A recent editorial in The Times urged the government to essentially not do anything to cushion the effect of the recent rise in the cost of electricity, which has translated into our new and massive electricity bills.

The reason given is that it costs that much to produce and people have to learn the real cost of things, and to pay for them. There was further argument about this being a somewhat spoilt nation that has to learn to earn what it wants to spend, and can no longer depend on government to live beyond its means.

Well, there is a valid point to that line of reasoning, but if we followed it to the full, fewer would opt for life saving heart surgery or any of the incredibly expensive medical interventions and treatments now available, even fewer would opt for a University education, and you could forget about public transport too (although most already have).

The reality is that the electricity bills are as likely to be an electoral issue in 2008 as they were in 1998. A full 10 years after Dom Mintoff’s intransigence brought down a Labour government, could the same thing happen to the Nationalist Party, unless measures are actually brought in to mitigate the effect of these bills?

The cost of electricity has long been a strain on household budgets. But normally you’d wait for the next pay day, settle your bill, moan a bit and get on with worrying about the rest of a long line of expenses that hit the family like an assault course every month.

But electricity bills are now so high, and becoming such a significant proportion of take home pay, that many are using reserves to pay, as well as trying to cut down as much as they can by the time of the next bill, because reserves have a limited life, don’t they?

The recent news that oil prices are rising again, partly because the world is consuming as much as it is producing and worries about Iran et al, mean that we could even be in for an even rougher ride with our bills than we have been to date. The prospects are of even more increases, which really makes more and more of us doubt as to whether not having had some long-term plan (via hedging or whatever) to allow us to afford the oil we have to import was wise at all.

Then there is this feeling among many that we are being squeezed dry by tax bills, electricity bills, unreasonable warden fines and more.

Life is of course much, much rosier (although they complain too,) or is just bearable for the army of people who do not remotely declare their full earnings.

But life on a fixed salary, going up only with the government increases every year, as well as those with fixed incomes of say Lm10,000 or thereabouts, (which means a take home pay after deductions of only around Lm6,500, can government strategists please note!) often from one working full time and the other part-time is becoming beyond a joke.

These include the people who save government a fortune by not sending their kids to state schools, by using private healthcare and are generally far less of a strain on public services but are now starting to feel the pinch too.

Of course now even many of the self-employed who underdeclare are suffering too. Once there is less money to spend, even from the majority of us who are salaried and are on some sort of fixed income, people are just going out less, buying less clothes, doing up their homes less, so even the underdeclaring self-employed person is feeling the pinch now too.

Electricity bills are unsustainable as they are because salaries, or pension cheques simply have not risen in line with them. If we face a scenario of more oil price increases, any government worth its salt is going to have to consider how it can mitigate the effect of these costs on your Mr, Mrs or Ms average who are crying out for a little relief and who are not apparently being heard, at least not yet…