The Daily Express reports:
PROTESTERS forced energy giant Centrica to shut its head office yesterday after storming it complaining of “rip-off” bills.
More than 50 members of environmental group Greenpeace blockaded the road leading to British Gas parent company’s offices in Windsor, Berkshire, using a 260 square foot spoof bill.
Five demonstrators locked themselves in and barricaded entrances with large bills printed onto sheets of wood. Hundreds of workers were turned away.
Greenpeace said average bills rose £150 last year, £100 of which was due to rising gas prices. It accused Centrica of relying on “expensive, imported gas”.
Showing posts with label energy rip-offs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy rip-offs. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Sunday, July 31, 2011
British Gas shareholders receive bonus while customers suffer
The Daily Telegraph reports:
Centrica, which owns Britain’s biggest gas and electricity company, announced profits of £1.3 billion for the past six months, including £270 million for British Gas.
The company is going ahead with a 12 per cent rise in payouts to shareholders, despite the price rise for its energy customers.
Centrica said that the rise, which comes into force in the middle of next month, was vital for the company to make a profit in the second half of the year.
Nine million residential customers are preparing for an 18 per cent rise in gas prices and a 16 per cent rise in electricity prices.
The rise will add about £190 to the cost of customers’ average annual bills, which will now be £1,286.
More on this story here.
Centrica, which owns Britain’s biggest gas and electricity company, announced profits of £1.3 billion for the past six months, including £270 million for British Gas.
The company is going ahead with a 12 per cent rise in payouts to shareholders, despite the price rise for its energy customers.
Centrica said that the rise, which comes into force in the middle of next month, was vital for the company to make a profit in the second half of the year.
Nine million residential customers are preparing for an 18 per cent rise in gas prices and a 16 per cent rise in electricity prices.
The rise will add about £190 to the cost of customers’ average annual bills, which will now be £1,286.
More on this story here.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Neil Clark: It's time to renationalise British Gas
You can hear Neil Clark, co-founder of the CPO, make the case for renationalisation of Britain’s energy companies on the Emma Britton Show on BBC Radio Somerset.
The discussion comes at 32 minutes into the programme of Tuesday 12th July.
The discussion comes at 32 minutes into the programme of Tuesday 12th July.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Scottish Power to raise gas bills by 19%
The Guardian reports:
Household budgets face further pressure after a leading energy company said it was raising gas bills by 19%.
Scottish Power, which will also raise electricity tariffs by 10%, said it would add 48p to the average daily combined gas and electricity bills of its 2.4 million customers, an extra cost of £175 a year.
You can read the whole report here.
More on this story here.
Household budgets face further pressure after a leading energy company said it was raising gas bills by 19%.
Scottish Power, which will also raise electricity tariffs by 10%, said it would add 48p to the average daily combined gas and electricity bills of its 2.4 million customers, an extra cost of £175 a year.
You can read the whole report here.
More on this story here.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Cold Comfort Britain: British Gas announces 24% rise in profits
The BBC reports:
Operating profits at British Gas rose 24% in 2010 to £742m, its parent company Centrica has said.
The news comes two months after the UK utility announced a 7% rise in domestic energy bills, which it blamed on rising wholesale prices.
British Gas said it had increased its number of customers by 267,000 during the year to 16 million.
The results helped Centrica to achieve pre-tax profits of £2.8bn, with operating profits up 29% to £2.4bn.....
The 24% rise in British Gas's operating profit was largely because of an increase in profit per customer, with the number of customers up just 1.7%, as revealed in the group results of its parent Centrica.
Operating profits at British Gas rose 24% in 2010 to £742m, its parent company Centrica has said.
The news comes two months after the UK utility announced a 7% rise in domestic energy bills, which it blamed on rising wholesale prices.
British Gas said it had increased its number of customers by 267,000 during the year to 16 million.
The results helped Centrica to achieve pre-tax profits of £2.8bn, with operating profits up 29% to £2.4bn.....
The 24% rise in British Gas's operating profit was largely because of an increase in profit per customer, with the number of customers up just 1.7%, as revealed in the group results of its parent Centrica.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Privatised energy firms face gas and electricity price review
The BBC reports:
Ofgem is to investigate recent energy price rises, as it says they have significantly widened suppliers' profit margins.
The watchdog said that the net profit margin of £65 per typical customer in September was now £90, a 38% rise.
The calculations take into account price rises announced by three of the "big six" suppliers in recent weeks.
The regulator said it was asking if "companies are playing it straight with consumers" after the latest figures showed a 38% rise in profit margins from the typical dual-fuel customer in the last three months
Ofgem is to investigate recent energy price rises, as it says they have significantly widened suppliers' profit margins.
The watchdog said that the net profit margin of £65 per typical customer in September was now £90, a 38% rise.
The calculations take into account price rises announced by three of the "big six" suppliers in recent weeks.
The regulator said it was asking if "companies are playing it straight with consumers" after the latest figures showed a 38% rise in profit margins from the typical dual-fuel customer in the last three months
Monday, November 22, 2010
Neil Clark: Paying the cost of Britain's Greedy Firms
This article by CPO co-founder Neil Clark appears in the Sunday Express
DID you think Britain was an expensive enough country to live in?
If so, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. Over the next few weeks things are going to get a whole lot worse… Take energy prices. On December 1, Scottish and Southern Energy, Britain’s second biggest supplier, is raising gas prices by 9.4 per cent. Ten days later British Gas is putting up its gas and electricity rates by seven per cent.
Household bills will go even higher from January 1 as VAT rises to 20per cent. Just what we need to get the New Year off to a good start.
