Energy Prices

[SuperSaints1877]

1 minute ago, scottsdad said:

We protesting the energy price hikes, the gross profits of the energy firms, the lack of help from the government, or Oaksoft's posts?

All of the above!

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, mizfit said:

Lads I’m starting to think we need to consider moving beyond protests.

I'd set myself on fire but I can't afford the petrol. Eh, ha ha ha ha..!?! 

[Pens_Dark]

7 hours ago, Aufc said:

i see Shell and Centrica both reporting billions of quarterly profit. There is not a cost of living crisis. There is a cost of greed crisis. 

So much this. So much.

[Pens_Dark]

3 hours ago, MEADOWXI said:

These folk have no shame and are scum, as they insist they need to hike prices again in October,

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/centrica-profits-gas-energy-bills-b2132932.html

 

British Gas owner Centrica has seen operating profits increase five-fold to £1.34 billion as energy bills soar.

The company’s profits for the six months to the end of June were a substantial increase on earnings compared to the £262m recorded in the same period last year.

Crime in plain daylight. 

Yet the most depressing thing about it is there's nothing we can do about it as these p***ks take their cake time and time again. All the while the government stand by idly and lecture us on tightening our belts. 

What a fucking time to be alive.

[SuperSaints1877]

[Aufc]

Crime in plain daylight. 
Yet the most depressing thing about it is there's nothing we can do about it as these p***ks take their cake time and time again. All the while the government stand by idly and lecture us on tightening our belts. 
What a fucking time to be alive.

Or get told by few people on here that I should be fine because I earn above the average wage

[Todd_is_God]

3 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

^^^ Keeping himself warm this winter by waving Ukraine flags in the dark.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

I might be wrong but I don't think anyone is arguing against nuclear power on the basis of either greenhouse gas emission or deaths from accidents and air pollution.
No need to invoke images of evil. For me it's about the problem of dealing safely with nuclear waste, the potential for security breaches, the potential consequences of accidents related to failure of the core, the fact that it's not renewable energy in any way, shape or form and that the sources of raw material appear to be largely found in rogue states. It's also incredibly expensive when you factor in both running costs and de-commissioning.
I haven't heard good responses to any of those points because frankly all of them are indisputable.
The only defence is whether nuclear is needed at all as part of the energy mix or whether we can get away without it.

More the point that other forms of energy production (particularly renewables) have externalities (manufacturing and transportation costs in particular) that the Swampies seem to ignore. It's a simplistic Nuclear bad, Renewables good stance that bears no relation to reality.

Closing off the debate on using nuclear is short-sightedness of the first degree.

[Todd_is_God]

RE: The Price Cap increase versus profits chat.

As the price cap is simply a reflection of the average wholesale price, it's natural that it goes up.

The profits, though, are obscene. Given the exceptional circumstances, suppliers should be capped at a % increase on last years profits (in line with the average yearly increase in profit over the previous 5 years) with everything above that taxed at 100% with this amount used to provide relief to end users.

That way private companies can still increase profits and joe public isn't slapped with £4k annual energy bills.

That's probably entirely simplistic, but is it not workable?

Edited July 28, 2022 by Todd_is_God

[Satoshi]

Seen some of the front pages today attacking the results of Centrica and Shell.

CEOs are well paid public figures, but having your face on the front page of papers with a critical headline can't be particularly pleasent on a personal level. I'm sure both are pretty thick skinned.

The shell share price is pretty close to what it was in 2001 and has hovered around the same level for 20 years.

Centrica had a higher share price in 1997 than it is today (it was more than 4x higher in 2013).

Relative to the market booming in that time these are both drastically unsuccessful companies.

The shell share price went up slightly following the announcement, Centricas went down.

You may think these are greedy companies hoarding cash and profits, but their owners are hardly benefiting from it. If they are long term holders they have lost out big in recent decades.

[The Moonster]

21 minutes ago, Satoshi said:

Seen some of the front pages today attacking the results of Centrica and Shell.

CEOs are well paid public figures, but having your face on the front page of papers with a critical headline can't be particularly pleasent on a personal level. I'm sure both are pretty thick skinned.

The shell share price is pretty close to what it was in 2001 and has hovered around the same level for 20 years.

Centrica had a higher share price in 1997 than it is today (it was more than 4x higher in 2013).

Relative to the market booming in that time these are both drastically unsuccessful companies.

The shell share price went up slightly following the announcement, Centricas went down.

You may think these are greedy companies hoarding cash and profits, but their owners are hardly benefiting from it. If they are long term holders they have lost out big in recent decades.

I'm sure their owners are sitting without the heating on and wondering if using a flask instead of boiling the kettle could reduce their monthly bill even more. I don't know why you and a couple of others keep up with this nonsense.

