Money going to the affluent while the rest of us struggle is national disgrace

When the weather’s like it has been recently, it’s difficult to think about having to put the heating on. Of course, it’s difficult anyway, given the fact that most of us are going to be wondering and worrying for the foreseeable future over how we’re going to pay for said heating, outside of robbing a bank (if you can find a branch) or mugging the nearest energy company shareholder/executive we happen across.

With the next hike in the energy price cap due in October (and more freezing fun and frolics scheduled for 2023, yay!) the announcement of what it’s going to be is apparently due later this month. My spies, who are everywhere, tell me the date of fate is August 26.

So fasten your seatbelts (especially if you are now living in your petrol-less, stationary car) and look out those extra tatty blankets you were going to keep for drying the dog, now to be used for lagging yourself as you realise, in a Game Of Thrones kind of a way, that winter is coming.

Joking aside, what with all this carry-on about huge percentages of many people’s diminishing incomes (who knew it was possible to have negative equity in your gas bill?) going on this absolute necessity and the discovery of the polio virus in London sewage, I am starting to do my usual overreacting in conversation with unsuspecting friends – and you equally unsuspecting lot out there.

This means wondering how one of the hitherto biggest economies in the world and (apparently) still the sixth richest nation on Earth is managing to do a more than passable impersonation of a Third World country. And given our current leadership (or lack of it until September 5 – and even then, I’m not expecting much), that could easily be construed as an insult to Third World countries.

It’s always seemed to me, in my simplistic approach to political thought and the practical applications thereof, that governments generally are there, in good times, to keep things ticking over and butt out as much as they can. In hard times, that’s when they step in to help out. Not so these days, when getting any kind of assistance of any sort or scale seems to have disappeared from what’s on offer to most of the general public.

Most of our present problems with infrastructure, from energy to water to health provision, leaving aside the recent act of national self-harm which shall be nameless (as well as hopeless, useless and aimless), seem to stem from a lack of investment over many years from widely differing shades of government. Money, instead of going back into the economy and being thoughtfully deployed for the improvement of those elements of practical everyday living necessary to all, appears to have been withdrawn from these areas and allowed, not to trickle down (unlike the failing water systems of our southern neighbour), but to fly upwards into the gaping and ever-open pockets of the already affluent. Not to mention the effluent problem but that’s a rant for another day, you will be relieved to hear.

Any road up, it appears – and I do not condone it but I can absolutely understand the frustrations behind it – that there is a growing movement towards non-payment of energy bills. We are a basically meek and law-abiding lot in this country but the tipping point into mild-mannered anarchy seems to be looming ever closer in the lives and minds of many who see no way out of their predicament and no end to it.

Of course, experts and public figures are already issuing dire warnings about the penalties to be expected if we don’t cough up on time and in full. So much so, that even hardliners are now conceding the whispered mention of “possible” second windfall taxes and forward plans being “discussed” – huzzah! – for “consideration” by our next Dear Leader. Double huzzah, except that it’s going to be a bit late for those facing the double dunter of poverty and punishment and preparing to person the barricades. Or, even, for those merely feeling a mite tetchy about being lectured on “handouts” by a woman who used taxpayers’ money (500 grand of it, or thereabouts) on a private jet flight to Australia.

Me, although I have always been a believer in the cock-up rather than conspiracy theory of modern governance, I think it makes other examples of recent government policy all too clear and suddenly, absolutely comprehensible to the bewildered who have hitherto believed them to be examples of extreme bonkersdom. It explains a lot about recent Home Office initiatives, if nothing else. How long will it be, do you think, before hapless groups of “can’t pay, won’t pay” protesters find themselves on the wrong side of the new laws against saying nasty things in public gatherings about the government? Or even gathering in public at all?

Followed by a swift opportunity to experience the amenities of the prison ships moored in the Thames and other suitable estuaries or to board an otherwise empty cattle class flight to Rwanda?

The tipping point into mild-mannered anarchy is looming

DOESN’T ADD UP: Many people are struggling to pay their bills while the rich seem to be getting richer.