Tories are trying to face both ways on pricing
Evil… or perhaps he’s just confused. George Osborne doesn’t seem to know that his government doesn’t try to influence the way private companies set their prices. (But then, he doesn’t seem to know that his own name is really Gideon.)
Michael Meacher’s latest blog article is really amusing if you think about it in relation to the recent Commons vote on energy prices. He writes:
“It’s really rich that Osborne has tweeted: ‘Vital this (drop in the oil price) is passed on to families at petrol pumps, through utility bills and air fares’.
“He’s spent the last 5 years lambasting Labour in support of the Tory free market mantra that the State should get out of the way and leave it all to the markets.
“Now rather pathetically he’s pleading with market operators to show a dose of fair play rather than exploit a windfall for their own interests which is the natural instinct of capitalism.”
It’s doubly rich when you know that almost his entire Parliamentary Party (Osborne himself wasn’t there, for example) voted against a measure that would force private energy companies to pass the benefits of supplier price drops on to customers by cutting prices.
What is Conservative policy on this, exactly?
Note: Mr Meacher also suggests a future Labour government may take at least one of the Big Six energy companies into public ownership. Naysayers may start queuing up now to get their derisory comments published.
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We may be benefitng from the colossal drop in oil prices at the petrol pumps but it’s having a huge destabilising effect on many fragile economy’s around the world, who rely on oil revenues. OPEC (Saudi Arabia) are undercutting every other oil producer in order to try and maintain their market share. This is already leading to reduced investment and redundances in the oil industry. What we need is stable energy pricing with Ofgen doing their job making sure that profits are passed back to the consumer. The oil price is something that Mr Osborne has no control over but he’ll still take the credit for it.
They are trying to put the blame on the companies and say it’s not their fault whilst not doing anything about it on purpose. They know the companies won’t be bothered by public annoyance since they have a monopoly and anyone with a car has to use them.
Russia has angered the yanks that brought this about
but dont forget those inn power dont pay nowt has they
have the tax payers to pay for theirs ouch