Electricity is making Dickensian Britain real again. Sometimes you read a headline that you have to read twice just to comprehend: “Courts waved through applications by energy firms to forcibly install prepayment meters in people’s homes”. Prepaid electricity meters? Forcibly installed? Wait, let’s back up. Newsflash: Britain has prepaid meters for electricity. I used to have one in my rented apartment. I had to take the electric key and top it up at the local supermarket. And if I forgot, I was plunged into darkness. Once it happened when I was on the phone to a friend at night and everything died in the middle of the conversation. I had to stumble in the dark to find the key to the electrical box outside and then press a button which gave me an extra £2.00/$2.50 worth of electricity until I could top it up again at the supermarket, and the walk of shame having to buy electricity over the counter. Asking to top up electricity at the supermarket was like being 16 again asking to buy a condom: I mumbled it just loud enough for the cashier to hear but low enough so the others standing in line couldn’t hear…
Energy firms have been force-fitting electricity meters - debt agents sent by the energy companies were smashing down doors of vulnerable people’s homes, some disabled it turned out and force fitted electricity meters. Sometimes in unsociable hours at night. These are people who are so poor they are forced to eat or heat, missed a bill, and the utility companies sent the heavies around to install a pre-paid meter. It must be a hangover from the sadistic medieval times…like Henry VIII feasting on roast beef, busy siring an heir to the throne whilst chopping his wives’ heads off and burning Catholics. The modern day equivalent is UK electricity companies gorging themselves on profits from the energy crisis and government subsidies whilst screwing the working poor for nothing more than spite. There’s something uniquely other-worldly about ram-raiding the poor to fit pay-as-you-go energy meters to fund the hoarding of the fat cats…like a 70’s dystopian B movie…
And the British working class are not just poor, they are fucking poor: the UK has a GDP per capita equivalent to the poorest state in the US – Mississippi. There are more food banks in the UK than McDonalds’ outlets; let that sink in. Deprivation - people living in households with income below 60% of the median – primarily live in the north of England that has gotten so bad after 13 years of Tory rule that deprivation in the north of England has now fallen to the level it was in former GDR. Again, let that sink in. Imagine if downtown Oakland was in Labrador …although at least the North of England has sports teams…
The International Monetary Fund has said that British households have been the worst hit in western Europe in the energy crisis because of its high dependence on gas. The UK uses gas for generating about 40% of its electricity and for heating 85% of its homes. And British houses are amongst the least energy-efficient in Europe. My theory for why British housing stock is so shitty is because British construction workers have this ritual of getting shitfaced in the pub after work. Every evening. Not just construction workers, but especially construction workers. Hard to sink a 10” nail on a hangover or get the levels right on those windows when you’re seeing blurry. But god bless ‘em, they’ve been keeping the economy going during the cost of living crisis. In fact, getting shitfaced in the pub is like the old Victory Gardens during WII: it’s the only thing getting the economy through the current cost of living crisis.
Over 10 years ago the Conservative government was advised to invest in storage capacity for strategic oil reserves, like the US has, you know, to smooth out the peaks and troughs of energy prices. ‘We can’t be bothered’ was the Tories’ response, so they didn’t. So when the Ukraine war hit, the Brits had to buy oil on the spot market paying top dollar. They were competing against countries that have sovereign wealth funds that could afford it….
During the free-market fundamentalism of the Thatcher-Reagan years, the government sold the publicly owned family silver and privatized the gas and electricity companies. Where did the proceeds of that and money from North Sea oil go? Oil producing countries like Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia have sovereign wealth funds funded from their oil production to help fill the state coffers for pensions and stuff. The UK? Nope. Seems all those petro-dollars seeped into private hands. And now the country is broke...if you’re not in the inner capitalist circle; if you are, there’s plenty of money, just not for you & me.
The UK is so broke the Royal Navy can’t afford to participate in upcoming NATO exercises, due to a recruitment crisis and lack of equipment. One of the main reasons potential recruits are put off joining is the decrepit state of accommodation for soldiers. Britannia that used to ‘rule the waves’ is so broke it can’t even field a team for NATO exercises. The British military is like a water boy at the end of the bench of Team US-centric Military Empire. When are they going to replace UK’s seat on the UN with a highchair? Or maybe just have its UN representative sit on Uncle Sam’s lap…?
And here’s the irony. The free-market fundamentalist Tories refuse to bring into public ownership the main national energy company because that’s ‘socialism’. But they allow a ‘socialist’ energy company 100% owned by the French government – EDF – to be one of the largest energy providers in the UK, not to mention build its flag ship next generation nuclear reactor. Go figure. That EDF built nuclear reactor - financed by the Chinese by the way (the UK government is broke remember?) has as much chance of ever being built due to cost overruns and a broken financial model as the 3rd runway at Heathrow airport - never happened. Or the high speed railway from London to the North of England - never happened. Why the UK is so shit at public projects may be a topic for next time. (Spoiler alert: Fail to plan, plan to fail.) The major exception to this is deaths and corporations of the royal family; when it comes to the lucky sperm club they excel.
Électricité de France (EDF) is my energy provider, it took over my energy provider during the energy crisis. Technically, 31 energy companies went bust during the energy crisis, but I’d call it 32: Bulb Energy, with 1.7 million customers, was placed in ‘Special Administration’; that’s management-speak for going bust in my book. The few energy companies left standing like the ‘socialist’ EDF were paid by the UK taxpayer to take over the undercapitalized energy providers. Yes, millions of energy customers became dependent on the market regulator, OFGEM, to pay new suppliers to take them. “Enshittification” was once coined to describe the way that social media platforms like Facebook decay; it’s an apt description of the UK energy market too…
Privatised British Gas, now called Centrica, announced this week, despite increasing debtors due to households not able to pay their energy bill for 2024: Analysts are forecasting profits of around £747mn at the household supply business, a sharp recovery from £72mn in 2022. Over a 100%+ increase in profit all going to shareholders, whilst the working poor freeze-the modern day version of Cool Britannia.
OFGEM is the energy regulator in the UK. It has one job – to regulate the energy market. During the era of ‘light touch’ and the revolving door of OFGEM employees and energy company directorates OFGEM allowed under-capitalized energy companies into the market. They collapsed when they didn’t have the cash to pay for the rising cost of gas. And guess who’s paying for that bailout of those companies on top of enormous energy bills? The outsider capitalist UK taxpayers. The insider capitalists don’t pay either any tax or severely reduced rates of tax due to offshore tax ‘vehicles’. Have you noticed how many UK ‘dependents’ countries in the Caribbean are tax havens? Not a co-incidence. Just yesterday it was announced the billionaire Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and prize fighter for the financial and corporate elite paid a tax rate of 23% on £2.2m income last year; I pay 45%. Folk like me who don’t have tickets to ride these tax-avoiding vehicles have to shoulder the institutionalised racketeering of a sock-puppet regulator and political class. One thing Anglo-America has in common, in the immortal words of perhaps the only moral billionaire alive:
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
q--- Warren Buffett
God save the Buffett!
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