https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/03/npower-electricity-gas-price-rises-dual-fuel-bills#comment-92525414 Npower is to increase its electricity and gas prices for 1.4 million customers One of the greatest lies ever foisted upon the British people was that repeated almost daily during the 1980's by the Thatcher government. The deception, which gave proof to the theory that if you tell a big enough lie and repeat it often, people will accept it as truth. The great falsehood filling the media, being repeated at every opportunity by conservative politicians and being driven by those with their own, not very well hidden agendas, met the conditions for forceful propaganda, being short and easily remembered. "Privatisation introduces competition, drives down costs and improves services". The history of privatised industries since 1980 is littered with examples evidencing that far from being the great blessing for the consumers as promised by the hyp...
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http://www.eurolabour.org.uk/energy-poverty MEPs back Labour report calling on energy companies to play fair and help the millions living in energy poverty Energy companies have never "played fair" since Thatcher and her government privatised energy. The only motivation for these parasites is the maximisation of profit for their parasitic shareholders.The consumer comes somewhere down the list of priorities. In the field of energy (now predominately owned by "foreign" companies as a direct result of privatisation) the myth of "Privatisation brings down costs, reduces price levels and improves services for the consumer", has been exploded as a hypocritical lie. The prime mover in this shabby exercise in exploitation, was and remains, the conservative dogma of handing to their "friends in the city" whole chunks of publicly owned industries, for private profits (and party donations),. The Labour party should not only be ...
Royal mail can look for other "victims". A tool used for "Blackmail" The Royal Mail put a card through my letter box yesterday, (Saturday 13th December 2014)advising, "Unfortunately we can't deliver your item because there is a fee to pay". Upon closer examination, it seems that "The sender didn't pay the full postage", and Royal Mail are demanding a payment from me of £1.11 This "Fee" includes a £1 handling charge! The item in question, I know to be a Christmas card which probably exceeds the arbitrary size restrictions (measured by a rather crude template device) impose d by Royal Mail a couple of years back as a means for extorting even more money from the long suffering public. The "excess charge" of 11p is really neither here nor there, but to add a handling charge of £1 is really adding insult to injury. I have no objection to excess charges where the sender has either forgotte...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/water-giants-make-2billion-profit-4703371 Water giants make £2BILLION in profit - but SEVEN of them didn't pay a penny in tax 4/5ths of this planet is covered with water. Yet some private companies, many of them ultimately foreign owned , make £billions in profits selling an essential commodity to the people of this country. Without water, we would all die and these privately owned companies are very much aware of that simple fact. The great obscenity of the privatisation of the water companies, is that a government took what the nation already owned, sold it to their friends in the city, who then offered shares for sale to a few small "investors" and control of the water industry to a small number of large corporations who have been milking the profits ever since. It is a gross perversity, that companies can make huge profits from the sale of water and collectively pay little if any tax. There are certa...
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/19/labour-transport-campaign-fight-rail-fare-price-rises?commentpage=1 Campaigners step up rail fares fight as prices rise again Fare to rise by another 6% Average ticket price has gone up 25% under coalition government. So has the subsidy that the taxpayer gives to these privatised parasites. Bring Back British Rail. If we are going to give subsidies, then at least we should be giving them to an industry that we own rather than pouring our money into the pockets of private businesses and their share holders.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/25/scottish-power-warranty-cameron-cable-business-secretary?commentpage=1 Business secretary will address Scottish Power scandal Business secretary Vince Cable We may all rest comfortably in our beds. Vince is on the case. He will deal with these miscreant Scottish Power people in the same way as he has dealt with all the other privatised power companies that have been ripping people off for the past 30 years. He will take up this long running and still outstanding "cashback promises" matter with Scottish Power, as he has attacked other malpractices in respect of exorbitant price hikes, failure to pass on reductions in wholesale prices of energy, bad service, complicated pricing structures etc. Cable and other gang members on government front bench Vince can be relied on to sort out the problem. He can also be relied on to give away public assets at knock down prices to his friends in the city and to e...
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/29/future-labour-government-will-not-undo-hugely-unpopular-coalition-cuts_n_5413596.html?utm_hp_ref=uk Future Labour Government will not undo Coalition Government Cuts Ed Miliband And Ed Balls Labour will not undo ConDem Coalition cuts. Labour have not undone Tory anti trade union legislation. Labour will not restore the real reductions in pensions, nor will they reverse the increases in taxation for working people imposed at the same time as reductions in taxes for millionaire. The Labour party will not restore essential public services, energy, water, railways to public ownership and prevent the excesses of privatised industries and their profiteering at the expense of their customers and the country. The Labour party will not commence a programme of house building, particularly in the social housing sector, to address the chronic and shameful housing shortage in this country. This ...
