Buy one, get nothing free
We’re genuinely baffled by Ed Miliband’s big conference showstopper announcement this week that a Labour government would freeze people’s utility bills for a year and a half. Channel 4’s Fact Check is extremely sceptical that it can be done at all. The energy companies are predictably furious and making all manner of dire threats.
But what we really don’t get is what the point of it is.
After all, Miliband has only promised to freeze bills until the start of 2017 (on the presumption that he could draft and pass the legislation very quickly after being elected in May 2015). And if you want to freeze your energy bills until the start of 2017, you don’t have to wait two years – you can do it right now.
At least three of the big six energy suppliers already offer price freezes until 2017, or in EDF’s case late 2016 (which rather undermines their claims that having to freeze prices will lead to powercuts and general disaster, but that’s a separate issue). It’s a rather better deal than having them frozen at mid-2015 prices, especially as that gives the companies plenty of time to to hike up their rates before the legislation kicks in, if it looks like Miliband’s party will win.
(And of course, we’re yet to hear what would stop them inflating the prices on 2 January 2017 to a level designed to recoup all their losses, leaving families facing a sudden shock.)
And of course, this is a universal policy, of the sort Labour in Scotland has been telling us for most of the last two years is “regressive” and benefits the rich more than the poor. It represents a disproportionate subsidy of the rich, who have bigger homes and can afford to have the heating blazing all winter and giant plasma TVs in every room.
We’re not sure why that’s suddenly a good thing when the Council Tax freeze implemented by the Scottish Government for the last six years is a bad thing. But more to the point, we’re not sure what purpose it serves even if it’s workable, which seems to be at best doubtful.
You don’t need to elect Labour in 20 months’ time to freeze your energy bills. You just need to click on the pictures above. It seems a lot more straightforward.
U-switch will be doing brisk business I think
You genuinely don’t understand why a political party would punt a populist policy in the hope that voters will look at the headlines not the details? It was their conference, they had to say something.
It is funny to see the Project Fear tactics blasted on the Labour politicians though…hell mend them.
The one good thing to come out of this is that Labour once more have exposed themselves as a bunch of incompetent half-wits. To add to that it is a subject that even the lowest informed voter can understand and it affects everyone.
Like Stu says Energy Freeze Good. Council Tax Freeze Bad!
Ed Miliband is looking more like Mr. Bean every day.
Call me cynical (thank you), but that an unelected Shadow PM in waiting can offer the electorate a guarantee of two years price freeze against a private company’s wishes could only mean he has some confidence that he is able to.
As a former energy secretary who failed continuously to bring the energy cartels into line, the only power in his arsenal could credibly be that it is now his his turn to have his back scratched. The years of turning a blind eye must surely have built him up an arsenal of favours so large, as to utilise towards, in his head at least, his negotiating his way to a general election win.
If this is not the case then why stop there? if he really can take on the big boys and make promises to the electorate let him prove his worth is tackling a reversal of privatisation in the NHS in England or removing the gagging order millions, or taking on the petrol companies. To be honest i think he’ll be stumped as his dad, the janny, has now left the school and he wont get the other kids into the pool at the weekend after all.
it’s simple. the big six compete hard with each other in part of the retail market, consisting of those consumers educated and determined enough to switch supplier for a better deal. but the majority of consumers are ‘sticky’, ie have never switched. they make up the element of the market that is captive, and they are subjected to the worst of the price rises.
i’ve yet to see the details of labour’s cap, but the market is so opaque and complex that the big six will find a way around it. governments and regulator powerless (or captive) against them.
also, what about all those scottish consumers off the gas grod – will heating oil and diesel be capped too?
‘grid’
My big energy bills are the ones that come from CPL. For this stuff called kerosene. £700 a pop to fill that tank. And when my mother was alive and in the house all day, during that winter when we had temperatures down to -20C, we once went through a tank in a month.
That’s part of why I’m too scared to retire. Is Ed going to freeze my oil bills?
“rather undermines their claims that having to freeze prices will lead to powercuts and general disaster”
……….which may happen anyway and if it does the blame may be laid at Eds feet ( though I’ll bet it’ll more likely be “Salmond’s fault”)
In one of my previous lives, a College’s husband was a jet setting engineer with a “well known generating company” who was specialising in carbon capture on new plants.
He was convinced that capacity was so inadequate that power cuts were inevitable in the next 10 years. (about 5years ago) to the point that he bought his own generator.
Mind you, he was literally a bloke in the pub. and the real push for renewables hadn’t started by then.
