Hardly surprising. Watching the same grocery items increase in price 3 times in 6 months, sometimes to over 150% of the original price, it was clear people were going to be in trouble.
Pair that with skyrocketing rents, especially in the landlord’s paradise that is London. And the fact that even getting into a rental often requires a lot of money upfront. The cracks are widening.
A lot of people were barely holding it together before. It’s only going to get worse unless drastic changes are made.
Alright what is causing this? Is it brexit, regular inflation, reduced social support or all three?
All three, plus 13 years of underinvestment in the country and mismanagement of the economy leaving us all poorer and more exposed to financial shocks.
As others have said, a lot of things.
Inflation is soaring all over the world. And we know that companies are taking advantage of the excuse to raise prices in excess of inflation. Brexit dealt a huge blow to the UK specifically. A war in Europe restricting the flow of quite a few staple goods.
And the Tories systemically gutting every social safety net they reasonably can over the past 13 years.
And for major cities like London, private landlords take full advantage, using every excuse they can to increase the rent by the maximum they can year-over-year. Which also has the secondary effect of forcing working-class people to move very frequently, which is expensive. I knew very few people who were renting and hadn’t moved at least once in the last 3 years. Some moved multiple times.
Capitalism inherently creates wealth over concentration. It simply can’t function without intervention- as we can see, it devolves to neo-feudalism and rent seeking parasitism.
Intervention can reset the counter, but these are inherent traits of Capitalist political economy
I don’t think the inflation is so regular.
I think a lot of it is driven by soaring profits of large companies.
Be sure to thank a Tory.
Nothing good in history has ever come from conservatism. Nothing at all.
What about the little flag industry?
They do pretty much rely on conservatives, don’t they?
This and your username simply reads as short-sighted, uneducated and immature. Not all change is good, and by definition, some things being conserved is good. However, the balance must be struck, and in the UK we have a long and reasonable history of it ocillating between polarities every few years.
However, 23 years of Conservative rule is not anything close to balance. Austerity and all. Change is sorely needed. The profiteering and upward soak of money must tilt in the other direction for a while, for the sake of people like in the original post.
Some things being conserved is absolutely good. However, the “Conservative” government isn’t really all that conservative, is it? Unless you refer to conserving their own self interests, I’ll grant you they’re really good at that…
Oh and I am 40 years old and educated to masters level, not that that really should matter in the slightest. I do admit that I am pretty short sighted though, damn eyes just ain’t what they used to be. Thankfully I can fix that with glasses through our wonderful national health service… at least for now until the “conservatives” get rid of that too…
The sick man of Europe once again.
“Sick man of Europe” is a label given to a nation located in Europe experiencing economic difficulties, social unrest or impoverishment. … Throughout the 1960s to the 1980s, the term was also most notably used for the United Kingdom when it lost its superpower status as the Empire crumbled and its home islands experienced significant deindustrialization, coupled with high inflation and industrial unrest – such as the Winter of Discontent – including having to seek loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Since the mid-2010s and into the 2020s, the term being used for Britain began to see a resurgence after Brexit, a cost-of-living crisis and industrial disputes and strikes becoming more commonplace.
I hope the conservatives are proud. A lot of enemies of Britain tried to destroy it and didn’t even get half as far as the conservatives got.
I saw David Cameron was still travelling around the world getting paid thousands of dollars to give speeches at companies’ events.
The man gambled the future of the UK for mildly more power than he already had, and when it blew up in his face he ran away. If the people of the UK had any balls he’d be looking over his shoulder everywhere he went.
Take away more public benches! Install more spikes! Continue to expand police powers against citizens without a fixed address!
That’ll fix it!
It worked in the United States! Oh wait…
Didn’t they promise to cut all homeless people in half by 2024? 😂
Edit: I just checked again because I forgot, but the phrase was made by an artist and not by a party. Still funny though :)
They promised a lot of things which got a lot of derps to vote for them :\ They didn’t actually follow through with said things, and said derps never said anything more about it…Imagine being working class and being fooled into voting for Conservatives…
Not sure the public will be on board with such mass dismemberment.
I find it amusing and horrible that there is an alternative reading of that sentence
In wealthy countries, the wealthy of those countries don’t like to share their wealth.
Is it really better in other countries?
In 2008 we had the first great recession.
When it hit, public services were in a good place, and people did have enough saved to help cushion the blow. While I’d like to say Labour are to thank for that, their introduction of tuition fees (a measure now destroying higher education) shows that it isn’t always the case.
This time, public services are already “unhealthy” due to years of systematic under-investment and minor privatisations (why buy an MRI when you can rent it right?). People don’t have the savings to weather it due to a decade and a half of stagnant wages. A lot of this is thanks to Tory policies, and a good chunk of blame lies there.
So, we’re seeing a surge in people losing out, rather than overextended companies going bust. It feels “worse” this time because it isn’t people losing their jobs because a company went bust, it’s people starving and freezing while working full time.
Have you any resources on the tuition being bad, I believe it to be but I keep hearing how it’s a great system that you only pay back upon earning a certain amount.
As someone whose salary is based on how much tuition others are paying, and who is losing about £1200 per year paying it back, I can categorically say it’s bad from both ends.
The tuition freeze has essentially meant universities in the UK have had a budget cut every year based on inflation, which is now driving a push towards international recruitment since they pay the bills.
The higher education sector is increasingly mimicking our school system (a true failure); with universities prioritising progression and student appeal over quality of education. Indeed, we even have our own “opt in” Ofsted (Office For Students), so eager is our government to see us follow the school system into ruin.
1.1 million people migrated to the UK last year. 500,000 net migrants need to live somewhere. The government isn’t doing anything to slow this down, so this problem is going to get much worse.
The first sentence is “The rise is driven by people arriving legally from outside the EU and the resumption of post-pandemic travel.”
Are those usually the homeless?
You seem to have me confused with someone arguing about refugees. I quoted the net migration. That means when you add up everyone who left, and everyone who arrived, 504,000 people were added to the UK. They need to sleep somewhere. Do you want them to sleep in tents?
I’d believe you, except…
"The latest house building statistics show that in the financial year ending March 2022 there were 204,530 dwellings completed in the UK. "
The average UK household has 2.36 residents. That still leaves a deficit of more than 21,000 people. And this gap compounds year on year on year.
