shush Mat… Dizzy Lizzy will be wanting to charge for those if its not yet occurred to her 
That was mentioned on radio 4 yesterday morning. It seems they have put the price up to match global prices. The thinking was they should be made to reduce them.
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There is a global price for oil and gas, and the price of those is reflected in the price of electricity produced using fossil fuels.
However, there isn’t a global price for electricity. There is a regulated market for electricity within the EU and some other bordering countries including the UK. This is because there is a network of electricity interconnections between these countries with a flow of electricity back and forth all the time … sort of an EU supergrid. In this case it makes sense for all parties to stick to a unified price structure. One of the things that the EU are looking at is how to change this mechanism to take the now large amount of renewable energy into account using the mechanism. As all countries have to agree, the UK will probably object to any proposed changes. Free market and all ya know.
The Hamburger Gessler of the Tory Govt strikes again…
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What a load of cobblers.
Thank goodness - the art of conversation is not dead!
This is The Guardian report on the same subject:
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Cobblers!
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Thanks for posting this Graham. It’s just so nice to hear people talking about real hard economics - not the ephemeral personalities and their petty rivalries that fill most of the media.
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He has a point but he needs to expand a bit. How much are energy companies investing in green energy? What percentage of the dividends goes into pensions?
His Corbynite politics would leave Britain with the living standards of Cuba andthe democratic freedoms of Zimbabwe.
did you observe the chart at minutes 7.06 onwards?
Soooo… your idea of a reasonable comparison of economies is…
Britain - which spent hundreds of years raping its colonies - vs - those very colonies that were raped for hundreds of years?
I wonder if you’d be surprised if, after person A robbed Person B of almost everything they own, Person A is better off?
Let’s take a more realistic comparison for Cuba - a neighbouring country with a broadly similar size, climate and history - Haiti:
- In Cuba, the average life expectancy is 79 years (77 years for men, 82 years for women). In Haiti, that number is 65 years (63 years for men, 68 years for women).
- Cuba has a GDP per capita of $12,300, while in Haiti, the GDP per capita is $1,800.
- In Cuba, 2.6% of adults are unemployed. In Haiti, that number is 40.6%.
- Cuba spends 12.8% of its total GDP on education. Haiti spends 2.4% of total GDP on education.
- In Cuba, approximately 36 women per 100,000 births die during labor. In Haiti, 480 women do.
- In Cuba, approximately 100% of the population has electricity access. In Haiti, 39% of the population do.
- In Cuba, approximately 57.1% of the population has internet access. In Haiti, about 32.5%.
- In Cuba, the literacy rate is 99.8%. In Haiti, it is 61.7%.
Here’s an idea - instead of indulging in cheap political jibes, why don’t we all bring some evidence and sound argument to really inform the discussion?
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And if you disagree or protest you end up in prison. Which would you prefer?
I am surprised that the numbers are so selective and do not mention political detainees or those who have fled.
You’ve missed the point entirely Randomadness. You specifically wrote 'the living standards of Cuba - but even extending the comparison to human rights, the fact is that Haiti also has a very poor human rights record - as, in fact, do most of the post-colonial societies that were ravaged for centuries - whatever their political complexion since. You can’t compare the results of different political ways forward without taking into account their starting points - and indeed other external factors (such as the US-led international boycott, and invasion attempt, that have crippled Cuba for decades).
But the real point is that in order to make an (unsubstantiated) political point you drew a deeply offensive comparison between coloniser and colonised.
The UK actually has a terrible record of human rights abuses. I wonder if you actually know about this history? The mass killings? The concentration camps? The legalised plunder disguised at home as ‘the Navigation Acts’!? It is only relatively recently (and possibly briefly) that the UK has achieved some level of humanity - but it has to be recognised that this relatively ‘liberal’ position is built on the wealth extracted during slavery and colonialism.
It’s easy for the privileged to adopt a ‘holier than thou’ attitude towards the under-privileged.
