Energy Price Freeze

As I said earlier. If you're in my position with heating oil I wouldn't recommend it as an alternative! The initial outlay is around 10k including the tank etc. Then you need to fill the tank up which currently at the prices at the moment you're talking £2500. Then it needs servicing frequently unlike gas, it's just bloody expensive!
 
mex said:
What a daft question to ask. What ever answer anyone would give you would be the wrong answer.
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Explain why it is a daft question? Any why whatever answer given would be wrong?

People are clearly somewhat vexed by the huge profits posted by energy companies, so I'm curious as to what people think a fair profit from a residential customer actually is.

I personally don't think a couple of percent of my bill going into the profit pot is that bad.
 
RichardtheSane said:
I have a question.

How much profit, as a percentage, do you think would be fair for an energy company to make from a residential customer?
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personally i'd run them as not for profit trusts - with the bill being the cost of the fuel plus a pro rata cost of maintaining/expanding the infrastructure.
 
big soft moose said:
personally i'd run them as not for profit trusts - with the bill being the cost of the fuel plus a pro rata cost of maintaining/expanding the infrastructure.
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Then there would be no incentive to perform, no reason to be and they would become one. That is a route to a state run monopoly with all the inefficiencies, waste and corruption that I had thought we left behind decades ago.
 
2blue4u said:
Then there would be no incentive to perform, no reason to be and they would become one. That is a route to a state run monopoly with all the inefficiencies, waste and corruption that I had thought we left behind decades ago.
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Waste and an inefficiency is replaced by profit which the customer doesn't see either. It's no gain at all.

How about people being motivated to perform because they like doing a good job and delivering a good service? Not everyone is a short sighted selfish git out for themselves.
 
Dave1 said:
Explain how that works for urban houses, flats or terraces.

Do you demolish next door to site the tank? I would suggest anyone living in any of the large cities has no choice but electricity or gas.

Or for any rented property...
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When I lived in Portishead, which last time I checked was urban, I had heating oil as there was no mains gas in my road. There was a gap wide enough to walk down along one side of my house leading to the back garden, where the tank was. Further up the road in the old cottages, which were terraced, the people in the middle had the pipe from the tanker run through the house from the front door to the back garden when they needed a fill up. What you do is get a big enough tank that you only need to fill it once a year.

It won't work for flats, but for anyone with a house it can work if they want it to. Depends how strongly they feel about the profits made by the energy companies, I suppose.

I don't recommend oil as a heating system, because if you think the prices charged by the companies you are complaining about are too high you really won't like the price of oil, or the way it fluctuates. I would laugh when I'd heard about British Gas or one of the others putting up prices by 10% and think how lucky the people on mains gas were to have that much price stability.
 
I'm intrigued about how Mr Milliband is going to stop the energy companies putting prices up.

If he tells them they can't sell their product for £x and have to sell for £y what's to stop them saying bog off and not selling any at all to the uk consumer?

Can he re-nationalise the companies and if so how and at what cost to the taxpayer?
 
onomatopoeia said:
When I lived in Portishead, which last time I checked was urban, I had heating oil as there was no mains gas in my road. There was a gap wide enough to walk down along one side of my house leading to the back garden, where the tank was. Further up the road in the old cottages, which were terraced, the people in the middle had the pipe from the tanker run through the house from the front door to the back garden when they needed a fill up. What you do is get a big enough tank that you only need to fill it once a year.
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So I presume you haven't noticed that the majority of affordable housing built in the last decade or 2 is built so close together that it's impossible to walk between the houses? And most inner city houses are either terraced or semis with very little space between them.

It's a fact that the majority of houses in working class urban areas don't have the ability to go with oil (even if it was cheaper, which it isn't), and have no option but gas, electricity or freezing.
 
srichards said:
Waste and an inefficiency is replaced by profit which the customer doesn't see either. It's no gain at all.
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Exactly. When governments privatise these things, they tell us that the improved efficiency and competition will make for a better service. What it actually does is make profit for the shareholders at the expense of ordinary customers who see no improvements at all.

cowboy said:
Can he re-nationalise the companies and if so how and at what cost to the taxpayer?
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I'm sure they could but I doubt there is any motivation to do it.


Steve.
 
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2blue4u said:
Then there would be no incentive to perform, no reason to be and they would become one. That is a route to a state run monopoly with all the inefficiencies, waste and corruption that I had thought we left behind decades ago.
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I work for a non profit trust we have an incentive to perform - both the high road one of doing a good job feels good, and the low road one of not getting our arses fired for not doing

their reason to be would be clearly laid out in the articles of incorporation -ie to provide affordable power for everyone in the uk , and officers would be held to this by trustees - in effect it would operate just like a company , but instead of money disappearing to shareholders it would go back into the infrastructure (or to reduced pricing)

and there's no reason to become one - if you look a other fields in the third sector there are still multiple trusts.
 
Now granted there's only 2 people here (most of the time 1).
There's a lot of stuff on standby in this house.
I'm a b****r for tuning off light in all but the room being used, and the heating timer never sees use (if it's cold, light a fire or turn a heating on for a bit, but don't be heating the entire house for no reason).
The last quarterly electricity bill was 106 GBP, and the gas was 36 GBP.
Heating is gas....hot water is gas .....hob is gas...oven electric.
I can't wrap my head around how people are paying 90+ GBP a month.
Oh and for comparison, my winter bills (Feb) were 166 GBP and 104 GBP respectively...for a quarter.
 
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