Energy Cartel & Customer Investment in the Energy Industry.

spinbuster

We hear frequently in the media about the need for customer energy bills to rise so that energy companies can invest to meet the projected future demand for energy.
If a proportion of a customer’s bill is being invested in this private industry then why is the customer not acquiring shares i.e. equity in that private industry? Or to put it another way, why should the customer be paying a private tax to fund private shareholders future profits?

Cardew

Because Maggie Thatcher wanted it that way!


Your question applies to all the nationalised companies that were privatised - gas/electricity, water, telecoms, Trains, steel, Royal Mail etc etc.


The nationalised companies were sold off to investors raising £billions for the Exchequer.


Obviously investors want a return on their investment, otherwise why would they have invested?


It is a valid argument that these industries should not have been privatised - selling off the family silver according to Harold Macmillan*!


However for good or bad, the companies were sold off and the companies need to make a profit - it is called Capitalism!



*

Macmillan is widely supposed to have likened Thatcher's policy of privatisation to 'selling the family silver'. His precise quote, at a dinner of the Tory Reform Group at the Royal Overseas League on 8 November 1985, was on the subject of the sale of assets commonplace among individuals or states when they encountered financial difficulties: 'First of all the Georgian silver goes. And then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go.' Profitable parts of the steel industry and the railways had been privatised, along with British Telecom:

Nada666

The co-operative model you suggest is doing well in other sectors, isn''t it?

Customers who are interested are free to purchase shares if they like - they can even buy them for other suppliers, too, not just their own. Those who are disinterested are uninterested.

Farway

Nada666 wrote: »

Customers who are interested are free to purchase shares if they like - they can even buy them for other suppliers, too, not just their own. .

Which is just what I have done, the divis help pay the bills