Customers 'Duped' By Energy Switching Deals

redux

Sledgehead wrote: »

Be careful what you wish for :
http://www.energyanalyst.co.uk/an-analysis-of-coal-generation-in-the-uk-and-gas-market-interaction/

Note this diagram of inflation adjusted coal prices. The 1979 price spiral happens under full nationalisation at a time of huge Union power. Margaret Thatcher came to power in that same year. She broke the Unions about 5 years later.



Of course, this is not the whole story, as since the last state-set spike in energy prices, wages have grown in real terms:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/HMT-1.jpg

So the current run up feels nothing like that union inspired spike, as heating was a bigger chunk of peoples' take home pay.


Interestingly, in Jacques Peretti's mini-series, The Super-Rich and Us, Mr Peretti reveals data showing the 70's to be a high point of egalitarianism, with wages of bosses being only a small multiple of the workers. The chart link below tells the same story:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/GD-Wage-chart1.jpg

To hear Union bosses of the time, like Scargill, you'd have thought the absolute opposite was true: they refused to recognize their good fortune and instead went on the rampage, demanding inflation busting wage rises. That's what's behind that spike you see in coal prices - the spike other ordinary people were having to pay. The result: people lost all sympathy with the "working man" and their unions. And Maggie was invited to bust them up.

:rotfl:

This has to be one of the most comically simplistic attempts to make a partisan political point that I've seen for some time.

How about a bit more context?

The price of oil jumped dramatically in 1973 and 1974, and the price of coal was dragged upwards as well.

All around the world, not just here.

Do some searches for coal price 1974 and various country names, such as Australia or India or USA.

You might discover for example that the price of coal from the Appalachian Basin more than doubled in 1974, as buyers desperately outbid each other while production capacity could not expand rapidly enough to keep up with burgeoning demand.

One might just as easily blame the free market, and still be too simplistic.

Pincher

I blame humans: too many of them.


If there were only a million people, we could all burn coal and wood for energy, and still produce less greenhouse gas than all the animals farting around the world.


If we all just turn the thermostat down by ten degrees, and freeze to death, the energy we save could run ten Jeremy Clarksons.


Free condoms, NOW!

Sledgehead

redux wrote: »

:rotfl:

This has to be one of the most comically simplistic attempts to make a partisan political point that I've seen for some time.

How about a bit more context?

The price of oil jumped dramatically in 1973 and 1974, and the price of coal was dragged upwards as well.

All around the world, not just here.

My post was made in response to a post that said all we need do is nationalize and things will be fine. The clear implication there is that market prices need not worry us when energy is nationalized. I pointed out that during nationalization things were far from fine.

Now whether you attribute the 79 energy price spike to unions or market forces (as you do), it's pretty clear who is right here, and it's the guy who says nationalization is no silver bullet when it comes to energy bills, and THAT IS ME.

And that my friend, gives ME the last laugh.

Sledgehead

Widelats wrote: »

If you got plenty cash though its still worth while to go solid fuel,.

Yeah, nothing better than trucking logs and coal over a brand new carpet. Still, if you vacuum more it keeps things in check for longer - and vacuum cleaners are powered by fairy dust. As is the car that trucks in the solid fuel. And the heat lost through opening doors to fetch in more solid fuel is fairy fuel and thus totally free. And there really are enough trees to give us all enough heat, because the fairies are planting them. It's quite wrong to think that if even a tiny fraction of us used wood as a principle source of fuel, prices would rocket, something goblins have been saying for years. And it's a fiction that only dried, stored wood makes solid fuel economically viable, so piling itt up in your garden is fine, and incidentally, also makes a nice home for fairies.

Widelats wrote: »

avoiding them energy companies is always a good thing.

... because they are wicked witches who demand a whole 4% return, money that is frittered away on retirement pensions, when taxpayers money would do just as well!

But seriously, as long as you can provide your own energy w/o poisoning the rest of us with carcinogenic phenol vapours (by burning chipboard and ply), good luck to you. Maybe you live in a forest and like the grizzly adams existence, or are rich enough to have a little man make you your fires every morning and do the felling and chopping. But for the rest of us, I think we'd be hard pressed to meet or energy needs in such a :
- convenient;
- clean;
- healthful;
- environmentally friendly;
- cheap way;
which also has the benefit if furnishing the economy with a business that pays for people's pensions and provides others with jobs.

And here's a thought: maybe if we got behind British business, they might not only stay British, but expand overseas and then our pensions could be paid for by profits made from overseas consumers. Now there's a thought ....

redux

Sledgehead wrote: »

My post was made in response to a post that said all we need do is nationalize and things will be fine. The clear implication there is that market prices need not worry us when energy is nationalized. I pointed out that during nationalization things were far from fine.

Now whether you attribute the 79 energy price spike to unions or market forces (as you do), it's pretty clear who is right here, and it's the guy who says nationalization is no silver bullet when it comes to energy bills, and THAT IS ME.
I
And that my friend, gives ME the last laugh.

I didn't attribute it in full to only market forces. I specifically said that such a comment would be as simplistic as your remark.

The force of your post was that this was solely due to excessive union power in a nationalised industry in this country.

I pointed out that this happened all over the world, whether nationalised or private, and in a context that this was resulting from the oil price shock.

To add to that, you spoke of crushing the union. At the time of the miners strike in the mid 1980s, even lifelong Conservative voters were saying that Thatcher had gone too far, and surely investing in more efficient and cleaner production was worth at least thinking about before closing down enough coal to last 300 years.

After all, coal has traditionally been subsidised here and abroad for the sake of driving other economic growth.

When the utility companies here were about to be privatised, the government increased the tariffs by 40%, in order to make the flotation more attractive to investors.

That 40% gazump is neither union power nor tariffs being directly connected to market competition, but exploitation of what was still mainly a monopolistic structure. We didn't get real competition of people having choices between suppliers until more than 10 years later.

When the railways were privatised, government subsidy doubled and kept going up, and there was less political control. The efficiency of the system is undermined by there being so many companies, and for a while more money was being spent on legal fees to do with inter company contracts than on maintenance.

We are digressing too much here by now, but neither nationalisation or privatisation is an ideal for its own sake. Nationalised industries still have to have a sensible price unless in a command economy, and privatisation doesn't necessarily overcome monopoly power if badly designed.