Should the energy industry be renationalised?

Southend1

With all the price hikes and accusations of profiteering, I'm wondering whether people think we'd be better off if the industry was renationalised.

Southend1

I should also have said please post a comment with your reasons if you have time. Thanks

pooch

I remember the days of nationalisation, no choice of supplier and the lights going out.

Also, we the taxpayers cannot afford to buy back the industries we sold.

Also, pension funds will be hit hard if they lose the energy companies from their portfolio of investments

Also, we are no longer self sufficient in energy supply, so how can the British Government nationalise a French or Russian Business???

Southend1

pooch wrote: »

I remember the days of nationalisation, no choice of supplier and the lights going out.

What about the massive marketing spend that comes along with choice? And is there a real choice anyway? All suppliers have dire customer service and act as a cartel where pricing is concerned.

pooch

Southend1 wrote: »

What about the massive marketing spend that comes along with choice?

What about it?

And how does it compare to the price a bloated, nationalised monopoly could charge. Of course, at least when the lights went out, they couldn't charge for usage ... but the standing charges still applied.

Southend1 wrote: »

And is there a real choice anyway? All suppliers have dire customer service and act as a cartel where pricing is concerned.

Er, yes there is a choice!

Have you looked at any energy comparison site?
There seem to be almost 20 different suppliers to choose from probably offering over 100 different tariffs in total (although this has reduced in recent times due to government regulatory intervention) :cool:

ihateyes

Renationalising means the Government has to basically buy the companies back....

Who pays for that?

In pucblic services there is so much red tape, that the slightest thing to be done, will require feasibility studies... blah blah

Why are bills so high at the moment? Government taxes! they wont go away

My solution is companies cannot have own mainstream businesses and residential businesses.

matelodave

I'd bet there's nothing the unions would like better - they would have us over a barrel and there'd be nothing we could do about it.

Nationalised industries have never performed efficiently and have always cost us more than privatised. Possibly in the short term they'd try and hold prices down but when they are buying fuel & energy from abroad on the open market they'd still have to pay as much as everyone else.

The best way to reduce energy prices is to reduce the tax and green levies. The 5% tax adds £50-£70 to most peoples bill and we are paying that tax on the green levies as well so without much effort the government could reduce our bills by £100 or more a year.

Cardew

There was a thread recently that discussed the history of energy prices. When Gas/Electricity was privatised in the 1990s there was a marked fall in energy bills.

The distribution companies are not making huge profits(in percentage terms) and for re-nationalisation to work the foreign suppliers of energy would need to be taken over. 'Hi Mr Putin, Would you have any objections if we take Gazprom into UK Government ownership'!

A far bigger factor than the profit margins of the companies is the so called 'Green Levy' where the Government have decided customers will pay(and not general taxation) the massive subsidies to firms producing energy from solar/wind etc.

Customers also pay for the social tariffs for the less well off and cross-subsidies for pre-pay tariffs.

Pincher

Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Idi Amin in Uganda.

Just about everything in this country belongs to somebody else, except maybe Vladimir Putin. Lots of Russian ex-oligarchs who ran away with Russian money, yes, but it's not Putin's investments, so he doesn't care.

We dump the capitalist system, which is about to collapse when the US realises it will end up like Greece, with a debt mountain they can never hope to repay. We now fall into the arm of mother Russia, declare we are going communist, and nationalise/confiscate EVERYTHING from all these filthy multinationals.

We will get cheap oil and gas from Russia, the RAF will fly Migs and we can stop paying for Trident.

All to save me £150 a year on utility bills.

Butterfly_Brain

There is a petition up asking for just that
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/re-nationalise-gas-and-electricity?source=facebook-share-button&time=1382256677

Southend1

Interesting stuff. The votes are 50/50 at the moment but the comments seem to be largely against renationalisation.