Our exposure to Russian gas is limited indeed but the wholesale gas market is not aligned to Russia alone, it's a global market and the ripples from reductions in Russian supply are felt everywhere. Countries that do rely on Russia can't rely on that supply anymore and so they'll soon be competing with us for gas... This drives up prices and the second risk coming over the winter is there might not be enough gas. It's a supply crisis and not a profit making crisis, the energy companies have always made a profit, it's nothing new.
A windfall tax is pointless. It might make us feel better that we're hitting these companies but it won't change expensive energy bills as it'll either get passed on or the money will be wasted. You could nationalise but how will you subsidise energy bills against the fact that wholesale gas costs 400% more than before? Is the taxpayer going to front the entirety of that risk forever?
Let's not forget to keep in touch with reality too, we are recovering from the biggest economic shock in history where a huge chunk of the country was being paid taxpayers money to not work. Just 18 months later we are now in the middle of a proxy war with one of the worlds largest economies and the second largest gas producer. It really is the perfect storm and I just don't understand the ignorance to the bigger picture.
As I keep banging on about on this thread, my biggest problem at least politically in all of this is why are these two tory fools not proposing building 5-10 nuclear powerplants to secure our energy supply?
