Energy companies turn up the pressure

Big business and vested interests are holding the government and British people to ransom. Their arrogance and laziness is the cause of low investment and fair wages. Perhaps, the government doesn't have the stones to deal with them but folks like these and their Tory pals are slap bang in the middle of my sights.

Maybe, the Prime Minister wants to spend time dicking with strategy and trying to bring the unreasonable to the table but, I think, folks need to be reminded who's running the show. Dropping one of the bullies like a sack of potatoes may be timely.

Fasten your seatbelts everyone - we're going to have a rough ride this winter!

After a lukewarm reaction to his housing plans Gordon Brown will want to be sure that his energy plans are not greeted in the same way.

They will be.

I find it odd that Labour activists want to bite the hands that keep the lights on. Don't they remember what happened to Ted Heath?

There is a problem with the energy supply in this country largely because the Labour government has done nothing other than build windmills. No doubt because they like tilting at them.

What is needed is some realism from the political class and a whole lot fewer taxes of any sort.

I suggest they start doing some real work that will bring benefits across all of society rather than blaming everyone other than themselves for what is going wrong. A social tariff that allows the poorer people to get by will be a good start.

None of this would have happened if NewLabour had actually had an energy policy in the first place.

Not a single power station has been built by this government for eleven years despite the fact several of them face imminent decommissioning.

Three energy reviews were commissioned at enormous expense over eleven years and still nothing was done.

Not a single planning approval has been granted for Gordon Brown's great windfarm initiative.

The great white hope for nuclear energy - the takeover of British Energy by a French company, has failed because they can't agree a price.

This is a farce of a situation, a result of a complete lack of foresight despite an immense amount of advice and leaves the government completely incapable of giving the slightest direction in on of the most important issues facing the country.

This single issue should finally make people realise that we have a bunch of total incompetents wrecking our country.

Oh dear........

Another feeble effort. Too little, too late.

The Government should have kept on top of energy companies over the years and regulated the market more aggressively to ensure competition delivered fair prices to the consumer.

The government has also dithered for years over the nuclear question. Then tried to sell British Energy to the French to dig them out of a hole (another failure).

Big decisions needed to have been made a long time ago. Any announcement in this area is going to just be another ill thought 'sticking plaster' just like yesterdays stamp duty botch job.


What date shall we march on London and demand a general election?

Time for bringing the energy industry under public ownership, methinks .... if only Thatcher hadn't hived off all the industries that we, the British people owned, to her mega-wealthy foreign friends, we might still have some kind of control over our own destinies.

Unfortunately, it doesn't end with the energy companies. The pharmaceutical companies, the waste recycling companies, the aerospace companies and the rest - they all hold the government to ransome.
And the BMA were pretty good at negotiating too.

I have seen a County bus contract go to one company closely followed by the man who negotiated the contract.

It seems that anyone who gets into a position of influence uses it to their own ends and politicians including a recent ex prime minister have set the example.

Until personal integrity becomes the norm, us ordinary mortals are the losers.

Enough is enough. it is time to lance the Nu-Labour boil once and for all.

Labour have had *ten* years to come up with an energy policy, now they're desperate to do something the energy businesses have them over a barrel.

And lets not forget the government wants these businesses to invest billions, so that's one of many reasons a windfall tax won't work - not unless we fancy being Russia's patsies when it comes to having power next decade.

And whilst I don't think much of the energy companies attitude here, just what did Brown expect? He already taxes them to the gills, and lets be honest - it's not their responsibility to pull rabbits out of his hat for him.

No 6# Jonathan Cook

I have never joined a demostration in my life, but I'm so hacked off with GB and his cronies that I would probably go.

I suggest they start doing some real work that will bring benefits across all of society rather than blaming everyone other than themselves for what is going wrong. A social tariff that allows the poorer people to get by will be a good start.

What I'd like to see is a politician float the idea of co-ordinated international action by governments to rein in the energy companies.

Given that the only argument the companies have is that if the government doesn't play nice they'll take their toys somewhere else it'd be interesting to see their reponse.

#6

I'm up for protest march on Downing Street.

Now that the national cupboard of finances is bare, the goverment looks around for anyone left with money to take it from them. How would we feel if the government said that homeowners had made exceptional unearned capital gains on their home values in over the last 10 years and there would be a windfall tax on them?
Energy companies have owners in their shareholders, including pension funds, and they have employees. Will they all get a 'Windfall Credit' back from the government in future years if the sector starts to lose money?

Once again, the hypothetical non-issue of Man-made Climate Change is dominating a discussion and making a huge (and costly,) difference to the way ordinary people live their lives.

Sadly this hysteria will continue until the doom-mongers are silenced. There is little sign they are about to shut up.

Only yesterday the latest scare story was running, choc-full of fear inducing facts, that the last decade was the hottest for 1,200 years.

