Sunday, December 1, 2013

Government's Energy Policy Omnishambles



According to news reports this morning George Osborne is going to give us all a £50 rebate off of our electricity bills? That works out to around 96p per week. Combined bills have risen by around £75 to £150 per year.

I have listened to many reports on the energy crisis and fuel poverty, yet not one single so-called political journalist has mentioned that in 2010 shortly after assuming power, and despite a firm pledge no to, George Osborne CUT pensioners winter fuel allowance between £50 and £100. Pensioners aged 60 to 79 years saw their allowance cut by £50 while those aged 80 years on saw their allowance cut by £100.  The older you get the more prone you are to suffering hypothermia and unfortunately not many people are aware they are becoming susceptible to hypothermia and this is why so many elderly people perish from the cold. Is George Osborne and this headless chicken government seriously expecting pensioners to be grateful that they are being rebated £50 out of what has already been taken away from them? By my reckoning the lower scale are owed £150 while the higher scale is owed £300, which Osborne has stolen from them.


It's also worth noting that while needy pensioners were having their wither fuel allowances cut by the Conservatives and left struggling to pay their fuel bills and struggling to keep warm, the Tory chancellor was awarding millionaires with a £100,000 cheque in the form of a tax rebate. The prime minister David Cameron's advice to pensioners and others on low pay struggling to pay astronomical heating bills and struggling to keep warm and feed themselves, was to put on an extra jumper and stay in one room! Almost as bad as previous Conservative government's advice on heating costs and staying warm between 1979 and 1997, when they advised the elderly to wear a woolly hat to bed. This was in reply to criticism over the number of 'unnecessary deaths' that were happening with the elderly due to Thatcher privatising the utility companies and the resulting price hikes in gas and electricity.

Is this rebate of £50 going to be paid to everyone across the board no matter what their financial circumstances? So a person subsisting on £57 per week job seekers allowance will get a £50 rebate while a millionaire tax avoiding Tory party supporter also receives £50 off of their energy bills? Will this £50 be available to all across the country, or will it only apply to certain areas?

Since the Conservative controlled Coalition government took power in 2010, families have seen their annual incomes fall by approximately £1,600 per year as a direct result of the Tory chancellor's austerity measures and his help to big businesses to drive down wages and it's getting worse.

Poor families and those struggling with energy bills who have been placed on prepayment meteres pay more for their gas and electricity than anyone else, this is penalising the poor, will they just receive 96p per week? or will they be given real substantial help to help them cope with heating their homes and feeding their families and themselves? Some people have already seen their family tax credits cut, their child allowance cut and are already being forced to pay more in council tax and rents and some have been slapped with the bedroom tax of between £14 and £24 per week. How is 96p per week going to help them?

The government's energy policy has been exposed as a complete and utter omnishambles a complete contradiction, they haven't got the first idea what they are doing, let alone how to do it, and over something as vitally important as our energy security, it really is very frightening.

What does George Osborne say to the fact that he and his government have already raised the green levy for all energy consumers by 50% over the past three years?

What does George Osborne say about the fact that his government have already raised the carbon floor by 4% higher than they need have?

Where is this £300 million 'rebate' going to come from? A cut in green taxes and then placed on general taxation? So we are not saving anything at all, except for the millionaire Tory tax dodgers who don't pay tax so they will pay no or very little tax but will still receive the £50 rebate, while the rest of us pay for this rebate through general taxation.

ONCE AGAIN George Osborne, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have succumbed to pressure from the big 6 energy companies and placed some green taxes onto general taxation, which benefits the energy companies and penalizes the rest of us. David Cameron is dancing to the tune of the energy conglomerates, we know Cameron doesn't do detail but the coalition government's complete energy horlicks is seriously alarming!

