Another biweekly brief to start the week, this week I will be talking about rising energy bills in the UK and rising inflation rates still trending over the past couple of weeks.
First off, it’s been an intense week for households as energy prices continue to rise in England, Scotland and Wales the average household’s energy bill will rise by £693 in April which will be an extraordinary 54% increase each year. The energy price cap is the maximum price of energy and electricity bills that can be charged by the suppliers to the customers over a six-month period. This was supposed to be a protection method implemented by the government to ensure that energy bill companies don’t take advantage of the customers by charging them higher prices because of their loyalty. This rise in energy bills was initiated partly because of the decline of exports from Russia as many parts of Europe rely on Russia for their supply of gas.
It is said that according to The Bank of England, the UK will face the biggest fall in living standards from records since 1990. This is described to be an energy crisis as yearly energy bills rose from winter 2021 at a price of £1,277 to summer 2022 of £1,971. So, what help can the people get? Chancellor Sunak has offered a £350 support plan from the government for households with £200 off energy bills, but this needs to be repaid within five years. This will become yet another worry for the 22 million households.
This then raises the question of why have gas prices gone up? Unfortunately, Europe is short on supply of gas and pressure is building within Asia as demand is increasing for liquefied natural gas. Liquefied natural gas is produced from hydrocarbons including methane, ethane, propane, and butane which are used residentially for heating homes and generating electricity. For the UK, this has hit very hard as 85% of residential buildings use gas for central heating and boilers.
As of the last brief, inflation is still the biggest topic talked about every day and mentioned by the Financial Times, The BoE will raise the interest rate to 0.5% to tame inflation. However, this could help with inflation, but it wouldn’t really help the households in the UK today, energy bills are already rising and with inflation skyrocketing this will affect living standards dramatically.
Beijing has reported more Covid-19 cases in the city. To help prevent the spread of the disease, some local areas have gone into lockdown and people are getting tested regularly. Travel restrictions are still held tightly at the Chinese borders so any athletes who have tested positive must be in isolation and will only be allowed to compete with two negative tests in 24 hours.
Anticipations are high for the Winter Olympics however there are strict regulations for foreigners entering the country due to the government guidelines which are certainly more uptight than the Tokyo Olympics previously.
Have a great week.
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