What a good idea! . Bring back British Rail! "The train companies receive huge sums of taxpayers money in the form of grants every year. The train companies receive huge sums of money in the form of ticket charges, and every year inflate this ticket revenue with fare increases way above inflation levels. Every year, the train company "bosses" siphon off a large portion of this income to pay themselves six figure salaries and bonuses and to provide large dividends to their "investors". The rest of this taxpayer funded (one way or another) income is explained as being necessary for "investment projects" on the rail network. The only purpose of the privatisation of British Rail was to provide a bottomless pit of income for private companies and investors. It had nothing to do with "improving services and driving down costs" nothing to do with "providing value and saving money for the taxpayer" and it had nothing to do w...
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/03/rail-state-control-ed-miliband?guni=Keyword:news-grid%20main-1%20Main%20trailblock:Editable%20trailblock%20-%20news:Position1:anchor%20image Bring rail under state's control to win back power Renationalisation of the rail network. "Bring the rail network back into national ownership if Labour wins the next election" A very good idea and a step in the right direction. The problem of course is that today's Labour Party, at least the leadership and the hierarchy of the party, lack the political will to take the necessary steps to bring about the return of this asset to public ownership. There are some industries which are far too important to society to be left to the vagaries of private enterprise. Privatisation has failed and penalised the consumer, the tax payer and the public in all of the industries privatised to date. For complete failure, we need look no further than British Rail. For exploita...
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/27/ed-miliband-energy-price-controls-freeze-big-six Ed Miliband to propose fresh energy price controls Miliband will tell the Federation of Small Businesses that he wants to create an open market economy where small businesses can grow and make bigger profits. Ed Miliband. The "policy" to control energy prices is popular amongst a large proportion of the public, (aka. voters). The only question is which, of the variants from each of the major parties solutions to achieve the same objective, will the voters select as their preferred option? Each segment of the Coalition, Miliband's version of Labour, and soon no doubt to be joined by Farange and his UKIP, compete with each other to offer what they hope will be the most popular solution to solve the problem and "deal with the broken energy market" and finally end the energy companies cartel in the supply and distribution of energy in this cou...
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/08/ed-balls-nick-clegg_n_4561996.html?utm_hp_ref=uk Ed Balls Says He Could Join Coalition With Nick Clegg Balls and Clegg Another reason why politics in this country and its politicians, are loathed and despised. The prostitution of principle (if they have any) for the acquisition of power, no matter how corrupt or contaminated such power may be. The people of the country are sacrificed on the altar of the ego's and personal ambitions of shameless and self serving men (and women) more interested in their positions, salaries and expense accounts and other perks rather than working people, the sick, the disabled, the unemployed and the excesses of businesses, banks and privatised industries. The cynicism and hypocrisy of this arrogant posturing was a contributory factor in my decision to leave the labour Party some years ago. The "power at any cost" philosophy which was becoming the o...
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/02/rail-fare-price-increases-condemned-passengers Consumer and campaign groups join passengers in condemning increases Let the train take the strain The train companies receive huge sums of taxpayers money in the form of grants every year. The train companies receive huge sums of money in the form of ticket charges, and every year inflate this ticket revenue with fare increases way above inflation levels. Every year, the train company "bosses" siphon off a large portion of this income to pay themselves six figure salaries and bonuses and to provide large dividends to their "investors". The rest of this taxpayer funded (one way or another) income is explained as being necessary for "investment projects" on the rail network. The only purpose of the privatisation of British Rail was to provide a bottomless pit of income for private companies and investors. It had nothing to do with "improv...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/800000-people-lifted-out-offuel-poverty--by-redefining-it-8976232.html 800,000 people ‘lifted’ out of fuel poverty – by redefining it The UK is second only to Estonia among European countries for the number of people struggling to pay their energy bills When the statistics show a figure that is not acceptable, or embarrassing, governments (of all political positions) have a very simple solution. The answer to the problem is "move the goal posts" and in this way, the offending information can be manipulated to reflect the picture as the incumbent government would prefer it to be rather than what it actually is. The natural extension of this, is that when your new calculation becomes problematic, it is always possible to revert to the previous calculation and choose whichever figure is the most acceptable. The classic example of this subterfuge is the way in which RPI and CPI are interchangeable for governm...