Saturday 4 November 2023

Well, Of Course!

Bill payers could be on the hook for almost £6bn to cover the cost of bailing out suppliers that went bust during the energy crisis, according to the government’s spending watchdog.
I mean, don't we always?
Dame Meg Hillier, the chair of the committee, said: “Our report is a sobering reminder that we are still living with the fallout of the failure of so many energy suppliers in 2021-22.
Right, sure. Not a failure of government, oh dear me, no...

4 comments:

Northish said...

They went bust because of the stupid energy price cap. When the price of what you are buying goes up, but you can't increase your selling price, what did the government think was going to happen? Those companies should have been shopping around for bulk energy and providing competition on standing charges.
It's yet another piece of idiocy from E Milliband that the Tories went along with. They are all fuckwits.
Heres an article from 2013 predicting what would happen.
https://moneyweek.com/merryns-blog/madness-milibands-energy-price-cap.

Mudplugger said...

Whatever the root-cause of this cock-up, there's a £6bn hole that someone now has to pay back somehow.
If it's passed on to the surviving energy companies, they will have to pass it on to all their customers, so everyone pays.
If the government covers it, same thing happens, because governments don't have money of their own, they have to raise it from taxpayers, so whether it's via income tax, VAT, excise duty or whatever, that's where it would be raised, so everyone pays.
Looks like it doesn't really matter, everyone pays.
And still nobody will lose their job/pension at OFGEM - that's the real scandal.

Sgt Albert Hall said...

When companies go bust the owners/shareholders lose out first. Their suppliers of goods and services who have not been paid remain unpaid so they lose out. What sort of dystopian thinking is it that would require the customers of rival companies to pay of these debts?

JuliaM said...

"They went bust because of the stupid energy price cap. When the price of what you are buying goes up, but you can't increase your selling price, what did the government think was going to happen?"

Government? Think? Didn't expect those two words to be seen together in a sentence...

"Looks like it doesn't really matter, everyone pays.
And still nobody will lose their job/pension at OFGEM - that's the real scandal."


Very good point!

"What sort of dystopian thinking is it that would require the customers of rival companies to pay of these debts?"

The sort that the 'conservative' party does, of course!