We can discredit this instantly, via the most glaring inconsistency, that during the medieval warm period grapes were grown in Scotland, something that is emphatically not happening now. If we look to the names on the study however, we see that the chief researcher was an old friend, Michael E Mann, he of the hockey stick fame and scaremonger in chief of the IPCC.

Despite the attempts of the pro-MMCC community to stifle it, discussion and debate is occurring, and the truth is finally emerging from the mire of misinformation promungulated by Mann et al.
It is about time that howling hysterics like Clegg and Gore were called to account, and moreover stopped proposing that we spend our money in these extravagant and unnecessary ways.

re: 14

Same here.


From the latest Private Eye:

-12 percent: The year's fall in violent crime trumpeted by Home Office press release in July

+19 percent: The year's predicted rise in violent crime not trumpeted by Home Office in secret memo in August

Why should private companies pay for Labour's social security plans? Surely the answer is to increase social security?

For those who live in the country, far from busses and trains, who cannot afford a car how about taxing car companies if they don't get one free?

I think the energy companies should stand fast and resist this. It is not their job to dig Labour out of the mess. What they ought to be doing is to insist that energy companies build stores on land in the UK to g'tee we have 6 months gas/oil/petrol supply on shore in case of aggro with Mr Muscles.

power-to-the-ppl

I assume that the -12 percent will be heralded in the Office of General Statistics (or whatever it's called) and will be shoved onto NuLabours website quicker than I can type this comment!

I must start reading Private Eye again.

Nuclear is a dead-end because the woldwide known deposits of uranium is very limited and there are much bigger players than us who want it e.g. the USA.

Fortunately for us, those clever people at MIT have just recently cracked the problem of storing solar energy during the daytime to be released at night for heating and lighting etc.

Which of course, did'nt even make the news although it will change the world.

So we have a possible answer to the 'energy crunch'.

On a slightly different note, I agree with one of our contributors who stated that our politicians are at their best when they are on holiday.

That is, doing nothing, on the basis that most of what they do do when they are around is unhelpful.

Read Sue Cameron in today's FT and you will see what's going wrong at the heart of government; nobody has a clue what they are supposed to be doing.

Government is currently one man - Brown - with 'a multi-billion pound shopping list of plans'... oh great, more good money thrown after bad.

It seems that having had the Brown boom we are now in for the Brown splash as much tax payer cash as you possibly can,.

This explains why no minister can make a passable attempt at explaining policy - because it's all been made on the hoof by Brown.

This is just a catastrophe for the country - one man is single handedly driving us into a ditch and no one is doing anything about it including his own ministers.

The Conservative Government privatised the power suppliers. Which means they are purely motivated by profit not research and development into alternatives and clean coal. Thatcherism which is what most of you support.

Now you expect the Government to subsidise these Private companies profits by paying them for Research and Development.
An ideal solution would be do the same as they did with Railtrack. Convert power generators into 'not for profit companies'. Thats a bit too expensive at the moment though and the damage has already been done.

They built all the Gas fired power stations. for short term profits and now expect to government to bail them out Now the gas is running out and becoming hideously expensive. Not to worry though they will just increase the bills and add to inflation. Lets vote conservative for the sake of it. Even though most problems we face today can be traced back to thatcherist individual greed, no such thing as society(crime) etc.

Two phrases spring to mind both of which are appropriate to this government "Headless chickens..." and Corporal Frazer's "Don't panic......" , God help us because this lot haven't got a clue!

It has been clear for many years that we did not have an energy policy/strategy and what we are seeing now is the inevitable result .... a country heading rapidly towards chaos.

No clear policy on nuclear power and has already been said no attempt to fill the gap that will be left when some current power stations are decommissioned.

Building windmills will make a small contribution but is no real answer.

On top of that GB has been trying to play tough boy with the Russians who provide half of our gas supplies. If they turn the taps off to put him in his place, and who could blame them, we really will have a problem with Winter approaching.

"Big business and vested interests are holding the government and British people to ransom. Their arrogance and laziness is the cause of low investment and fair wages. Perhaps, the government doesn't have the stones to deal with them but folks like these and their Tory pals are slap bang in the middle of my sights."

There is plenty of arrogance and laziness in all sorts of businesses - and governments.
If you could recommend a way to increase sensible decision-making and moderate some of the excessive salaries/bonuses paid, I'd be happy to support you.

It's a bit much, though, to blame business and "their Tory pals".

Blair was so far up big business that you could just about see the soles of his tennis sneakers. (Hardly surprising, then, that his retirement plan is doing so well.)

Brown doesn't seem to have got stuck in, to shake up the businesses who we all need to invest in the UK's future.

He didn't even manage to insist that the FSA (his creation) should follow its own guidelines and enforce sense on Northern Rock and other banks. (But that would have limited credit, which is all that this governments' vaunted "growth" has been based on for years.)

(And, incidentally, most Labour ex-Ministers seem to have drifted happily into roles with "big business", so I don't think you can make this good party/bad party approach stand up.)