....Then there’s train fares. Britain’s railways are already the most expensive in Europe and fares will rise again by as much as 10.8 per cent on some commuter routes from January.
Far from being a helpless bystander, there’s much the Government could do to alleviate the situation.
Regarding the railways and the utilities, the best solution would be to bring them back into public ownership. With no shareholder dividends to be paid, prices could be reduced to the European average, bringing relief to long-suffering commuters.
In Belgium, where railways are still owned by the state, fares are up to 20 times cheaper than in Britain. At weekends, prices actually drop by 50 per cent, making it easier for friends and families to visit each other.
Railways are a natural monopoly and it is much better for consumers if they are in public ownership.
You can read the whole article here.
DID you think Britain was an expensive enough country to live in?
If so, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. Over the next few weeks things are going to get a whole lot worse… Take energy prices. On December 1, Scottish and Southern Energy, Britain’s second biggest supplier, is raising gas prices by 9.4 per cent. Ten days later British Gas is putting up its gas and electricity rates by seven per cent.
Household bills will go even higher from January 1 as VAT rises to 20per cent. Just what we need to get the New Year off to a good start.
....Then there’s train fares. Britain’s railways are already the most expensive in Europe and fares will rise again by as much as 10.8 per cent on some commuter routes from January.
Far from being a helpless bystander, there’s much the Government could do to alleviate the situation.
Regarding the railways and the utilities, the best solution would be to bring them back into public ownership. With no shareholder dividends to be paid, prices could be reduced to the European average, bringing relief to long-suffering commuters.
In Belgium, where railways are still owned by the state, fares are up to 20 times cheaper than in Britain. At weekends, prices actually drop by 50 per cent, making it easier for friends and families to visit each other.
Railways are a natural monopoly and it is much better for consumers if they are in public ownership.
You can read the whole article here.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Privatised British Gas hikes gas and electricity prices by 7%
The Guardian reports:
British Gas today announced it is putting its prices up by 7% for both gas and electricity from 10 December, making it the second major energy supplier to raise its prices in recent weeks.
It is estimated the increase in standard and variable tariffs will affect around 8 million customers, with the price increases adding £53 to annual gas bills and £29 to electricity bills.
Adam Scorer, director of external affairs at Consumer Focus, said: "British Gas and other suppliers respond to forward energy prices, and that will be their argument that price rises are needed. However, wholesale prices are around half of their peak in 2008, and yet in the same period customer's prices were cut by less than 10%.
"Consumers will feel that suppliers didn't make cuts when conditions allowed it, but are covering their profit margins as wholesale prices nudge up. At a time when there are reports of a gas glut it seems that consumers take on all the risk in this market."
British Gas today announced it is putting its prices up by 7% for both gas and electricity from 10 December, making it the second major energy supplier to raise its prices in recent weeks.
It is estimated the increase in standard and variable tariffs will affect around 8 million customers, with the price increases adding £53 to annual gas bills and £29 to electricity bills.
Adam Scorer, director of external affairs at Consumer Focus, said: "British Gas and other suppliers respond to forward energy prices, and that will be their argument that price rises are needed. However, wholesale prices are around half of their peak in 2008, and yet in the same period customer's prices were cut by less than 10%.
"Consumers will feel that suppliers didn't make cuts when conditions allowed it, but are covering their profit margins as wholesale prices nudge up. At a time when there are reports of a gas glut it seems that consumers take on all the risk in this market."
Friday, August 6, 2010
Neil Clark: Open Wide for Public Service Destruction
This column by CPO co-founder Neil Clark appears in the Morning Star.
NEIL CLARK examines the coalition government's plans to carry on the backdoor firesale of our assets.
July 6 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of the great Welsh socialist Aneurin Bevan, the father of the NHS.
Just six days after the anniversary, Tory Health Minister Andrew Lansley announced radical government plans which, if carried out, will mark the end of Bevan's great, humane creation in all but name.
The extent of the reforms, which allow all hospitals to leave public ownership as well as scrapping primary health care trusts and the revenue cap on private patients, shocked many political observers. They were a clear breach of Lansley's own pre-election pledge not to introduce any major structural reform of the NHS.
But those who appreciate that the "progressive" Con-Dem government bats for capital and not for the ordinary British people would not have been surprised in the least.
In January, the Daily Telegraph revealed that Lansley, then shadow health secretary, had received £21,000 for the running of his private office from private equity tycoon John Nash, chairman of Care UK and several other health companies.
In company documents Nash, who also gave the Tories £60,000 in September 2009, enthused over "recent policy statements by the opposition Conservative Party in the UK which have substantially strengthened their commitment to more open market reform to allow new providers of NHS services and for greater freedom for patients to choose their GP and hospital provider."
For privateers like Nash the trouble with Labour was that after the fall of Tony Blair the "open market reform" of the NHS was proceeding too slowly.
Now Nash and his fellow private healthcare providers have got the fast-track "reforming" government they want. But for pro-privatisation politicians like Lansley there remains a problem.
Despite the relentless propaganda of neoliberal think tanks and NHS-bashing columns by right-wing writers such as Janet Daley, Simon Heffer and Richard Littlejohn, the NHS remains an enormously popular institution. It's loved not just by socialists and social democrats, but by Conservative voters too.
If the government announced that the NHS was to be privatised en bloc there'd be a huge public outcry. So Lansley needs to present his reforms as "liberating" the NHS and achieve privatisation through the backdoor.
The government is clearly using the destruction of NHS dentistry as its model.
