Statements By Certain Politicians About Electricity Prices Irrelevant & Misleading

[Briar]

I am offering this new topic here rather than on that other place, because the Lady Jane recently deleted my new topic, and because I think it desirable to keep POC's Board alive if at all possible, rather than see all hs hard work being laid to waste.

 

Certain politicians, from both the main parties, have made statements and "promises"  (which, their being politicians, we all should know by now they will never keep!) concerning the price of electricity (and gas) to homes in the UK following the privatization (or as I prefer, the more accurate description of Piratization!) of these utilities.  Two serious matters that are the causes of the ridiculously high prices the poor consumers are forced to pay for electricity have been totally ignored.

 

The first matter that was ignored was the FACT that where electricity has been generated using oil or gas in power stations, the majority of the price charged for the fuel is in fact taxes imposed by the British Goverment.  We could all have prices reduced by nearly a half, if the greedy government would just stop taxing us so heavily !

 

The second matter concerns the behaviour of those running those piratized companies, who discovered quite quickly that they could achieve far bigger gains for their companies and the shareholders if they concentrated more on the wonderful games companies can play, with takeovers, selloffs, and so on.  Thus, for example, the Scottish Hydro-Electric Co. Ltd sold out to Southern Eelectricity Ltd., winning a handome payoff to the shareholders and the management.  Southern Electricty is, I am informed, since acquired by a French company.  So, in addition to the price to the consumer having to be higher in order to produce a modest return to shareholders, as against when a public utility it merely had to earn enough to stay solvent, the added costs of all the take-over games have had to be paid for by the poor consumers.

 

There is only one way to stop this:  De-Piratization of Utilities !

 

No, you can't do that!  That is Socialism !  I hear the cries from certain quarters !

 

I am all in favour of there being private companies selling products and services and making an honest and fair profit from so doing.  However, I think that basic necessities for all members of a society need to be provided by the society as a common duty.  As yet, we do not have private roads built and being paid for by us having to pay for a ticket at a barrier every few miles along it, like the French have done, though doubtless there will be people in the CON-Servative camp who even now are plotting how they will squeeze more profit out of us all by doing just that.  We don't have private firms running the Police Forces, yet (though a nototious private security firm are managing taking prisoners to and from Courts, escorting rejected immigrants to planes taking them back where they came from, and tried, unsuccessfully, to run security for the Olympic Games in London (in the end the Army had to step in and take over!). 

 

I suppose one could imagine a country that had private police firms, private armies, private courts, even a privately-owned, for profit company doing the Legislature, but few would want to live in it !