Some people would like the State to have a stake in business and take a pro-acticve role in steering their activities and social awareness. I wouldn't mind that. Though I'd be concerned who they'd appoint to help manage "big business".

Problem is, this government has spent all the money it collected - and more.

If Brown and Co had taken the money gained by increasing taxes on private pension funds and injected it into serious infrastructure, we'd be better off.

You could have built quite a lot of gas-storage for GBP50Billion. And thrown in a couple of nuclear power stations, as well.

Instead we got, well, I'm not quite sure. But Government borrowing seems due to reach GBP50Bil for THIS year.

I can imagine any organisation losing or wasting a few million here or there. But find it hard to imagine how on earth this mob can't manage on GBP600BIL.

I don't like the windfall-tax scenario much. If there is a need for such a tax, the terms and conditions should be set out, so companies know what they face - not just have a few politicians make a quick decision.

There was absolutely no need for oil prices to rise as they did. Not Brown's fault. They are already dropping. Not Brown's doing.

But it was a good reminder that the UK has failed dismally to tackle energy security for years. And has made absolutely zero investment during the Blair/Brown experience.

No 6# Jonathan Cook

count me in too, and everyone I know; friends/family, work colleagues; if there was a march tomorrow I know they'd all be there. We can't afford 2 more years of total economic destruction by labour; if they don't go soon it'll be too late and we'll be back in the stone age.

re: 22

dhwilkinson clean out your ears:
Labour've had eleven years
To come up with a plan
(Haha! Still think they can?)
O the sweet taste of liberal tears!

Gordon hangs by a thread
As Britain plunges into the red,
Ed Balls says so what?
As the ministers plot
To chop off Brown's dour Scottish head!

That is, doing nothing, on the basis that most of what they do do when they are around is unhelpful.

Speaking purely personally I have always believed it was a bad idea to have thick people in charge of anything, let alone the country.

A £1.6bn package to bail out the £5,000bn housing market is, let me see, 0.0003% help. Not withstanding the fact that it is not the government's job to support an asset class this was tokenism taken to an extreme.

We can now look forward to even more tokenism, mixed with political expediency for the energy sector government 'rescue package'.

The problem with thick people is that when put under close scrutiny - such as on newsnight last night for Alistair Darling, they come over as desperate, angry and unavaied of the basic facts of the argument.

Gordon Brown is in the same boat; whomsoever decided to delude us with the idea that we had some kind of intellectual heavyweight running the country? He's a lightweight to put it mildly.

The solution to the government being "blackmailed" is a very simple one; blackmail them back with extra regulation/costs.

Windfall taxes are a definite no-no in my book though; it's punishing private companies for doing well which is obviously mad.

Instead they should have had tighter regulation on prices/processes (for example, the government should have made it illegal for cash customers not to get the same discounts as direct debit customers).

But then again, after 11 years in power and still not having an energy plan, there's no way that labour will do anything that makes any sense on the energy front.

When your chancellor openly admits that he doesn't understand how the banking system works, and a PM who's blindfolded himself and just keeps on muttering "it's ok, everything's fine. getting on with the job. the job. i'm doing the job. let's get on with the job. it's all fine. trust me. getting on with the job." like a stuck record, you know you're in very very deep trouble.

"Iceberg, what iceberg?" said the captain of the titanic. "Full steam ahead, it's all clear, nothing to worry about. Move along, nothing to see here."

#28

Excuse me, but 'big business and the tories were handed the keys to the kingdom' after the labour party had run the kingdom into a brick wall in the 1970s and taken us cap in hand to the IMF.

Get your facts right.

Tony Blair promised a 'big clunking fist'....

......we seem to have got 'Jeremy Beadle'.

#14 RobinJD

A protest march on Downing Street won't achieve anything! (remember they've closed it off now....for...er... security reasons)

DIRECT ACTION would be far more effective. For example....that 'Fathers for Justice' idiot held up the M25 for a whole Friday the other week. He, single handedly, managed to make a REAL PROTEST. Unfortunately I was was one of the plebs stuck in the ensuing jam.

The FRENCH seem to have the right idea....they don't waste their time on silly marches!

If you could recommend a way to increase sensible decision-making and moderate some of the excessive salaries/bonuses paid, I'd be happy to support you.

Was Tony Blair knowingly laughing about Gordon Brown when he called him the 'clunking fist'?

There is a 2 word anagram of "a clunking fist" - which seems appropriate given the current circumstances.

Clue - the second word is "Stalin".

We will now probably be taxed to oblivion so that New Labour can avoid winter headlines of 'Old Age Pensioners Dying of Hypothermia'.

My suspicion is that these COWARD ministers are slimply taking a long term view on the situation i.e. SELFISHLY THINKING ONLY OF THEMSELVES.....in other words, when they lose their jobs/seats at the next general election then (no doubt!) they will be re-employed by these cartel companies as non-executive directors (or some other grandiose titles).....just as 'five houses' BLAIR was by his banking friends. The compliant are always well rewarded after their stints in office.