From the 1990s onwards, private dental chains started buying up NHS practices and converting them to private-only practices. The value of private dentistry grew from £289m in 1994-95 to just under £2bn in 2001-2. And costs for treatments soared - on average private treatments are four times more expensive than those offered on the NHS.
Millions of Britons, unable to pay the higher costs and without an NHS practice in their area, simply stopped going to the dentist altogether. As a result tooth decay, mouth cancer and other oral diseases rose sharply.
As I highlighted in the New Statesman in 2003, "A predominantly private dental service inevitably means a two-tier service: good mouths and gleaming smiles for the rich; disease, tooth decay and emergency extraction dentistry for the rest."
What we are heading for if the coalition gets its way is a predominantly private health service. As in dentistry, that will mean a two-tier service - good health and prompt treatment for the rich, longer waiting times and a second-class service for the rest.
How Nye Bevan must be turning in his grave.
Transport failure
Back in the 1980s, a group of fanatical neoliberals calling themselves the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) called for the deregulation of Britain's bus industry and the privatisation of the state-owned National Bus Company. The government listened to their advice and today Britain has the most expensive buses in Europe.
A decade later the same group of fanatical neoliberals called for the privatisation of British Rail. Despite the warnings of wise old anti-Thatcherite Tories such as Sir Ian Gilmour, who thought privatising the rail network was "crazy," John Major's government listened to their advice and sold off the railways.
The result? Britain has the most fragmented and expensive railway system in Europe, if not the entire world.
You'd have thought that given their disastrous track record - no pun intended - the ASI would by now have done the honourable thing and disappeared from public life.
Not a bit of it. The group is still active today - and still coming out with "free market" claptrap. Their latest proposal is for the TV licence fee to be abolished and the BBC to instead become a voluntary subscription service. Such a move would, the institute argues, encourage the BBC "to compete with the big US studios."
Well I don't know about you, dear reader, but I don't want the BBC to "compete with the big US studios." I only want the state-owned broadcaster to continue to produce the good-quality programmes it has done for years.
Implementation of the earlier "crazy" ASI ideas led to the destruction of the National Bus Company and British Rail. Let's make sure it doesn't claim a third scalp with the BBC.
Energy rip-off
"Why does NO-ONE step in and do something about these big companies robbing customers. I struggle with my gas especially when it's cold and it really at times has been a choice between being warm and buying food/paying other bills etc ... it's criminal and something really should be done about it," wrote a commenter on the Daily Mirror's website.
They were responding to news that British Gas had almost doubled its profits to £583m in the first six months of 2010.
Public anger with the corporate profiteers is certainly growing. It will continue to grow as living standards for the majority fall, due to the government's swingeing cuts in public spending. More and more people are waking up to the fact that the battle is not between the middle and working classes, but between a small gang of corporate profiteers and everyone else.
This gang of profiteers is screwing all of us and it will continue to do so until we make a clean break with neoliberalism and bring back into public ownership all the assets which have been privatised in the last 30 years.
NEIL CLARK examines the coalition government's plans to carry on the backdoor firesale of our assets.
July 6 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of the great Welsh socialist Aneurin Bevan, the father of the NHS.
Just six days after the anniversary, Tory Health Minister Andrew Lansley announced radical government plans which, if carried out, will mark the end of Bevan's great, humane creation in all but name.
The extent of the reforms, which allow all hospitals to leave public ownership as well as scrapping primary health care trusts and the revenue cap on private patients, shocked many political observers. They were a clear breach of Lansley's own pre-election pledge not to introduce any major structural reform of the NHS.
But those who appreciate that the "progressive" Con-Dem government bats for capital and not for the ordinary British people would not have been surprised in the least.
In January, the Daily Telegraph revealed that Lansley, then shadow health secretary, had received £21,000 for the running of his private office from private equity tycoon John Nash, chairman of Care UK and several other health companies.
In company documents Nash, who also gave the Tories £60,000 in September 2009, enthused over "recent policy statements by the opposition Conservative Party in the UK which have substantially strengthened their commitment to more open market reform to allow new providers of NHS services and for greater freedom for patients to choose their GP and hospital provider."
For privateers like Nash the trouble with Labour was that after the fall of Tony Blair the "open market reform" of the NHS was proceeding too slowly.
Now Nash and his fellow private healthcare providers have got the fast-track "reforming" government they want. But for pro-privatisation politicians like Lansley there remains a problem.
Despite the relentless propaganda of neoliberal think tanks and NHS-bashing columns by right-wing writers such as Janet Daley, Simon Heffer and Richard Littlejohn, the NHS remains an enormously popular institution. It's loved not just by socialists and social democrats, but by Conservative voters too.
If the government announced that the NHS was to be privatised en bloc there'd be a huge public outcry. So Lansley needs to present his reforms as "liberating" the NHS and achieve privatisation through the backdoor.
The government is clearly using the destruction of NHS dentistry as its model.
From the 1990s onwards, private dental chains started buying up NHS practices and converting them to private-only practices. The value of private dentistry grew from £289m in 1994-95 to just under £2bn in 2001-2. And costs for treatments soared - on average private treatments are four times more expensive than those offered on the NHS.
Millions of Britons, unable to pay the higher costs and without an NHS practice in their area, simply stopped going to the dentist altogether. As a result tooth decay, mouth cancer and other oral diseases rose sharply.
As I highlighted in the New Statesman in 2003, "A predominantly private dental service inevitably means a two-tier service: good mouths and gleaming smiles for the rich; disease, tooth decay and emergency extraction dentistry for the rest."
What we are heading for if the coalition gets its way is a predominantly private health service. As in dentistry, that will mean a two-tier service - good health and prompt treatment for the rich, longer waiting times and a second-class service for the rest.
