Energy Bailout 2.0
How Many More Sectors Are You Happy to Bailout?
Governments just love to shaft you. If you have any spare cash, they want it because they have none left and their credit cards have maxed out. The latest theft is stealing from you to bail out the energy sector.
Some of you may be wondering when Energy Bailout 1.0 happened. Well, cast your minds back to September 2022 when the propaganda of the day was that Putin was causing your energy prices to sky rocket. Of course the war in Ukraine didn’t help things but neither did printing a lot of money. Nor did blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.
From 1 October 2022, the UK Government launched an ‘Energy Price Guarantee’ scheme whereby they reduced the unit cost of electricity and gas for all households. They additionally provided £400 towards energy bills for all households.
‘But my normie friends said the Government was helping us out with our bills due to the Ukrainian war - they just had our best interests at heart’
No, that was Bailout 1.0. Taxpayers money went directly to the energy companies and you were told it was for your benefit, rather than the shareholders of those companies.
Not only did the UK Government subsidise households, they created a package of support for businesses. The Guardian estimated that the cost of the scheme was £25bn. This business energy bailout not only transferred wealth to the energy sector but handed huge discounts to corporate giants that didn’t need it.
As a result the British taxpayer got into more and more debt, whilst the likes of Amazon received subsidised energy.
And if the Government wasn’t being profligate enough, they provided a £40bn energy markets financing scheme which was meant to provide stability for energy and financial markets.
Unsurprisingly, all this money went straight to shareholders whilst householders struggled to keep the heating on. British Gas made £969 million profit, up almost 900%. EDF saw their profits jump to £2.3 billion, up from £860 million the previous year. All the other energy suppliers saw similar increases.
But this was just a sticking plaster. Whilst the taxpayer provided money could have gone to improve the companies, instead it went to shareholders. So after dividends were paid out, this money quickly disappeared and that leads us to Bailout 2.0.
Due to the exorbitantly high energy prices, even with our lovely government subsidies that we paid for ourselves, many people went into debt with the energy companies.
Approximately £3 billion of bad debt accrued last year as poverty stricken households failed to pay gas and electric bills.
Shareholders can’t go without their dividend payments, so the taxpayer is fleeced again. Well, the remaining taxpayers that have any money left to pay tax. As a result, the industry regulator Ofgem said it would lift the energy price cap to allow energy suppliers to recover these bad debts.
Ironically, Ofgem is meant to regulate the energy sector, not make sure shareholders have enough dividends every year. They say they “work to protect energy consumers, especially vulnerable people”. How exactly are they doing that by lifting the energy cap and making consumers pay more?
Read further on into the role and responsibilities of Ofgem and we find its true motives. “We are responsible for working with government, industry and consumer groups to deliver a net-zero economy, at the lowest cost to consumers”. Aha. So Ofgem aren’t really looking out for the consumer. They are just making sure net-zero happens but pretending to help the consumer. When in fact, by pushing net-zero they are making the consumer poorer and poorer.
A doom spiral of energy debts. The increased costs will cause more unpaid bills which means next year, the taxpayers who are able to do so will have to bailout the sector again.
On top of this we have government subsidies on renewable energy which again isn’t enough. Energy companies such as Siemens have been requesting more bailouts recently.
The US is no different. Their Inflation Reduction Act included hundreds of billions in green energy subsidies but within days the energy sector wanted more bailouts and taxpayers to shoulder the costs.
Energy seems to not be as profitable as it once was. Green energy is only profitable with massive subsidies and low interest rates and, according to some, fossil fuels are getting more and more expensive to extract.
Whatever the reason is, as a result, companies won’t make as much profit and will lobby governments to keep bailing them out in order to maintain a consistent dividend. As a result the consumer will keep getting poorer. The very poorest already can’t afford their heating and shortly the middle-classes will join them, as they are wiped out after progressively being shafted by the Government for more and more of their hard earned cash.
Like most western nations, the people are in an abusive relationship by their government.
I hate to even ❤️ this. Every single aspect of our lives is a scam to dehumanize, impoverish & ultimately kill as many as possible. I have always just wanted to be left alone to quietly live my little life. Why is that too much to ask of these psychopaths?