The cost of living, crisis, inflation and recession are evident every time I visit the supermarket for groceries, every time I fill up my electricity meter, every time a pay slip comes through my mailbox. Four pints of milk set me back a quart. now, it’s twice as much for twice as little. And now I learn that the energy price cap could rise by as much as £6,000 by next year, and 45 million people will be plunged into fuel poverty as a result – that’s 60% of the population. I’m currently on an old fashioned pay meter. I wish I could switch to prepaid. That way, I could enjoy more leverage over the energy companies, but I know my landlord won’t agree and I don’t want to compete with them for fear of no-fault eviction. I haven’t yet had to turn off appliances like my fridge and freezer to save energy, but I know people who have and it might be something to consider because this winter it’s going to be even harder to keep warm. Martin Lewis said the country is on the brink of disaster and we are experiencing a “national crisis on the scale of a pandemic”. Of course he’s right, but I think people like him are just waking up to the struggles that many of us have faced for over a decade because it’s starting to squeeze disposable incomes. That’s not a crisis in my book. The luxuries of life are privileges that I have never had the opportunity to take advantage of. In the last three years I have experienced almost nothing. While parents like me face the difficult task of explaining to our children why we can’t enjoy the things we used to, some of the country’s richest bosses are pocketing colossal pay rises, sometimes as much as 40%. We have water company executives getting six-figure bonuses despite raw sewage being poured into rivers. Meanwhile, people like me continue to bear the brunt of the price hikes. There has never been a greater need to freeze energy bills and increase the benefit cap. But Liz Truss, the favorite to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, will prioritize tax cuts for business, leaving the fat cats richer and working people poorer. Sometimes I wish I could trade places with people like Rishi Sunak and Truss so they could get a taste of the daily struggles people like me face. Perhaps then they would understand the cruelty that their view of the world imposes on us. At the beginning of the last decade, we saw how quickly political unrest can spiral out of control when authorities push local communities to the breaking point. In 2011, riots broke out in London and across the country after Mark Duggan was killed by the Metropolitan Police. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If this injustice continues, if extortionate food prices, energy bills and rents continue to rise, I fear that this could happen again unless those in power do the right thing.
The Trussell Trust is an anti-poverty charity campaigning to end the need for food banks. Show your support at: trusselltrust.org/guardian Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, please email it to [email protected]