Why was it then that SHELL pulled out of the Thames estuary mega wind farm 'infrastructure' project earlier this year? (reported by the BBC on 1-May-08) Answer: GREED... SHELL believed that the return on investment in the UK was simply not good enough for them; so they decided instead to invest the money in wind farms in the USA.

The FAT CAT energy companies will do what they like regardless.

*** Why can't ministers be BRAVE just for once in their miserable little lives and impose the windfall tax on the cartel energy companies NOW!***

re 33 BankRSlicker

ah, but you have to be very careful with direct action now that labour have changed all the laws. They've twisted all the laws so that any protest against the government can be seen as a terrorist act in the eyes of the law.

If it's a general fathers-for-justice campaign you'll be fine, but if it's a protest (even a peaceful one) against the government generally being negligent and destroying our economy/country/human-rights then you'd be dragged away as a terrorist.

Another idea could be for everyone in the country who's on self-assessment (and companies) to delay their tax returns/payments until the very last minute, starving the treasury of any physical money for months on end. A bit like a monetary version of the fuel blockade. Nothing illegal about it, doesn't cause any normal people any disruption, but would scare the life out of Brown if he didn't see any money coming in for months on end.

DIRECT ACTION

#34

Modern Japan demonstrates nothing except what can be done with a Marshall Plan to pump money into a previous dictatorship that went into a war and lost.

Once the US credit ran out in the early nineties the Japanese bubble burts and has never recovered since.

You really are the most tremendouslyill informed armchair philospher I have ever come across.

Get your facts right before engaging in argument. (something you might like to tell your prime minister)

Governments of both left and right have buried their heads in the sand about energy policies for decades. We have allowed ourselves to become reliant on imports of gas and oil - which we all knew were going to run out in the end, and hence, become more expensive to obtain. Consequently, this cost is passed on to the consumer - bills were bound to rise just as the price of petrol will stay high.

Similarly, our energy infrastructure is ageing and desperately needs replacing to meet new demand and new technologies. This is where the problem is - the Government doesn't have any money to pay for such repairs or a new generation of power stations. The energy companies have been asked to build them by the Government and the real reason that a windfall tax is being rejected is that the Government is terrifed that such a measure (as populist as it will be in the short term,) will turn out to be a major headache in the future. Can you imagine the backlash when taxes have to rise or the lights will go out?

We are in a difficult position. We need new generations of power stations - but look at the protests if we try to build anything that uses fossil fuels (despite enough coal left in the UK to sensibly mine) or heaven forbid, nuclear. Similarly, wind farms or other green options are praised until they are actually tried to be built - no one wants a wind farm to spoil their view or to disrupt the poor nesting birds.

What do we do then? The Government has no money left and we've nothing of any real value left to sell and not even the Tories would suggest privatising the NHS now (even though it leaks money like a sieve and people are dying because NHS Trusts are short of cash.) Imposing a populsit measure in the form of the windfall tax would score points but nothing else and would severely delay any real plans to build much needed energy infrastructure.

Perhaps one short measure may be to abolish the VAT on fuel bills for the next four months for EVERYONE. The revenues increased revenues earnt in petrol this year should pay for that

Threatened "Nationalisation without Compensation" seems a good remedy for threatened energy company blackmail. If the energy companies try it on then I am sure some Labour or Tory union or consumer supporter will propose such a solution. But this would mean that we had an Energy Policy, other than the stupid 'Dash for Gas' of the Thatcher years and neither party seems to have the backbone to make any decision.

All the Bank of England has to do is refuse or let it be known that it might refuse, to lower interest rates, or better still raise them for the pound to rise and the cost of imported fuel to fall and the problem may evaporate. If however the (supine) Bank of England bows to the considerable pressure from the vested interests of the city gamblers and lowers rates then it is they who are culpable.

Yet another reason to raise interest rates now!

Constable_Shoe

Funny, isn't it?

If scientists had said "The climate's changing" I don't think anyone would have been surprised. It seems always to have been in a state of flux.

If they (along with governments) had then said "We should watch out, because traditional fossil fuel supplies will be more difficult to locate and distribute", I don't think anyone would have had a problem.

I just hate this stuff about "a global scientific consensus", when the IPCC documents appear to depend on a very few scientists' input - and has been under attack for years.

(I've struggled through as much of the publicly available stuff as I can stomach. It's interesting, but I hated the downplaying of the medieval warm period. THAT was a truly "Inconvenient Truth".)

As far as I can determine, Michael Mann has still not offered his data and computer model for examination.

Sounds to me a little like the Cold-Fusion situation. Somebody makes a claim. Doesn't provide full disclosure. Nobody is able to replicate the earlier reported break-through. End of story.

Except that, in this case, most governments had bought into the "fear".

I just wonder how many ministers in this administration have read all the IPCC stuff, any background papers they can access and any critical papers.

