THE huge price increases for gas and electricity announced by Npower, which will be mimicked or even exceeded by the rest of the energy privateers, are a further argument for taking these utilities back into public ownership.
The government response abdicates all responsibility for the rises and could have been issued by a speak-your-weight machine.
It could be summed up as “not me, guv. It’s their decision. Privatisation works and we’ve got a safety net for those it fails.”
On every count, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform spokeswoman, who has the dirty job of explaining the government line, is wrong.
“Price changes are commercial decisions for the companies involved. There is a competitive market in the UK monitored by an independent regulator, Ofgem.”
There is no competitive market. It is an oligopoly for which Ofgem operates as a fig leaf, as with all the so-called independent regulators of privatised natural monopolies.
The “price changes” – why not shame the devil and call them price rises? – are simply a means of maintaining an unjustifiable level of shareholder dividends.
“The competitive market has delivered significant savings for UK consumers.”
Has it really? If so, why have prices zoomed by two-thirds over the past four years?
For a country that had huge oil and gas resources in the North Sea, which have been frittered away since they were handed over to transnational energy corporations, and hundreds of years of coal reserves, who should answer for the widespread fuel poverty here?
Who should explain why the transnationals are able to sell gas cheaply to the energy companies which then raise already inflated prices to consumers in Britain?
All of these natural riches, which could and should have been used to reindustrialise Britain, were handed over to the private sector to be squeezed dry in the service of private profit.
The idea that the rigours of “competition” and “private-sector management skills” will offer a more efficient, cheaper and better service to consumers has been debunked by the history of privatisation over the past quarter-century.
On the one hand, it has made an extremely small proportion of society very rich.
On the other, the vast majority of the population, who used to be collective owners of these industries, are now held to ransom by these licensed bandits, constrained only by a supposed “regulator,” who is as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Gordon Brown and his ministers cannot get away with a defence of “What can we do? We’re only the government.”
They could, as a first step to returning the energy sector to public ownership, impose price controls on gas and electricity prices.
Why not? They have had no difficulty in imposing below-inflation rises on teachers, nurses, police officers and other public-service workers.
Why should private shareholders be less affected by government measures to hold down inflationary pressures? Rocketing fuel prices are a much bigger spur to inflation than a 2.5 per cent rise for essential workers.
The great fuel robbery is just a microcosm of the overall new Labour strategy of allowing big business to gorge itself on higher profits while working people are penalised and abused.
THE huge price increases for gas and electricity announced by Npower, which will be mimicked or even exceeded by the rest of the energy privateers, are a further argument for taking these utilities back into public ownership.
The government response abdicates all responsibility for the rises and could have been issued by a speak-your-weight machine.
It could be summed up as “not me, guv. It’s their decision. Privatisation works and we’ve got a safety net for those it fails.”
On every count, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform spokeswoman, who has the dirty job of explaining the government line, is wrong.
“Price changes are commercial decisions for the companies involved. There is a competitive market in the UK monitored by an independent regulator, Ofgem.”
There is no competitive market. It is an oligopoly for which Ofgem operates as a fig leaf, as with all the so-called independent regulators of privatised natural monopolies.
The “price changes” – why not shame the devil and call them price rises? – are simply a means of maintaining an unjustifiable level of shareholder dividends.
“The competitive market has delivered significant savings for UK consumers.”
Has it really? If so, why have prices zoomed by two-thirds over the past four years?
For a country that had huge oil and gas resources in the North Sea, which have been frittered away since they were handed over to transnational energy corporations, and hundreds of years of coal reserves, who should answer for the widespread fuel poverty here?
Who should explain why the transnationals are able to sell gas cheaply to the energy companies which then raise already inflated prices to consumers in Britain?
All of these natural riches, which could and should have been used to reindustrialise Britain, were handed over to the private sector to be squeezed dry in the service of private profit.
The idea that the rigours of “competition” and “private-sector management skills” will offer a more efficient, cheaper and better service to consumers has been debunked by the history of privatisation over the past quarter-century.
On the one hand, it has made an extremely small proportion of society very rich.
On the other, the vast majority of the population, who used to be collective owners of these industries, are now held to ransom by these licensed bandits, constrained only by a supposed “regulator,” who is as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Gordon Brown and his ministers cannot get away with a defence of “What can we do? We’re only the government.”
They could, as a first step to returning the energy sector to public ownership, impose price controls on gas and electricity prices.
Why not? They have had no difficulty in imposing below-inflation rises on teachers, nurses, police officers and other public-service workers.
Why should private shareholders be less affected by government measures to hold down inflationary pressures? Rocketing fuel prices are a much bigger spur to inflation than a 2.5 per cent rise for essential workers.
The great fuel robbery is just a microcosm of the overall new Labour strategy of allowing big business to gorge itself on higher profits while working people are penalised and abused.