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.
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?
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Not a backhander: in fact, Lord Shrewsbury seems to have been open in his dealings with the government and the firm for which he was lobbying. But the activity was not permitted and he should have known.
Crossbench peer Lord Shrewsbury may be suspended from the House of Lords for nine months after he was paid £57,000 after lobbying for the government to buy a firm’s products during the Covid-19 crisis.
What about the Tory peer who (allegedly) took £29 million under similar circumstances, then?
According to the BBC,
The Earl of Shrewsbury was found by the Lords Conduct Committee to have approached ministers on behalf of a company marketing Covid-19 sanitiser products, which he worked for.
The committee recommended he should be suspended for nine months, which is subject to a vote by the upper house.
He was paid £57,000 by healthcare company SpectrumX for his work as a consultant over a period of 19 months between 2020 and 2022.
In 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, the firm was seeking regulatory approval for products including hand sanitisers and a walk-in disinfectant tunnel.
The peer approached ministers, including then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock to promote the company’s tunnel in return for a £3,000 monthly retainer, the committee’s report found.
He referred himself to the commissioner following allegations about his conduct in relation to the company in the Sunday Times.
Dare we hope that this recommendation indicates the direction of travel for members of either House of Parliament who are found to have broken lobbying rules in such a way – with an increasingly-severe scale of penalties for those found to have broken the rules, depending on the amount of money they took and the effectiveness (or lack of the same) of the product they were touting?
That would be useful with regard to that other case, mentioned above.
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Pharmaceutical firms have hiked the price of medication for Strep A – the disease that is currently killing UK children – from 80p to £19 per packet.
The government is happy to pay that amount.
We know this because a government minister said so in a response to Labour Lord Prem Sikka, who wanted to know whether the government would start up its own pharma firm to manufacture this medicine for a fair price.
Here’s a commentary on what happened:
So the government is happy to pay the cost of particular medicines, even if the companies supplying them hike the price to 23.75 times its normal level – because that’s “the market price”.
Nurses are telling government ministers “the market price” of their labour should be 1.2 times its current level – and the government has refused to pay.
The latter group is looking for a fair price for an honest day’s work; the former is engaging in bare-faced profiteering.
And the Tories are supporting the profiteers. Think about it.
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The man Liz Truss chose to be her chief of staff has already been interviewed by the US FBI in relation to vote-rigging in Puerto Rico.
Now it transpires that he is not being paid directly by the government for his government role, but by a private firm, for which he works (or has worked). So the government has been privatised. Is there a tax dodge involved here?
It’s a lobbying firm, which means this company seeks contact with the government in order to influence it.
Worse still, it’s alleged that Truss persuaded Fullbrook to take the role in return for running the Conservatives’ next general election campaign.
This has really upset Tory MPs.
Here’s why…:
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I’ll cut to the core: Liz Truss’s energy price cap plan preserves commercial profits at the expense of the public.
She’s putting you in debt so the shareholders of firms like Shell can profit.
That’s the gist of this clip:
But is this what follows the reason?
So, Truss worked for Shell and has received a donation from a wife of a BP executive, and now she is giving money to them and charging us in order to do it.
And did you notice the claim in the top video that Truss is now in thrall to the European Research Group MPs? Watch this:
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Promises broken: Jeremy Vine also pressed Keir Starmer on his reasons for abandoning the 10 pledges on which he was elected Labour leader.
Here’s a balancing view to set against This Site’s earlier article about Keir Starmer’s plan to tackle the cost of living crisis.
In the same Jeremy Vine interview when he discussed that plan, Starmer refused to support strike action by the TSSA (Transport Salaried Staff Association) union, saying he had to focus on his own ambition to be prime minister.
This Site’s friend Cornish Damo has this to say about it:
Keir Starmer appeared on #JeremyVine this morning & repeated he has no intention of attending picket lines now he's fixated on his own ambition of becoming Prime Minister at the next Election. They were good enough for him when he wanted to be Labour leader though… #DamoRantspic.twitter.com/mgPwhxDJux
— Damien Willey #SupportTheRMT (@KernowDamo) August 31, 2022
He’s got a good point, hasn’t he?
Starmer also discussed with Vine his u-turn on plans to renationalise the privatised energy firms; apparently the Covid-19 pandemic changed everything and now he can’t justify it.
Damo says this is nonsense and – from the arguments This Writer has heard over the last few years – he’s the one making sense:
So aside from telling striking workers to do one this morning on #JeremyVine, Starmer also faced questions on his refusal to now renationalise energy. Apparently we can't afford to now because of the pandemic. Try again & learn some economics you liar. #DamoRantspic.twitter.com/mHqa4xO5tp
— Damien Willey #SupportTheRMT (@KernowDamo) August 31, 2022
It’s all worth thinking about, when you’re weighing up whether a Starmer-led Labour Party deserves your support at the ballot box.
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Sally-Ann Hart: covering her posterior during the sewage crisis?
Here’s another great analysis from Maximilien Robespierre – this time on the way Tories who were elected to Parliament in 2019 are trying to cover their rear ends after voting to allow water companies to pollute our rivers, seas and beaches:
So: she said she voted for an amendment to Labour’s motion, that demanded investment in the sewerage infrastructure that would end the discharge of raw sewage into the environment.
But the amendment was changed to remove a requirement for water companies (in England) to take every reasonable step to ensure untreated sewage is not released from storm overflows. Also removed was the requirement to show improvements in the sewerage systems.
So her claim that she voted to demand improvements seems to be untrue. But, like many of her fellows in the Tory 2019 Parliamentary intake, she’s trying to put people off voting to remove her from her seat by pretending to be on their side.
