00:00Are we being ripped off? It's the sort of question we ask ourselves every time the bill
00:07comes in. We sort of fixed incomes, our wages may be up by a couple of percent when we're
00:13getting five, ten, fifty and sometimes twenty percent for utilities. That's a big, big chunk
00:20of wages. People who provide these services and goods, their costs are going up and they
00:26say if they don't put their costs up then they go out of business. We see this on the
00:32high streets, walk down and you see the shop units which are vacant. Now there's a very
00:36good reason for that, quite clear that their costs have gone up far more than they can
00:40actually cope with and that we're willing to pay. We do live in a very competitive environment
00:46and we're always looking for the bargain and when it comes to retailing, people increase
00:52their buy online as opposed to going to their local stores. It's a small number of monopolistic
00:57players who control everything and of course once that happens then competition does tend
01:02to take a bit of a hit. Well indeed, when we enter a recessionary period it's due to
01:08the fact that we're not spending. Remember GDP, gross domestic product, we hear a lot
01:13about growth in the economy. It's measured by spending, it's the collective actions of
01:20everyone that's in the economy, spending money on wages and all the things that we have done.
01:24And of course if people start to cut back for whatever reason, and of course it's mainly
01:28because their wages are not keeping up with the price increases, then quite clearly there
01:34is an overall hit to the economy because of course even gas, electricity and telephones
01:39and most of the other utilities, we can find some sort of choice which may be cheaper although
01:45not necessarily when it comes to water. Of course there is no choice of most people that
01:49they feel that the fat cats as they see them, they've done well out of the system and the
01:55poor consumers, maybe they are feeling they're getting ripped off.
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