Anger at forth coming COL crisis

[MyCheekyEagle]

Of course I understand that the ME war is going to have an impact on oil prices & that will get passed onto the already struggling families; but when things stabilise again & maybe oil prices reset the greedy corporatez never pass this saving back to customers fo they. They just think as we've got used to these new higher prices we'll just keep them there. This thought has given me the rage most of today!
Just needed to vent somewhere, thanks if you listened..

He probably doesn't. It will be some overseas company acting on his behalf and we would have to do it for everyone. This means rich people will be treated unfairly and they have a speed dial to the Govt.

It's a private company.
Private companies have a legal responsibility to maximise profits for their shareholders.
Where there is genuine competition this runs up against the need to stay competitive and the "invisible hand" of capitalism does a good job of efficiently allocating resources at the best prices

Where there is no competition because of the nature of the industry (water companies) or dodgy dealings the consumers/ordinary people are eaten alive by big business.

Unfortunately we had a bunch of ideologues in charge since the 1980s who thought because private enterprise worked well in some areas everything should be unregulated private enterprise. And we are where we are. But if you criticise this you get told Communism doesn't work (no shit) or informed the problems are down to a specific group.

Ooh, if that's upset you, wait til I tell you how pissed off I am with the benefits bill going up to fund the lazy beggars who won't work and the costs associated with the ever increasing number of immigrants coming in on boats!

Yesterday, as reported online, she was still going to put fuel duty up. Today, she's going to speak to fuel companies 'because we won't tolerate price gouging'. So who knows 🤷

Unless someone is caring for a person who gets PIP, DLA or Attendance Allowance, their UC work coach is very likely to require them to look for work. They don't just take the claimant's word for it.

“DEATH TO THE WEST!*”

*Except for my £50,000,000+ London property portfolio. I don’t mean that.

What am absolute tosser. I hope the fucker is banned and never gets to visit his luxury properties.

I hate Trump and Farage with a passion, but redistribution of wealth? Can some of that wealth be redistributed to me please?

I work 50 hour weeks, every hour God sends my way, and I feel like I’m the one propping up greedy corporations AND the NEETS as well as the Laycees, Jaxxons, Kaycee-Leas and Kaydens who would rather put pins in their pockets yes than find a job.

I’d love some of that redistributed wealth, but I think the Laycees and Jaxxons would get it instead :(

Having a legal responsibility to maximise profits for share holders is one thing, ripping off and over charging customers to do that is another.

I still don't understand how in a time & aftermath of a crisis (Ukraine war) British Gas managed to increase their profits from 72 million to 3.5 billion two years later.
While energy prices sky rocketed.

Surely there's something wrong there? Or can someone explain it?

Surely they are charging more now so they have sufficient funds to pay for the next lot of fuel they get, which will be at the increased price.

I heard the UK government came up with an offer of £40k of taxpayers money to leave, is this only available to illegal immigrants or can any of us apply 😂

So would you if you were travelling to London every week and living away from home for half the week/ needing to split your time between two locations

Define overcharging...
Prices are set by how much people are willing to pay. It's a matter of supply and demand. If I sell freshly bread and charge 5 pounds I can make a profit. If Í charge 8 pounds I make more profit. If I charge 9 pounds people stop buying my bread because they can buy the same quality cheaper elsewhere so I lower my prices back to 8 pounds. Noone has been overcharged. They paid the price they were willing to pay.

If I am a water company I can raise my prices to 10 pounds, 15 pounds, 100 pounds. You can go elsewhere except actually you can't. Sucks to be you. I haven't overcharged. I charged what you are willing to pay but since you need water there isn't much of a natural limit so I can charge a lot.
Likewise we all need heating and there are a limited number of companies providing it. So they can charge what they want and you can decide whether to pay it or not pay it and freeze.

Companies are amoral. It's there job to make profits for shareholders. They would be in breach of their responsibilities if they didn't. If I programmed a machine to make paper clips and then put it in charge of everything and then it destroyed the world in it's monomaniac quest to make paper clips then it's not the machines fault. Its mine. Likewise putting capitalist machines (companies) in charge of utilities and essential services leads to it all being a bit shit. Its foolish to call the companies evil. They are doing what they are meant to do.