I’m reminded of the famous exchange in Pygmalion between the self-satisfied condescending Professor Higgins and the worker Doolittle:
HIGGINS - Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE - Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.
My original comparison of Cuba with UK was simply to point out that if UK is subjected to massive nationalisation and Corbynite controls then she would have state imposed living standards, wages and thought whilst individual liberty and freedom of speech would disappear to be replaced by political prisoners and a police state, like Zimbabwe. I did not mention Haiti.
Re Mr Jones little rant, he has misunderstood the problem of EDF; EDF is and always has been part State owned and is going broke because of the size of its debts, I think €15 billion but it may be double that. As a result it cannot easily raise money on the market. One major cause of this is being unable to raise electricity charges to customers, blocked by the French government. The other is that EDF cannot manage its portfolio of commitments such as nuclear and foreign contracts ( eg Finland). Nor can it produce enough electricity at present as half the nuclear fleet is down for refurbishment or just plain busted and demand is rising.
So the French State has to nationalise the monster for it to get credit but the debts will be paid off( if ever?) by the taxpayer eventually who is either going to pay through higher electricity charges or higher taxes. Which taxes is another debate. Remember that electricity charges have gone up already.
As regards gas and oil, they costs have probably doubled or tripled since 18 months ago - my gas has.
However, that UK has to do something to deal with the problem is true; Simply increasing windfall taxes is dangerous as you have to remember that Shell and BP lost vast amounts a year or so ago and that Shell has had very valuable assets confiscated by the Russian.
Long term there have to be long term oil and gas purchase contracts at fixed prices, something the UK does not seem to do( I may be wrong here). Immediately, prices must be frozen and direct debits not increasable ( word).
Oil prices are falling however and gas may do so as the world adapts to Mr. Putin’s nightmare. Green energy is coming on stream pretty fast with those horrible windmills and new atomic power, plus,the great white hope, hydrogen which is already beginning to prove itself.
Perhaps when the stupid, long drawn out process of choosing a PM is over there will be immediate and effective action.
Enough blather, Empire must wait.
It’s about time the fact that the DWP’s implementatipn of policy is killing people came out.
Explain, svp. I havent lived in UK for 26 years and have no knowledge of what the DWP seems to have been up to.
@Geof_Cox posted an article about it up the topic here
Terese Coffey is the Minister of State for the DWP
Thank you graham, I was not sure if it was that to which the poster was referring. Just out of interest, have these complaints risen much recently or is it ongoing ie several years?
But why the completely inappropriate and patronising comparison?
It looks like a self-manufactured opportunity to attack Jeremy Corbyn - who is not a player in UK politics anymore anyway.
If you want a serious discussion about nationalisation, Labour’s proposals under Corbyn would in fact merely have moved the UK towards what is common-sense consensus in Europe.
Surely this is the appropriate comparison?
Over half of France’s economy is in the state sector one way or another - why not make this comparison, as the UK and France actually do have vaguely similar sizes, locations, histories, etc?
Or take Norway - widely acknowledge to be one of the best-run economies in the world - it regularly comes top in all kinds of studies of well-being, happiness, etc… Here, in addition to wholly state-owned industries and other services, the state controls around 35% of the total values on the Oslo Stock Exchange, and 5 of the 7 largest listed companies are majority or minority state-owned. It is way more ‘nationalised’ than anything Labour has ever proposed. And by the way it is also one of the freest societies in the world.
Drawing wild - or you might say ‘random’ - comparisons of rich European societies with entirely different post-colonial economies tells us nothing. If what you’re after is an evaluation of a more planned economy strategy vs a more capitalist approach for a poor post-colonial country, then you need something like the Cuba-Haiti comparison (in which the planned economy strategy looks much better, doesn’t it?) Trying to compare these strategies by contrasting one of the world’s riches countries with one of its poorest is fatuous.
Did you know, by the way, that the darling of the ill-informed champions of ‘free-markets’ - Singapore - is in reality one of the most state-owned-and-controlled economies in the world?