For two months we have seen Cameron, Osborne and Clegg instead of doing something to try and help consumers affected by the cost of living crisis they have been flailing about attacking Ed Miliband and Labour's pledge to freeze energy prices for 20 months, reset the energy market and introduce a tough new regulator as - a 'con'. Instead of acting to bring the energy companies under control instead they joined in with the energy companies and have put out all kinds of scare stories, from the lights going out to the energy companies raising their prices before the freeze:

1). Well before Ed Miliband announced Labour's energy plans, the energy companies have been threatening to put the lights out and spreading stories about gas supplies running short, and they have in fact *already*cancelled billions of pounds of investment by cancelling building a new green nuclear power station and two green gas power stations because of the Tory controlled coalition government's incompetence and dithering over their energy policy on renewables etc. The constant bickering and politicking going on between the Tories and the Lib Dems at the heart of British government over their energy policies causing delays in policy already lead to cancellations of investment is what is really threatening energy supplies in this country, it is not Ed Miliband's insistence on standing up to the energy companies and stressing that we must as a country have a clear cut energy policy for the sake of the people AND the energy companies and future energy security.

2). If all the energy companies decide to put up their prices before a future Labour government implement a price freeze, then this is called a cartel and we have strict laws about forming cartels in this country, if the energy companies did this then thus would be illegal and the regulator can stop them doing it.

3). Hypocritical Cameron and Osborne accused Ed Miliband of being a Marxist and getting his energy policies from 'Das Kapital'. This was one week before Osborne went to communist China and begged their communist government to come to the UK and build a power station for us.

Cameron says we have no control over global energy costs, yet he has signed a contract with the communist government of China to set the UKs electricity prices for the next 35 years!

Cameron, Osborne and Clegg say we have no control over global energy costs, yet the energy conglomerates are both produces and wholesalers of their own product, so they set their wholesale price they pay and the have set it artificially high.

Both Cameron and Osborne have said you cannot interfere in the market while doing exactly that! They have been interfering in the Market! They accuse Ed Miliband's price freeze of being  a con, yet in secret Osborne and Cameron have gone to the energy companies and have been begging the energy companies not to raise prices until after the 2015 general election - now that is not only a con, it is a huge deceit. They are virtually saying to energy companies look help us get back in and you can do what you like to energy costs after the election. It is gross misleading of the electorate and trying to gain votes and reelection by fraudulently allowing the public to believe the opposite of what is true and Cameron has form for doing this, he done exactly the same over the NHS when he said under his government there would be "no more top down reorganisations of the NHS" while secretly planning the biggest top down reorganisation of the NHS in its entire history, the man is a bare faced liar and cannot be trusted.  Take this argument to the Tories logical conclusion accusing Labour's energy policy being a con, the Tories said the energy companies would raise prices before a price freeze, then if this is so what is to stop the companies massively hiking prices after their self imposed price freeze that the Conservatives have been begging for in private?

Osborne says he cannot interfere in the market but he has CUT tax for fracking companies by a huge 50% to attract them into this country at the same time as watering down environmental impact assessments for fracking companies which could lead to the pollution our water supplies! This is in addition to Osborne shedding 15% of the workforce in the Department for the Environment, he is getting rid of the very workforce whose job it is to oversee that fracking impact assessments were carried out properly!

Cameron and Osborne will claim that their cut in green levies will save households £50 per year and come just days after David Cameron dismissed green levies as "green crap", but bills will still rise as inflation busting price hikes by the energy companies will add £107 to the average bill.
Cameron announces that green levies are "green crap" yet it is his government who have raised green levies over 50% in the past three years, so this government are not only giving us back a small amount of what they have already taken, we will pay for the rebate anyway as it has been reported that the green levies will be added to general taxation. In short the government's rebate means that he is going to take £300 million which is currently paid by the energy firms, give us a 96p per week rebate and pass the cost onto us all through general taxation. (I hope he doesn't have anymore bright ideas like this!)

If the green [crap] levies are cut, who will pay for the warms homes project that funds insulation for poor people and helps local authorities to insulate their housing stock? How many jobs will be lost as a result of the government's panicking actions?

On the one hand Cameron is saying his government are going to cut the [green crap] levies, yet writes in the Guardian that that he is going to argue in favour of green jobs in the new year, does anyone know what this man is actually doing? Does he even know? The man is a walking talking contradiction in terms! If David Cameron had any intention at all of providing 'green jobs' he would not now be constantly deferring the issue, he would be facing it head on, after all he has no difficulty in touring the world with his arms dealer buddies flogging arms to small Arab countries and dictatorships, for them to pass on to Al-Qaeda to use on our troops! If Cameron had his way and ed Miliband had let him, he would have sold arms to Syrian rebels who are run rife with Al-Qaeda!

