Category Archives: Energy

Rishi Sunak is out of his depth with his latest controversy [TWEETS]

Reality check (something for the weekend)

The image says it all.

While the people of the UK point out that raw sewage is being pumped into our waterways, the UK has the poorest economy of all G7 countries, Brexit is a disaster, supermarket shelves are empty, people can’t pay their energy bills, the NHS is in crisis and everyone is on strike…

… all Rishi Sunak and his gang can say is, “Stop the boats.”

Pathetic. Miserable. Unacceptable.

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Does think tank’s finding support Labour’s case for a national energy firm?

This speaks for itself:

A publicly owned electricity generation firm could save Britons nearly £21bn a year, according to new analysis that bolsters Labour’s case to launch a national energy company if the party gains power.

Thinktank Common Wealth has calculated that the cost of generating electricity to power homes and businesses could be reduced by £20.8bn or £252 per household a year under state ownership, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has committed to creating “a publicly owned national champion in clean energy” named Great British Energy.

It’s interesting that a state-owned company would save homes money; when electricity was privatised under Margaret Thatcher, we were told our bills would be lower.

So it seems the Thatcher government lied to us.

And that leads me to my second point: if privatisation has led to higher bills, then why not just nationalise the privatised energy firms?

Source: State-owned electricity generation firm ‘could save Britons nearly £21bn a year’ | Energy industry | The Guardian

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Jeremy Hunt may extend £2,500 energy price guarantee in major climbdown

Smirking Hunt: did he know he was going to do this all along?

After saying he would not provide any more help for households to pay their energy bills, it seems Jeremy Hunt is preparing to do just that.

The Express is reporting that he will extend the government’s £2,500 energy price guarantee for three months, until wholesale energy prices fall below the current Ofgem price cap in July, as they are expected to do.

Previously, the price guarantee was set to be raised to £3,000 in what would have been a £500 rise in energy bills for the average household.

It still represents an increase of £400, as the government’s grant that has kept bills down until now is ending at the beginning of April.

If the claim is true, it will be a major victory for Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, who had petitioned the government to use some expected savings to protect households.

As This Site stated in February,

According to Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, when the announcement that the price guarantee would rise by 20 per cent was made in Hunt’s Autumn Statement, energy prices were significantly higher than they are now.

The current expectation is that in July, energy regulator Ofgem’s price cap (rather than the government’s price guarantee) will drop below both the £3,000 set to come in April and the £2,500 limit in force now, so we will all pay less.

This means the government is likely to save around £10 billion on what it was expecting to spend on the price guarantee at the time of the Autumn Statement.

Mr Lewis has written to the Chancellor, informing him of these expectations and calling on him to keep the price guarantee at its current level until July – a measure that will add only £1.5 billion to the current cost (leaving £8.5 billion in the kitty).

He has said this is better than inflicting poverty – and its devastating effects – on the people of the UK.

The Express is now saying the cost is likely to be £3 billion, which is fine because it still leaves £7 billion in expected savings.

Let’s look forward to confirmation of this move in the Budget statement on March 15.

Source: Jeremy Hunt ‘to extend £2,500 energy price guarantee’ for three months

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Tory energy minister blames Labour for his own government’s failings

Why do Tories insist on trying to mislead us on every slightest blunder they make, when we can find the facts easily anyway?

Here’s Graham Stuart, Tory Energy Minister, blaming the last Labour government – which ended in 2010 – for his own government’s lack of exertion in bringing energy bills down with insulation and heat pumps, and investment in renewables:

When asked by the Guardian if he would take responsibility on behalf of the government for sluggishness on insulation, heat pump installations and renewables investment, he refused and instead criticised the previous Labour government, which was last in office in 2010.

He said the Conservative action on energy efficiency “has been transformational since the rather dire position we inherited both on renewables and efficiency from Labour”.

And what are the facts?

The Guardian this week revealed that a third of the funding pledged by the UK government for insulation and installing heat pumps has not yet been spent, analysis has shown, despite the continuing energy bills and cost of living crises.