How Nye Bevan must be turning in his grave.
Transport failure
Back in the 1980s, a group of fanatical neoliberals calling themselves the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) called for the deregulation of Britain's bus industry and the privatisation of the state-owned National Bus Company. The government listened to their advice and today Britain has the most expensive buses in Europe.
A decade later the same group of fanatical neoliberals called for the privatisation of British Rail. Despite the warnings of wise old anti-Thatcherite Tories such as Sir Ian Gilmour, who thought privatising the rail network was "crazy," John Major's government listened to their advice and sold off the railways.
The result? Britain has the most fragmented and expensive railway system in Europe, if not the entire world.
You'd have thought that given their disastrous track record - no pun intended - the ASI would by now have done the honourable thing and disappeared from public life.
Not a bit of it. The group is still active today - and still coming out with "free market" claptrap. Their latest proposal is for the TV licence fee to be abolished and the BBC to instead become a voluntary subscription service. Such a move would, the institute argues, encourage the BBC "to compete with the big US studios."
Well I don't know about you, dear reader, but I don't want the BBC to "compete with the big US studios." I only want the state-owned broadcaster to continue to produce the good-quality programmes it has done for years.
Implementation of the earlier "crazy" ASI ideas led to the destruction of the National Bus Company and British Rail. Let's make sure it doesn't claim a third scalp with the BBC.
Energy rip-off
"Why does NO-ONE step in and do something about these big companies robbing customers. I struggle with my gas especially when it's cold and it really at times has been a choice between being warm and buying food/paying other bills etc ... it's criminal and something really should be done about it," wrote a commenter on the Daily Mirror's website.
They were responding to news that British Gas had almost doubled its profits to £583m in the first six months of 2010.
Public anger with the corporate profiteers is certainly growing. It will continue to grow as living standards for the majority fall, due to the government's swingeing cuts in public spending. More and more people are waking up to the fact that the battle is not between the middle and working classes, but between a small gang of corporate profiteers and everyone else.
This gang of profiteers is screwing all of us and it will continue to do so until we make a clean break with neoliberalism and bring back into public ownership all the assets which have been privatised in the last 30 years.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
British Gas profits rocket by 98%
From The Daily Mail:
Profits at British Gas have almost doubled after the firm cashed in from a bitterly cold winter that left millions struggling to pay for heat and light.
News that the company made £585million in the first six months of the year has triggered outrage among customers.
The figure was up 98 per cent on the same period last year and helped its parent company, Centrica, boost profits by 65 per cent to 1.56billion.
British Gas and other power suppliers cashed in last year after they failed to pass on the full benefit of a sharp fall in the wholesale price of gas and electricity.
Profits at British Gas have almost doubled after the firm cashed in from a bitterly cold winter that left millions struggling to pay for heat and light.
News that the company made £585million in the first six months of the year has triggered outrage among customers.
The figure was up 98 per cent on the same period last year and helped its parent company, Centrica, boost profits by 65 per cent to 1.56billion.
British Gas and other power suppliers cashed in last year after they failed to pass on the full benefit of a sharp fall in the wholesale price of gas and electricity.
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Final Chapter for Libraries?
This column on public ownership, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears in the Morning Star.
The NHS is a great example of socialism in action. Public libraries are another. The idea of a place where all members of the community can go to borrow books which are communally owned is a quite wonderful one and totally at odds with neoliberal ideology, which prefers private - and not public - provision.
This is probably why, in this age of neoliberalism, public libraries in Britain are under grave threat.
A new report by the Valuation Office Agency showed that Britain has lost nearly 200 public libraries since 1997.
The number of books available to be borrowed has fallen dramatically - by 13 million in the period 2003-9. And worse could be to come, with swingeing cutbacks in local government spending likely to reduce the library service still further.
Part of the problem with the decline in libraries is that a new generation of people, brought up in an age obsessed with private ownership, prefer to buy books from bookshops rather than borrow them free of charge from their local library.
In 1979, by contrast, two-and-a-half times as many books were loaned by libraries than were bought at bookshops.
It's revealing that older people - brought up in a more collectivist era - use public libraries much more than younger Britons whose formative years were in an acquisitive society where private ownership became our country's new religion.
To reverse the decline in public libraries, therefore, we don't just have to increase spending on them. We need to change the whole ethos of our society to one where people once again relish sharing communally owned goods.
Hoping for change in Germany
One of the most disappointing political events of the last year in western Europe was the return to government in Germany, after an 11-year absence, of the fanatically pro-big business Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The FDP, a partner in the current Christian Democrat (CDU)-led coalition, favours massive cuts in public spending, cuts in the top rate of income tax and further privatisation.
The new German government has stated its intention to proceed with a partial privatisation of the country's state-owned railway Deutsche Bahn.
But the good news is that the plan has met opposition from within the government itself.
Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer - a member of the Christian Social Union party, the Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel's CDU - said he was not prepared to "squander economic assets" and blamed privatisation plans for the deterioration in services on the Deutsche Bahn-owned S-Bahn in Berlin.
The battle going on within the German government is one between fanatical neoliberals - the FDP - and the more moderate conservative protectors of the Rhineland model.
Let's hope the latter, with help from unions and the German left, can defeat the former and keep Germany's excellent publicly owned railway on track. And let's hope too that the stay in government of the extremist FDP is extremely short-lived.
Tackling the real problem in the NHS
The script is a familiar one. Before a state-owned enterprise is privatised, it is necessary to convince the public that the enterprise in question is failing to deliver the goods and is in urgent need of "reform."
