Life in UK Has Gotten Worse

I blogged about how bad the situation is in the UK. My post “UK is Not in a Good Place Right Now” published Tuesday refers. 

Just to illustrate how the country is fast deteriorating, UK shoppers are being left speechless after seeing the price of Lurpak spreadable packs jump to almost £10! 

One picture circulating on social media shows a 1kg pack of Lurpak slightly salted butter that is being retailed at £9.35, although the supermarket it was being sold at is unknown. At Ocado, that size is on sale for £9, while their 750g packs are available for an eye-watering £7.25. Sainsbury’s are similarly selling the Lurpak butter at the same sky-high price. The same brand of butter is available at Tesco for £5.30, whilst Asda are selling it for £6.

One @NicCicutti tweeted on Tuesday that “it now takes an hour’s work on the Minimum Wage to buy a tub of Lurpak. Let that sink in…”. 

In fact, the price of Lurpak has risen so much compared to just a year earlier that one Asda shop is putting security tags around their tubs of the popular spreadable! 

That’s not all! Taking to Twitter this week, one user, @Celeste_Tam42 revealed images of protected cheese in Aldi and packaged lamb chops in Co-Op. And at Tesco, it is understood staff were forced to secure baby milk products after a spate of thefts.

These tags operate via a transmitter that sounds out an alert when it is removed from a shop. They are usually removed by staff when customers pay at the till. 

For sure, life in UK has gotten worse! 

Fresh data reveals that Brits are teetering on the edge of a debt crisis with one in five admitting that they will need to borrow money or use credit to help cover the cost of essentials. 

A shocking 42 percent of UK adults expect they will struggle to pay a regular bill such as their gas, electricity or council tax in 2022 with the figure rising to almost 50 percent amongst 25-49-year-olds, a YouGov survey showed. The data comes as the country braces for fresh energy price hikes, with bills expected to rise by £1,300 per year by October – a move which could plunge an estimated 10 million Brits into perceived poverty. 

“These figures make for grim reading and emphasise just how dire the coming months will be for financially vulnerable people”, commented Phil Andrew, Chief Executive of StepChange, a debt advice charity which commissioned the YouGov survey. 

With inflation running at 5.5 percent, financial insecurity is already on the rise with debt services reporting a surge in demand. Citizens Advice confirm they have supported more than 20,000 people with debts to their energy company, a 29 percent increase compared to last year. In the same period, they’ve also supported more than 55,000 people with referrals to food banks and charitable grants, an increase of more than one third. Ophelos, a debt resolution company which work with energy, financial services and buy now pay later firms, claim they have seen demand for their services increase by 40-50 percent since the start of 2022. 

And if that is not alarming enough, Brits are falling victim to predatory local lenders because they are unable to cover their living expenses. The Centre for Social Justice estimate that as many as 1.08 million Brits are indebted to a loan shark, 700,000 more people than the last official study identified. Almost two thirds of victims, some 62 percent in 2021, had an income of below £20,000 a year with 45 percent of victims saying they borrowed the money to cover everyday costs, including council tax, gas and electricity bills as well as essentials such as school uniforms and push chairs. 

UK is really in deep shit!