Wages keep falling while prices continue to rise

UPC introduces wide-ranging price increases.

The column below appears in this week's INM's Irish regional newspapers.

By Michael Commane
On May 1 the price of briquettes went up by 26 cent a bale. Coal also went up.

The increase in fuel costs is due to a carbon tax increase. It’s hard for people to see the long term environmental issue when they are struggling to pay bills but climate change is a huge issue, and the people most affected are the poorest people in the world.

The following day it was announced that health insurance was to increase, yet again, by a substantial amount.

It seems everything is going up in price while at the same time we have all seen cuts in our wages or salaries.

But the increase that has really drawn my attention in the last few weeks is the one announced by UPC, the television, telephone and broadband provider. They don’t call it a price increase, instead a ‘price adjustment’.

In mid April I received a letter from UPC informing me that there will be a ‘price adjustment’ of €5.51 to my monthly UPC television bill. That works out as an annual increase of €66.12. Just imagine if the Government agreed to a similar television licence increase, the country would be up in arms and every opposition politician would be screaming and roaring. There has not been a whimper from any quarters in reaction to the latest UPC increase.

On a separate page and in smaller print UPC inform their telephone customers that the call set up fee, where applicable, is to increase on June 1 to 9.5 cent. In August of last year they increased the call set up fee to seven cent. The new charge means an increase of 35.7 per cent. This ‘call set up charge’ that they refer to is what UPC charge you just to make the connection to the number you are calling.

Have you noticed how all the facility providers are constantly asking their customers to go electronic and so receive their bills over the internet? It sounds great and environmentally friendly but I wonder do people, who receive electronic bills, analyse them in the same detail as they do the printed or posted version. I often find myself looking over my printed bill at breakfast.

These are the incidental items that have been increased. Then there is the new property tax and the upcoming charges on domestic water. Personally, I believe it makes sense to pay a property tax but I will be greatly annoyed if the Government introduces a blanket domestic water charge before they have installed water meters. That would be sloppy administration and certainly most unfair. Why should a person, who is careful with their water usage, subsidise someone who is profligate?

Just last week while sheltering from the rain in the foyer of a pub I spotted the stairway festooned with pictures of a former taoiseach who is now being paid a pension in excess of €2,200 a week from the coffers of the public purse.

You might well be inclined to say is this a question of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. There might be something in that. But it’s easy to be ‘gracious’ and ‘polite’, yes ‘sophisticated’ and ‘learned’ too about ‘issues’ when you have no worries or concerns about what it means to be worried about how you will pay your next electricity bill.

In recent days I watched a website about something in religion/theology. It was dealing with the words in the Creed. I was struck with how far away it was from anything to do with living in Ireland today. I wondered what Jesus would have thought about this sort of thing. It really was similar to discussing the number of angels on the top of a pin.

The Jesus of the Gospels spent his time comforting the poorest of the poor in their daily struggles, always critical of the status quo.