All the government are doing is trying to kick the energy problem into the long grass until after the general election in 2015. he keeps trying to spin about climate change issues, hoping that no one will notice how awful his government have been concerning green issues. He can delete all the speeches he likes because everyone already knows he promised to be the "greenest government ever" and "vote blue go green" and like his NHS promise everyone knows this was yet another huge lie. They want to delay any decisions of green policies until after the next election hoping that no one will notice their long and medium term energy policy is in tatters.

It appears that in the Coalition what we have is not a proper government, but an amalgamation of weak and utter pricks, none of them capable of making a tough decision (unless they concern bullying weak, the poor, disabled, unemployed, sick and elderly). Cameron, Osborne IDS and Clegg can stand up to the weak, but run a mile from the strong and powerful such as the bankers, hedge funds, big business and power companies any tough decisions due to be made here ends with the capitulation of the British government!

What has happened to all Cameron's big ideas? Big Society, Compassionate Conservatism, we're all in it together?

As the days and weeks pass Cameron is looking and sounding more and more unhinged, all his promises broken and disintegrated into a heap of dust, everything crumbling into a pile of lies, it's just one lie on top of another lie on top of another lie. He can make his big promises and protestations in his speeches and then try to expunge them from existence, but what he doesn't realise is that he is a busted flush no one believes him anymore, not even his own MPs! Cameron has proven himself to be totally untrustworthy, he is dishonest, he is a liar, in fact he is worse than a used car salesman because after an encounter with one of them at least we still have the car, after three years with Cameron, we have absolutely nothing, except a million more people in poverty, rising homelessness, soaring numbers of foodbanks and the Red Cross distributing aid to families inside Britain  as millions of families lose the fight with the cost of living as their wages are driven down every lower by Cameron and his mates in big business.

It's one long cover up after the other, it's U-turns and now the O-turn. Incompetence is rife. The green tax levy, in the morning  it was announced that number 10 had asked energy companies not to raise their prices until after the election, then by lunch time they definitely didn't and then by teatime they may have and all the while the energy companies are telling the country by radio and TV that Cameron and Osborne had definitely asked them to keep prices down and it is the same with every single policy announcement, it all ends in one huge heap of confusion. Where and what exactly is this government's green policy and energy policy? It's important its affecting millions of people who are currently making the choice between heating and eating, they have NO money for basics, while this government flails around sucking up to big business and the energy companies.

This government have now become synonymous with making policy up on the hoof and it shows, it really does show. There doesn't appear to be any clarity, no checks and balances within this government and it's structure and shape is non existent. Our energy security is vitally important and we appear to have a bunch of vacuous muppets running it. we are waiting for the Chancellor's Autumn Statement on Thursday to produce some clarity, but if his answers on the Andrew Marr show this morning were anything to go by, by Friday morning we will still be waiting for clarity. Whatever Osborne announces it should be an immediate freeze on energy costs and plans to restructure the energy market at the very least and the energy companies must pay for any rebates, this must NOT fall to the taxpayer.

Cameron's government covers up the today's errors and policy chaos, with tomorrow's errors and policy chaos and on and on it goes, it is relentless and has been the hallmark of this dreadful mongrel government over the past three years. The Liberal Democrats are no better what a weak power and awe struck pathetic bunch of poodles who are simply in government to serve the purpose of the Tories - to keep,them there, no matter what catastrophe, hardship and distress and utter chaos they cause.

Cameron is not an asset to the UK but a huge awful embarrassing drag on us all.

This is a total omnishambles of a government and we cannot go on like this.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It isn't a £50 refund or rebate, it is an average £50 a year reduction in our energy bills. Having said that, it isn't really that, is it? The £50 'reduction' the government and Big Six are banging on about simply means our bills won't increase by as much as they said they would. For example, a British Gas customer will now see their bills rise by 5%, not 9% as they said they would last month.