[Aufc]

Seen some of the front pages today attacking the results of Centrica and Shell.
CEOs are well paid public figures, but having your face on the front page of papers with a critical headline can't be particularly pleasent on a personal level. I'm sure both are pretty thick skinned.
The shell share price is pretty close to what it was in 2001 and has hovered around the same level for 20 years.
Centrica had a higher share price in 1997 than it is today (it was more than 4x higher in 2013).
Relative to the market booming in that time these are both drastically unsuccessful companies.
The shell share price went up slightly following the announcement, Centricas went down.
You may think these are greedy companies hoarding cash and profits, but their owners are hardly benefiting from it. If they are long term holders they have lost out big in recent decades.

Aye must be hard eh. Getting paid £6.1m. Even better you get to contribute massively to wrecking the climate and still make huge profits.

It’s a shambles. He will get a huge bonus off this as well. So he is essentially profiting from a lot of peoples misery (plus, as mentioned above, also being a large factor in climate change which is also providing misery for a lot of poorer people)

[Satoshi]

1 hour ago, The Moonster said:

I'm sure their owners are sitting without the heating on and wondering if using a flask instead of boiling the kettle could reduce their monthly bill even more. I don't know why you and a couple of others keep up with this nonsense.

Almost everyone with a pension will be invested in Shell and Centrica shares.

Some of their shareholders will not be wealthy (and owning their shares haven't helped).

37 minutes ago, Aufc said:

Aye must be hard eh. Getting paid £6.1m. Even better you get to contribute massively to wrecking the climate and still make huge profits.

It’s a shambles. He will get a huge bonus off this as well. So he is essentially profiting from a lot of peoples misery (plus, as mentioned above, also being a large factor in climate change which is also providing misery for a lot of poorer people)

Even people that paid well can be affected negatively by things.

As I said earlier on the thread, there is no doubt lots of people are in fuel poverty. There is (equally) no doubt both of the companies I have mentioned contributed significantly to climate change and (In the case of shell) were involved in covering it up.

The point of my post was to point out that the idea that these are enormously successful companies robbing the public is demonstrably not true. Their share performance sucks. Virtually every listed company is more successful than them.

People have to purchase energy, they can't avoid it and it gives them no joy. Most people won't like paying it regardless of the price. The margin is usually crap and even now the ROE is still far lower than most other industries.

Companies that really make money and have enormous margins are consultants and software firms, not companies selling gas to domestic customers.

[101]

7 minutes ago, Satoshi said:

Almost everyone with a pension will be invested in Shell and Centrica shares.

Some of their shareholders will not be wealthy (and owning their shares haven't helped).

A pension pot should be adequately diversified so as not to get overly concerned when the government recoup unearned profits. The whole theory of a capatalist society is it rewards risk and innovation, Shell have demonstrated none of these characteristics in order to generate this latest mammoth profit it has been pure luck.

If they had designed some way to remove and capture methane from manure and introduce it into the gas supply of Europe then they would have been worthy of a huge profit but all that's happened is the resource they drill for and sell has gone through the roof and they are cashing in, if the price had fallen they would have continued to drill for gas.

[The Moonster]

1 minute ago, Satoshi said:

Almost everyone with a pension will be invested in Shell and Centrica shares.

Some of their shareholders will not be wealthy (and owning their shares haven't helped).

Even people that paid well can be affected negatively by things.

As I said earlier on the thread, there is no doubt lots of people are in fuel poverty. There is (equally) no doubt both of the companies I have mentioned contributed significantly to climate change and (In the case of shell) were involved in covering it up.

The point of my post was to point out that the idea that these are enormously successful companies robbing the public is demonstrably not true. Their share performance sucks. Virtually every listed company is more successful than them.

People have to purchase energy, they can't avoid it and it gives them no joy. Most people won't like paying it regardless of the price. The margin is usually crap and even now the ROE is still far lower than most other industries.

Companies that really make money and have enormous margins are consultants and software firms, not companies selling gas to domestic customers.

Please stop. Shell have assets of $405 billion. If they were hard up they could sell those off and let someone else take on the horrible and money losing task of selling gas. They don't, they add more and more assets and post bigger profits in the billions each year. You can say "but but but its not the gas they make money from" all you want but the fact is people are going to die from these price rises. I couldn't give a f**k if their share price is 25p or 25 grand, they can quite clearly afford to make a bit less profit than they currently are. They are plunderers, they don't give a f**k about the environment or your average person on the street, people are quite right to call them the c***s they are. 

