The single news item I am dealing with this
week concerns the see no evil, hear no evil manner of the Big Six
energy monkeys who appeared on our television screens last week protesting the
pain they felt when their companies raised their cost of supplying energy to
hard pressed domestic consumers at three times the level of inflation when most workers in the public sector have
had their salaries frozen for three years or more! So Sad! So very Sad! You
could feel their sorrow, share with them the pain in their faces. All their
desperate feelings of hopelessness in the face of rising wholesale energy
prices. Something that all of them could do nothing about. Yes, they cared
about old people dying of cold in the Winter. Falling downstairs because they
couldn’t afford to turn on the lights. They would do everything in their power
to help! They would make allowances and exceptions! Cross their hearts and hope
to die, their sorrows were the greatest of burdens. Yes, never a day went by
without them thinking of all those poor unfortunate pensioners… Each bearing
their burdens as though it was their own personal cross!
Alright, now let me tell you quite frankly…
If any of you out there was IN ANY WAY assured or convinced by the crap that
came out of such a performance then you deserve to have these companies shit
all over you the way that they’re been doing. I mean, did you actually believe
that these people, possibly with one exception, were sincere or telling the
truth? If you did, then I’m afraid that there’s nothing that anyone can do for
you and you’ll always go on believing that Nick Clegg is really the
Resurrection of Jesus.
That said let’s take a closer look at the
situation. Firstly the people the big six energy suppliers sent along were
little more than doughboys. No Chief Executives or Chairmen. The contempt of
these companies for both the domestic consumer and the House of Commons Select
Committee was such that they sent along underlings. British Gas for example is
owned by Centrica. Where was the CEO or Chairman of that outfit? No, they just
couldn’t be bothered to send along anyone with any real authority but then I
guess they didn’t have to. The Chairman of the Committee seemed to behave all
the way through like a rag doll who didn’t know what was what most of the time.
As for its members, only a bit of questioning from angry Laborites that was
misdirected and wide of the mark. Nothing for example about what Big Six energy
company executives had been doing over the last year working inside Ed Davey’s
Department of Energy. No questioning at all about claims by the energy monkeys
that their companies had faced endless wholesale price rises in recent years.
Why not? If the committee members had done their work they would have been able
to put such claims to forensic examination and revealed them as lies. In the
last five years wholesale prices have gone up and down. When they rose domestic
prices went up. When they fell and often fell sharply WHAT DO YOU THINK THE COMPANIES
DID? Hands up those of you who
think that they reduced customer’s bills? Oh you did? Well then go stand in the
corner with your hands on your head.
If the monkeys said they were helpless in
the face of rising costs on the wholesale energy supply markets it
went unquestioned and unchallenged by the Committee. Only in truth they
weren’t so helpless at all. They just upped their customers’ prices. Increases
that paid for fabulous salaries and bonuses given to their top executives and increased
dividends for their shareholders. Even worse, they never told their customers
when wholesale prices were going down. Why should they? The next part of the
racket is all the chatter about switching suppliers, yak, yak, yak… And the BBC parades someone on television to say
that he’s easily switched suppliers dozens of times in the last few years and
saved a fortune! They must have searched very hard to dig that one up. Then
there’s also the great and seemingly unsolvable mystery about energy tariffs
with the stupefying consensus engendered in the Committee that it was all very
complex with its members making the monkeys promise to sort it all out, and
naturally they all agreed to.
Well let’s take a colder look. Firstly as I
myself and so many others have experienced, the Big Six energy companies MAKE IT VERY HARD for their domestic
customers to switch suppliers. Hard to bordering on the impossible. As for the
seemingly intractable complexity about tariffs, well if you actually sit down
and subject all the various tariffs to a critical forensic analysis you’ll find
that most of them work out the same with little difference in savings all the
way across the various companies. It is true to say that all the company and
politician engendered chatter (mainly from the Liberal-Democrats) about the
huge savings to be made in ‘switching’ IS A PLAIN MYTH. Just something to
keep you busy and hopeful. So pathetically Liberal-Democrat. There really is no
value in switching suppliers because their prices are all much the same. They
operate as a price fixing cartel courtesy of the Department of Energy for whom
they work. No-one on the House of Commons Select Committee asked the monkeys
any serious questions about the real value of ‘switching’. They just accepted
what they were told because none of them had done any serious homework or
produced any figures. They let them get away with various claims and promises
throughout.
For anyone watching who could see what was
going on it was like taking candy from a baby. Yes, promising to do this and
promising to do that… It all revolved around trivialities. Meanwhile the
domestic prices of gas and electricity continue to rise year on year at 2 or 3
times the rate of inflation, the pay of senior company executives is on an
endless roll and the shareholders are creaming it.
