Bulb only cost billions because the government chose to make it cost billions? What world do you live in where a company with millions of customers going bankrupt costs nothing. You are the one arguing that we should have left all the energy suppliers to go bankrupt in 2022 and that would have somehow been better for consumers. Genuinely insane.

You have no idea what you are talking about. It was Truss that brought in the energy caps and it required a vote in the house.

What matters with the inflation situation is what is happening now not what happened one year ago. Because that tells you what is changing now. If inflation goes to zero it doesn’t mean price are going down it means they stop rising. The aim is to reduce the rate at which prices are going up, to do that you have to look at what is still causing inflation in recent months.

If energy suppliers go bankrupt is a big deal. It cost the government multiple billions because Bulb went bankrupt that money doesn’t come from nowhere. Some of the additional costs in bills was due to that bankruptcy as the money is recovered via the standing charges.

You have a mistaken impression that I think this government is good, I don’t, I look forward to the day they are out. But I don’t spout absolute bollocks as a way to attack them. And I especially don’t do that by attacking agencies which do a lot of protect consumers.

What are you on about. I just provides you with 4 quotes from the ONS, which by the way has the same appointment process as OFGEM.

You think a bunch more bankruptcies in energy providers would have been better for the consumer? Did you forget what happened with Bulb.

18 months for what?

“Rising prices for air travel, recreational and cultural goods and services, and second-hand cars resulted in the largest upward contributions to the monthly change in both the CPIH and CPI annual rates.”

“Falling prices for motor fuel led to the largest downward contribution to the monthly change in CPIH and CPI annual rates, while prices for food and non-alcoholic beverages rose in May 2023 but by less than in May 2022, also leading to an easing in the annual rates.”

“Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 7.1% in the 12 months to May 2023, up from 6.8% in April, and the highest rate since March 1992; the CPI goods annual rate eased from 10.0% to 9.7%, while the CPI services annual rate rose from 6.9% to 7.4%.”

“The slight rise in the annual CPIH inflation rate in May 2023 broadly reflected offsetting contributions across the different product groups. A large upward effect from recreation and culture was offset by a large downward contribution from food and non-alcoholic beverages. The overall effect from transport masked larger, offsetting underlying contributions from motor fuels (downward), air fares (upward) and second-hand cars (upward).“

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/may2023

Try looking at what is actually happening in recent months rather than over the last 12 months. When deciding what factors are keeping inflation high you want to look at what is changing month by month.

Imagine calling other people arrogant while spouting conspiracy nonsense about OFGEM and conservative donors.

Core inflation strips out food and energy and is going up in the Uk and down pretty much everywhere else.

During periods of inflation reducing or deincentivising spending are the ways to reduce demand. Inflation in restaurants and recreation, air fares are not down to these factors that you list, they are down to there being more demand due to some groups of people having more money after building up savings and paying off debt in the pandemic when they couldn’t do these things. The way to reduce demand for these things are additional taxes on groups that are spending on them now.

You clearly have no idea how OFGEM works. The cap has come down, but the government is subsiding it less than they were before. It will come down further in October. It’s a pretty transparent set equation on how to work out what the cap will be. OFGEM is not controlled by any party it’s an independent organisation like all of our regulators.

Anyway energy is more than just electricity and gas you might have noticed that diesel and petrol have gone down in price and the ONS has reported that energy is actually reducing overall inflation right now because of the falling prices.

Unpopular to say but factors include government choices like increased minimum wage and pensions, tax hike reversals (NI), tax cuts on business investment, inequality in how pandemic funds benefitted different groups leaving some with large excess savings and lower debt than would otherwise be expected.

And of course as ever the impact of Brexit on goods and workers.

It would be beneficial if the government took actual actions to help deal with inflation that went beyond things that they naturally want to do (like not negotiating with striking workers). But they are content with letting BoE use the single tool in their toolbox which will unfortunately impact some groups much harder than is actually needed to have the desired impact across the whole population as they can stand away from it and say it was BoE that did it.

You could replace the non-conservatives on the committee with the biggest Boris fans and the report would still have passed committee with a majority. What a terrible analogy for many reasons.

Not really. Energy prices are going down and are currently deflationary and supply issues are largely resolved. The UKs inflation situation is different to other countries that faced these same challenges so there is more going on that just these issues.

They are already down 13% in real terms since March 2022.

I didn’t pick this number from nowhere in this opinion piece you have a couple of expert predictions in the 20-35% range.

The inflating away of prices only works if salaries don’t inflate at the same rate, the problem with that is then still that you have a big hit on quality of life. It doesn’t really change affordability in any way. As non-housing spending will go up more out of the total salary leaving a smaller amount available for housing costs. Ultimately the only solution to the housing affordability problems is more housing in the places where more people want to live.

Inflation is helping house prices a lot at the moment. I think we will see a modest drop in prices around 10% in total but which will amount to 25-30% in real terms due to inflation. Hard to see drops much greater than that happening due to the supply constraints making rental costs also very high.

Help for mortgages would defeat a large part of the mechanism being used to deal with inflation. If the market expected there to be a realistic chance of this happening then interest rate expectations would go up even more and mortgage costs go up even more. Gove was an idiot to suggest they were looking at it. Or he didn’t particularly care beyond his own interests and popularity.