There’s no chance of cutting bills while the private sector runs the UK energy market – All that the energy giants are interested in is profit. Public ownership – as in France – is the only answer

38 comments

  1. Comparing mostly nuclear EDF to Centrica, a gas company, makes no sense.

    The grid should be nationalised though.

  2. But isn’t the price increase due to the common energy market? So even if nationalized the price increase would still be an issue? Also as far as I’m aware France capped the prices by subsidising EDF.

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    I’m not against nationalizing energy companies, but in this case it would do nothing it seems to alleviate the costs for customers here.

  3. Agreed 100%
    Companies are made to make money. Unfortunately when you have money making machines in charge of what are essentials people suffer in the name of the profit

  6. not only are they ‘interested’ in profit, but in fact that’s their responsibility to shareholders, so wanting them to change out of the goodness of their hearts isn’t really possible, without commercial justification.

  8. While i agree that they should be public owned, i don’t know how much that would improve things with the current lot in charge.

  9. If a single or very few companies have control of the market for a critical resource, it makes perfect sense for them to cartel, induce shortages intentionally and then charge more for the power they do provide. After all, they make more money overall with higher margins and less work.

  10. It boils down to what a country feels is a social utility and whether there should be a right to it. Is healthcare a social utility? Is power a social utility?

    It then ceases to be about profit to an extent, but more about sustainability. But that may well be anathema to the modern British state.

  11. A big problem is that we have a government that steps in to reduce the risk of energy companies making a loss but does little to protect the public.

    There also appears to be no limit on the charges that companies can impose on customers.

    Both of these things are within the power of the UK Government to control without needing to nationalise.

    I’m not opposed to nationalisation, but the problem here isn’t private ownership: it’s the way it’s done.

  12. No business that is an intrinsic part of how society is run should be a private for profit entity. Public ownership that reinvests profits back into the infrastructure is the only way this should be.

  13. All vital services, should be publicly owned. Run as a business with profits being put back into the country rather than shareholders.

  14. Yes! Lets nationalise the Energy sector because they only want profit! Yuck!

    You can make this very argument about every single commercial enterprise. Think about that for a second.

  15. Nationalise transmission sure, but keeping generation and retail private is fine IMO. These companies are highly regulated anyway so a lot of the same goals can be achieved by better rate setting from Ofgem without public ownership – energy market liberalisation has arguably been a net positive and there’s a reason why this has been an explicit goal of the EU. Most of the underlying issues aren’t related to nationalisation/privatisation, and many of them can be addressed by using existing regulatory tools better.

  16. We used to own a lot of companies. British Gas, British Telecom (BT) and the railways. There’s probably more that we’re sold off by Maggie Thatcher that I can’t remember. I was only little at the time.

  18. A lot of our energy comes from gas still. A renationalised British Gas would still have to buy that gas on global markets.

    I used to work with a chap who had spent the first half of his career working at the nationalised British Gas in its training organisation. He told me several times how wonderful it was. Training courses at luxury resort hotels. “Personal development” grants to do courses nothing to do with work. All of this stopped when it was privatised. Not once did he ever mention gas customers.

    My father used to work for British Rail Board and some years they turned a profit. The shareholder (Department of Transport) took this modest profit and spent it on roads.

    Nationalised industries being run for the population’s benefit and reinvesting in themselves are myths.

  19. I think all essential infrastructure should be publicly owned. How can foreign nations own our power plants?

    And don’t get me started on the water companies monopoly. I understand private ownership encourages competition but how do I change my water company?

  20. The problem was when the companies were in public ownership they were starved of investment

    The chancellor had a choice, effectively steal the profits of the public utilities and not put up taxes or allow them to invest and put up taxes. They didn’t put up taxes.

    There needed to be a lot of investment due to decades of underinvestment, so that would either mean large scale public borrowing or sell it off get some money and let (force) the private sector to do all the investment.

  21. Can’t see many other ways out of this mess. And even then, it wouldn’t solve everything.

    But It’s not as if employers are going to give everyone a massive salary increase. Most small businesses are hurting too.

  23. The author does well to put “natural monopolies” in quotation marks; perhaps he even knew that the National Grid was only formed via expropriation.

  24. I’m sorry but i can’t agree to this, this is sleepwalking into a stalinist state run by the far left socialists of the Labour party. How am I expected to survive if i can’t siphon money to my mates?!

  27. Water and energy should 100% be nationalised.

    I’d almost say internet counts as a critical infrastructure these days too, there should be a basic state internet service provided for free. So many things require internet access these days and it’s only going to get worse as companies and the government cut back on physical locations.

  28. Suppliers don’t make large profits, producers do at the moment.

    Worth noting that French power is mostly nuclear too which hasn’t been as affected.

  29. The private sector are literally subsidizing your bills right now. You want to drop that and have the tax payer do it instead? Or just not bother? Neither sounds good to me.

  31. From The Guardian, who did their best to ensure Jeremy Corbyn would not be prime minister, comes an innovative idea that Jeremy Corbyn had in his manifesto. Is this irony? Or just plain hypocrisy?

  32. Reducing corruption, not bring publically owned, is the solution.
    And we know the only people more corrupt than business folk is governmental representatives.

  33. France also has amazingly green energy thanks to nuclear, making Germany look like fools with their Russian gas green energy lol

  34. Torys received 60m in funding from energy/gas/oil related companies since they came to power in 2010.

    A further £11m since Johnson was elected.

    Torys won’t do anything to control the sector, let alone a windfall tax. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

  35. Standing by for shouts from fucktards along the lines of “Socialist hell!”, and “Might have well elected Corbyn”

    Etc…

    I often wish I could play Monopoly against tories. It must be a piece of piss to win. Once they’ve sold off all the railways and utility companies, followed by all the property in Mayfair to Russians, it’d be a matter of one rent payment on Old Kent Road, and they’re out.

  37. People really need to understand the difference between providers and suppliers.

    Suppliers barely make a profit per customer. Iirc it’s less than £15 per customer annually. British Gas have just basically fired and rehired their engineers and cut their wages substantially whilst increasing hours.

    Totally different to the likes of BP making £xbillions profit per month.

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