According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), last month saw a huge increase in the number of energy consumers’ Direct Debit (DD) failures. Whereas in April last year, 2.13% of DD payments bounced, this year 2.71% of demands were sent to empty bank accounts. This news follows Energy Price Cap hikes in 2024 Q4, and 2025 Q1, despite the Government’s “lower bills” promises. It is no surprise that higher costs lead to greater hardship and payment defaults. But what is still surprising is the Green Blob’s capacity to continue gaslighting the public in the face of devastating arithmetic.
Unfortunately, ONS data on the failure of DD payments only begin in 2019. So it is difficult to form a picture (or a chart) of how domestic finances are being hit by climate and energy policy alone. This era encompasses the madness of lockdown, during which the combined effects of green financial policies, economic suppression, money-printing and then recovery shocked the energy market. That chaos of price spikes, inflation and high interest rates have since been blamed on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the major belligerent’s alleged ‘weaponisation of energy’, rather than on Covid-era policy and sanctions. Nonetheless, those factors are in fact harder to spot as features on a steady upward trend, which clearly depicts increased hardship.
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