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Am guessing lots of movement in the ground due to soil drying out. Our patio that was laid last year has opened up in many places as the ground below has dried up, cracked and moved around. You can imagine the damage this would do to old clay pipes.
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So Gove was at Athens International airport last night: https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/15/michael-gove-confronted-by-anti-brexit-holidaymaker-delayed-by-30-hours-17189042/
And Johnson was spotted at Nea Makri, a few km away the day before.
Burying the hatchet for some Project Trojan Horse reverse coup?
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Energy costs for gas and power in the wholesale markets are much higher for the years to come than they were before the crisis - we’re facing higher bills for years. If this scheme is structured so that, if prices fall quicker than expected, the windfall profits are used to wind up the scheme quicker at less cost to the taxpayer, then I think it would be a good one.
NB the government can borrow cheaper than the private sector, so government funding would make this scheme overall cheaper for taxpayers.
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So allowing the banks AND energy companies to generate profits off increased prices is the way to go? Allowing the energy companies to fail is the cheapest way of renationalising the entire system (without buying out the energy companies) so it can be run as an essential service at cost
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But my reading of this scheme would be privately backed between the banks and the energy companies with a government backed security of the loans. So no risk to the banks and guaranteed profits for all except the government.
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Yep. This ongoing fallacy that privately run = competent and efficient vs state control = wasteful and inefficient is pretty much dead in the water now. Or at least it should be.
Absolutely no argument against bringing essential services under government control. Water, Gas, Electric, Trains and Buses.
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Allowing the energy companies to fail is the cheapest way of renationalising the entire system (without buying out the energy companies) so it can be run as an essential service at cost
You have to be a bit more specific when you say "energy companies". My point was about the pure suppliers (Bulb, Octopus etc) that don't actually own any power stations. These are not valuable companies (have barely turned a profit in the last decade) and are of minimal value for the government to own.
The owners of power stations are at zero risk of failure... you can always turn it off if you aren't allowed to sell energy above your marginal cost to produce.
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Lol, thats what anyone sensible would do, instead we have spent £2bn+ of our money keeping Bulb on life support
Within the constraints of a Tory government who are arguing for stronger market forces to improve our living standards, I think the proposal to allow end users to spread the cost of the current high prices over a longer period with a government backed loan is a pragmatic solution
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Yes, you are correct, just taking customers from the retail suppliers is only one part of the solution.
I'm sure there are many different models, but when most people talk about re-nationalising the energy companies, they are talking about the producers and the infrastructure. So power stations, etc.
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They could of nationalised it, instead the Government are left holding a business that no one want's to buy but stuck pumping money in to hold it in zombie mode, Government rules also mean Bulb aren't allowed to hedge currently so they are now even less attractive to buy and are costing the tax payer more than they should to administer
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Government rules also mean Bulb aren't allowed to hedge currently so they are now even less attractive to buy and are costing the tax payer more than they should to administer
To be honest, I think that government's policy on hedging is pretty sensible and has avoided them getting ripped off by bankers peddling exotic financial products. One of the fundamental attractions of government ownership of volatile assets is that they have an enormous balance sheet and can handle these risks.
Of course, it's easy to get the crystal ball out in hindsight and say that they should have predicted a set of circumstances. But if it was all so predictable, who would have sold you the insurance?
Like insurance, financial hedging incurs costs in circumstances where the government may in principle be able to bear the risks and could usually do so more cheaply. It is also important to bear in mind that there are some risks that only the government can bear, and that these may be impossible to hedge at tolerable cost
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Guess this would of come out sooner but british worker was too lazy to upload it
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I assume she was referring to the UK having some of the lowest worker productivity in Western Europe but spinning it as needing to work harder rather than a result of the fact that everything is fucking crumbling and people are dealing with surviving rather than prospering.
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Just looked it up. Only Portugal and (mostly southern) Italy have lower PPP adjusted wages than the UK in Western Europe. When you take into consideration the state of everything else in the country is it any wonder people aren't finding the energy to work their arses off? That and eye-watering childcare and virtually no eldercare...
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@Platini
What is the use in that? A bankrupt energy supplier (e.g. Bulb) is of zero value, probably deeply negative if you honour long-term fixed tariffs properly. It's not like you would transfer any productive generation assets to the State.