About £2.1bn remains unspent of the £6.6bn that was supposed to be used between 2020 and 2025 on making buildings more energy efficient and decarbonising heat. The funding is part of the £9.2bn that was promised for such spending in the Conservative general election manifesto of 2019.

The shadow climate minister, Kerry McCarthy, said: “Graham Stuart is living in a fantasy world. It was the Conservatives who crashed the market for onshore wind, costing British families £150 in higher bills. It was the Conservatives who gutted energy efficiency programmes, to the extent that installation rates are 20 times lower than under the last Conservative government. And it was Conservatives whose own net zero strategy is so poor that the UK’s own courts deemed it unlawful.

I think it’s going a bit far to say that the Tories’ failure on this has kept energy bills high, though, when the globalised energy giants like Shell and BP are charging us whatever they like because they get most of their cash abroad.

I mean, who owns the wind farms, apart from the King?

Source: UK energy minister blames Labour for soaring energy bills | Energy bills | The Guardian

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Energy bills WILL rise by £900 in April and the Tories don’t care

Burning your money: ironically, the next energy price hike will give the privatised providers even more of your money to burn.

It’s happening, then.

Despite Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis pleading with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt to use a fraction of the money they’ll save when wholesale energy prices fall in July on cutting bills between April and then, the Tories have turned a deaf ear and are bent on further-impoverishing us all.

Let’s remember one very important fact:

UK Energy corps made £60 billion profit last year.

They made £billions of it speculating on the wholesale gas market.

Today, Ofgem announced your bills will go up 20% more in April.

This is the most revolting & disgusting exploitation of ordinary people in modern times.

— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) February 27, 2023

There’s a lot of disgust with Ofgem for allowing the price to rocket:

Ofgem are not regulators. They are enablers.

I unreservedly condemn the 20% increase in your energy bills.

— Claudia Webbe MP (@ClaudiaWebbe) February 27, 2023

But here’s the kicker:

Energy bills have risen nearly 10 times faster than wages, TUC analysis showshttps://t.co/kXfEyx6AdD

— Morning Star (@M_Star_Online) February 27, 2023

Energy bills have risen 10 times faster than wages, but the government – Sunak and Hunt again – are keeping wages down and still funnelling cash to these big energy firms.

And let’s not forget that the Tories created these firms by privatising national utilities, back in the 1980s.

They said at the time that privatisation would allow more investment to go into the service, providing power to the nation at a cheaper price.

And people believed it!

Those were more innocent times. And, for “innocent”, read “naive”.

Anyway, there it is.

You need to find another £900 per year for energy, starting in 32 days’ time. That’s £500 for the new increase, plus £400 to make up for the Tory grant that has helped keep your bill down until now.

How are you going to do it?

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No more help for households, says Hunt, despite energy price cap rise in April

Grinning Hunt: the Chancellor won’t help families cope with energy price increases in April – not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t want to.

Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer and well-known misprint, has said he won’t provide any more help for households to pay for their energy bills.

This means the Tory government’s Energy Bills Support Scheme will end in March, just before the cap on our energy bills rises to an expected average of £3,000.

So we’re all facing a real-terms rise of £900 on our energy bills and Hunt will do nothing about it.

He has said,

“We constantly keep the help we can give families under review.

“But if you’re saying ‘Do I think we’re going to have the headroom to make a major new initiative to help people?’, I don’t think the situation would have changed very significantly from the Autumn Statement, which was just three months ago.”

This is not true.

According to Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, when the announcement that the price guarantee would rise by 20 per cent was made in Hunt’s Autumn Statement, energy prices were significantly higher than they are now.

The current expectation is that in July, energy regulator Ofgem’s price cap (rather than the government’s price guarantee) will drop below both the £3,000 set to come in April and the £2,500 limit in force now, so we will all pay less.

This means the government is likely to save around £10 billion on what it was expecting to spend on the price guarantee at the time of the Autumn Statement.