That's what happened in the 1990s with British Rail. And it's what's happening today with the NHS.
Anti-NHS propagandists have made great capital out of a recent report on the failures at Stafford hospital, where at least 400 patients were held to have died due to substandard conditions and care in the period between 2005-8.
But as Unite's national officer for health David Fleming has pointed out, Stafford's problems were not caused by public ownership but by the obsession with what he describes as the "target-obsessed privatisation culture."
Stafford hospital was run by the Mid-Staffordshire Foundation Trust. The Department of Health claims that foundation trusts are "at the cutting edge of the government's commitment to the decentralisation of public services" - which is neoliberal-speak for "they are a great back-door way to achieve privatisation of the NHS."
With their commercialised, profit-obsessed approach - and their £180k chief executives - foundation trusts are inimical to the very ethos of Nye Bevan's NHS.
Last month it was revealed that Royal Surrey County NHS Foundation Trust made a profit of over £300,000 in one year by selling abroad £4m of drugs intended for use in Britain.
The best way to make sure that the deaths at Stafford are not repeated is to scrap foundation trusts and restore the NHS to its original, 1940s socialist ideals, where the needs of patients are put before profits. And that also means bringing all ancillary services, such as cleaning and catering, back in-house.
End the annual energy profits charade
It's become an annual event. Britain's privatised energy companies announce enormous profits having failed to pass on the reduced price of gas to consumers.
Cue harsh criticism from Ofgem and expressions of shock and outrage from politicians and media commentators.
Meanwhile things carry on as before, with the privatised companies continuing to fleece the public.
The one thing that will put an end to this annual charade is the measure that none of our three major parties, still wedded to Thatcherite dogma, will even contemplate - the renationalisation of Britain's entire energy sector.
Public limited companies will always put the interests of shareholders before the interests of the general public. If we want the interests of the public to come before profits, we must have public ownership. It really is as simple as that.
The NHS is a great example of socialism in action. Public libraries are another. The idea of a place where all members of the community can go to borrow books which are communally owned is a quite wonderful one and totally at odds with neoliberal ideology, which prefers private - and not public - provision.
This is probably why, in this age of neoliberalism, public libraries in Britain are under grave threat.
A new report by the Valuation Office Agency showed that Britain has lost nearly 200 public libraries since 1997.
The number of books available to be borrowed has fallen dramatically - by 13 million in the period 2003-9. And worse could be to come, with swingeing cutbacks in local government spending likely to reduce the library service still further.
Part of the problem with the decline in libraries is that a new generation of people, brought up in an age obsessed with private ownership, prefer to buy books from bookshops rather than borrow them free of charge from their local library.
In 1979, by contrast, two-and-a-half times as many books were loaned by libraries than were bought at bookshops.
It's revealing that older people - brought up in a more collectivist era - use public libraries much more than younger Britons whose formative years were in an acquisitive society where private ownership became our country's new religion.
To reverse the decline in public libraries, therefore, we don't just have to increase spending on them. We need to change the whole ethos of our society to one where people once again relish sharing communally owned goods.
Hoping for change in Germany
One of the most disappointing political events of the last year in western Europe was the return to government in Germany, after an 11-year absence, of the fanatically pro-big business Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The FDP, a partner in the current Christian Democrat (CDU)-led coalition, favours massive cuts in public spending, cuts in the top rate of income tax and further privatisation.
The new German government has stated its intention to proceed with a partial privatisation of the country's state-owned railway Deutsche Bahn.
But the good news is that the plan has met opposition from within the government itself.
Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer - a member of the Christian Social Union party, the Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel's CDU - said he was not prepared to "squander economic assets" and blamed privatisation plans for the deterioration in services on the Deutsche Bahn-owned S-Bahn in Berlin.
The battle going on within the German government is one between fanatical neoliberals - the FDP - and the more moderate conservative protectors of the Rhineland model.
Let's hope the latter, with help from unions and the German left, can defeat the former and keep Germany's excellent publicly owned railway on track. And let's hope too that the stay in government of the extremist FDP is extremely short-lived.
Tackling the real problem in the NHS
The script is a familiar one. Before a state-owned enterprise is privatised, it is necessary to convince the public that the enterprise in question is failing to deliver the goods and is in urgent need of "reform."
That's what happened in the 1990s with British Rail. And it's what's happening today with the NHS.
Anti-NHS propagandists have made great capital out of a recent report on the failures at Stafford hospital, where at least 400 patients were held to have died due to substandard conditions and care in the period between 2005-8.
But as Unite's national officer for health David Fleming has pointed out, Stafford's problems were not caused by public ownership but by the obsession with what he describes as the "target-obsessed privatisation culture."
Stafford hospital was run by the Mid-Staffordshire Foundation Trust. The Department of Health claims that foundation trusts are "at the cutting edge of the government's commitment to the decentralisation of public services" - which is neoliberal-speak for "they are a great back-door way to achieve privatisation of the NHS."
With their commercialised, profit-obsessed approach - and their £180k chief executives - foundation trusts are inimical to the very ethos of Nye Bevan's NHS.
Last month it was revealed that Royal Surrey County NHS Foundation Trust made a profit of over £300,000 in one year by selling abroad £4m of drugs intended for use in Britain.
The best way to make sure that the deaths at Stafford are not repeated is to scrap foundation trusts and restore the NHS to its original, 1940s socialist ideals, where the needs of patients are put before profits. And that also means bringing all ancillary services, such as cleaning and catering, back in-house.
End the annual energy profits charade
It's become an annual event. Britain's privatised energy companies announce enormous profits having failed to pass on the reduced price of gas to consumers.
