How are you coping? Cost of Living Spike Hits the Delphius Household Hard.

 Well, I had to have the chat with the boss today. "Sorry Guv, but I can't afford to keep coming into work. I'm going to have to find work closer to home".

Now my fuel bill is running at £100 a week and energy prices are on the up, that means I'll be paying close to 50% of my wages just on getting to work and energy.

As it is, a third of my monthly wage will be going on petrol alone.

It's unsustainable unfortunately. Like a lot of other poorer people, I'm having to asses my options. Do i go for a similarly-paid job closer to home? Do I really jack in a job that I enjoy doing and go shelf stacking instead?

This is the dilemma that most people on or close to minimum wage face. As of the 1st of April, my hourly rate is 10p and hour higher than minimum wage. The problem employers have, if all the jobs pay the same wage, then jobs become interchangeable and the deciding factors are the cost of transport to the job and the quality of the workplace.

Unfortunately employers don't pay any attention to quality of the workplace, so it boils down to transport costs. The closest job wins out.

Sadly this is then a factor affecting social mobility. Without the ability to move freely about the country or a job that pays a wage that allows you to move freely, your physical mobility is curtailed. That then impacts social mobility, because the jobs that may have provided a leg-up, with opportunities to move up the ladder are removed because the cost to the person to get to that job, to do that particular job and access those benefits is higher.

This is where the minimum wage kills social mobility. 

It's also an indication of capitalism gone wrong. Instead of investing in staff and increasing productivity through training and benefits, employers are all diving to the bottom and instead paying the lowest wage, curtailing training and instead handing profits to shareholders and owners. It's not far short of exploitation of the poor. Maybe we haven't got to the slums of Salford that prompted Marx and Engels to write their various essays, but it's effectively the modern equivalent if you go on any council estate.

Capitalism is supposed to benefit all of those in society. Not just the rich and the middle class. The poor too should also get a slice of the profits. Otherwise you disenfranchise them. Remove their ability to function in society and bad things happen. The gangs of London, the stabbings and the drug abuse across the country are all symptoms of selfish capitalism.

Politically, extremist parties arise. 

Frankly, I don't think Communism or far-left Socialism isn't the response to unfettered Capitalism. Marx thought so, but Communism is just as bad for the poor as Capitalism.

There needs to be a more balanced version of capitalism that provides for all. Entrepreneurs need to have the freedom to innovate, they need to be rewarded for generating jobs. But the corporations that are established and insist on worker exploitation and tax avoidance need to be reined in.

The rich need to pay more to help the poor, we need to stop giving benefits to the middle classes who quite clearly don't need them and we need to get the rampant money devouring beast that is the NHS under control.

I've said it until I'm blue in the face that the big tech corporations need to start paying back into the system the money they take. If needs be offshoring of corporation tax liabilities needs to be made illegal. You do business in the UK, what you do stays in the UK and benefits the UK. You don't asset strip the UK by paying tax in another country. 

That would be a start. No need for 90% tax rates for the rich, but I'd put them on warning that if tax avoidance becomes the norm then they will be the next target.

Low Paid Voters: Is it Time to Send a Message and Vote for Extremists?

 Okay, it's pretty clear now that the government don't have the interests of the poor at heart. There was absolutely nothing in the spring statement that would alleviate the energy crisis. 

There was no plan to give help in the short term and there was no deviation from the net-zero ideology. 

Great news for the middle class, abysmal news for the poorest in society who are facing the dilemma of "heat or eat", facing lower mobility, and generally a struggle to cope amid a rapidly reducing standard of living.

So, given that both the Tories and Labour want to crucify the poor on their pious plans to save the planet, what are the poor working class to do?

Do we all give a protest vote to an outlandish party? Do we vote for Communists or Nazis? Do we vote for the raving loony party? How are we to make our displeasure public? We can't refuse to vote, because that is counter productive. We need to vote in order to push the agenda our way. 

Well, it's about time the poor organised. Many special interest groups like the greens, the Muslims, the LGBTQ+, all have become politically active and vote as a block in order to sway election outcomes. Back in history, the Trades Unions would be the ones to organise the working class/poor vote. But now they are in bed with the elites that don't care about the poor working classes. 

Without the commitment and the will to vote in numbers for a specific party, none of the parties will take the poor working class agenda seriously. Why would they when they can ignore them and not suffer any consequences? If the poor had a block vote and representation as to what their demands are, then they would be better represented in Parliament. 

Until then, we're fucked.

Budget Response: The Poor Are Fucked.

 So, lets see how Rishi Sunak "helped" the less well off in the spring statement.

By costing them more money. In my book that ain't helping.

So we'll be paying more in National Insurance for a Health service that has got dramatically poorer in the past few years. Now that most GP services are privatised, the service has gone down the pan. It's almost like they don't want to see you any more. Rishi says that raising the threshold before paying N.I. and Income Tax is actually a tax cut. Actually it isn't. At best it's neutral, at worst it's a tax hike for those on low incomes.

More N.I. to pay for a failing health service I've just had my first call in for my "annual" blood test for three years. Fuck my health then, I'll just put up with any health issues caused by the cocktail of drugs I'm taking while my GP gets paid to pretend to be a doctor. I guess I should be lucky that I'm around to have blood to test, given that certain people were given DNR notices without their consent during the pandemic.

Ah, you say, but maybe Rishi will save us the cost of fuel and energy. Maybe he will drastically reduce fuel duty and remove VAT from energy?

Er, no.

5p off fuel duty. When the price of fuel is going up by more than that a week. So basically Rishi has taken the cost of fuel back to last Friday. Or to put it another way, his tax cut will be wiped out by Monday. The past two weeks it has gone up 8p a litre each week. To me, that cut in fuel duty grants me a saving of £3 a week. when my fuel bill has gone up by over £20 per week. 

I'm now looking to downsize my car. Or I would if the small car market hadn't exploded in the past month as everyone else tries to sip petrol or get a ULEZ-compliant car. No electric car for me, I don't have a drive to charge it on, I don't even park the car outside the house, it's parked across the road. So I can't avail myself of the benefits that having an electric car would grant me. Even If I had all of the above, I rent my house so would need permission from the landlord to fit a charging point, which entails gutting most of the house running high current cables from the fuse box to the front of the house.

A lot has been said of those on fixed incomes: the people that get benefits, or pensioners. But in reality most low-paid workers are on fixed incomes. Wages rise at most by 3% a year. My last pay rise was 1%. Not even close to the current rate of inflation. But this is the norm now. Wages rise by fuck all, until employers hit the limit of minimum wage where they are forced by law to increase the wages year on year. 

This is where a truly progressive government could transform the fortunes of the poor: take those on minimum wage out of tax and National Insurance contributions. The minimum wage from 1st of April this year equates to an annual salary of nearly £20,000 before tax. It'll be interesting to check my P60 this year, because I'm not far off that figure. 

I shall be watching this year's budget with interest if I don't get an above average pay rise this year.