Compared to the Conservatives, Labour has often been regarded as the “nice but dim” party. But now they’re just the “dim” party – particularly when the lights go out (did you see what I did there?).
when ed milliband talks tuff its like a surreal experience. he comes across as very limp wristed. power company shareholders will be wetting themselves at his tuff talk.
p.s.. has anyone seen the pic of slab leader on munguins republic. if you are the nervous type, dont look
He might as well offer free flights to Mars, he knows he is never going to win.
On BBC Scotland Johann Lamont was at pains to point out in a radio interview that socialism does not mean that socialists support universality. So I suppose it means in calling for a universal price freeze Ed Miliband is not as RED as people thinks he is.
Anyway price controls in general don’t work in practice; if this proposal is enacted it will destabilize the energy market and energy supply, and also may actually be illegal under EU law.
Ed is more a NED than Red with this proposal, he hasn’t thought this through. Reducing the green levy on fuel bills bills by transferring this additional cost to general taxation seems a simpler and fairer way.
This is Ed Miliband, the Energy Minister from 2008-2010, who didn’t give a flying fuck about escalating energy prices on the plebs while he was in office. In fact he exacerbated the problem by forcing a green energy tax on providers who invested in renewables, the cost of this, of course, went straight to the consumer. Ed Miliband is a liar with unrealistic unworkable policies that can only be carried through with nationalisation, and we know what the Red Tories think of that! Miliband has proved in the last couple of weeks just why he is unelectable to the people of SE England.
Nobody is mentioning his land grab plan, which Im in favour off but how would he
implement it…
If a developer is banking land and does not build on it, Ed is threatening to take the land off them, he did not mention who pays for it, I presume its the state, or is he going to nationalise the land? Either way whats he going to do with the land, I suggest he start up a new bank
and put it in there he could call it the “Land Bank”
Great stuff as usual Rev!
Hilarious certainly, but curious too. Wonder who Ed’s appealing to? All the not so well off folks who were going to vote Labour anyway? And wait till the Tory smear machine gets going. You’ll see the equivalent of the ‘Tax Bombshell’ poster saying that red Ed’s only one step away from nationalising the utility companies and middle England will run for cover.
Free flights to Mars might actually have more appeal in the places where he needs votes.
I was going to write something about Ed Johan and the labour party but I just can’t articulate myself,but I can safely say it would not have been pleasant .we need to open peoples eyes to this lot of charlatans before it’s to late
@faolie
Mars = the ‘Ed Planet, right enough.
Surely Ed’s proposals are contrary to EU competition law?
How much are the energy companies paying you to advertise them, Stu? 😛 Don’t tell me you’ve lost all the money we gave you on the poker already?
There’s been a lot of the usual rhetoric about fat cat energy companies paying dividends to prop up the millionaire lifestyle of their shareholders. What’s forgotten is that energy companies and utilities are core holdings for almost every pension fund. If the companies have to cut or freeze dividends because they can’t fund them from profits, the pension funds will be the biggest losers. Dividend cover is thin enough at it is. SSE for example covers its dividend by only 1.5 times. That’s not much spare room to absorb a price freeze.
As has been pointed out by SSE, by far the best solution is to pay for the renewables levy out of general taxation (which is progressive) rather than lumping them onto household energy bills (which isn’t), thereby reducing bills by £100-£120 at a stroke.
DOSAC was better run than the labour party.
I’ve always suspected that the Thick of It is really how things are run in Westminster. Now we know for sure the LP is run the same way- without the enforcers all things are going pear shape.
All nicely tidied up in that article.
Was a strange policy from the outset. All the time for complex brand new legislation and possible court challenges. As well as the potential price rises leading up to the freeze what happens after end of freeze (do energy companies adopt new models and raise prices even higher again)? link to cityam.com
Wide range of scary attacks on Ed and I wonder if the UK energy companies have overplayed their hand. Whatever, Ed Miliband can’t back down now.
Stairheid (Candidate for First Minister of Scotland) says …
Whit Ed Molybdenum wiz sayin wiz that yoos auld yins will have mare munny in yer biscuit tin cos he’ll no allow yon big companies to steal yer munny just fur wantin a light on when yer in the cludgie.
An’ we’ll be wantin a debate wi Eck askin the SNP tae gie us that munny yuv saved tae pay fur Gregory Pecks, ointment an’ free bus trips tae Millport.
Ye, see, giein folks mare munny is just bribes fur mare votes fur the referendum & Labour just disnae dae that, right?
And the lies just keep on coming….
What was it that Hitler said? If you’re going to tell a lie, make it a big one!
The only problem to this is that you might get away with it once. Do it often and as Hitler eventually found out (and probably very soon the Labour Party too), is that somebody is going to call your bluff, and when that happens, well, it ain’t going to be pretty!!!