Doubt that little David Miliband bothered much. Far too busy when he was with DFRA. Much easier to accept and spout than read and doubt.
As

# 29

Gordon is not a m0ron.

He knows all about non-endogenous growth theory.

Furthermore, he is only been a light-weight recently, due to many happy hours pounding the tracks on holiday.

If only he could be Prime Minister of Scotland eh?

I see that the real Prime Minster of Scotland, Alex Salmond, seems to be bathed in an almost permanent glow these days.

Can't possibly think why.

How come they can't just knock the VAT off gas and electricity?

That way the energy companies aren't affected and we get lower bills.

Of course the treasury will get stung but it would anyway if the energy companies start playing up with their investments.

Like the French who have already discovered the fact, we have no choice but to invest in nuclear power for our future baseline supplies.

Unfortunately (for us) the French have an estimated 200 years supply of uranium ore (ref: Michelin guide to the Limousin region). Their nuclear power stations, certainly the one in the Loire valley, appear to be well designed.

Wind and wave power might provide the top up supplies but until we get fusion power we have no choice for our increasingly power-hungry country. How else are we to power our "carbon-neutral electric" transport for example?

Anyone who enviously wants a windfall tax slapped on energy companies should think more about the consequences of it and less about the envious pleasure of taxing a profitable company. Would they rather British energy companies didn't make any profits at all? That they even went bust? Then where would we get our energy from? And suppose you're a British energy company with British HQs, and you know the government will windfall-tax any profits you make above an arbitrary level - would you stay in Britain or move overseas? Remember these companies are run in their shareholders interests - this is the job of the CEO and other management, and if they are remiss in that job they can be held legally responsible by the shahreholders. And finally... who are these shareholders? A quick search reveals a long list of investment firms, most of whom will be holding these investments for pension plans. Suddenly a windfall tax on British companies sounds like stealing from Peter to pay Paul...

Never listen to the loathsome Blears.

#6
"What date shall we march on London and demand a general election?"

Sounds like a plan!

re: 35 jonathan_cook

along similar lines, other anagrams are:

"Gordon Brown": BORN DO WRONG

"new labour government": REMOVE WANTON BUNGLER

Clause 4 concern?

Accusations of blackmail by energy companies are absurd. The real problem is that we are sleepwalking into an energy disaster. Disaster is NOT an exaggeration in this context.

Here are some of the issues at stake:

- Nuclear provides 26% of UK electricity. 2 of the 8 stations close in 2014, and 2 more in 2016. It is not possible to build replacements in the time remaining.

- No nuclear strategy? Government accepts the need to replace nukes, but expects someone else (hopefully EDF of France) to supply the technology and investment. We can't afford to do this ourselves, apparently, but we can afford a GBP9bn Olympiad. The sell-off of Westinghouse was idiotic.

- North Sea gas production is falling rapidly. We imported a fifth of our gas needs last year, rising to half in 2010 and three-quarters by 2015.

- LNG is not a viable strategy, since so many countries (including the US and China) are banking on LNG; supplies are limited.

- Short of running out, the only option appears to be gas imports from Russia. This being so, a more pro-active attitude towards that country might be politic.

- Cost. With net imports of oil as well as gas rising rapidly, the cost of buying foreign energy will escalate. The trade balance will worsen steadily as a result. What, exactly, do we sell in foreign markets that will earn the additional funds to pay for imported energy?

Failure to address the looming energy deficit is idiocy. The idea of imposing extra taxes on the very same companies whom we expect to build us out of the energy crunch is puerile.

power_to the people@26

Your horrible poetry makes a good point they have had 11 years to fix the Conservatives disastrous, incompetent privatisation mistake on a par with Railtrack and nationalise or convert to not for profit company the power generators. but they are too scared to move away from the Thatcherite model for fear of our voting system. Which favours the South and the Midlands. No party dares veer away from the all powerful 'angry from Tumbridge Wells' brigade.

Sorry I didn't mention Gordon Brown/NuLabour/NuLab/Zanu Labour or whatever. in that Comment. But I don't like spouting out pointless representative drivel. I'm very sorry you don't like the Government and I'm sure you believe cat could do a better job or whatever but this is getting boring. Leave you whingers and trolls to it.

re: 52

Whatever lies Nu-Labour spew
There's one thing we know is true:
They'll try to beguile
With a false, sleazy smile---
Their days of corruption are through!

Before Britain can ever be changed
We need to kick out the deranged:
They'll arrest you for smoking
(It's quite thought provoking)
No wonder the public's estranged!

@52, dhwilkinson

Exactly how would nationalized energy help here? Or are we forgetting gas prices have doubled for the energy companies?

How would a nationalized energy company have magically dealt with that? Would they have been able to absorb so much of the price increase? Or pass the majority of the increase onto the customer? Or would there have been a new budget every time a big increase occurred so they could handle the redistribution of costs?

