Omg 18%

Cus

zagfles said:

Moby said:

zagfles said:

Moby said:

I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated economic and political thinking for far too long now.

  No we really aren't. Really. Every time there's any sort of economic turbulance or social unrest the revolutionaries get all excited. The inner city riots in the early 80's, the miner's strike, the poll tax riots, black Wednesday, the global financial crisis, the 2011 riots, the occupy protests, the yellow jackets, Corbyn. Yeah, man, this time it's real! The age of neo-liberalism is over! We'll overthrow the system!

Err....no. Some minor tweaks are made, a few lessons are learnt, but the system survives. Because people aren't stupid, they've seen the result of revolutions all over the world. They don't buy the ridiculous "well they did it wrong" or "the rest of the world conspired against them" arguments.

When inflation hits, 'common sense' dictates that working men and women should accept below inflation pay rises, otherwise inflation bites. When the banks crash and the government bails them out, working men and women have to accept lower public spending and higher taxes, because reducing public debt is 'common sense'. In an external energy price shock, if the government wants to keep prices down, then it's 'common sense' that the costs should ultimately be borne by consumers through higher future bills and through some complex tax on profits that allows multiple loopholes to reduce the cost to business owners.

At no point in any of this is the legitimacy of the market pricing mechanism questioned, as neo-liberal orthodoxy dictates that market mechanisms are sacrosanct. Putin's actions has shifted thinking on such issues in ways that Jeremy Corbyn was never going to do....sometimes it takes a war to change the way we do things.

Have you read the energy board recently? That's the trouble with living in a "neo-liberal" democracy, you're allowed to question what your leaders do, and people do. Come the revolution, that neo-liberal idea will be consigned to the scrapheap of history.

You're right that Putin's actions have shifted thinking though. Who'd have thought Europe would because so united, even in the face of the severe pain being inflicted on us? Who'd have thought the UK's standing in the Europe would improve so much after the lows of Brexit, we even came second in Eurovision after several years of finishing at or near the bottom! They're actually starting to like us after Brexit!

That neither Labour or Tories are talking about capping wholesale prices is a sign of how deep the neo-liberalism now runs. Approaches that were previously considered perfectly acceptable in certain circumstances are now deemed beyond the pale, and this is something I really think we need to fight very hard against. One of the greatest mistakes of Thatcherism was to confuse the completely acceptable business motivation of profit seeking with a mantra of profit maximisation, something that can be counter productive and which should, in a functioning democratic system, be controlled.

There is no excuse for UK wind energy prices to be rising alongside global gas prices, and this is basic price gouging. We are inventing all manner of complex initiatives to sidestep these price rises, the cost of which will ultimately fall on consumers and taxpayers, except for the one simple measure of forcing limits to price gouging on the parts of the wholesale energy market that we can control.

Make your mind up. First you say "I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy..." Now you saying it's firmly entrenched

If we were self sufficient in energy, we could potentially do stuff like cap wholesale prices. But we're not, thanks to all those who object to fracking, new gasfields, new coal mines etc, and despite the massive subsidies for renewables and FITs we've all been paying through our bills.

I'm confused, are you saying that fracking, new gas fields, new coal mines etc is what you want?

bostonerimus

bluenose1 said:

What I don’t understand is who is currently making the massive profits on energy? Someone must be. The public are told we all have to pay more because of Ukraine war yet nothing is said about those who are profiteering. 

There again I wouldn’t trust this Govt to do anything efficiently in the interests of those who need it most. The NI cuts Liz Truss is proposing hardly helps those on low income, think it was something like 67p a month whereas the top 10% of earners will be  £97 a month better off.  
I think the EU are more likely to act to do something re energy than the UK. 

Russia
Saudi-Arabia
BP
Shell
etc.

QrizB

Partial quoting on my phone is a pain in the R's so excuse this approach.

"There is no excuse for UK wind energy prices to be rising alongside global gas prices, and this is basic price gouging."

The majority of UK renewables are funded under FITs, ROs or CfDs. These are paid a fixed rate whatever the market price might be.

For those renewables that aren't funded that way, why exactly do you think the investors should be forced to sell their energy for less than the market price?

[Deleted User]

bluenose1 said:

What I don’t understand is who is currently making the massive profits on energy? Someone must be. The public are told we all have to pay more because of Ukraine war yet nothing is said about those who are profiteering. 

