Dumb enough to think the £50 or so cut in bills is really a cut?

British Gas put bills up recently by an average of £123. They are going to cut them by £53 so British Gas customers are still going to be £70 a year worse off in 2014 than they were this year.

This is Cameron's "solution" to ever rising fuel bills. A one off rebate that doesn't actually lower bills.

Labour release a new posterhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/BaeleD3CQAAzWWs.jpg" >

It's quite unbelievable really. The energy companies have contributed nothing to the reduction. The costs have been shifted from energy bills to income tax.

According to rlRobert Peston at the BBCrl the net result is an [iincrease[/i in bills of between four and five percent for all customers bar EDF who will stick with their increase of 3.9%.

I wonder how many EDF customers will be thinking they are due a reduction in their bills when they see headlines like this at the BBC "rlFuel bill cuts will follow energy policy changerl"?

I also wonder how this "reduction" will feed through to those on pre-payment meters, they are usually the ones mostin need of any help. It has all the makings of another Cameron/Gidiot balls-up

rlhttps://stuffunemployedpeoplelike.com/2009/03/09/31-claiming-its-not-cold-enough-to-turn-on-the-heater/rl

So the "Big 6" have effectively held the HM Govt to ransom and got away with it!

Prices will still go up, customers will still get shafted by the energy providers and in addition have to pay more tax to pay for the green levy which was meant to penalise the energy companies for not reducing carbon emissions.

When viewed in conjunction with water bills and the ridiculous cost of public transport (especially rail) people are now realising the folly of Thatcher's privatisation of the essential services.

Yes but don't forget, NPower have promised, the day after their 10.5% price rise, that they will not put up their prices again until 2015, unless prices go up again.

In other news I promise not to eat any more chocolate between now and christmas, unless I eat some more chocolate.

Will that be the prices that they themselves set since, as [iWhich?[/i explains, they effectively sell to themselves?

I hate to point out the blindingly obvious, but energy companies don't use energy - they make it.

The green levy was ALWAYS going to be passed onto customers. The aim isn't to penalise energy companies, but CAUSE price increases to make customers use less. The same is true for carbon trading. If the cost isn't passed onto consumers, they will carry on exactly as before, using just as much energy.

The reality is that most of the so-called carbon reduction benefits in Europe have come from crashing economies combined with subsidies to 'green' fuels. If you want cheap electricity, burn coal (the cheapest of all being brown coal, which is highly carbon-intensive). If you want green electricity, put up a windmill or solar panel - but accept the resulting significant price rise (plus indirect cost of subsidies). You cannot have your cake and eat it.

As for the rest of the thread, for the umpteenth time, most of the increase in wholesale prices is due to the UK's lack of self-sufficiency in fuel (and the increasing production costs of depleting fields) and the consequent requirement to buy gas from Russia etc. Privatisation, bonuses, profits, dividends etc are absolutely nothing to do with the reality of what's driving prices upwards.

Not all of them, and those who do sell to the domestic market are happy to keep separate their generating and retail businesses, to their advantage, so in reality, none of the domestic retailers "make" energy.

So [iWhich?[/i got it wrong, then?

No they don't and if you believe that then you don't understand what energy is.

Gas, coal, oil etc are merely carriers of energy and the energy companies simply facilitate the carriage and sometimes convert, usually at a cost to efficiency



The green levies are not there to punish consumers (as the energy companies would have us think), they are there to pay for energy reduction techniques (better insulation etc), encourage the development of alternative technologies and offer transitional relief to those who are struggling to heat their homes.



How do you work out that brown coal is cheap? Tonne for tonne it may well be but not if calorific values are taken into account. Brown coal has a value of around 6.5 million BTU/tonne, anthracite (what this country was good at producing until the 1980s), has a value of around 25 million BTU/tonne

Wholesale prices for Gas and Electricity are actually lower now then they were in 2008.

There was a big spike then but they fell back and while they have risen again they are still lower than in 2008. Yet for the last three years prices have gone up 10% a year. The green levy and rising wholesale prices are two things definitely not to blame.

There is some detail herehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/household-bills/10043967/How-energy-bills-have-soared.htmlrl

and herehttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478713/Energy-giants-greed-Energy-bills-10-profit-customers-double.htmlrl

Not exactly your left wing papers.

It seems to be when wholesale prices fall we see little of the savings but when they rise by even a small amount we get an increase and then some from whatever level prices were at. There seems to be a constant upward trend in domestic energy bills to a degree not present in wholesale price rises.

Some of the pros & cons of nationalising the big 6. It says Centrica & SSE are worth £30bn, how much are we spending on HS2? www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 81112.html

Some of the pros & cons of nationalising the big 6. It says Centrica & SSE are worth £30bn, how much are we spending on HS2? www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 81112.html