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| Another day closer to poverty |
Pinch on your ever decreasing household budget as new higher energy prices kick in from today and a punch in the eye from your energy supplier because they don’t have to put up prices unless wholesale costs rise but they all chose to do so because they’ve been given carte blanche by Ofgem.
My purse is so bare that even the moths have left as there’s nothing left to munch on!
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| This restaurant's closed |
The energy price cap is supposed to be the maximum suppliers can charge if the cost of underlying gas or energy prices increase as a whole. It’s not supposed to be a mechanism for them to automatically put up prices if the underlying prices haven’t increased but I guess they do. Why wouldn’t you? This explains why collectively they’ve rinsed us all, making billions of pounds in profits in the process. Bet collective supplier profit figures are never published by Ofgem are they?
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| Collective energy supplier profits |
Today an articled headed ‘Energy Bills rise by £149 for a Typical Household’ appeared on the Beeb web site. This article stated that in specific terms the latest price cap change meant the following:
Gas prices are capped at 6.24p per kilowatt hour (kWh) – (OVO are charging me 6.33 p per unit)
Electricity at 24.5p per kWh – (OVO are charging me 24.67p per unit)
Standing charges - have gone up to 61p a day for electricity – (OVO are charging me 67.53p) and 32p a day for gas – (OVO charging me 34.57p)
What this means for punters like me is that whilst the unit cost has increased only fractionally, standing charges levied by OVO have gone up by around £33.48p per annum.
And what are these increased standing charges really paying for? Paying to re-hash the National Grid? Paying for the closure of cheap coal fired power stations? Paying for the broken electricity pricing market? Paying for all that free wind/solar power that isn’t connected up to the Grid? Paying to keep supplier companies afloat that shouldn’t have been allowed by the Regulator to enter the industry in the first place? Paying for failed Government policy ie privatising energy when it should have remained in control of the State? Paying for all those people who’d rather buy the latest smart phone than pay their energy bills?
Is it fairer to pay for Government net zero policies from energy bills or from general taxation? A question I often ask myself but never receive a sensible answer to.
Most people would have thought that general taxation should have included an element ringfenced to pay for the nation’s transition to net zero but think about it. Everyone needs somewhere to live (owned or rented) and that somewhere uses energy so a large majority will end up paying an energy standing charge at some point regardless of age or circumstances.
Not everyone pays income tax. In fact, without access to any statistical data, I’d hazard a guess that collectively there are far more energy consumers than there are income tax payers. ONS – do you have any figures? It makes sense for the Government to allow policy charges to be recouped from energy bills because it’s likely to generate far more revenue than increasing general taxation which no-one wants.
People moan like banshees when energy prices are increased but after a few days adjust to the inevitable and just get on with it. Typical human behavioural response when confronted with any change to the norm - most adapt and survive, there’s only a few that go under.
In a few days’ time when all this media ‘furore’ has blown over there’ll be another scandal for the population at large to feel outraged about. Wonder what it’ll be this time? Free KFC given to vegetarian migrants? Keir Starmer’s pants donated by Brillopad? Smart phones that spy on your toilet habits? My boss just called me a lazy good-for-nothing tea-swilling smelly old minger so I’m taking them to tribunal? Whoops, that slip’s going to prejudice my case ….