For Ed, what was he thinking? These are private companies in a consumer market. If they wanted to rocket the price of fuel to astronomical levels, then there is nothing anybody can do about it! It’s a consumer market. You don’t like; go elsewhere and find a better rate.
Hopefully, the lies spinning out of London, as well as Scotland, will soon unravel big time, and give us all a big laugh!
If “red Ed” really wanted to do something to help fuel poverty (which for many reasons this won’t touch) he should start with banning the daily standing charges on pre-payment metres.
Many people have been shoved onto these precisely because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills. Once on them, they cost far more to start with. But in addition, they charge a daily amount even if you’re disconnected because you can’t afford to put money in.
So you have people in dire poverty who can’t afford to feed the metre, so have no gas or electricity at all, hence no ability to cook or keep food fresh. They live like this for days, then when they do finally have an odd fiver to feed the metre it’s instanty eaten up in debt for the standing charge, so they’re still cut off. Help those people first and make that illegal. Then look at genuine ways to reduce bills for everyone else.
Makes me so mad that people are living like that, and trapped in those kind of cycles, while the sodding Daily Mail and Westminster elites go on about “all the unemployed have flat screen TVs and Sky and mobile phones”. No. They. Do. Not. You ignorant half-witted, out of touch, silver spoon-fed moron </rant over>
And breathe…calm…zen-like positivity…
Cath
“he should start with banning the daily standing charges on pre-payment metres”
Spot on. Now that is a rip off.
I didn’t realise that the privatisation of the Royal Mail was about to happen – as in next week.
I watched with horror as the ITN lunchtime news tried to sell it to the public.
Apparently it will prevent the unions from having a strike vote and strike.
“I didn’t realise that the privatisation of the Royal Mail was about to happen – as in next week.”
I guess Eck’s letter asking for a moratorium must have got lost in the post then. Odd that 🙁
It seems to me, Milliband, is promising to freeze energy bills without the consent of the energy companies, it may backfire spectulary on him, I do hope so.
O/T Rev I do apologise, on BBC Scotland lunchtime news Alex Salmond call David Cameron FEART..brilliant.
link to bbc.co.uk
Anyway, on to more important stuff.
link to bbc.co.uk
g.p
O/t too, sorry, re Cameron’s refusal to debate with Salmond.
Sad Severin with comments link to archive.is
Not only is Ed’s projected energy price freeze populist nonsense, unworkable and probably illegal under EU competition law, his other populist pledge to fight the privatisation of the Royal Mail has had absolutely no effect on the Tory/LibDem Coalition’s plans to do so, which are being implemented as we speak. So much for the effectiveness of the Labour opposition in Westminster. Why oh why can’t their sheep-like supporters recognise this fact, and at least vote for Scottish independence, when these Westminster imposed policies will be consigned to the dustbin of history, as far as Scotland will be concerned?
During the winter, the warmest room in my parent’s house (the kitchen), generally hovers around 16C. Is this the comfort and security they worked all their lives for? What levels of fuel poverty can future generations look forward to?
Scotland is the energy capital of Europe, with a guaranteed future in renewables. Vote Yes to ensure this vast wealth does not just disappear up London’s lum.
O/T The Guardian article on Scottish Defence Plans (usual nonsense). But a fascinating post from Dorice re. Glen Douglas – ‘Nato’s biggest, most secure weapons, equipment and supplies facility in Western Europe’. I’d never heard of it. So it’s not just the neuks they’re worried about!
link to secretscotland.org.uk
The funny bit was hearing Milliband bleating about Scare stories! Anyhoo, talking of fearties, I see that Cameron hasn’t the heid, hairt or hingers to debate the FM.
If I was running the SNP Yes campaign, I would be making more of energy prices. It’s a national disgrace that an oil rich country has older folk dying in winter, because they are afraid to turn the heating on.
Discounted, or even free heating in winter for older folk should be a priority in an independent Scotland.
O/T
For those who want answers to the more common questions about independence, you can even submit your own question.
link to yesscotland.net
Regarding the Royal Mail sell off. It’s worth approximately £3bn and if we want to buy shares we have to spend a minimum of £750. But hang on – don’t we own it already?
Sounds like they’re getting desperate and saying anything to try and scrape back some popularity…
“Vote for us and we’ll cure cancer, discover the secret of immortality and the meaning of life, bring your ancestors back from the dead and reduce your energy bills by a massive 1p per year!”