As for those calling for nationalization or a windfall tax - get real. The majority of those PRE-tax profits came from abroad, and the UK has no claim on them (if you want to go that route, take a look where our food and power comes from and consider the consequences of other nations retaliating along the same lines. Try 'Middle Ages'), these industries are also the ones we're relying to spend billions investing in new tech so we can keep the lights on.

They could also take their business elsewhere - kiss goodbye to jobs and tax income, and of course the expertise - unless you think the public sector could offer better money to the experts...

So, any sane, rational or realistic ideas from either side of the political divide?

The Building of nuclear power stations should be a national affair not left to private enterprise.Given this governments liking for hidden taxes I belive that If it was to scrap the much heralded bin tax and make it a power tax to pay for nuclear energy that most people would think that was fair. Providing that we were all given shares in that company

Nearly all of the posts above...are a great argument for global warming!

Apparently, the Russians are all for global warming!

#51 Friendlycard et al

I have worked for a Japanese company....and boy!... they don't mess around! ('mess' is the polite word)

I reckon they could build a nuclear power station for us in approx 48 months +/- a day or two.

re: 57

They have sleeping tubes, don't they? If only our MPs were as dedicated to their jobs!

Blast!!!......Stalin's birthday is on a Sunday!

Well it's nice to see that all the same silly hysterical tory schoolgirls are back but sadly they dont seem to have learnt a thing during their long summer recession.
Its like St Trinnians all over again, you have the older ones threatening revolution and the rather sillier less influential small ones are back to writing rude names and equally bad poems on the toilet walls.
While they have spent weeks trying to find even nastier things to say and do against the government, the government have carried on running the country and fairly well in the circumstances things are very slowly but inevitably getting better there are signs that the recession is reaching its lowest point, that wont sit well with the Tory bloggers on here, they want things to get worse so that they can carry on with their ridiculous abuse.
We dont have nothing to fear though, our illustrious shadow cabinet have once again triumphed, they have come up with a wonderful plan to help those hardworking families that they care so much about, they are now offering inheritence tax on two million pound homes to be abolished, thats bound to make a big difference to the lower paid , dont you think?

54 frank-castle

I am talking about a Nationalised or 'not for profit' electricity generation companies not concentrated on making short term decisions for the benefit of shareholder profit. like building then cheap Gas fired power stations now expensive gas fired power stations. Everybody knew north sea gas was going to run out.

Power generation, water companies and rail infrastructure are in my view unsuitable organisations to be in private ownership. As they are incapable of running and developing properly at a profit without public subsidy and don't really have any competition so the market is irrelevant. Why should the taxpayer subsidise shareholder profits?

I dare say you'll come back and say Labour have had 11 years to sort it out. I am not speaking for the Labour party. relevant comment though makes a change.

re: 60, grandantidote

I've missed your ludicrous comments grandantidote, but I must applaud you for having the courage to come on this blog. Since I last had the pleasure of reading your comments Labour have tumbled even lower in the public esteem, but at least it makes for a fascinating psychological study as to why their minions still support them. Would you like me to explain to you my theory as to why you do?

at no.6 yes we can all have a march demand a general election and elect who?

It's time for us all to create a proper 21st century democratic system.

In the short term we should build a few coal fired power stations and deal with the emissions as best we can. We can start mining our own coal again.
This will give us breathing space to develop alternatives; nuclear and green renewable.

Oh! and we should leave the EU asap, we can then follow our own policies and regulations.

@61, dhwilkinson

Doesn't matter if the business was not-for-profit or not, wholesale energy prices have increased - and those costs have to be passed on to the end user in some form regardless of who is running the business.

So I ask again, how does your nationalized business magically defeat the increase in wholesale costs? If a nationalized gas or oil supplier has to pay twice as much for gas or oil now as last year, how exactly will they refrain from doubling peoples bills?

Initial prices *may* have been lower (although public sector costs are generally greater than private sector ones, even when including fat cat wages, so thats not guaranteed at all), so I strongly suspect that after the wholesale increases, consumer prices wouldn't be vastly different from today.

More to the point, if one nationalized entity (Northern Rock) is handing out repossession orders, what makes you think a nationalized energy company would be any friendlier to the consumer? Especially since the poorer end are hardly vote-winners (thats reserved for Mondeo Man and his ilk)

I'd also add it'd the UK government that had been warned for *decades* they didn't have enough gas storage and did nothing, the European governments that tied gas to oil prices (via nationalized bodies no less!) which is why gas prices are increasing at their current rates - and yes, Labour have had 11 years to come up with an energy policy that would've insulated us from this.

So much for government control - it's what got us in this mess in the first place.

The only possible benefit of a nationalized energy system would be to protect the vulnerable by moving their costs over to the higher paid. Which means the middle class, the ones who are now starting to lose their jobs and seeing their mortgage payments go through the roof, whilst their property starts to depreciate... Not much cash there anymore I'm afraid. Plenty of votes to lose though.

Would the Tories have done better? Probably not, although I suspect they'd have at least fixed the energy problems out of innate hawkish behaviour, so leading to lower costs.

a simple solution is to ensure that the generation and retail portions of the business are owned and operated independently.