But
then, exactly who are these energy companies? Well
they’re certainly not producers and they’re certainly not consumers. They
actually stand in the middle. They are suppliers. What you might call middlemen. The best description of this
Big Six Energy Cartel is that they’re actually brokers. A bit like the company
in between you and your insurance company. People in the middle who supply the
service at a nice tasty price, or profit if you will. They are, effectively,
parasites. Parading like virtuous hard done by people who are only doing their
best! Who just can’t help raising your prices!
What a delightful performance they gave on
our televisions. Nearly all of them at the mercy of wholesale price rises… in
an uncontrolled energy market let it be said. But then let it also be said that
Britain is the only country in Europe where an uncontrolled energy market operates.
Every other country somehow operates very strict controls over their energy
suppliers and markets. Britain is the exception. Perhaps that explains why
overseas energy companies like to operate in Britain and indeed control most of
the Big Six Energy suppliers here. The Germans are in big and so are the
French. Nice work if you can get it on the backs of our poor and our
pensioners, with a little bit of help from their oh so friendly Liberal
Democrats.
This brings me back to energy monkey in
chief, Lib-Dem Secretary of State for Energy, Ed Davey. In and out of the media
over the last week. Promising to rein in naughty over-charging energy
companies, and get a grip on their
wickedness. Give the public a far better deal. Make switching easier. Make tariffs
far more competitive. Introduce a Commission. Oh yes, such a very British
Solution! A real live Commission. Actually it means getting a dozen of your
mates together, all with titles, OBE’s or other such crap, pay each of them
eighty grand a year with three meals a day and as much booze as they can
guzzle, and tell them to get out some Report or other after two years when most
of them will have died in their sleep anyway and everybody’s forgot who they
are. Yes, that’s a Commission! No matter, Ed Davey’s going to set up a
Commission. He’ll open the whole market up! There’ll be stacks more competition!
Yes this suddenly energized man had heard
the cries of his people. He had climbed the mountain and spoken to God
THERE
SHALL BE NO OTHER PARTY BEFORE ME…
THOU SHALT SIMPLIFY ENERGY TARIFFS SO THEY
MAY BE BETTER UNDERSTOOD IN THE LAND OF PLENTIFUL COMPETITION THAT I HAVE
PROMISED THEE
THOU SHALL MAKE SWITCHING SIMPLE AND EASY
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOUR’S PRICES
and so on! Yes, in the last week, with energy
making the news and the topic on fire he’s suddenly climbed out of the box where
he’s been hiding and proclaimed to an incredulous public that he knows exactly
what’s been going on, that he’s now going to make it easier for everyone, that
the old, the lame and the sick won’t have to suffer anymore because he’s going
to open up the market to competition and that he, Ed Davey, Liberal-Democrat,
is going to be the Savior of the Nation this Winter… Sweet Jesus and
Hallelujah!
Worst of all however was his appearance on
the television program Watchdog being interviewed by Ann Robinson. I watched it
with a deepening sense of disgust. No serious or earnest questioning about
anything important like his Department employing energy company executives,
about the myths of wholesale prices purveyed by the companies, about where he’d
been hiding over so many months, about why the so called energy price regulator
was never anywhere to be seen let alone heard, challenging energy company price
rises, why the British energy market of all those throughout Europe was the
only one without regulation.
No, there was nothing like this at all.
Only a handful of questions tamely asked about all the usual rubbish… tariffs
and switching, competition and the lack of it. It was almost as if they’d got
together beforehand to mutually agree the agenda. You could see how easily he
dealt with the tame questioning by the grin on his face. Watchdog is supposed
to be a consumer affairs program, but when the questioning is rotten the half-
truths come only too easy and the Secretary of State was allowed to get away
with blue murder.
The Big Six energy companies currently operating
a Cartel with the consent of the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition Government are quite
frankly a gang of unashamed rascals. Either the Energy Cartel should be broken
up soon as possible or else each of these companies should be taken into public
ownership. Each nationalized without compensation so that only one gas supply
company exists along with one electricity supply company. Each with a single
Chief Executive. No more dozens of Chairmen and CEO’s each earning huge salaries
and getting dirty big bonus packages. No dozens of Call Centres and useless
Customer Service Departments with countless people in each being regularly rude
to the public and telling them lies. Just one company for each service as it
was back in the days when everything worked fine and there were very few
problems.
Be warned you energy rascals. Keep raising
your prices and the general public will seriously start talking nationalization!
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