MajorBloodnok
It is just the same as Thatcher selling us back our own silverware. The really cynical aspect of this, is that it shifts financial risk away from the institutional investor, placing it on the shoulders of the small investor instead. At the same time, the small investor has no potential of influencing corporate policy, which is usually geared to benefit the institutional big boys. At no point does the interests of the general public or the ‘common weal’ come in to the equation. It’s the banking bail-out all over again, or the collectivisation of public assets for private gain.
Bloody incremental-ists.
John Grant , that’s not a bad stab at articulating yourself John, better than any unionist politician anyway, and no that’s not damning with faint praise!
Surely the companies, as much as we might dislike them, have rights as well, under law I mean and Milliband cannot just do as he likes, there must be more to come on this, plus the fact that folk will have the right to expect that if he can do this with the power companies then he can do it with others who seem to be getting rich out of peoples suffering.
I am getting the distinct feeling the onionists are fecked.
I have over 200 FB contacts
FB Better Together 0 friends like
FB Yes 36 friends like
this from a broad base of friends with lots of different political views, atleast the one’s who are politically engaged. 🙂
Royal Mail selloff.
That will be around £250m less that we can claim as part of the UK assets come post independence negotiations.Don’t suppose,however,that has anything to do with the haste to privatise it.
sorry forgot to include they are all Glasgow based
@fordie
jeez, its been 30 years since I walked Glen Douglas road even then if you stopped on the road a while the MP’s (military police type) were all over you like a rash. back then I thought it was a nuclear weapons store.
A bit of info on European energy prices. the UK prices are some of the cheapest in Europe.
A breakdown of where your gas/electricity bill money goes.
Andy-B
Yes Scotland seem to be having a bit of trouble with their answers pages at the moment. Page 1 seems OK but page 2 is just a repeat (a bit jumbled up)of the page 1 questions (apart from the last 2 questions.) I phoned them about it
yesterday. They are now working on fixing it.
Its a cunning plan, Rev. The quid pro quo is Ed carries the referendum to quit the EU and then allows the generators to let leash the carbon fuelled generating plants. Now there is no need for all these blasted renewable windmills so we can cut all the green charges off the bills as well and, bingo, your bill goes down, the big 6 profits go up and Labour is in power for another 13 years.
Better go and see the Great Barrier Reef while it still exists. 🙁
With selling off their Assets like Royal Mail how long is it going to be before the UK is balance sheet insolvent, I know they will have lots of nice furniture in Whitehall etc.
But with the on book debt at over 1.2 Trillion and rising by about 120 billion per annum how long is it going to be before its game over!!!
Is that the plan?, as far as I can see the only way they can ever get their economy back on track is by defaulting and starting anew, the bonus is that the sweaty socks wont get hold off their share of the crown jewels etc…..
Tory Prime Minister of the UK Cameron wont have a debate!
Lib/Dem Sec of State against Scotland Moore wont have a debate!
Labour leader of better together Darling must have a debate!
Well the Tories are paying for the campaign after all. But darling cant answer any questions, his job is to cloud the issues and sow confusion and doubt in Scotland.
link to archive.is
As others have pointed out above, the YESScotland page
link to yesscotland.net
Is actually quite good (aside from the techie points noted above). If you click on the actuall question, then you get an even more detailed answer. A very good resource.
However, as regards the article above, I just want to praise Rev Stu. Despite all the frothing and huffing and puffing in the mainstream media, this one article has singlehandedly skewered Milibands cynical announcement on energy prices in one go. This is what holding politicians to account means. No fluff, no waffle, straight to the point, this is one excellent piece of journalism.
Labour’s promise to freeze energy bills, was just one big exercise in cynicism. It is a nothing policy, and Miliband and his spin doctors will have known that. The Labour party really are finished, if this is what they have resorted to.
Have to laugh at David Cameron, the UK prime minister feart of the first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond.
David Cameron, feartie.
Robert Louis
Well I did not think of clicking on the question. Neither did my wife.
I wonder how many more think the short answer is all there is?
Peter,
I agree, it is not obvious in any way, that the question links to a more detailed answer. Hopefully that will get fixed too.
So, the main reasons for voting Labour are:-
energy bill freeze (which can be done without them)
an end to the bedroom tax but only if they’re in power tomorrow. (My old gran was fond of pointing out that tomorrow never comes!)
A more equal one nation (so Scots can pay for education, prescriptions, bus passes, hospital parking, tolls on Bridges, eye tests and care for the elderly, like England)
That’s the Yes Campaign finished right there that is. I’m off to ask Santa for some Union Jack underpants!
As those on lower income spend a greater proportion of their income of fuel, it will disproportionately benefit them surly? This is a good thing i think. Also, although there are many deals to price fix currently, many energy users do not have the do not have the knowledge or ability (such as the need to pay by monthly DD) to take advantage of these offers.