65 frank castle

I am talking about Generation not the selling to the public. The providers were originally seperate from the Generators.

I was clearly talking about the fact that we are now dependant on Gas to generate electricity which is running out because of the Thatcherite obsession with Privatisation and the markets that went into areas it shouldn't. Some things the Rail, Water and power Generation(infrastructure)should have not been privatised maybe the not for profit option used by Network Rail so all profits and subsidy are used by the business for RESEARCH and DEVELOPMENT into clean coal and alternatives and maintaining of those less profitable Clean coal stations for energy security rather than going for the then easy cheap option of Gas to provide big bonuses for shareholders.

Why privatise the Rail network when you wouldn't think of privatising the Roads?

Its a different point of view that people outside the perpetually angry BBC forum land sometimes have.

Original thought doesn't seem to be welcome here.

@67, dhwilkinson

And how would nationalized generation have protected us? Do you honestly think a nationalized industry would have made different choices?

British Energy is primarily owned by the government, and yet has made similar choices to the more private industries.

When our energy production was nationalized, we still made the same errors.

Given capitalism and democracy are isometric philosophies, for your idea to work we'd have to abandon our current freedoms and political system for one insulated from popular response.

As for your original thought comment, it's somewhat ironic as Thatcherite policy was an original thought, whereas you speak of ideas from an old protectionist era.

Might want to drop the hubris and take off the hair shirt, they're quite unflattering.

62 ptpp, I must say that having my comments dubbed ludicrous by some one such as you, who is intellectually bereft of anything sensible to say other than your pathetic ramblings which you purport to be poems and or anecdotes is really insulting.

There are many on these blogs from who I perhaps could accept that kind of comment but from you with your incessant idiotic diatribe which probable bores pretty well every body probably even your fellow conspirators on here then that is difficult but I guess I have no alternative but to try.

I can promise you that I have missed your comments on here with a large measure of relief but the holiday is over now so I guess that I will if I wish to remain on these blogs have to put up with your nonsense.

If you can first explain to me why you think that you are amusing and even more so how you think that your attempts at poetry
are in the slightest bit clever and then perhaps you could tell us all what great policies that you think Dave and George have come up with that makes you support them.

Then you can explain to me in your rather biased and inimitable way your thoughts on why people support Labour.

68 frank castle

Your are becoming very boring. Please either look back at what I have said several times on here. or go back to campaigning for smarmie Dave and chums. Ill provide a summary for you.

British Leyland, british shipbuilding, British Telecom etc= good to privatise as they are commercial enterprises.

Railtrack, Water, Power Generation= Bad to privatise they are Infrastructure and should not make any profit as they require a lot of investment and are monopolies.
I have suggested the Alternative of the model that is now 'Network Rail' where all profits and subsidy go into the Rail Network. All payment from the retail arm should go into Research and development and funding loss making power stations for energy security. I think that's clear I'm sorry if you don't but that's it.

I have already said that labour followed this Thatcherist Ideology because I am not campaigning for anything other than an End to our stale political system that is under the thumb of spoiled perpetually angry overpayed middle class curtain twitchers. Who probably usually surrounded by yes men judging by the way anyone with a different point of view is treated on here. Oh no! Im catching an angry virus from this site. Thats a first a computer Virus that has mutated to infect Humans.

re: 69

A lengthy comment for you grandy, but perhaps your time would've been better spent making a point rather than indulging in 'idiotic diatribe'--- the very same thing you accuse me of. No matter, I expect hypocrisy from bloggers like yourself who toe the party line with such enthusiasm.

There's one thing as silly, you see,
As the lies of a Labour MP:
Your comments --- they're full
Of the usual bull
And Nu-Labour hypocrisy!

The gullible who espouse the theory of man induced global warming should be made to pay for the huge increase in REAL energy costs. Windmills and the like are only ‘viable’ because they are greatly subsidised. Spain has also ruined its countryside with windmills and now requires to burn more fossil fuels. The ‘green mafia’ and the government knew this before they started blighting our countryside and blowing (excuse the pun) our money on windmills, good one !

The great unwashed who will no doubt swoop on any building of any new power station and hysterically claim, “the end is nigh”, will also be found disrupting any progressive development e.g. a new road. If these jokers break the law, gaol them.

I, like most others tolerate these green freaks and are mildly amused by them, but now that it has started to cost real money and threaten our energy security I think the public may become hostile to these narrow minded people.

I have only recently started to read this blog, but without meaning to sound rude- which I try not to be, or stupid- which some may think I am- just what is Charles E Hedwidge on!!!????

re: 73

It's intentional winding-up, known as trolling.

#51 is so bang on. It needs sticking to Gordon Brown's desk so he can't forget about it.

What I can't understand is why it has been allowed to get into this state. Yes people don't like power stations being built so they are unpopular with the politicians who wish to be elected. But surely Blair/Campbell at the height of their popularity, huge opinion poll leads, with a huge Parliamentary majority and brilliant at spin could have made the unpopular decisions without real electorial damage?