Cue harsh criticism from Ofgem and expressions of shock and outrage from politicians and media commentators.
Meanwhile things carry on as before, with the privatised companies continuing to fleece the public.
The one thing that will put an end to this annual charade is the measure that none of our three major parties, still wedded to Thatcherite dogma, will even contemplate - the renationalisation of Britain's entire energy sector.
Public limited companies will always put the interests of shareholders before the interests of the general public. If we want the interests of the public to come before profits, we must have public ownership. It really is as simple as that.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Press Release on the obscene profiteering of Britain's energy companies
According to the new report from the energy regulator Ofgem, Britain’s privatised energy suppliers are making more than £100 out of every customer by refusing to cut bills during the record freeze.
They are now making an average profit of more than £105 a year from every dual-fuel customer.
The wholesale price of gas fell by around 60 per cent between 2008 and 2009. But suppliers chose not to cut customer tariffs before the winter - meaning a profit bonanza of £846 million a month.
The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.
The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That's what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain's long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.
They are now making an average profit of more than £105 a year from every dual-fuel customer.
The wholesale price of gas fell by around 60 per cent between 2008 and 2009. But suppliers chose not to cut customer tariffs before the winter - meaning a profit bonanza of £846 million a month.
The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.
The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That's what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain's long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The unfunny joke of energy policy
This column, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark was published in the Morning Star.
Writing in the Observer in 2004, Anthony Barnett told of a little game that the fanatically free-market minister Nigel Lawson used to play when he was energy secretary in the early 1980s.
Lawson would turn up at energy conferences to give speeches entitled "UK Energy Policy" and then proudly announce that the government didn't have an energy policy.
How very droll. What a great wit that Lawson was. Except that now nobody is laughing.
Britain faces a very real energy crisis - and it's a crisis which has been caused by adherence to free-market dogma.
In its recent report, the energy regulator Ofgem - previously so enthusiastic about the "liberalisation" of the energy market - warned that the free-market approach to energy which successive British governments have followed since the 1980s will leave us short of energy supplies by 2015.
Ofgem said that only increased state intervention - in the shape of a new state-controlled energy buyer to sell gas and electricity to consumers - would be able to keep the lights on.
But as welcome as Ofgem's report is, it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. Ofgem still envisages a future for our privatised energy companies.
But as long as energy companies remain privately owned, they will continue to profiteer at our expense and put their short-term profits ahead of Britain's longer-term energy concerns.
This winter, the coldest in Scotland since 1914 and the coldest in many other parts of Britain since 1981, the energy companies once again have shown their true colours.
The wholesale price of gas fell by around 60 per cent between 2008 and 2009. But suppliers chose not to cut customer tariffs before the winter - meaning a profit bonanza of £846 million a month.
Public ownership of the entire energy sector would not only mean lower bills, as there would be no shareholders' noses in the trough, but it would enable Britain to make sensible long-term plans regarding its energy policy for the future. Either that or we'd better make sure we're well stocked up on logs and candles.
This week marks the centenary of the comedian and singer Joyce Grenfell, one of Britain's best-loved entertainers.
Grenfell (right), whose aunt was Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman MP to sit in the House of Commons, had a privileged upper-class upbringing, but like so many, her political outlook changed in World War II.
"The more I see people brought up the easy way," she wrote, "the more I incline to socialism. Things will never - can never - be the same as they were before the war."
And things were not the same as they were before the war. A Labour government with public ownership high up on its agenda launched the greatest programme of nationalisation in this country's history.
There are legitimate criticisms to make of the way it went about things, not least the overgenerous compensation that was paid to the railway owners.
But by the end of its period in office the fact remains that around 20 per cent of the British economy was in public ownership.
That remained the case for almost 30 years, until the Thatcher government began its work of overturning the post-war settlement.
Ironically Thatcher came to power in 1979 - the year that Grenfell died.
I'm sure that if Grenfell returned to life today she would be horrified and saddened at how all the achievements of the post-war era have been destroyed.
They've sold off our energy, our transport, our airports and our natural resources.
Now it's time to flog off the few remaining ports that remain in public ownership.
The historic port of Dover is being earmarked for sale, with the Nord de Palais District Council in France reported as being the main bidder.
The News of the World revealed that the government is being advised by merchant bank NM Rothschild. A source at the investment bank said: "This is an exciting sale. Selling Dover to Calais is a very logical move as that is where most of the business is directed."
Well, selling Dover to Calais for £350m may be an "exciting sale" and "logical move" for merchant banks like NM Rothschild, which has made enormous fortunes from privatisation down the years, but for the rest of us it is a sign of how financial concerns trump all other considerations in modern Britain.
Dover is a port which has played a key role in British history. Its white cliffs are a symbol of our defiance against the nazis in World War II, but all that counts for nothing as far as the money men are concerned.
The big scandal is not that Dover is being sold to the French - as the prospective Tory candidate for the town Charles Elphicke seems to think - but that it is being sold at all. Ports are national strategic assets and should be nationally owned.
"The port should absolutely stay in British hands. It always has been and it should always be. It means so much to the boys who have sailed away from it and come back," said Dame Vera Lynn, forces sweetheart and singer of the classic The White Cliffs of Dover. Dame Vera is understandably incensed by news of the sale.
"How could they even think about selling it off? It is not right. Dover is part of England. It simply can't be part of anywhere else."
But for the global money men the whole idea of "national" ownership is anathema. All that matters to them is whether they can make a quick profit.
Writing in the Observer in 2004, Anthony Barnett told of a little game that the fanatically free-market minister Nigel Lawson used to play when he was energy secretary in the early 1980s.
