The price of power and who foots the bill for Britain's rocketing energy costs took centre stage yesterday as the oil giants Shell and BP unveiled huge combined profits of £7.2bn, made in just three months, and consumers were hit with a new round of steep rises in prices from gas and electricity to air travel. Npower, Britain's fourth largest domestic power supplier, signalled the start of what experts said will be another round of price increases in gas and electricity after it abolished its cheapest online dual fuel tariff and raised charges for new internet customers by up to 20 per cent. Industry analysts expect all energy bills to rise by another 20 to 25 per cent by next spring, pushing another one million Britons into fuel poverty. The hike was just one of several being absorbed by consumers yesterday, ranging from an increase of up to £30 per return flight in the fuel surcharge paid by British Airways' passengers, to petrol pump prices now averaging 109p per litre of unleaded fuel. One forecourt in Kent was charging 129p per litre.
The price of power and who foots the bill for Britain's rocketing energy costs took centre stage yesterday as the oil giants Shell and BP unveiled huge combined profits of £7.2bn, made in just three months, and consumers were hit with a new round of steep rises in prices from gas and electricity to air travel.
Npower, Britain's fourth largest domestic power supplier, signalled the start of what experts said will be another round of price increases in gas and electricity after it abolished its cheapest online dual fuel tariff and raised charges for new internet customers by up to 20 per cent. Industry analysts expect all energy bills to rise by another 20 to 25 per cent by next spring, pushing another one million Britons into fuel poverty.
The hike was just one of several being absorbed by consumers yesterday, ranging from an increase of up to £30 per return flight in the fuel surcharge paid by British Airways' passengers, to petrol pump prices now averaging 109p per litre of unleaded fuel. One forecourt in Kent was charging 129p per litre.
i admit that even though i was already intellectually persuaded of this (by all the diaries and discussions on the topic here, plus the California electricity deregulation debacle), the stark contrast between Britain and Europe at this particular moment really drove it home for me.
is there a way to use Helen's Helen's letter to the Guardian as a foot in the door to enlighten the English-reading public about the realities of market-based versus more state-managed energy policies? i know you all have been shouting from the roof-tops about this forever, but here is a particularly good window of opportunity to really change minds among the public who is directly affected, and harmed, by these bad policies.
kool-aid is very hard to wring out, but these days look fine ones for some serious laundry. A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
But it's not very good at dealing with a situation of structural undersupply, where you need to rely primarily on imports, which in turn require specific infrastructure, at least physical and usually also political, and the long term relationships and contracts that implies.
For which you need public bodies. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