I have no idea if this is workable, but it sends a clear message, labour are willing to challenge big business.
£ 50 = 3 bags of coal. Thank f**k I can burn old wellies and any thing else that comes to hand.
@Vambo
I’d suggest BT leaflets except they’ve no substance and fur your lum something rotten.
gfaetheblock
Big chief ‘Red Ed’ speak with forked tongue.
robert Louis
OK – I phoned yes scotland again – no-one there now. I left a message asking for an instruction to be added to get to the more detailed answers.
Thanks for the tip!
@ handclapping
Not to mention that the lum would stink of keech.
I’m still not convinced that Ed has any legal basis to fix an open market?
He surely must need to introduce new legislation in order to do this? It wouldn’t even be guaranteed to get past the commons where no doubt their will be hostility from those MP’s and Lords with shares in the energy companies.
Would this even be allowed under EU law?
Kininvie,
With regards to pension funds invested in energy companies; I wouldn’t worry about them as Osbourne will be seizing them in the next couple of years anyway when the Bank of England have to raise interest rates.
Workplace pensions and the opening up of the bond market to Joe public is regarded by some as a signal that we’re about to hit the skids.
Let’s hope we’re out of the way before it does.
So you have people in dire poverty who can’t afford to feed the metre, so have no gas or electricity at all, hence no ability to cook or keep food fresh. They live like this for days, then when they do finally have an odd fiver to feed the metre it’s instanty eaten up in debt for the standing charge, so they’re still cut off. Help those people first and make that illegal. Then look at genuine ways to reduce bills for everyone else.
Cath you are absolutely right, it’s disgraceful that people with these awful pre-payment meters actually pay more for the privelege and quite often go without
their basic human needs, christ it’s 2013! (ie access to heating or cooking or hot water) which are cut off purely by not having the spondoolies to feed the meter, which will take off the ‘debt’ at source, leaving so little in ‘credit’ on the meter that it effectively cuts off the supply!
torylabour Ed doesn’t care, tell it like it is Ed, you are cosy toes, no worries about anything while the poor and disabled of this so called ‘union’ suffer untold and inhumane deprivation. It’s a wonder society functions as it does really, I am aghast at how civilised people are, given the disparity that is caused, promoted and accepted by the powers that be.
p.s. it’s been a difficult week helping a carer avoid one of these awful rip off meters, hence my rant!
Yeah it really makes me angry Hettie. I’m not well off but I can afford to pay the mortgage, eat, heat my home and have a social life. And in that I know I’m extremely lucky (at least for now). I’d happily pay more for elctricity, even if that would hurt, if I knew it was going to stop that sodding standing charge on pre-payment metres. It’s heartbreaking to see people who have a disposable income of a few pounds a week and can’t have their kids to stay because they literally couldn’t afford the food and to feed the metre. And that’s before you even start on the bedroom tax…
The level of real poverty in this country is sickening. And when you’ve seen it, then you watch BBC Question Time, you question what universe you’re living in compared to these people ruling over us.
@Hetty-
You know this already, but the reason ‘society’ hings thegither is because the majority i.e. us is unbelievably decent, well-mannered, and considerate.
If we weren’t? The whole ‘28 Days Later‘ nightmare would’ve happened years ago – metropolitan elite scum only exists because we allow it to.
And how ‘considerate’ is that?
Trouble is, Ian, people are too quick to believe what they read in the media. So sadly, many decent people believe the benefits system is overly generous, all unemployed people do have flat screen TV, Sky, broadband, mobile phones and full stomachs to soak up all the booze they drink.
If they knew the truth, they’d be as shocked as those who have seen the reality are. But in fairness, even those who’ve seen the reality have also seen the worst of the abuses and piss taking as well, and finding the balance is hard.
Most people are decent and fair-minded but that can be exploited when you play on the worst of the piss-taking in the mass media, and totally ignore the very genuine need many others are in.
I work, my wife works, we have no children, we moved from the central belt to the highlands last December to keep ourselves employed rather than be on the dole. £360 for 500 litres of heating oil (minimum delivery) and it lasted from 28th December to the 2nd February and we had it switched off between 23:00 to 06:00 and 10:00 to 16:00. Needless to say we have not bought anymore but bought 2 x 1kW and 1 x 450W Oil filled electric heaters from Argos. We switch those on when the temperature in the 120 year old cottage falls below 16ºC. They are off when we are at work between 07:30 and 18:00 Monday to Friday. Even with relatively high electricity prices they are a lot cheaper to run than the oil fired heating which is a total rip off and unaffordable even for us with a combined pre tax income of around £37 000 a year
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