There again I wouldn’t trust this Govt to do anything efficiently in the interests of those who need it most. The NI cuts Liz Truss is proposing hardly helps those on low income, think it was something like 67p a month whereas the top 10% of earners will be  £97 a month better off.  
I think the EU are more likely to act to do something re energy than the UK. 

Oil companies are making profits following years of losses.  

Resource industries are cyclical; nothing new there.  Normally with the price of barrel so high we would see lots of investment going into exploration and extraction. Then the price would drop and cycle would start again. Instead they are paying dividends to shareholders who have suffered badly in recent times.

Why? Three reasons:

-  oil companies are concerned about coming price drops. 

- anti-oil propaganda and disinvestment aka ESG. 

- lack of qualified resources (students don’t study petrochemical engineering, closed refineries are not being replaced, etc).

We have a major misalignment between economic dependence on oil and investment in oil. If one believes that using oil is unethical and that cutting usage is an overwhelming priority then high oil prices are a good thing; inflation and recession will cut down oil consumption. 

zagfles

Cus said:

zagfles said:

Moby said:

zagfles said:

Moby said:

I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated economic and political thinking for far too long now.

  No we really aren't. Really. Every time there's any sort of economic turbulance or social unrest the revolutionaries get all excited. The inner city riots in the early 80's, the miner's strike, the poll tax riots, black Wednesday, the global financial crisis, the 2011 riots, the occupy protests, the yellow jackets, Corbyn. Yeah, man, this time it's real! The age of neo-liberalism is over! We'll overthrow the system!

Err....no. Some minor tweaks are made, a few lessons are learnt, but the system survives. Because people aren't stupid, they've seen the result of revolutions all over the world. They don't buy the ridiculous "well they did it wrong" or "the rest of the world conspired against them" arguments.

When inflation hits, 'common sense' dictates that working men and women should accept below inflation pay rises, otherwise inflation bites. When the banks crash and the government bails them out, working men and women have to accept lower public spending and higher taxes, because reducing public debt is 'common sense'. In an external energy price shock, if the government wants to keep prices down, then it's 'common sense' that the costs should ultimately be borne by consumers through higher future bills and through some complex tax on profits that allows multiple loopholes to reduce the cost to business owners.

At no point in any of this is the legitimacy of the market pricing mechanism questioned, as neo-liberal orthodoxy dictates that market mechanisms are sacrosanct. Putin's actions has shifted thinking on such issues in ways that Jeremy Corbyn was never going to do....sometimes it takes a war to change the way we do things.

Have you read the energy board recently? That's the trouble with living in a "neo-liberal" democracy, you're allowed to question what your leaders do, and people do. Come the revolution, that neo-liberal idea will be consigned to the scrapheap of history.

You're right that Putin's actions have shifted thinking though. Who'd have thought Europe would because so united, even in the face of the severe pain being inflicted on us? Who'd have thought the UK's standing in the Europe would improve so much after the lows of Brexit, we even came second in Eurovision after several years of finishing at or near the bottom! They're actually starting to like us after Brexit!

That neither Labour or Tories are talking about capping wholesale prices is a sign of how deep the neo-liberalism now runs. Approaches that were previously considered perfectly acceptable in certain circumstances are now deemed beyond the pale, and this is something I really think we need to fight very hard against. One of the greatest mistakes of Thatcherism was to confuse the completely acceptable business motivation of profit seeking with a mantra of profit maximisation, something that can be counter productive and which should, in a functioning democratic system, be controlled.

There is no excuse for UK wind energy prices to be rising alongside global gas prices, and this is basic price gouging. We are inventing all manner of complex initiatives to sidestep these price rises, the cost of which will ultimately fall on consumers and taxpayers, except for the one simple measure of forcing limits to price gouging on the parts of the wholesale energy market that we can control.

Make your mind up. First you say "I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy..." Now you saying it's firmly entrenched

If we were self sufficient in energy, we could potentially do stuff like cap wholesale prices. But we're not, thanks to all those who object to fracking, new gasfields, new coal mines etc, and despite the massive subsidies for renewables and FITs we've all been paying through our bills.

I'm confused, are you saying that fracking, new gas fields, new coal mines etc is what you want?

Better that than importing fossil fuels from abroad.

ComicGeek

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Prism said:

sgx2000 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

sgx2000 said:

Tony Blair was the most successful PM im the last 50 years..

Electorally no more successful than Maggie.

Both succeeded in their time to address the challenges of the era.
Both implemented policies that were unpopular while carrying the populace with them.
Both set a vision and led (rather than managed) the country.

