To think this is very morally wrong

[Lovelycupofcoffee]

So I read today that energy companies are making huge profits and some of their directors are getting paid huge bonuses. I find this absolutely disgusting when there are families choosing between paying electric bills or cutting back on feeding their family . Could the government not step in and shop this ? Come October it’s going to get worse but surely we shouldn’t have to be choosing between food or paying our electric bill. If these companies are making so much money why increase the standing charge for gas/ electric? There is something very wrong here.

Well of course YANBU but what do people expect voting in the likes of Victorian Mill Owner Jacob Rees Mogg?

the government coffers are also swelling with the tax.
fuel duty receipts are massive at the mo

Vote Tory, get Tory...

Greed

YABU for thinking that private companies in a capitalist free market should give a shit about their customers when their raison d’être is to make profit for shareholders. Corbyn said he was going to renationalise the energy companies and look what happened to him.

Money doesnt just vanish overnight, if its not in my pocket someone else has it in theirs. Everytime there is a financial crisis someone is profiting from it and its totally wrong. The richest people in the world know full well how the plebs are suffering but they are happy let the cash keep rolling in rather than take action to ease the suffering at the bottom of the chain.
But at the end of the day that is how a capitalist society works and this is a result of privatisation. If we want to change anything, it can only be achieved by stripping back and changing the foundations of our society and that is very difficult to do.

I'm surprised that there's not been protests or even riots about it. Where's the anger? How come I'm not hearing it in the news how people are having to sell their homes to down size to save money? I don't get it.

Good heavens, could Jeremy Corbyn have been right all along 🤔

Many of the larger companies are based outside the UK eg Eon (Germany) and EDF (France). Uk gvmt would be unable to restrict their bonuses and dividends even if they wanted to.

Yes the government could, but they won't, because they are conservatives and don't care about ordinary people, just lining their and their rich mates pockets.

I don't know why ordinary people voted in this government. Turkeys voting for Christmas.

Don't worry, it's the conservative plan. The wealth will trickle down in another 100 years or so. The system is working as intended.

I think the Irish government is debating charging the energy company's a windfall tax. Intended to try to force them to do the 'right thing' ie pass on savings and profits to customers. Doubt it will come to anything though, but yes it's wrong

That's capitalism, baby!

Yes, let's try communism instead. History has proved communism to be a winner.

Also 'shareholders' include pension funds and banks. So the organisations that will pay out money to us all in old age. And lend us money for our mortgages.

This isn’t news. Greedy people always find ways to fuck over those less fortunate than themselves.

There’s a very big gap between the current political climate and communism. 🙄

Opening poster, I'll give you insults daughter's response to things like this. Remember this, the next time you have a vote, and vote accordingly.

What does morality have to do it. Why do you reduce important issues like these to be measured by the goodwill of a business to be charitable.

Why not focus on competence instead. We elect and pay politicians to make logical decisions and plan for the future. Governments of the last 25 years have failed to plan to plan for the future.

This is an issue of competence, not morality. Hold people to account on performance, rather than hoping that someone, somewhere with a kind heart will make up for people’s incompetence.

The companies selling you energy aren’t making massive profits, several have gone bust.
The companies producing the energy (some companies both produce and sell to you) they are making a fortune from huge increases in the cost of oil, bizarrely all energy prices are linked to oil, I don’t understand why wind energy goes up when oil is expensive. The cost of producing it isn’t Increasing.

Government could tax them, although some of this money isn’t in the UK so safe from UK tax, government are doing a sort of windfall tax but are allowing companies to offset the tax by increasing investment in increasing oil and gas production, no idea why.

Morality enters the equation when people are rewarded for incompetence.

^^ this

@StepAwayFromGoogling do you understand that there is a whole range of others ways to run an economy? What an infantile post. 🙄

We could have had a socialist in power who would have sorted this, but no...socialism was just too scary. The Tories are psychopaths.

All of this. People are reading headlines and getting mad at the wrong companies.

Energy suppliers have very small profit margins, hence why so many small ones have folded recently.