Gas price hikes enrage residents (From Echo)

You have to remember Maggie Thatcher's lot sold off British Gas which we as British taxpayers owned. It is now owned a private company which happens to be French. Does anybody really think they will be bothered about the British freezing to death. They are there purely to make a profit. The only way the prices can be capped is if British Gas was nationalised again which this lot in Government certainly won't be doing

All the energy companies are as bad as one another.
Laws could, indeed, be passed to ensure profits are directly linked with actual wholesale price and not what the company wants to charge. If the average wholesale price falls during a fixed period (April to April, say) bills must reduce by that amount for the following year. Any price rises must be inline with or below inflation and only imposed yearly.
Energy companies are not like any other company because they have a direct influence on how we live (or die). We have no choice but to use them. For this reason, I believe Governments can, and should, put strict controls on them. Every human deserves to be warm and have food in their bellies. However, energy companies are increasingly denying people the ability to keep warm by charging their extortionate prices, just to keep the fat cats happy. I use "extortionate" in the strict sense of the word.

But for my £69 monthly S/O to British Gas I get a warm house, hot water for the shower and something to cook on. By comparison my £123 per month in Council Tax (soon to be a bit more) gets me...umm....??

They make £50 profit per customer, less than £1 a week. Hardly extortion. Put another jumper on.

GrumpyofLeigh wrote:
But for my £69 monthly S/O to British Gas I get a warm house, hot water for the shower and something to cook on. By comparison my £123 per month in Council Tax (soon to be a bit more) gets me...umm....??

£69 is fine if you can afford it. Surely that is not for both gas AND electricity. We pay about that for gas alone.
More and more people are finding themselves in fuel poverty because of increasingly lower incomes and increasing fuel prices. More poor people, especially the elderly, are having to make choices that people in a modern, first world, society should not have to. Eat or freeze? And all because the energy companies only care about their fat cat shareholders and fat cat management. They should be made to care about the appalling situations they cause the poor and vunerable and the Government (whichever flavour are in power) need to make sure this happens and put the people of this land first rather than allowing the these energy comapnies get away with this extortion.

No, thats gas alone. But its a payment I make out of choice and feel I get value out of it. But its barely half what Southend Council takes from me - where I have no choice - and provides me with very little.
Just trying to add a bit of context.

emcee wrote:

GrumpyofLeigh wrote:
But for my £69 monthly S/O to British Gas I get a warm house, hot water for the shower and something to cook on. By comparison my £123 per month in Council Tax (soon to be a bit more) gets me...umm....??

£69 is fine if you can afford it. Surely that is not for both gas AND electricity. We pay about that for gas alone.
More and more people are finding themselves in fuel poverty because of increasingly lower incomes and increasing fuel prices. More poor people, especially the elderly, are having to make choices that people in a modern, first world, society should not have to. Eat or freeze? And all because the energy companies only care about their fat cat shareholders and fat cat management. They should be made to care about the appalling situations they cause the poor and vunerable and the Government (whichever flavour are in power) need to make sure this happens and put the people of this land first rather than allowing the these energy comapnies get away with this extortion.

Don't use british gas then.
Compare the market dot com. Lots of good deals.
Simples!

I'm happy with BG. Sadly Comparethemarket. com doesn't extend to a choice of a cheaper council (yeah, move then, I know...)

GrumpyofLeigh wrote:
No, thats gas alone. But its a payment I make out of choice and feel I get value out of it. But its barely half what Southend Council takes from me - where I have no choice - and provides me with very little.
Just trying to add a bit of context.

Agreed, you have to pay your CT (no profits allowed, by the way) but at least you can have some say on, or perhaps influence, how your money is spent, whether it be by lobbying your councillor, voting a council in or out and you can even stand as a councillor yourself. You can even ensure they are, indeed, carrying out the tasks that they say are spending your money on and that they are spending the money correctly. Councils also have caps on what they can charge their residents. None of this applies to energy companies, unless you have limited powers as a shareholder.
Your council tax allows you to live in a community that has street cleaning and refuse collection, a police force, a fire brigade, eductaion, a miriad of other local services and amenities. It tries to provide a clean and safe environment for you to live in. As with all taxes it is compulsory. Energy bills are not compulsory but to enable us to be part of a modern society and be able to keep warm and cook
food in our own homes we MUST pay our energy bills, we have no choice.
However, having said all that we could all choose to go and live in a tent on the moors, on boat, become travellers or go and live in a shanty town in some third world country. That way we would not need to pay either the energy companies or CT. :o)

But the existence of competition does provide SOME pressure on the energy companies to remain...what?...wit
hin bounds. But where is the REAL comparison at local Govt level when you cannot get a fag paper between the parties?
I accept fully that the whole point of local taxation is to socialise costs and, thereby, provide services for the greater good which cannot be done individually but when do we get ANY input to say "yes, I'm happy to chip in for that" and "no, just stop doing it"?

Gas is a business, and having shares in the company, I must say, well done, after all not much increasing the tariff in the summer, and for those moaners, try comparing with the price of electricity.

If you vote tory you can't complain about sky high energy prices. They are the direct result of Tory privatisation.

Shoebury_Cyclist wrote:
If you vote tory you can't complain about sky high energy prices. They are the direct result of Tory privatisation.

I think part of the price rises might be due to the increasing wholesale price of gas.
If it was still run as a government department then the cost would be even higher, as they'd still have to buy the gas at the same price but there would be several extra layers of bureaucracy to pay for. Governments of all colours are good at that, keeping staff they don't need and paying over the odds for works on the gas mains.
Think yourself lucky, things could be much worse.

emcee wrote:
All the energy companies are as bad as one another.
Laws could, indeed, be passed to ensure profits are directly linked with actual wholesale price and not what the company wants to charge. If the average wholesale price falls during a fixed period (April to April, say) bills must reduce by that amount for the following year. Any price rises must be inline with or below inflation and only imposed yearly.
Energy companies are not like any other company because they have a direct influence on how we live (or die). We have no choice but to use them. For this reason, I believe Governments can, and should, put strict controls on them. Every human deserves to be warm and have food in their bellies. However, energy companies are increasingly denying people the ability to keep warm by charging their extortionate prices, just to keep the fat cats happy. I use "extortionate" in the strict sense of the word.

you pays your money you take your choice. clearly you expect the taxpayer to pick up the tab for your energy consumption which is obviously considerable. the irony is communists consume more because they don't pay for what they use.

Nebs wrote:

Shoebury_Cyclist wrote:
If you vote tory you can't complain about sky high energy prices. They are the direct result of Tory privatisation.

I think part of the price rises might be due to the increasing wholesale price of gas.
If it was still run as a government department then the cost would be even higher, as they'd still have to buy the gas at the same price but there would be several extra layers of bureaucracy to pay for. Governments of all colours are good at that, keeping staff they don't need and paying over the odds for works on the gas mains.
Think yourself lucky, things could be much worse.

you neglect the fact that he expects taxpayer subsidies to fill the gap. there are zero, repeat zero examples in history when anything was run better in the public sector than the private sector but that horsemeat still has to be flogged. birdseye beefburgers all round?

If enough customers moved suppliers !!!

I hate British Gas. I have just moved to a place supplied by them, It was my priority to get rid of them to another supplier. I had a run-in with them many years back that left me without gas for six years. I won in the end. My father had a service contract with them. About a month after the service was done, the boiler would not light. I checked it out myself and found that the pipe to the pilot light was lose and leaking, also the burners had not been secured to the boiler. I will never deal with them again. It is shoddy workmanship and greed. We should all change supplier and watch them squirm.