Maggie was only suceeded by, selling off all the family silver.... to the wealthy tory voters ....
We owned all the utilities
Now foreign companies own them

Who wants to own and run the utilities? We already control them pretty well with policy without having to run them. 

All profits are stripped from the utility companies and paid to executives and shareholders. Very small amount is reinvested into network maintenance and improvements, which is why 20-25% of water is lost through network leaks.

We have an ageing distribution system for all utilities - power outages and water supply issues are more to do with low network investment than anything else. 

I am always curious why people would be visiting a retirement/investment forum if they are  ideologically opposed to profits and shareholders.  

I'm not ideologically opposed - I just believe that certain things are too important to allow private investors to control for personal profit, utility companies being the main one. Security of energy supply is critical for any country, and the lack of investment in infrastructure is dangerous.

Part of my work is dealing with large scale utility infrastructure connections - people would be shocked to see how much of the current infrastructure is held together by temporary fixes, with major issues to come in the immediate future.

So no, I don't believe that people should profit from dividends that should clearly be used for national security investment.

The model you so desire has been implemented in Venezuela. Formally the richest country in South America. So beloved by the former Labour leader (currently suspended).  Worked great.  You should experience it in person. 

Not really, not sure why people have to work so hard to twist things on here. 

The Netherlands would be a better example of publicly owned infrastructure, although renewable energy provision is lagging behind.

There is a problem here.  I own shares in companies which own Dutch utilities. Like Eneco which produces and supplies natural gas and heat (owned by Mitsubishi). Or PWN water.  

They do have state ownership of gas storage facilities.  So? Right now Netherlands are experiencing soaring energy prices.  

Blaming energy inflation on shareholders is ludicrous. Energy policy in  the UK and the Netherlands is  determined by the governments.  It were successive governments who destroyed  diversity and security of energy supply by making themselves heavily reliant on Russian gas.  

You are just pushing your ideology even though the thread has nothing to do with it and energy prices are up everywhere. 

Again, why try and twist everything? I haven't blamed energy inflation on shareholders, I haven't suggested that state ownership of distribution networks results in low energy prices, I'm not driving any ideology.

There's a difference between bodies that run the major distribution infrastructure and those that create/sell energy. In the Netherlands the electricity distribution is owned solely by the government through TenneT, with all profits going back to government. In England & Wales the electricity and gas distribution is owned by National Grid plc with lots of shareholders to please.

I have no ideology - I just think it's a stupid position where a country has no control over its own major distribution systems, and where investment in the system is not kept up. I 

It's not about energy prices, but security of supply (that's reliability of infrastructure as well as procurement of energy).

arnoldy

bluenose1 said:

What I don’t understand is who is currently making the massive profits on energy? 

Solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, wood pellet producers. The price of sunlight or the breeze has not changed, they are coining it in. The EU very sensibly is making technical changes that decouple the market price of electricity from the market price of natural gas electricity. 

Cus

zagfles said:

Cus said:

zagfles said:

Moby said:

zagfles said:

Moby said:

I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated economic and political thinking for far too long now.

  No we really aren't. Really. Every time there's any sort of economic turbulance or social unrest the revolutionaries get all excited. The inner city riots in the early 80's, the miner's strike, the poll tax riots, black Wednesday, the global financial crisis, the 2011 riots, the occupy protests, the yellow jackets, Corbyn. Yeah, man, this time it's real! The age of neo-liberalism is over! We'll overthrow the system!

Err....no. Some minor tweaks are made, a few lessons are learnt, but the system survives. Because people aren't stupid, they've seen the result of revolutions all over the world. They don't buy the ridiculous "well they did it wrong" or "the rest of the world conspired against them" arguments.

When inflation hits, 'common sense' dictates that working men and women should accept below inflation pay rises, otherwise inflation bites. When the banks crash and the government bails them out, working men and women have to accept lower public spending and higher taxes, because reducing public debt is 'common sense'. In an external energy price shock, if the government wants to keep prices down, then it's 'common sense' that the costs should ultimately be borne by consumers through higher future bills and through some complex tax on profits that allows multiple loopholes to reduce the cost to business owners.

At no point in any of this is the legitimacy of the market pricing mechanism questioned, as neo-liberal orthodoxy dictates that market mechanisms are sacrosanct. Putin's actions has shifted thinking on such issues in ways that Jeremy Corbyn was never going to do....sometimes it takes a war to change the way we do things.