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

Having a grand old time with our before we can even really see the effect of the price hikes in April. My partner and I had a 2 bed flat in Leith all of last year, and with me working from home and her finishing her masters for much of the year, plus no double glazing, we knew our electricity usage (electric boiler) would be quite high. We then got a bill for £800 for about 3 months, which obviously freaked us out as we are both pretty frugal in what we can control. Turns out we had economy 10 meters, despite the storage heaters having been ripped out years before, so presumably previous tenants had just been paying these crazy bills from having the heating on/heating water outside of the cheap times. Anyway, long story short they were pretty good, put us on a flat rate for both readings and back dated it to when we moved in. 

We moved up to Perth in January, kept the same energy provider, and in April they sent us a bill "recalculating" the past year in Leith and essentially reversing the agreement we had had previously, resulting in a 2K swing from being £400 in credit to £1000 in debt, with £600 written off as it was over a year ago. They also hadn't billed us for some of the period so some of that credit shouldn't have been there right enough. Now been waiting three weeks for that to get sorted after phoning and chasing a couple of times. They have always been pretty decent so I'm sure it will get sorted but don't really have much clue about the general state of our account. We have gas here now though and it's looking like exactly the wrong time to move from all electric to gas, haven't had the heating on since early march but the hob and hot water seems to be more than enough to pile up a decent amount cash-wise. Last times I had gas the bill for that in a 2 bed flatshare would average about £20 a month year-round, without being much more indulgent it's a lot, lot more now. 

[scottsdad]

I have escalated my complaint to Scottish Power. 

Not sure if it was this thread where I first posted this, but the story is simply this. In 2015 I left Scottish power and joined OVO. Paid my final bill with SP and moved without too much pain. For 7 years all has been fine, no problems with OVO.  

In June Scottish power sent me a bill for over £11,000 "based on actual meter readings". I checked with OVO who say nothing has changed (ie I am very much still a customer of theirs). I put in a complaint. I got one reply, a week later, from someone telling me they were passing it on to someone "with more skill than me" to deal with. Then I received another bill, for just under £4,000. 

Having heard nothing else, I escalated this. I have to wait 8 weeks from my initial complaint to take it to the ombudsman, but i reckon I might go to the press with this if not resolved. The Guardian have regular stories about people having issues like this with energy companies. 

[101]

11 minutes ago, Genuine Hibs Fan said:

Having a grand old time with our before we can even really see the effect of the price hikes in April. My partner and I had a 2 bed flat in Leith all of last year, and with me working from home and her finishing her masters for much of the year, plus no double glazing, we knew our electricity usage (electric boiler) would be quite high. We then got a bill for £800 for about 3 months, which obviously freaked us out as we are both pretty frugal in what we can control. Turns out we had economy 10 meters, despite the storage heaters having been ripped out years before, so presumably previous tenants had just been paying these crazy bills from having the heating on/heating water outside of the cheap times. Anyway, long story short they were pretty good, put us on a flat rate for both readings and back dated it to when we moved in. 

We moved up to Perth in January, kept the same energy provider, and in April they sent us a bill "recalculating" the past year in Leith and essentially reversing the agreement we had had previously, resulting in a 2K swing from being £400 in credit to £1000 in debt, with £600 written off as it was over a year ago. They also hadn't billed us for some of the period so some of that credit shouldn't have been there right enough. Now been waiting three weeks for that to get sorted after phoning and chasing a couple of times. They have always been pretty decent so I'm sure it will get sorted but don't really have much clue about the general state of our account. We have gas here now though and it's looking like exactly the wrong time to move from all electric to gas, haven't had the heating on since early march but the hob and hot water seems to be more than enough to pile up a decent amount cash-wise. Last times I had gas the bill for that in a 2 bed flatshare would average about £20 a month year-round, without being much more indulgent it's a lot, lot more now. 

It's not the biggest job in the world to switch from a gas hob to an electric or induction hob.

But you're right bad time to go back to gas.

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

2 minutes ago, 101 said:

It's not the biggest job in the world to switch from a gas hob to an electric or induction hob.

But you're right bad time to go back to gas.

Not our place unfortunately, will be buying in the next year or two all things being well and will be prioritising all electric probably. Love me gas hobs but some of the induction ones are nearly as good now 

 

[Pens_Dark]

14 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

RE: The Price Cap increase versus profits chat.

As the price cap is simply a reflection of the average wholesale price, it's natural that it goes up.

The profits, though, are obscene. Given the exceptional circumstances, suppliers should be capped at a % increase on last years profits (in line with the average yearly increase in profit over the previous 5 years) with everything above that taxed at 100% with this amount used to provide relief to end users.

That way private companies can still increase profits and joe public isn't slapped with £4k annual energy bills.

That's probably entirely simplistic, but is it not workable?

Stop talking sense.