this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
18 points (95.0% liked)

UK Politics

3103 readers
278 users here now

General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jai1 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are you on about. I just provides you with 4 quotes from the ONS, which by the way has the same appointment process as OFGEM.

You think a bunch more bankruptcies in energy providers would have been better for the consumer? Did you forget what happened with Bulb.

18 months for what?

[–] Syldon 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sigh, your figures from the last 3 months have no merit. We still have an inflation issue. And people are paying more for their bills now than they were 3 months ago. The reduction has just been announced by suppliers. Now I had an £80 rise last month and that has been dropped to £40 next month. That is still an extra cost. Deflation is when costs are reduced. We do not have deflation regards energy, except in how much suppliers have to pay for it.

Increasing interest rates is not going to solve anything other than make the economy worse. The issue is due to supply restrictions. how exactly have these been resolved?

They have not. Go listen to the last Question Time with a supplier telling you exactly this. Listen to the many economists who are shouting about how bad this policy is. The government have back healed the problem as a BoE issue. It is not, the BoE cannot remove restrictions to supply. The BoE cannot impose price restriction on the likes of shell and co. Who btw are Tory donors. The supply issues are expected to go even more out of control when we introduce actual border checks for the first time since leaving the EU. They will balloon even more again when the EU introduces biometric checks.

As for energy suppliers going bankrupt, it is not the end of the world. They are just middlemen and nothing more. Wales have already said they will set up their own energy company. But because of OFGEM imposing penalties on new companies offering a cheaper alternative, that means we will have to pay the old company compensation for taking their business (unless they introduce freeze pricing until the time limitation runs out). Bulb however does not exist anymore it is now owned by octopus. We are paying even more to France for our energy.

OFGEM is not independent. It is a non ministerial dept under direct supervision of government. This is why Christine Farnish resigned last year. And also why Sunak imposed energy caps by a statement to the house. The ONS does have some independence, but they work to guidance set by government. This government has blocked more FOI requests than any other government since FOI was introduced.

As for the 18 months. That is the longest this bunch of scumbags can stay in power. The abuse they can reap is near its end. Thankfully.

[–] Jai1 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have no idea what you are talking about. It was Truss that brought in the energy caps and it required a vote in the house.

What matters with the inflation situation is what is happening now not what happened one year ago. Because that tells you what is changing now. If inflation goes to zero it doesn’t mean price are going down it means they stop rising. The aim is to reduce the rate at which prices are going up, to do that you have to look at what is still causing inflation in recent months.

If energy suppliers go bankrupt is a big deal. It cost the government multiple billions because Bulb went bankrupt that money doesn’t come from nowhere. Some of the additional costs in bills was due to that bankruptcy as the money is recovered via the standing charges.

You have a mistaken impression that I think this government is good, I don’t, I look forward to the day they are out. But I don’t spout absolute bollocks as a way to attack them. And I especially don’t do that by attacking agencies which do a lot of protect consumers.

[–] Syldon 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The idea that any government dept is independent is ludicrous. They work under the guidance of government. This means they can never be independent. The board is even appointed by government, and we know how corrupt these shithouses are.

Inflation is still happening now, and energy costs are part of that issue. They are not deflationary as you stated. It only cost the government billions for bulb because they choose to do so.

Anyone can set up an energy firm. As I have already said Wales have said they are going to do this as a nonprofit organisation. We as a country would have had no liabilities to the cost of bulb going under until after we bought it out. Octopus went on to make a killing on the sale of Bulb when it was taken back out of nationalisation.

I am not talking bollocks. Raising interest rates will have no effect on inflation. Something that many economists are also stating. Arguing against that and stating energy costs are going down is bollocks.

[–] Jai1 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bulb only cost billions because the government chose to make it cost billions? What world do you live in where a company with millions of customers going bankrupt costs nothing. You are the one arguing that we should have left all the energy suppliers to go bankrupt in 2022 and that would have somehow been better for consumers. Genuinely insane.

[–] Syldon 1 points 1 year ago

I never said let them go bankrupt. I said we had no liability until the government bought off them. And again you miss the point. Anyone can start an energy supplier. If one goes bankrupt then we would have to supply ourselves like we used to. That would mean the government doing some work.