Have you read the energy board recently? That's the trouble with living in a "neo-liberal" democracy, you're allowed to question what your leaders do, and people do. Come the revolution, that neo-liberal idea will be consigned to the scrapheap of history.

You're right that Putin's actions have shifted thinking though. Who'd have thought Europe would because so united, even in the face of the severe pain being inflicted on us? Who'd have thought the UK's standing in the Europe would improve so much after the lows of Brexit, we even came second in Eurovision after several years of finishing at or near the bottom! They're actually starting to like us after Brexit!

That neither Labour or Tories are talking about capping wholesale prices is a sign of how deep the neo-liberalism now runs. Approaches that were previously considered perfectly acceptable in certain circumstances are now deemed beyond the pale, and this is something I really think we need to fight very hard against. One of the greatest mistakes of Thatcherism was to confuse the completely acceptable business motivation of profit seeking with a mantra of profit maximisation, something that can be counter productive and which should, in a functioning democratic system, be controlled.

There is no excuse for UK wind energy prices to be rising alongside global gas prices, and this is basic price gouging. We are inventing all manner of complex initiatives to sidestep these price rises, the cost of which will ultimately fall on consumers and taxpayers, except for the one simple measure of forcing limits to price gouging on the parts of the wholesale energy market that we can control.

Make your mind up. First you say "I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy..." Now you saying it's firmly entrenched

If we were self sufficient in energy, we could potentially do stuff like cap wholesale prices. But we're not, thanks to all those who object to fracking, new gasfields, new coal mines etc, and despite the massive subsidies for renewables and FITs we've all been paying through our bills.

I'm confused, are you saying that fracking, new gas fields, new coal mines etc is what you want?

Better that than importing fossil fuels from abroad.

Would it better to import from existing sources instead of building the infrastructure to extract new fossil fuels in our own country? I guess that depends on how committed we are to new clean energy sources.

[Deleted User]

ComicGeek said:

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Prism said:

sgx2000 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

sgx2000 said:

Tony Blair was the most successful PM im the last 50 years..

Electorally no more successful than Maggie.

Both succeeded in their time to address the challenges of the era.
Both implemented policies that were unpopular while carrying the populace with them.
Both set a vision and led (rather than managed) the country.

Maggie was only suceeded by, selling off all the family silver.... to the wealthy tory voters ....
We owned all the utilities
Now foreign companies own them

Who wants to own and run the utilities? We already control them pretty well with policy without having to run them. 

All profits are stripped from the utility companies and paid to executives and shareholders. Very small amount is reinvested into network maintenance and improvements, which is why 20-25% of water is lost through network leaks.

We have an ageing distribution system for all utilities - power outages and water supply issues are more to do with low network investment than anything else. 

I am always curious why people would be visiting a retirement/investment forum if they are  ideologically opposed to profits and shareholders.  

I'm not ideologically opposed - I just believe that certain things are too important to allow private investors to control for personal profit, utility companies being the main one. Security of energy supply is critical for any country, and the lack of investment in infrastructure is dangerous.

Part of my work is dealing with large scale utility infrastructure connections - people would be shocked to see how much of the current infrastructure is held together by temporary fixes, with major issues to come in the immediate future.

So no, I don't believe that people should profit from dividends that should clearly be used for national security investment.

The model you so desire has been implemented in Venezuela. Formally the richest country in South America. So beloved by the former Labour leader (currently suspended).  Worked great.  You should experience it in person. 

Not really, not sure why people have to work so hard to twist things on here. 

The Netherlands would be a better example of publicly owned infrastructure, although renewable energy provision is lagging behind.

There is a problem here.  I own shares in companies which own Dutch utilities. Like Eneco which produces and supplies natural gas and heat (owned by Mitsubishi). Or PWN water.  

They do have state ownership of gas storage facilities.  So? Right now Netherlands are experiencing soaring energy prices.  

Blaming energy inflation on shareholders is ludicrous. Energy policy in  the UK and the Netherlands is  determined by the governments.  It were successive governments who destroyed  diversity and security of energy supply by making themselves heavily reliant on Russian gas.  

You are just pushing your ideology even though the thread has nothing to do with it and energy prices are up everywhere. 

Again, why try and twist everything? I haven't blamed energy inflation on shareholders, I haven't suggested that state ownership of distribution networks results in low energy prices, I'm not driving any ideology.