Lawson would turn up at energy conferences to give speeches entitled "UK Energy Policy" and then proudly announce that the government didn't have an energy policy.
How very droll. What a great wit that Lawson was. Except that now nobody is laughing.
Britain faces a very real energy crisis - and it's a crisis which has been caused by adherence to free-market dogma.
In its recent report, the energy regulator Ofgem - previously so enthusiastic about the "liberalisation" of the energy market - warned that the free-market approach to energy which successive British governments have followed since the 1980s will leave us short of energy supplies by 2015.
Ofgem said that only increased state intervention - in the shape of a new state-controlled energy buyer to sell gas and electricity to consumers - would be able to keep the lights on.
But as welcome as Ofgem's report is, it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. Ofgem still envisages a future for our privatised energy companies.
But as long as energy companies remain privately owned, they will continue to profiteer at our expense and put their short-term profits ahead of Britain's longer-term energy concerns.
This winter, the coldest in Scotland since 1914 and the coldest in many other parts of Britain since 1981, the energy companies once again have shown their true colours.
The wholesale price of gas fell by around 60 per cent between 2008 and 2009. But suppliers chose not to cut customer tariffs before the winter - meaning a profit bonanza of £846 million a month.
Public ownership of the entire energy sector would not only mean lower bills, as there would be no shareholders' noses in the trough, but it would enable Britain to make sensible long-term plans regarding its energy policy for the future. Either that or we'd better make sure we're well stocked up on logs and candles.
This week marks the centenary of the comedian and singer Joyce Grenfell, one of Britain's best-loved entertainers.
Grenfell (right), whose aunt was Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman MP to sit in the House of Commons, had a privileged upper-class upbringing, but like so many, her political outlook changed in World War II.
"The more I see people brought up the easy way," she wrote, "the more I incline to socialism. Things will never - can never - be the same as they were before the war."
And things were not the same as they were before the war. A Labour government with public ownership high up on its agenda launched the greatest programme of nationalisation in this country's history.
There are legitimate criticisms to make of the way it went about things, not least the overgenerous compensation that was paid to the railway owners.
But by the end of its period in office the fact remains that around 20 per cent of the British economy was in public ownership.
That remained the case for almost 30 years, until the Thatcher government began its work of overturning the post-war settlement.
Ironically Thatcher came to power in 1979 - the year that Grenfell died.
I'm sure that if Grenfell returned to life today she would be horrified and saddened at how all the achievements of the post-war era have been destroyed.
They've sold off our energy, our transport, our airports and our natural resources.
Now it's time to flog off the few remaining ports that remain in public ownership.
The historic port of Dover is being earmarked for sale, with the Nord de Palais District Council in France reported as being the main bidder.
The News of the World revealed that the government is being advised by merchant bank NM Rothschild. A source at the investment bank said: "This is an exciting sale. Selling Dover to Calais is a very logical move as that is where most of the business is directed."
Well, selling Dover to Calais for £350m may be an "exciting sale" and "logical move" for merchant banks like NM Rothschild, which has made enormous fortunes from privatisation down the years, but for the rest of us it is a sign of how financial concerns trump all other considerations in modern Britain.
Dover is a port which has played a key role in British history. Its white cliffs are a symbol of our defiance against the nazis in World War II, but all that counts for nothing as far as the money men are concerned.
The big scandal is not that Dover is being sold to the French - as the prospective Tory candidate for the town Charles Elphicke seems to think - but that it is being sold at all. Ports are national strategic assets and should be nationally owned.
"The port should absolutely stay in British hands. It always has been and it should always be. It means so much to the boys who have sailed away from it and come back," said Dame Vera Lynn, forces sweetheart and singer of the classic The White Cliffs of Dover. Dame Vera is understandably incensed by news of the sale.
"How could they even think about selling it off? It is not right. Dover is part of England. It simply can't be part of anywhere else."
But for the global money men the whole idea of "national" ownership is anathema. All that matters to them is whether they can make a quick profit.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Families face shock 20% rise in heating bills as gas giants cash in on Big Freeze
The Daily Mail reports:
Families face record winter gas bills averaging £360 as power companies reap a huge windfall from the big freeze.
The 'big six' energy suppliers have refused to pass on a steep fall in wholesale prices to customers.
They are collecting a profit bonanza of £846million in a single month by charging over the odds to keep homes warm.
Householders have had no choice but to turn up the heat to cope with the coldest spell in 30 years, with snow and ice blanketing the entire country.
Domestic demand for gas over the last month is predicted to be 60 per cent higher than in a normal winter.
This increased consumption will result in average bills of £360 for the three-month period from November through to the end of January, compared with £300 a year ago.
Greedy suppliers decided to reduce the tariff to customers by less than 10 per cent - even though the wholesale price of gas came down by some 60 per cent between 2008 and 2009.
Families face record winter gas bills averaging £360 as power companies reap a huge windfall from the big freeze.
The 'big six' energy suppliers have refused to pass on a steep fall in wholesale prices to customers.
They are collecting a profit bonanza of £846million in a single month by charging over the odds to keep homes warm.
Householders have had no choice but to turn up the heat to cope with the coldest spell in 30 years, with snow and ice blanketing the entire country.
Domestic demand for gas over the last month is predicted to be 60 per cent higher than in a normal winter.
This increased consumption will result in average bills of £360 for the three-month period from November through to the end of January, compared with £300 a year ago.
