Ministers must look at drastic options if energy fatcats do not lower prices
Cap in hand
OH to be a fly on the wall when energy fatcats are summoned by Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi to justify their outrageous profits.
We hope he won’t fall for any lame excuses, or special pleading about how it’s not their fault bills are rocketing.
The fact is that, while households are teetering on the edge of financial collapse and bills are heading towards £4,400 A YEAR, the bank balances of the power bosses grow ever more swollen.
As we reveal today, one possible outcome from the summit is a more stringent windfall tax on energy firms’ profits, in order to subsidise bills.
The vast amounts the likes of British Gas owner Centrica have been raking in are on the back of Putin’s war in Ukraine, not their own ingenuity.
It would be better — not to mention more ethical — if they voluntarily lowered prices, instead of jamming them up to the maximum allowed under the cap.
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There seems to be fat chance of that, though. So they only have themselves to blame if ministers look at drastic options.
Bills no-mates
AS bills spiral out of control, there is no shortage of “experts” taking to the airwaves to demand immediate action from the Tory Government on the energy crisis.
Fair enough, you might think. Except look at who they are.
There’s Gordon Brown, whose fiscal incontinence tossed hundreds of billions on to the UK’s debt mountain, and who was a key figure in the New Labour administration that failed to start work on any new nuclear power reactors.
Or what about Sir Ed Davey, whose own Lib Dems actively opposed building new nuclear power stations in 2010 because they wouldn’t be ready until 2021 or 2022? How foolish such short-termism looks now.
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Then there’s bandwagon-jumping CBI chief Tony Danker, who as recently as June was urging a headlong dash to net zero environmental targets, despite the state of the economy.
If there’s one thing a fed-up country doesn’t need, it’s hot air from this lot.
Plumb job
THE latest to be hit by a hosepipe ban are the 15million customers of Thames Water.
That’s the same Thames Water that has failed to get a £250million London desalination plant working, which was supposed to help counter droughts.
It has also proved incapable of stopping untreated sewage pouring into our rivers, and is scandalously losing a quarter of its water supply to leaks.
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Meanwhile CEO Sarah Bentley — who recently told customers to take shorter showers — pocketed £2million last year and is now set for £727,000 in bonuses.
At this rate, the energy and water company bosses will soon start giving even the politicians a good name.