đ©đȘVoice #12: German Bakeryâs Gas Bill Has Jumped from âŹ5,856 to âŹ75,000 a Month
đ©đȘVoice #12: German Bakeryâs Gas Bill Has Jumped from âŹ5,856 to âŹ75,000 a Month
This is only the beginning of Europeâs dystopian trajectory
Todayâs post is from JM Riordan, with over 2.5k followers on Medium. JMR traded plane-hopping for life in the countryside. She writes about alternative ways of living, current events, travel, and more.
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While the image above was taken in a Greek bakery, not a German one, please note the affordable prices. Low prices for fresh bread, if not a just a tad higher, have been common all around Europe for as long as I, or anyone in my family, can remember.
In the US, the equivalent of âŹ1ââŹ2 canât even buy you a crappy industrial made loaf that is pre-sliced and loaded with additives. (Not sure one could even call it bread.) Artisan loaves, as shown above, can easily cost $8â12 stateside. ($1=âŹ1 as of this writing.)
Unlike the US, Europe has always treated artisan bread as an essential. A human right, if you will.
This is no longer the case.
Germany
Eckehard Vatter, of the Vatter Bakery chain founded in 1955, said that his business of 35 bakeries had a fixed-price contract for gas through 31 December 2023 for âŹ5,856/month, but it was cancelled without notice. The gas supplier now demands âŹ75,000/month, leaving Vatter with mortgage-sized gas bill of âŹ330,000 for 4.5 months. A bill they demand payment for before the end of this month. (Source)
Without gas, Vatter canât run the ovens or heat his bakeries.
On 8 September, more than 800 bakeries across Germany turned off their lights and sold bread in the dark to call attention the energy crisis. Patrons who chose to eat their pastries and sandwiches in the bakery sat in the dark.
In the true ass-backwards nature politics and policy, bakeries are not eligible for energy subsidies from the EnergieKostenDĂ€mpfungsProgramm (EKDP), but companies producing trivial things such as wallpaper and vermouth qualify. (Source)
Ireland
Geraldine Dolan, the proprietor of The Poppy Fields CafĂ©, a small coffeeshop in Athlone, received a bi-monthly electric bill for âŹ9,836.92, including âŹ812.22 VAT (value-added tax).
Energy costs are skyrocketing, but her patronsâ salaries are not. Therefore, Ms. Dolan can only pass on a small portion of her increased operating costs to her customers. Ultimately, closing the doors of the business she started 16 years ago, may soon be her only option. (Source)
Britain
Earlier this month in the UK, popular television show This Morning added âEnergy Billsâ to their Spin-to-Win game. The wheel being dotted with options to win either ÂŁ1,000 or have your energy bills paid by ITV, the channel whose show it is, for 4 months!
Energy bills are so high in Britain that callers were hoping to land on the âEnergy Billsâ tabs instead of the cash prizes because it would save them so much more money. Then, This Morning went on to change it to âAll Household Billsâ the next day.
However, the privileged âblue checkmarks,â who probably arenât yet feeling the pressure of the exorbitant energy costs started bashing ITV and whinging about how dystopian This Morning had become, so âEnergy Billsâ and âAll Household Billsâ were removed from the wheel. (Source)
So, now everyday, hardworking people who are struggling to get by miss out on this opportunity to snag a bit of reprieve because some privileged shitheads couldnât keep their virtual traps shut.
What these âblue checkmarksâ fail to grasp is that the show itself is not dystopian. Whatâs dystopian is that energy bills are now consuming 50% or more peopleâs monthly take-home pay. That people are being forced to choose between heat and food, and itâs only getting worse.
Itâs Time to Fire the Politicians
Whatâs amusing is how often I hear EU and British politicians blame Russia for the energy crisis, and then listen to their âsubjectsâ âyes, we allow them to treat us as such âmindlessly parrot the same BS, like programmed robots.
Sure, Russia cut off/reduced gas supply to the EU as a response to the sanctions imposed on them by the EU, US, and UK and for SWIFT all but booting Russia out of the international banking system except for âessentialâ trade.
Unfortunately for all of us obedient in the West, sanctions did diddly-squat to the Kremlin and have been hurting us ever since.
The ruble tanked for all of 2 weeks, and then soared to rates higher than before the sanctions (click on Graph and then 1 Year), becoming the best-performing currency in the world in 2022.
We can thank your politicians for that. Sanctions backfired, and now weâre suffering. (Source)
But our stubborn politicians either donât want to admit they were wrong or are, for some psychopathic reason, dead-set on reducing the West to third or fourth world status.
Because at this rate, economic activity in Europe will go to zero this winter.
This is just based on the rising energy costs alone. It doesnât even include the costs of labor and other essentials businesses require to operate. It also doesnât factor in that most people wonât be able to afford much beyond food. Or that governments keep printing money, which has only ever exacerbated inflation, historically-speaking.
But even if the West lifted its sanctions on Russia now, who is to say Russia would start selling natural gas and oil to us again? After all, we are running a proxy war with them by arming and funding the Ukrainian government.
And if Europe goes down, so does the rest of the world. After all, the EU is the largest trading bloc in the world and the lead trading partner for 80 countries. (Source/Source 2)
In reality, our âleadersâ keep making Russia the scapegoat for this manufactured crisis, so we donât come after them instead.
It was their short-sightedness that got us into this position in the first place.
Itâs time we all give our politicians a swift kick in the ass out the door before we are either frozen or starved out of existence â or at least into total submission so that we accept The Powers That Shouldnât Beâs goal for total control via digital IDs, CBDCs, UBI, socialism, total censorship, and an even more heavily surveilled world (including snitching on one another â Ă la the GDR, aka East Germany before the Wall came down).
Dystopia is here, and George Orwellâs turning in his grave.
Wake up.
A Note on Socialism: Before you shout in favor of it, chances are you donât really know what it is (especially if youâre from the US). France and the Nordic countries, for example, are capitalist/market-based countries with large social safety nets and benefits; they are not socialist. In her book The Nordic Theory of Everything, journalist Anu Partanen describes her home country Finland as a âcapitalistâs dream.â
Socialism is not all rosy and cooperative as the TPTB in the West like to make it seem, and neither is communism.
Resources: I encourage you to read about life in the GDR before the Berlin Wall came down. Or learn about life in Cuba (a 23-min edifying video) or Venezuela, once the worldâs 4th wealthiest country, and now one of the poorest (a fascinating 26-min video).
For those wanting insights from someone who as lived through economic collapse and hyperinflation, check out Arpad at Star Path Academy. He created a special series on Venezuela with the help of a Venezuelan woman, which you can see/listen to here.
If you found this article informative, check out these other pieces:
Are We Going to Talk About Lebanon?
The Government to Start Spying on Drivers (It just started in July 2022)