Greedy suppliers decided to reduce the tariff to customers by less than 10 per cent - even though the wholesale price of gas came down by some 60 per cent between 2008 and 2009.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Britain's privatised energy firms rip-off the public in the cold snap
From The Daily Express
GREEDY energy firms will be the biggest winners of the cold snap, claim analysts.
They say the owners of British Gas will rake in an extra £1.5million every day of the January freeze.
All the major suppliers who refused to cut customer bills before the winter are now enjoying a profits boom as families turn up the central heating to beat the cold.
Gas and electricity bills will rocket by an average £47 per home this month to a record January high of £203.
An estimated 30 per cent surge in the nation’s energy use will line suppliers’ pockets, with Centrica, parent company of leading seller British Gas, set to be the biggest winner.
Richard Hall, of Consumer Focus, wants a Competition Commission investigation.
He said: “Suppliers have failed to fully pass on wholesale price cuts.”
GREEDY energy firms will be the biggest winners of the cold snap, claim analysts.
They say the owners of British Gas will rake in an extra £1.5million every day of the January freeze.
All the major suppliers who refused to cut customer bills before the winter are now enjoying a profits boom as families turn up the central heating to beat the cold.
Gas and electricity bills will rocket by an average £47 per home this month to a record January high of £203.
An estimated 30 per cent surge in the nation’s energy use will line suppliers’ pockets, with Centrica, parent company of leading seller British Gas, set to be the biggest winner.
Richard Hall, of Consumer Focus, wants a Competition Commission investigation.
He said: “Suppliers have failed to fully pass on wholesale price cuts.”
Sunday, October 25, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
CPO Press Release on the Profiteering of Britain's Privatised Energy Companies
PRESS RELEASE FROM THE CAMPAIGN FOR PUBLIC OWNERSHIP ON THE OBSCENE PROFITEERING OF BRITAIN’S PRIVATISED ENERGY COMPANIES
Here we go again.
A newly published report by the watchdog Consumer Focus says that Britain’s privatised energy companies have over-charged customers by £1.6bn having failed to pass on billions of pounds of savings made from the falling price of gas and electricity.
Consumer Focus states the fall in wholesale prices has saved energy companies around £1.6 billion, but this has not been reflected in average domestic bills.
Energy bills rose by 42% last year, with the average household paying £1,293 for the year.
The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.
The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That's what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain's long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.
Here we go again.
A newly published report by the watchdog Consumer Focus says that Britain’s privatised energy companies have over-charged customers by £1.6bn having failed to pass on billions of pounds of savings made from the falling price of gas and electricity.
Consumer Focus states the fall in wholesale prices has saved energy companies around £1.6 billion, but this has not been reflected in average domestic bills.
Energy bills rose by 42% last year, with the average household paying £1,293 for the year.
The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.
The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That's what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain's long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Press Release on the Massive Increase in Shareholders Dividends of the 'Big Six' Energy Companies
DATE OF ISSUE: FRIDAY 5th SEPTEMBER 2008
Calls for a 'windfall tax' are sure to increase following the news that the 'Big Six' energy companies hiked their shareholder dividends payouts by 19% according to new research. The suppliers paid £1.64bn in dividends in 2007, £257m more than in the year before, a study commissioned by the Local Government Association found.
While calls for a windfall tax are understandable, the Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.
The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That's what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain's long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.
Calls for a 'windfall tax' are sure to increase following the news that the 'Big Six' energy companies hiked their shareholder dividends payouts by 19% according to new research. The suppliers paid £1.64bn in dividends in 2007, £257m more than in the year before, a study commissioned by the Local Government Association found.
While calls for a windfall tax are understandable, the Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.
The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That's what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain's long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Campaign for Public Ownership Press Release on British Gas Profiteering
The Campaign for Public Ownership condemns the decision of British Gas to hike gas prices by a record 35%.
The price increases come just six months after the company increased its dual fuel bills by 16 per cent.
While Centrica customers have been hit by a 44 per cent increase in their bills this year, the company's shareholders have suffered far less, with its shares dipping by less than 10 per cent since the start of the year.
And today, to rub salt into the wound, Centrica plc, the parent company of British Gas, will announce profits of £992m.
British Gas is profiteering, pure and simple. The appropriate response from the government is not greater regulation as some have called for, or a one-off windfall tax, but to end the profiteering once and for all by taking our utilities back into public ownership.
The price increases come just six months after the company increased its dual fuel bills by 16 per cent.
While Centrica customers have been hit by a 44 per cent increase in their bills this year, the company's shareholders have suffered far less, with its shares dipping by less than 10 per cent since the start of the year.
And today, to rub salt into the wound, Centrica plc, the parent company of British Gas, will announce profits of £992m.
British Gas is profiteering, pure and simple. The appropriate response from the government is not greater regulation as some have called for, or a one-off windfall tax, but to end the profiteering once and for all by taking our utilities back into public ownership.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Energy bills to soar as British Gas announces 14% price hike
From the Daily Express, Saturday 7th June 2008
MILLIONS of families face being hit by spiralling energy costs after British Gas yesterday announced a massive 14% hike in its tracker bills. The huge increase- to be introduced with immediate effect- could see average gas and electricity bills rocket to £1,327 a year by 2009. News of the price jumps was greeted with dismay by groups representing the elderly, who said pensioners were already struggling to keep themselves warm in winter.
MILLIONS of families face being hit by spiralling energy costs after British Gas yesterday announced a massive 14% hike in its tracker bills. The huge increase- to be introduced with immediate effect- could see average gas and electricity bills rocket to £1,327 a year by 2009. News of the price jumps was greeted with dismay by groups representing the elderly, who said pensioners were already struggling to keep themselves warm in winter.
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