The Poolie Bunker

For April.
C. Tax up
Water up
Broadband up
Phone up
Food up
ETC.

2.8% WELL AYE.

Must fiddle the figures to keep the Triple Lock as low as possible while the benefits people get treat like Millionaires.
Total corruption.

Starmer Out.

you would have thought diane abbott was doing the figures. whatever starmer says you need to phone a friend if you cannot work out the answer yourself.

Of course the figures are false, however reality will return big style over the next few months and blow the fraudsters out of the water!

The big one that's down (temporarily) is gas and electricity for household bills.

I got a refund of £253 off British Gas last week and a big cut in my monthly direct debit.

Of course, the regulator will bump up gas and electrict prices in July, so heating bills will rocket for the winter, especially if the Iran War is still dragging on.

Well the rises in household bills is greater than the state pension.
Sick of people going on about not affording the triple lock, check out other European countries state pensions…we are well down the league table, in fact it’s embarrassing.

Scrap the pension, give them the living wage…or minimum wage.

If the retailers keep gouging the public noughts going to change, on my trips to the supermarket on my last trip it was eye watering increase in basic food prices in the last 18 months. I picked up 2 lamb chops at the meat counter in Morrisons just under £10, I put them back. I go back to what used to be a family meal. Fish and Chips, 18 months ago in Seaton it was around £11 now £13, yes energy costs have increased but has fish and potatoes ? I was in a small in Seaton, a woman bought a large glass of wine, £11.50, ffs how do they justify that for a glass of plonk ? As long as the the public keep taking it up the ar** retailers will never reduce the prices.

Gas consumption is less during the Summer so from July nailed on the Standing Charge will go up massively.

Then probably up in October like every year.
It's about £1.35 a day now for gas Leccy water Standing Charges.
Easy cash for the greedy bastads

Why do people pay utilities using monthly direct debits, the companies hold over £3 billion in their accounts, put the equivalent monthly direct debit in a separate account. Why fill the coffers of the greedy bas**rds.

Smart meters Scam where they were bullshited to reduce your bills.
Which produced a shit load of Direct Debits at higher prices than the actual usage.

I will carry on paying every 3 months for what I actually use.

I think British Gas have finally got the message they can't mug me after about 55 e mails of our team are in your area for a free fitting of a Smart Meter.

Apparently the supermarket profits are not up, so it's not price gouging that's causing higher prices.
Fish has indeed got more expensive, the boats don't run on fresh air, fuel costs have gone through the roof.
Everything that needs transporting costs more as fuel costs rise, everything we make or sell in outlets has gone up because energy costs have gone up. Everything we grow costs more because fertiliser has gone up. And of course wages have gone up as have employer NI contributions.
The only thing that has gone down is the real-term value of the pound in your pocket.
And this inflation is down claim doesn't mean costs are coming down, it just means they're going up a little bit slower. Government spin which does feck all to help us with the cost of living.

I don't have a smart meter either Kev. I'm on the lowest tariff available, courtesy of Money Saving Expert. You do have to pay by monthly dd, but you don't have to have a smart meter.

'Course, if Jamie Saving Expert can find me a lower tariff, I might change to that.

Got it in 1, Well spotted.

Theoretically gas prices shouldn’t go up as the U.K. gets most of its gas from Norway, unfortunately the price of gas is controlled by the world markets.
Standing Charge is a cash cow, when I had my place in the U.K. irrespective whether I was there or not I still had to pay the Standing Charge, low energy users also get penalised as well. The definition of the Standing Charge is ‘line rental’

the costs involved in manaufacture and transportation of goods need not to actually go up before there is a price increase. just the mention of the possibility of it happening will add something onto the prices. this also includes stock purchased before any rise and that goes up as well and not till its all used up.

Agreed there's some of that goes on, but a business that doesn't make a profit isn't a business for very long. If they're maintaining their profit margins rather than increasing them it's not price gouging.
The government is doing quite nicely out of this btw with hugely increased VAT receipts. I can remember when VAT was introduced as a kind of "luxury tax" now it's applied to such luxuries as heating and lighting.

Are these fake figures, net migration to the UK fell to 171,000 in 2025, a 48% decrease from 331,000 in 2024 and a sharp decline from the record peak of 944,000 in the year ending March 2023. This drop represents the lowest level of net migration since 2012, excluding the Covid-19 pandemic
The public overestimates the proportion of asylum seekers in UK immigration, perceiving it to be 33 per cent compared to the true figure of around nine per cent.

How do you living in Thailand know what the public think?
And even if that percentage is right it's still about 17000 too many illegals.

In the year ending March 2026, there were 43,806 detected arrivals via illegal routes. So if that’s 17,000 too many, then you’re saying that around 26,000 would be an acceptable number?

Seriously Jamie, what are you on? This was a thread about the cost of living till you single-handedly made it about migration.

Get your blinkers off, it’s not the first time I have mentioned the replies on some topics have veered of the topic but I was kindly reminded by admin that’s what message boards are for, opinions.

bollocks to a population the size of kings lynn scrounging off us. they can shove there diversity up there arses as there should be zero number of illegals/ asylum seekers/ drain on our resources allowed to land on our shores. any that manage it and get detected should get the minimum food and shelter before they are deported. nothing new about immegration anywhere in the world. it was usually the countries themselves that advertised for it or for certain jobs that there were a shortage of.

Top left hand corner of the screen, 'New Topic.' Click on it, type in 'Latest migration figures' or some such, and there you are, your very own topic to chunter on with. You curmugeonly arse

They play the figures down,nobody trusts them,just take a look around the street corners and town centres, Jamie..Only a mug would believe anything they say!

with figures its like saying you used to be 23 stone but now you have dropped to 21. you are still an overweight fat git. saying figures are down even if true does not mean nobody is entering.

TBH can you belief any figures from government departments, they can be massaged to suit the criteria at any time of what ever government is in power.