Wasn't that an important part of their job? They could have as many energy reviews as they like but ultimately Blair should have taken the decisions and made them happen. The same applies to Major and Thatcher before him. After all they all wanted the job.

But their failure to make it happen leaves us in a poor position just as the world economy is going into possible Depression.

An oil price spike of $147 a barrel may not have been predictable but that it would go up and that North Sea oil and gas would decline was obvious. As a problem for Britain the energy gap, I believe, is in the same league as the credit crunch.

The only possible light is that Gordon Brown appears to be aware of its importance. In a much under reported speech recently (Nick probably sat through it) Gordon Brown set out the problems showing he had an understanding of them. Alastair Darling wrote the forward to the last energy review so he also knows. So the government is not ignorant of the problem.

But Britain needs decisions now. Yes they are difficult ones but its time to show true leadership. Labour are going to lose the next election anyway so they need not worry about popularity, or even donations from vested interests.

The big question is does Gordon Brown have it in him? Can he cut through all the contradictory advice, lobbies, vested interests and threats, red herrings, labour party funding problems and deliver true leadership? Can he put genuinely put the economic interests of Britain ahead of his short term reputation with the green lobby? Can he find the strength to ignore climate change targets which everyone knows we are going to miss anyway? Forcing through fossil fuel power stations takes political courage. Unfortunately the evidence is against him being a strong leader.

I think his long term reputation would be enhanced if he could deliver that leadership.

Winding up the people you need to make it happen (the energy companies) with threats of extra taxes is unlikely to be a positive move.

Today the price of a sack of coal where I live in Scotland,mined locally,has risen to 9 quid,up from 6.50 a year ago and a fiver 2 years back. This is sheer unmitigated greed by the privatised mine company.I could understand maybe a pound extra to cover the extra fuel costs involved in digging the stuff out and delivering it but this is way beyond that. Linking the price of all energy to a volatile oil market was a strange decision,presumably governments gave in after pressure from the producers.

The only way to deal with rank profiteering like this is to tax it out of existance. There is a huge cartel going on with energy prices in the UK and I have heard the executives reasons and excuses why windfall taxes would be such a bad idea,but in the end one comes to the conclusions that the prospect of their huge bonuses are blunting their rationality.

The only solution for this is a windfall tax now,price controls or renationalisation of UK energy sources. This nonsense has to be snipped at the bud.

#20 said 'fortunately for us, those clever people at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have just recently cracked the problem of storing solar energy during the daytime to be released at night for heating and lighting etc'

If this development really works it is important for all of us as it potentially hugely increases the potential of sloar power, but it was hardly reported at all. A link to the MIT website on the subject is

https://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

73 and 74
74
"...what is Charles E Hedwidge on!!!????"

Not angry pills like most people commenting here.

Power_to the people

re: 73

It's intentional winding-up, known as trolling

Thats rich coming from you. You didn't want to say that, you wanted to say he's a fellow troller. That's if he is. You are though.

@70, dhwilkinson

Given you appear to accuse anyone who disagrees with you as being a Tory, and indulge in childish ad hominem attacks, spare me the crucifiction speech.

As for your network rail idea, as a rail user I can say it's a busted flush - and given how much investment is required in energy production would lead to permanently high energy prices. Many ideas sound good, alas when you do the math, not so much

80 frank-castle

I keep having to reply to you because I say something. and you come back angrily and replying that I said something slightly different that suites your little right wing black and white Socialist/'decent hard working law abiding' point of view making me sound like I was a late 70s socialist. quite a lot of you do that. Its quite annoying. Your little game is boring me now so it ends here.

frank-castle wrote:
"...As for your network rail idea, as a rail user I can say it's a busted flush - and given how much investment is required in energy production would lead to permanently high energy prices."

It is still a business but has no shareholders. All profits and subsidies go into the business there are no shareholders to pay. Its the same as now, with no shareholder profits and the company can make a loss when investment is needed. That is how I think It should have been done. Whether it is possible now I doubt.

The Damage for the short term financial gain of the last Conservative government has been done. Less saving for a rainy day, more selling of the family silver. We may now be suffering the consequences. The essential infrastructure companies should not have been privatised for people to make profits. as they can't make profits its impossible. They need too much investment. That is my view.

nick,
energy companies are constantly reminding us that the hugh profits are needed in order to replace old infrastructure.

the uk has regulators for all public utilities. why have we waited until now to decide to invest in new plant and other forms of energy, didn't we know that we were running out of gas and oil and so would become more dependant on imports.

more interesting is that if we are successful in cutting our energy consumption in our homes and businesses by 30% then would all the new infrastructure be required.

but just in case we do the energy companies have increased their prices for gas above 30% so can rest easy that revenues will still increase and shareholders will benefit with double digit increases in dividends and senior executives salaries and bonuses.