There's a difference between bodies that run the major distribution infrastructure and those that create/sell energy. In the Netherlands the electricity distribution is owned solely by the government through TenneT, with all profits going back to government. In England & Wales the electricity and gas distribution is owned by National Grid plc with lots of shareholders to please.

I have no ideology - I just think it's a stupid position where a country has no control over its own major distribution systems, and where investment in the system is not kept up. I 

It's not about energy prices, but security of supply (that's reliability of infrastructure as well as procurement of energy).

You should re read what you said up the thread.

Your latest post is moving into a narrow argument which is different from where you started but still wrong. There are different ownership mechanisms for generation, transmission and distribution but in all cases security of supply is 100% government’s responsibility.  Having worked in the industry in 2 countries and under different ownership formats I have not come across any scenario with key decisions NOT being made by governments/regulators.  Wrong decisions impacting security of supply were made in Netherlands, Germany and Britain (both Labour and Conservative governments). 

Why? Because the lessons from the 70s crisis have been forgotten by the public and did not bring votes. 

zagfles

Cus said:

zagfles said:

Cus said:

zagfles said:

Moby said:

zagfles said:

Moby said:

I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated economic and political thinking for far too long now.

  No we really aren't. Really. Every time there's any sort of economic turbulance or social unrest the revolutionaries get all excited. The inner city riots in the early 80's, the miner's strike, the poll tax riots, black Wednesday, the global financial crisis, the 2011 riots, the occupy protests, the yellow jackets, Corbyn. Yeah, man, this time it's real! The age of neo-liberalism is over! We'll overthrow the system!

Err....no. Some minor tweaks are made, a few lessons are learnt, but the system survives. Because people aren't stupid, they've seen the result of revolutions all over the world. They don't buy the ridiculous "well they did it wrong" or "the rest of the world conspired against them" arguments.

When inflation hits, 'common sense' dictates that working men and women should accept below inflation pay rises, otherwise inflation bites. When the banks crash and the government bails them out, working men and women have to accept lower public spending and higher taxes, because reducing public debt is 'common sense'. In an external energy price shock, if the government wants to keep prices down, then it's 'common sense' that the costs should ultimately be borne by consumers through higher future bills and through some complex tax on profits that allows multiple loopholes to reduce the cost to business owners.

At no point in any of this is the legitimacy of the market pricing mechanism questioned, as neo-liberal orthodoxy dictates that market mechanisms are sacrosanct. Putin's actions has shifted thinking on such issues in ways that Jeremy Corbyn was never going to do....sometimes it takes a war to change the way we do things.

Have you read the energy board recently? That's the trouble with living in a "neo-liberal" democracy, you're allowed to question what your leaders do, and people do. Come the revolution, that neo-liberal idea will be consigned to the scrapheap of history.

You're right that Putin's actions have shifted thinking though. Who'd have thought Europe would because so united, even in the face of the severe pain being inflicted on us? Who'd have thought the UK's standing in the Europe would improve so much after the lows of Brexit, we even came second in Eurovision after several years of finishing at or near the bottom! They're actually starting to like us after Brexit!

That neither Labour or Tories are talking about capping wholesale prices is a sign of how deep the neo-liberalism now runs. Approaches that were previously considered perfectly acceptable in certain circumstances are now deemed beyond the pale, and this is something I really think we need to fight very hard against. One of the greatest mistakes of Thatcherism was to confuse the completely acceptable business motivation of profit seeking with a mantra of profit maximisation, something that can be counter productive and which should, in a functioning democratic system, be controlled.

There is no excuse for UK wind energy prices to be rising alongside global gas prices, and this is basic price gouging. We are inventing all manner of complex initiatives to sidestep these price rises, the cost of which will ultimately fall on consumers and taxpayers, except for the one simple measure of forcing limits to price gouging on the parts of the wholesale energy market that we can control.

Make your mind up. First you say "I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy..." Now you saying it's firmly entrenched

If we were self sufficient in energy, we could potentially do stuff like cap wholesale prices. But we're not, thanks to all those who object to fracking, new gasfields, new coal mines etc, and despite the massive subsidies for renewables and FITs we've all been paying through our bills.

I'm confused, are you saying that fracking, new gas fields, new coal mines etc is what you want?

Better that than importing fossil fuels from abroad.

Would it better to import from existing sources instead of building the infrastructure to extract new fossil fuels in our own country? I guess that depends on how committed we are to new clean energy sources.

Or on how much we want to rely on other countries rather than be self sufficient. As we, Germany and the rest of Europe are finding to our cost.