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Gas price hike makes everyone shiver
The divide between rich and poor, both internally in countries, and externally between rich and poor countries, will widen as the recession develops; it is already starting to bite with suggestions that Centrica, owners of British Gas, are going to raise gas prices by 70% this year. This could be a softening up bit of PR; get the media talking about it, cause panic at such a monstrous rise, and then raise prices by 15% and a few months later by another 20%, and everyone will remain relieved the dreaded 70% hasn't smacked them round the back of the head. It usually works. But what incensed me wasn't the likely stunt, or the possibility of a 70% rise in gas price - and all the talk about choice and competition is nonsense, all the rest would follow suit a few weeks after British Gas - it was the smirking managing director of Centrica, a smarmy looking American, who suggested in answer to the question 'How are people going to cope with such a huge rise in a basic utility like gas?', that people would get used to it, and it might mean two sweaters rather than one. This from a man on at least a million a year plus bonuses for ripping customers off on behalf of the shareholders, for whom a gas bill, even on a country estate, would not be a third of his income as it is for the very poorest in society. Of course, the rich will lose much more as the recession accelerates because they have so much more to lose - 'when you got nuthin, you got nuthin to lose, you're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal' Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan - but for the very poor, on a fixed low income, rises in basic commodities which form the bulk of their purchases hit them hard and fast. The government prats on about moving children out of poverty, but now poverty will be stalking children, nutrition will diminish where it is already poor. Fuel poverty, the inability to afford heating, is creeping forward and swallowing more people as prices have risen in the last year. If a bad winter comes along, as is still possible, many will be very cold with the inevitable consequences. It's a miserable death. In poor countries, it's almost immediate; for many, if crops fail and the price of basic foods rockets, you don't eat. Our images of the 'great depression' are mostly from the US, because that was where the cameras mostly were then. But it wasn't all bankers throwing themselves out of buildings [I wonder if that actually ever occurred? Urban myth?] and queues of thin, desperate looking men in fedora hats shuffling forward for a bowl of soup. We have had such an extended period of what's called prosperity in the developed world, as we consumed everything we could get our hands on, in one giant consumer party which had to end some time. Half the party guests are so bloated with overeating they can barely walk, others are so drunk they can hardly think, and that's just the politicians. Hardly anyone alive knows what it is like for the whole system to crash, fall apart, bank after bank closing doors, people queueing to get hold of their money, which is always virtual anyway, whether figures on a computer screen or on paper, they can diminish and dim so easily when confidence evaporates. Companies in a wide range of industries are laying people off already, so for some the recession has definitely started despite the media constantly asking politicians 'is this a recession?' None of the chatterati know quite what a recession looks like yet, so they don't know how to react; keep smiling and denying it's bad, because once you admit it, it feeds back and people lose more confidence, thus bringing it on. So they all behave as if this is just a minor blip in the economy and it will be allright... soon. But more and more experts who really should know are saying 'It's a recession, and it's started' all they can't [or won't?] say yet is how long it will last and how bad it will get. |
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