The accompanying graphic comes from the Daily Telegraph. Depending on which company supplies your gas the price has increased by up to 98% since 2003. If you get your electricity from British Gas your bill has gone up by 81%. These are the fastest rises since records began.
Here’s what the Telegraph says:
The figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in the year to last month the cost of domestic gas rose by 35.8 per cent, faster than during any of the energy crises of the 1970s and 1980s.
Since June 2003 the cost of gas has gone up by 64 per cent and electricity has risen by 45 per cent. The average price of goods and services went up by 10 per cent over the same period.
The squeeze on household budgets has been tightened by a 16 per cent rise in council tax, a 24 per cent rise in water bills and a jump of nearly 50 per cent in mortgage interest payments.
The Times seems to think that the energy companies might be running something like a cartel:
The most recent profits figures for the six main companies, which also include Eon, Scottish Power, and Scottish and Southern, reveal they made more than £2 billion in six months last year. Average household energy bills are expected to exceed £1,000 this year, compared with £572 in 2003.
According to well-placed industry insiders, the practices used by the big six to rack up profits include keeping domestic bills broadly “in line” with one another, restricting energy supplies to competitors and demanding laborious accreditation and credit requirements for new companies.
Living in the ivory tower that is chateau Mac Uaid I may have missed the protests and demonstrations organised by the British unions. Maybe Labour government ministers are standing outside post offices bunging envelopes full of £50 notes to pensioners and single parents. I have learned that in Belgium the Federal Government has approved measures that will triple the number of poorer families that will be entitled to financial assistance with their heating oil bills. Around 300,000 families on modest incomes will be entitled to help. This is an increase from the 100 000 who currently receive help. The government decided to act because so many families were struggling to pay their bills. Families with an annual income of between 13,500 and 22,800 euros can claim between 30 and 105 euros to help pay their household heating costs.
The odd thing is that the Heating Oil Fund has been financed by the petroleum industry to the tune of 9 million euros. The Federal Government is now to provide the fund with an extra 30 million euros in public money to pay for the new measures.
No organisation seems to be demanding similar support for people on low incomes in Britain. Combine the rapid inflation in the prices of essential goods and services with the pitiful pay rises that Brown has in store for workers in Britain and you see that New Labour is presiding over a major attack on the standard of living of the working class. Being poor is now a real fast track to being even poorer . From Respect Renewal’s point of view propaganda and organisation on these themes have to be a major part of its message in the coming months. Millions of workers are effectively without an organisation that is capable of making demands and agitating politically over something as basic as the cost of living. Most prominent Labour figures are too preoccupied getting donations from property developers to worry about much else.
At the same time, to quote from the statement on the revamped Socialist Resistance website:
Union activists must ensure serious wage claims and a real fight in the next pay round. They should also being raising the demand for emergency cost of living increases as price rises bite.
There is a real gap in British politics at the moment. It’s roughly the shape of a class struggle party with working class support. That’s the gap that Respect Renewal has to fill because this winter and next winter millions of people are going to have to decide between not eating or freezing. No other organisation that presently exists is able to fill that gap.
Liam redux 
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