She says an “ambitious” plan will be unveiled on September 1, to clean up the system. Will it be as ambitious as the plan she has already supported – that allowed water companies to stink up our beaches with possibly disease-ridden crap?
This Writer agrees with Maximilien Robespierre: Ms Hart should have been challenged to take a swim in the water she voted to despoil – to prove she had defended it, or demonstrate conclusively that she had not.
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Alistair Phillips-Davies: he’ll be raking it in while you rake over the coals for a little more heat.
Apparently the chief executive of energy firm SSE can’t do anything about the massive 47 per cent pay hike he enjoyed this year – to £4.5 million – because his salary is set independently.
In 2016, his pay was £1.7 million – which is still far too much. But the next year (2017) his pay had risen by 72 per cent to £2.9 million. It seems that trend has continued ever since.
Just think how much money has gone to bosses like him, and shareholders, altogether. Enough to fund a complete change of direction to renewables, perhaps? But they didn’t bother because they were greedy and wanted the cash for themselves. Am I right?
No doubt that will be a huge comfort to his millions of customers who will be freezing in their own homes this winter because they chose to eat food that day instead of staying warm and can’t afford to do both because of the huge hike in energy bills that pays this man’s wages.
I can just hear the conversations over the cold and lifeless hearths: “Why do we have to freeze while Alistair Phillips-Davies rakes in £4.5 million a year?”
“Ah, well – his pay is set independently so there’s nothing he can do about it.”
(I think somehow the actual conversations may run a little differently!)
Here’s the clip:
If this man’s wages really are set independently, it proves only one thing:
The system is corrupt from the bottom to the top.
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The problem: energy prices are set to have quadrupled within a year and the Tory government is doing nothing about it.
Controversial as he may be in many respects, Owen Jones makes a lot of good points in this short clip from an appearance on Jeremy Vine’s show.
Firstly, because the energy firms are private companies, their shareholders have received £200 billion in dividends since 2010 – money that could have been used to reduce bills instead, or to free the UK from dependence on fossil fuels provided by foreign suppliers (this would have eliminated the price shock that has sent our bills skyrocketing today).
We’ve been told profits have increased fourfold because of the price increases – and very little of that is likely to go into energy independence; 60 per cent of these new profits will go to shareholders.
The energy industry is a natural monopoly which should never have been privatised. The solution to the price problem is to re-nationalise the industry and impose stern pricing controls on bills sent to the public. Windfall taxes on the companies are not enough.
See/hear for yourself:
Sadly, nobody in any position to affect the energy crisis is even thinking of re-nationalisation, despite the example of France, where price increases are pinned at an affordable four per cent.
Even Labour leader Keir Starmer thinks the energy firms should remain in the hands of billionaires – a position that sets him against the vast majority of his party’s members.
But then, who cares about that? Starmer’s party “reforms” have ensured that the opinions of Labour members won’t have any impact on party policy in the future. The membership exists to service the desires of the party’s elite MPs, candidates and other high-level representatives.
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Liz Truss has said the huge profits being taken by energy firms that are charging enormous – and soon-to-increase – prices for gas and electricity should not be considered “dirty and evil”.
Let’s have a think about that, shall we?
According to the BBC, Truss said
windfall taxes on profits – urged by some to fund help for households – were about “bashing business”.
She said cutting taxes was the best way to help with living costs over winter.
We know this is not true; the people facing the worst outcomes due to the higher cost of living caused by Tory policies are those who do not earn enough to pay taxes – who will not receive any benefit at all from her tax cuts.
Asked about public perceptions of record profits, she added: “I don’t think profit is a dirty word, and the fact it’s become a dirty word in our society is a massive problem.
“Now, of course, the energy giants, if they’re in an oligopoly, should be held to account, and I would make sure they’re rigorously held to account.
“But the way we bandy the word around ‘profit’ (as if) it’s something that’s dirty and evil, we shouldn’t be doing that as Conservatives.”
Certainly there are justifications for organisations making a profit – if it is used properly. So, for example, bonuses to workers improve productivity (but most people working for the energy firms are facing the same dilemma as the rest of us – whether to eat or heat this winter).
Also, profit allows investment in the business, to make it better. We see no such investment by the energy firms. Indeed, efforts by the government to secure such investment were dismissed by them until the Tories made it a condition by which they could avoid the current windfall tax.
Meanwhile, the people heading up these firms have imported huge amounts of cash into their personal bank accounts. According to information circulating on the social media,
John Pettigrew, boss of National Grid received £6.5m bonus on top of his salary
Chris O’Shea, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica was paid almost £2m last year in salary and benefits
Centrica’s non-executive directors were paid almost £1m
Scottish Power’s CEO Keith Anderson is on £1.15m.
E.On boss Michael Lewis is on £1m
EDF’s Simone Rossi is also on £1mAnd their top execs enjoyed a share of £4.65m
At the same time, there are
People who haven’t had breakfast and/or lunch TODAY, because they can’t afford it.
People using food banks because food is becoming more of a luxury than a necessity.
Children celebrating a birthday without presents.
Parents worrying about new school uniforms – and some schools enforcing rules which are not cost-effective.
People who can’t get to work because they can’t afford to put petrol in their cars/pay for public transport anymore.
People who are working so much they’re making themselves ill, and they STILL CAN’T AFFORD to pay their bills.
People who have been given fines by these same energy/water companies because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills in the first place – increasing their debt.
Customers being told to do STAR JUMPS TO KEEP WARM for crying out loud!
Hose pipe bans when gallons of water leak away every day.
Elderly people NOT DRINKING because they’re worried about running out of water!
It isn’t profit that is the problem; it is obscene profiteering that drains money from the economy when it could be used to improve the lives of millions of people – who actually created the profit in the first place.
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