Tories Confirm That High Energy Bills Are Their Policy
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necessary, according to the Conservative Party.
The remarkable claim that the sky-high bills, which are crippling
households across Britain and which are the primary cause of the ever-
increasing inflation rate, was made by Tory energy spokesman Charles
Hendry at his party conference.
Ignoring the fact that the primary reason for the high bills is the
Tory-initiated policy of privatising the energy suppliers, after years
of Tory-managed neglect of those institutions, Hendry went on to claim
that the “pain of huge gas and electricity bills were not as bad as
lights going out up and down the country.”
Asked whether power firms are conning customers by bumping up bills to
rake in enormous profits, he told a fringe meeting at the Tory
conference: “Are they ripping off the public? That is very emotive
language. And I think what we are seeing at the moment is prices going
up for reasons which are structural.”
“Are they making too much profit? These are the companies which we are
asking to invest billions of pounds in the energy infrastructure of
our country. If they don’t, the lights are going to go out.”
“And so what we are concerned about at the moment in terms of price
rises will completely pale into insignificance when we start getting
power shortages in 2014 or 2015.”
In other words, Tory policy is simple: let the ordinary consumers, who
paid tax to set up the energy supply installations in the first place,
pay inflated prices for international companies to whom these
institutions have been sold — so that they can make billions in
profit, and invest a few million back.
Such is the despicable logic of the Tory party, which still represents
international big business interests, which put profit before the
people of Britain.
The solution to the energy supply crisis is simple, and is BNP policy:
these installations must be put back under state control, as they were
for decades before the Tory and Labour parties sold them off to their
‘friends’ at knockdown prices, and then they must be run on a non-
profit basis to supply the bedrock for true free enterprise to
flourish in Britain.
Needless to say, the greedy, short-sighted Tory comments infuriated
pensioners’ groups who accused power firms of ‘taking advantage’ of
vulnerable customers by forcing them to choose between heating and
eating.
A series of price rises has seen annual fuel bills for the average
British family increase from £1,000 to £1,400. Age Concern director
general Gordon Lishman admitted energy companies had hiked bills in
response to increases in oil prices.
At the same time Britain’s ‘Big Six’ energy firms are paying record
dividends to shareholders — paying out a staggering £1.6 billion last
year, an increase of nearly 20 percent.
E.On senior executive Mark Owen-Lloyd sparked fury among hard-pressed
households by joking that continued high gas and electricity prices
would mean “more money for us.” The firm — which paid out £240 million
worth of dividends in 2007, after paying nothing in 2006 — was forced
to apologise.
New figures show that inflation reached 4.7% last month, thanks in the
main to soaring utility bills which saw double-digit rises. The
figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the
rises in energy tariffs sent the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) up 0.3%
from July’s figure of 4.4%.
Nearly all of the increase in the official rate of inflation was due
to rising energy costs, with electricity prices up by 18% year on year
and gas rocketing by 27.7%, the ONS said.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/2008/10/tories-confirm-that-high-energy-bills-are-their-policy/