RISHI Sunak rides to the rescue yet again.
The furlough kid swaggered into the House of Commons with a fistful of measures which he threw around to the cheers of his party colleagues.
The Milkybars are on Rishi, or so we are led to believe.
READ MORE: What is in Chancellor Rishi Sunak's new £15bn cost of living package?
While a billionaire chancellor, backed by his braying millionaire cabinet colleagues and backbenchers, smugly announced a few hundred pounds here and there for people going through the toughest financial period many can remember, people are still left wondering how they will get through the month never mind the year.
The average energy bill has gone up by more than 50% from last month to £1971 a year.
That ‘average’ masks the reality for many people, as there are countless households now paying well above that since the cap was increased.
That is just the start of the problem because Jonathan Brearley, boss of Ofgem, said to expect the cap to go even higher in the autumn, to £2800.
That means average bills to heat and light homes will have more than doubled in the space of a year come the start of next winter.
On average, bills will go from £1300 to £2800.
READ MORE: 'Desperately short of what is needed': Reaction to Rishi Sunak's £15bn help package
Sunak said he is doubling the £200 payment he is giving to every household for bills in October.
The £200, that no-one has seen yet, wasn’t enough in the face of the whopping increases people are facing an average of £700.
The £400 won’t be anywhere near enough as the gas and electric increase in October is about to put another £800 a year on top of that.
The Chancellor’s £400 will reduce the amount people have to pay, which for some will be enough, but for many all it will do is lower the amount there are in debt by, come October.
The winter will be bleaker than before.
The only good thing that can be said is that it now doesn’t have to be paid back.
READ MORE:Energy price rises around Europe and what governments are doing about it
Most people in the country do not have the resources to cope with these increases, as well as the increased cost of petrol, for those who can afford to run a car, the rocketing cost of food in supermarkets and the cost of public transport.
They simply don’t have the money.
The chancellor, however, does have the money.
In the last year, the amount of money coming into the treasury has increased in the last year giving him an estimated £30bn extra at his disposal.
What is he waiting for?
Who else has the money?
The companies who are selling the gas and the petrol to those who then sell it on to us, they have the money.
Shell and BP, two of the biggest and most well-known oil and gas firms, have recorded record profits over the most recent periods.
BP, between January and March posted profits of £5bn, double what is made for the same period the year before.
Shell also had a record for the same three months rippling its profits to £7.2bn.
Between them they have racked up more than £12bn profit in three months.
That is where our cash is going.
When people can’t afford to turn on the heating or buy enough food these firms have money to burn.
Sunak said "we are on the side of hard-working families” and that the Government would not stand by while people were struggling.
But the truth is for years the Government has stood by, more than that, it has actively pursued policies that have kept people poor and made poor people poorer.
It has allowed, actively encouraged, an economy where people are working for poverty wages and created a benefit system that punishes people while it claims to incentivise work.
Now we are expected to believe the Government is “throwing it’s arms around” the most vulnerable in a time of need as Boris Johnson claimed.
What Sunak has done is akin to throwing a half-inflated lifebelt to someone who is drowning, when he has a stack of fully inflated ones on the quayside.
The chancellor and Prime Minister are only forced to act when millions more people are facing a crisis.
Millions have been in crisis for decades.
The problem is that we have an economy where the richest are rewarded with yet more riches and are able to make even more money they don’t need on the back of hard-working people.
Instead of being in a position to throw out a few hundred pounds to people and claim to be fixing a problem, the chancellor and Prime Minister should be creating an economy and a society where people are not in the level of need in the first place.
Rather than be eradicated, poverty in the UK and in Scotland this century has been allowed to grow to levels that are a national disgrace while the gap between rich and poor is now a canyon.
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