (and provide plants for processing the liquid into gas again and feeding it into the pipelines) to replace imports.

As far as i am aware, there has been no significant difference in refining requirements globally within the last half decade. We, globally, still use the same type of oil and byproducts as a decade ago and in similar (although not exactly the same, due to china/india industrialisation) quantities. Although i do understand that LNG is increasingly being used for power production, that change over has been going on for nearly a decade within europe (2008 first national electricity production in the UK iirc) although i am unsure of US/china/india LNG power use, which has given refiners and transporters significant time to adapt and take advantage of the new markets.

So as per my point above, brent crude (the 'recognised' price for oil, yes i know there are lots of others within differing markets) was $100pb a decade ago with fuel costing approximately 1/3rd (for both fuel and home energy) and yet today the same $pb is costing the consumer 3 times as much ... its greed and profiteering producing considerable inflation which is leading to significant destabalisation of the micro and macro economic conditions for most of the industrial and semi industrialised world.

My overarching point is that global collective governments have failed to regulate markets for essential items (like food, water and fuel), and with capitalist markets doing what capitalist markets do (i.e make money for shareholder/self and fuck everyone else), we seem to be on the verge of a humanitarian crisis of the like of the societal collapse of the Indus, Bronze age or Mayan. Btw it looks like those collapses took perhaps hundreds of years to fully enact.

Shits fucked yo.

[Keckers]

Ah but for a brief moment in time we created a lot of shareholder value.

[depili]

It's not the requirements about the end products, but the refineries setup for russian crude can't just go and change to another type of crude on a whim that I was saying. And you can't replace pipelined stuff with some arriving by ship as easily as you need the transport capacity from somewhere.

And general way the world economy works is that once supply of something, in this case mostly electricity, isn't completely up to demand prices rise and unless demand lowers the price will keep on rising. In this case it is a cascade of no gas -> no electricity from gas -> need oil and other alternatives to produce said electricity shortfall -> other energy sources get more expensive.

For example in Finland we imported decent amount of oil products, both crude and refined stuff, from Putinland, now all that has to be made up by imports via shipping and organizing that supply chain from the ground up just takes time and the shipping capacity might not be there even when the oil itself is available and the refining capacity isn't there completely to replace all of the imported refined stuff -> no matter how cheap the crude is it doesn't magically get here and be refined to what is needed.

[Hel OWeen]

It's not the requirements about the end products, but the refineries setup for russian crude can't just go and change to another type of crude on a whim that I was saying.

Yepp. This is something I learned through this war: refineries are built to refine a specific crude oil and can't just process crude oil from other sources. So even if there was plenty of crude oil otherwise available on the world market, not being able to refine it is what contributes to the energy shortages.

[depili]

It's not the requirements about the end products, but the refineries setup for russian crude can't just go and change to another type of crude on a whim that I was saying.

Yepp. This is something I learned through this war: refineries are built to refine a specific crude oil and can't just process crude oil from other sources. So even if there was plenty of crude oil otherwise available on the world market, not being able to refine it is what contributes to the energy shortages.

Depending on the refinery it might be possible to switch to another type of crude, but it will take time to get the process adjusted. Fortum, posting record losses mainly due to being tied to Uniper, has switched to other supplies than the russian crude for example, but getting that replacement crude all the way to the refinery isn't easy.

[Smegs]

It's not the requirements about the end products, but the refineries setup for russian crude can't just go and change to another type of crude on a whim that I was saying.

Ah apologies. I certainly conceed the point here. I was thinking more of the crude byproducts as opposed to types of crude.

[Keckers]

Why does it seem like nobody is asking how the fuck the Tories can end up having a leadership election where the two candidates are clearly incompetent idiots?

[depili]

Why does it seem like nobody is asking how the fuck the Tories can end up having a leadership election where the two candidates are clearly incompetent idiots?

Because everyone knows there are no competent ones available?

[Dee Jiensai]

Why does it seem like nobody is asking how the fuck the Tories can end up having a leadership election where the two candidates are clearly incompetent idiots?

Because everyone knows there are no competent ones available?

Liz Truss **has** to happen.
It's inevitable since she is cosplaying Thatcher.
Its the proof of "History always repeats itself, once as Tragedy, once as Farce".

And there is nothing imaginable more farcical than PM Liz Truss.

[Paradox]

everything is fine

[NoirAvlaa]

Why does it seem like nobody is asking how the fuck the Tories can end up having a leadership election where the two candidates are clearly incompetent idiots?

Because everyone knows there are no competent ones available?

Liz Truss **has** to happen.
It's inevitable since she is cosplaying Thatcher.
Its the proof of "History always repeats itself, once as Tragedy, once as Farce".

And there is nothing imaginable more farcical than PM Liz Truss.

Also there's just _something_ about Sunak that will never appeal to the core tory voter for leadership position... can't quite put my finger on it...

[Shiodome]

Why does it seem like nobody is asking how the fuck the Tories can end up having a leadership election where the two candidates are clearly incompetent idiots?

Because everyone knows there are no competent ones available?

Liz Truss **has** to happen.
It's inevitable since she is cosplaying Thatcher.
Its the proof of "History always repeats itself, once as Tragedy, once as Farce".

And there is nothing imaginable more farcical than PM Liz Truss.

Also there's just _something_ about Sunak that will never appeal to the core tory voter for leadership position... can't quite put my finger on it...

his wife is richer than him?

[Keckers]

He likes the wrong type of coke

[Rodj Blake]

His policies are a bit like Gordon Brown's?

[Rodj Blake]

Thick Lizzy's rumoured cabinet picks:



On the plus side, Patel is out.

On the other hand, Braverman will be worse.

[Siv]

Thick Lizzy's rumoured cabinet picks:



On the plus side, Patel is out.

On the other hand, Braverman will be worse.

How is Dorries still in?