That’s a pretty significant change, if you ask me!

Mr Lewis has written to the Chancellor, informing him of these expectations and calling on him to keep the price guarantee at its current level until July – a measure that will add only £1.5 billion to the current cost (leaving £8.5 billion in the kitty).

He has said this is better than inflicting poverty – and its devastating effects – on the people of the UK.

You can see him saying it here:

So it seems clear that Hunt has lied; he does have the headroom to help people with a new initiative, the situation has changed significantly and he can give more help to families.

He just doesn’t want to.

Remember this: the Conservative Chancellor would rather inflict poverty on you than do his job, which is to protect you from financial troubles that are no fault of your own.

Source: Jeremy Hunt says no more help for households despite energy bills increase in April

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Martin Lewis calls for government to hold energy prices down – and he has good cause

This is so simple, I’ll leave Mr Lewis to explain it:

The bit that sold this idea to me was that poverty is more costly to the nation in so many ways.

But Tories love inflicting poverty on us. Otherwise, why did they give away £700 billion to their rich friends during and after the Covid pandemic, thereby ensuring it would not be available to shore up public services and pay packets, and keep the cost of living down?

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How has Shell made £32bn profit from inflated energy prices?

I’m confused.

According to this BBC article, Shell should be paying 75 per cent of its UK profits to the government in taxes.

In a year when the firm has announced record profits (due to inflated energy prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine war) of £32 billion, that comes to £1.2 billion.

It was supposed to pay a 35 per cent Windfall Tax on its “extraordinary” earnings. That would have come to £560 million – but in fact it only paid $134 million (almost £109 million).

There’s an additional 30 per cent in Corporation Tax, which should bring in £480 million, and a supplementary 10 per cent rate that should bring in £80 million. I notice the BBC piece is silent about whether that happened.

And gas and oil firms like Shell are allowed to reduce the amount of tax they pay by the cost of decommissioning projects like North Sea oil platforms and investments in other UK projects.

Meanwhile, the Tory government’s Energy Bills Support Scheme is costing the public £15 billion. The windfall tax was supposed to help fund it – but how many firms pay into it, and how much are they paying, if they are allowed to claw back so many millions?

The government hopes to make £14 billion per year – which is not enough to cover its costs.

And underlying all of this is the elephant in the room: how are these firms being allowed to make such huge profits in the first place?

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Government support for business energy bills set to be halved from April

Businesses may go bust after April this year, because the government is halving the amount of money it is providing to support them with their energy bills.

The total level of government support is expected to fall by more than half from the £18.4bn the current six-month scheme is estimated to have cost by the time it ends.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt told industry leaders last week that the current scheme to support businesses was “unsustainably expensive”.

So the scheme, which caps the unit cost of gas and electricity for all businesses, will be replaced at the beginning of April with a new scheme that offers a discount on wholesale prices rather than a fixed price. The new scheme is expected to run until March 2024.

Hunt was challenged on the usefulness of the scheme – but claimed that the government’s aim was to bring down inflation because that would have a better benefit for business.

And he said Ofgem had been tasked with investigating whether the system was working properly because it was understood that firms are not yet benefiting from falls on the wholesale cost of gas:

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Vox Political

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Category Archives: Energy

Rishi Sunak is out of his depth with his latest controversy [TWEETS]

Like this:

Reality check (something for the weekend)

Like this:

Does think tank’s finding support Labour’s case for a national energy firm?

Like this:

Jeremy Hunt may extend £2,500 energy price guarantee in major climbdown

Like this:

Tory energy minister blames Labour for his own government’s failings

Like this:

Energy bills WILL rise by £900 in April and the Tories don’t care

Like this:

No more help for households, says Hunt, despite energy price cap rise in April

Like this:

Martin Lewis calls for government to hold energy prices down – and he has good cause

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How has Shell made £32bn profit from inflated energy prices?

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Government support for business energy bills set to be halved from April

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