DaveWHU1964 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 12:19 am
Not a pop at you MB because I'm seeing quite a lot of this type of posting but if what you say is true (and it may well be) then we've had created for us a system that doesn't work and that we cannot change. Who does that work?
To me it's utterly unbelievable that some people seem OK with transferring £100-150 billion directly from the public to energy companies with nothing coming back our way, other than less of us will freeze to death this winter, which of course is great but shouldn't be happening in the first place. Some of these same people were having apoplexy when Corbyn wanted to spend a fraction of that bringing in free broadband. It seems redistributing yet more money from the hard-pressed to companies / the comfortable/ the well-off is fine, whilst doing the reverse is not possible/ desireabe/ tolerable and will be fought against tooth and nail.
This isn't going to be sold to people. It's not sustainable. If people (not you) decide to hold this line then it won't go well for them.
To be clear Dave, IMO we shouldn’t be in this position. There are plenty you can point the finger at across all three main parties over the years. This isn’t something that just happened. UK plc underinvests shock! Fingers need to be pointed and questions asked but you and I know that all major parties will play the “not on my watch” card. Johnson did it about decisions under May when he was part of the cabinet.
But we are now in this position so you have to look at what practical solutions are available while implementing policy and investment decisions to try and prevent this happening again (been a bit light on this so far).
If we want to nationalise then you are looking at paying a multiple of the net profit. That will be many times the £100bn these measures will cost as you have to buy the producers. 16% of EDF cost the French government €10bn and EDf is half the size of BP and a quarter of the size of Shell.
You can nationalise the suppliers, but there is a reason a lot of those are going bust. Their margins are tiny so you spend X billions to save a fraction of X short term.
Taking shares in the banks was a bit of a mess when we went down that route last time.
In some form or another the money gets to the energy producers (ultimately). You either do it directly by underwriting the wholesale price (UK government approach). Or you bung everyone in the UK a variable lump of cash and they pay it to the energy suppliers who in turn pay it to the energy producers.
No one else is taking about anything viable. The only articles I have seen about nationalisation all focus on the suppliers.
As for what we get in exchange, we’ll that’s where ministers earn their pay. For making life very easy for the producers, they should have extracted concessions in terms of investment and jobs. No idea if they did.