Energy bills set to rise another 40% as economy is in the Brown stuff

Insiders in the energy business report that they expect to see 40% price rises before the winter.

That is going to hurt.

Meanwhile the economic outlook is very bad. Inflation is apparently 3.1%! That's a laugh. RPI is well over 4% and has been for ages. Peoples disposable income has been either static or going down for the past two years.

Its grim.

Quite a lot of this is not of the governments making, however the charge that they should have fixed the roof whilst the sun shone stands. The government built a healthy surplus in the years that it followed Conservative spending plans so that when the dot com bubble burst followed by September the 11th they had the cash to prevent a problem.

The problems were two fold. Firstly they over spent to prevent that crash, secondly they continued to spend to the point where they now have no room for maneuver at all.

It is too early to say how bad things will get, but it is clear that this government has squandered an opportunity to build in stability.

The BBC has this and the Telegraph has this.