Poor Casualties of the new Cold War

Fron The Sunday Express, 25th October 2009.

THE second biggest power supplier in Britain is due to announce bumper profits next month.
Scottish and Southern Energy, which has nine million customers, has already forecast that pretax profits for the six months to the end of September will be significantly higher than last year’s £303million.
Speculation is rife that the company could announce profits for the period of nearly £600million. But with average annual household energy bills standing at £1,239 after a 42 per cent rise last year, any rise will enrage consumers.
Power suppliers, many of them foreign owned, say they need to make money to invest in new infrastructure but price comparison website uswitch.com believes there is plenty of scope for another price cut.
Uswitch.com said household bills have fallen by only four per cent from last year’s high, despite energy on the wholesale market being relatively cheap all year. Experts at energy consultancy McKinnon & Clarke have branded the situation “scandalous” and say that the energy companies have a stranglehold on the market.