However those days are long, long, gone. I'm 66 and people didn't stay at home until they were married when I was young, they went out flatting with friends.
Elderly people these days tend to live to a greater age, and with conditions which would have killed them many years ago, so there are many more with dementia. The parents who are old and infirm these days are older than they were, so really not up to doing childminding and helping around the house. My parents were divorced, then both remarried, and when their spouses died they most certainly didn't need to live with me, they were both quite capable of managing by themselves. Elderly people with dementia often require a lot of care, and if they are living with family then they need those family members to keep a watch on them - not go out to work and leave them alone.

So it's all fine then.
Great, let's let them crack on.

Ps I think it's foolish to just accept that "this is just how it is"
And I still don't understand how British Gas managed to increase its profits so dramatically in two years post-Ukraine.

How was that possible? To go from a profit in the millions to billions so quickly?

Everyone just accepted it and rolled their eyes but, seriously, HOW was it possible?

Yes i think we all know how business works.

However, the job of Govt (or should be so they tell us) is NOT to work hand in glove with business to screw over the general public.

Regulation can and should be devised to limit price rises for all, not just pathetic "social Tariff" paid for, not by the companies, but the consumer who pays their bill.

This should not be done via Windfall taxes that just end up in the Treasury but atm the regulators are working for the industries they are supposed to moderate ie Telecoms, allowed to increase prices by £3 every year, thats often more than a 10% rise.... no competition there.

E.G one could say to petrol retailers "Prices cannot increase above the rate of wholesale price rises" "that prices cannot be raised until the operator has paid the higher costs, reductions must be passed on with immediate effect"

Or set a margin of say 1.5p per litre? with supermarkets only allowed to operate SM's above a certain size if they provide a fuel outlet.

But instead we have a Govt that says "i will have a meeting" stupid as well, as these unjustified rises will keep inflation high, knocking the govt off target and less money for public services, less change and guaranteeing Labours defeat in 3 years time.

Windfall taxes would be an excellent idea. But anij government to implement them would façr a barage of headlines about communism and innovation/doing well being punished etc. I still wish they would do it. People elected a Labour government. But there would be consequences - and profiteering/excessive windfalls are easy to see but probably harder to define. Would it only apply to energy companies or be wider in remit.

Also, just accepting that not everything works best run as a profit making business and privatisation was a mistake and maybe we should try to renationalise those areas. Or at least not continue down the road if privatise everything.

WF taxes don't help e.g a care worker, using her own money to travel to vulnerable people, yes she claims back mileage BUT HMRC very recently cut that rate.

We need to find a way that limits price rises.

I don't they'd face quite such negative headlines with price curbs.

Sorry I meant to say windfall taxes alone would be an excellent idea but you suggestion would be even better. But the level of outrage it would generate would be huge. I would assume any government is scared of that. And TBF if people would vote against it at the next election then that their choice.

I think people would welcome it (price curbs) of course would be opposed by Reform/Tories but a real reason to vote Labour.

Would be supported by the back benches too.

Lab are running out of time to make real differences to peoples lives.

I don't think it's a matter of just accepting it. More that if I put a fox in a henhouse and it eats all the hens it's a bit foolish to blame the fox or to handwring. The fox isn't evil, it's just doing what a fox does.
I think there are things this government (or any other) can do to make the situation better. But collectively we spent the last 45 years mostly voting in governments who promised to remove the growth restricting chicken wire between foxes and hens. It's not really a failure of politics itself. Just IMO we need to rethink the Thatcher era certainties.
What's more frustrating is that there is a push to go the other way and privatise more. Eg the constant threads on here about how the NHS is inneffiçient/unsustainable in it's current form. There are a lot of issues with the NHS. But if people vote for privatisation at the next GE then it's going to be annoying when there's "how could this be allowed to happen" shock if medical care becomes more expensive down the line. And I reserve the right to eye roll.

... This shows the price going down by 18% in 18 days.

The issue is toothless regulators.

You can privatise monopoly businesses and they can work OK, but you need aggressive regulation to make sure profiteering and asset stripping doesn't take place.

This should make the privatised monoply a somewhat boring but stable investment, which is as it should be.

Let's hope it gets back to 60ppl (which is what I paid in Dec)