The Conservative Party

gill_undrhill said:
That is one argument. Here is a different one:

I see a lot of this going on: mentioning 13, possibly 14 years in power, but can I remind people the first 5 years were in a coalition with the hopeless Lib-Dems.

Furthermore, Boris Johnson got elected with an 80-seat majority in December 2019 - he was just getting going in early-2020 and then Covid-19 happened. We could argue for hours if Johnson and the tories dealt with that correctly or not, but the fact is, it wasn't his fault. Then, just as Covid-19 was pretty much sorted out (early-2022) Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine. We could argue for hours if Johnson and the tories dealt with that correctly or not, but the fact is, again, it wasn't his fault.

So now we come to the middle bit: David Cameron, Brexit & Theresa May. We don't need to argue for hours on that one, she should never have been Prime Minister.... why appoint a 'Remain' supporter into the top job, to deal with that, once the referendum result was for Brexit? "Brexit means Brexit" what a load of rubbish - if everyone in the House of Commons and the House of Lords (and the civil service) had accepted the democratic decision of the British people and acted to sort it with as much speed as possible, lead by someone totally committed to it, even the middle part of this Tory timeline might have been different.

This Tory government are in their death throes, I accept that, but how much is it their own fault and how much is it to do with pro-remainer civil servants, old-farts in the House of Lords, plus international events over which they had absolutely no control at all?

P.S. why did you say con-men as the worst of the lot was a woman: Theresa May. If you can't easily beat Jeremy Corbyn in a General Election, you should resign from politics.
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This is what happens when you drink the kool-aid people…
 
They don't care - its operation "milk the system while we still can now" - although Coffey is spectacularly rubbish at her job

 
They are finished at last, but it won’t stop the thieving fuckers robbing the public blind until the day they are voted out.
 
bluethrunthru said:
Yup - thing with it is the rest of the world - particularly the EU - were damaged by the 2009 financial crash - then were hit by Covid - then had the impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However Germany et al continued to invest in education, health and transport rather than opt for the ideological choice of austerity. When Covid hit they also dealt with the horrors and came through the other side - they have truck drivers and they have people in work. What they don't have is supply chain issues resulting from self imposed border checks instead their produce flows freely across a continent. Post invasion places like France used the (state owned) energy company by cutting bills and taking a very low profit - our Govt chose to let the bills sky rocket and borrow money and give it to the energy companies so that they maintained their profits and now our Govt wants its borrowed money back - not from the companies but from us.

The biggest differences are summed up in 2 words. Tories and Brexit
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Why were energy prices tied to the TTF rather than oil price which caused the eye watering price rises caused by loss of refining capacity? Two words “European Union”.
 
metalblue said:
Why were energy prices tied to the TTF rather than oil price which caused the eye watering price rises caused by loss of refining capacity? Two words “European Union”.
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TTF is the gas price. Tying our overall energy price to the wholesale gas price is something the government could have temporarily changed if they wanted to but they chose to leave the pricing formula alone and fleece the taxpayer instead to subsidise the also fleeced consumers and thereby guarantee excess profits for the energy providers, whilst everyone unfairly blamed the energy retailers, many of which went bust.
 
west didsblue said:
TTF is the gas price. Tying our overall energy price to the wholesale gas price is something the government could have temporarily changed if they wanted to but they chose to leave the pricing formula alone and fleece the taxpayer instead to subsidise the also fleeced consumers and thereby guarantee excess profits for the energy providers, whilst everyone unfairly blamed the energy retailers, many of which went bust.
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The government also upped the daily standing charge to take into account the companies that went bust, so we, the customer, footed the bill.

I heard/read yesterday that the charges will be going up again. Unsure for what reason this time but probably for the upgrade of the system. All the while, massive profits get pumped offshore to wealthy shareholders.
 
west didsblue said:
TTF is the gas price. Tying our overall energy price to the wholesale gas price is something the government could have temporarily changed if they wanted to but they chose to leave the pricing formula alone and fleece the taxpayer instead to subsidise the also fleeced consumers and thereby guarantee excess profits for the energy providers, whilst everyone unfairly blamed the energy retailers, many of which went bust.
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If only it was so easy. Do you really thing the government could have ripped up existing energy supply contracts and renegotiated the terms to base them off oil prices after the TTF horse had well and truly bolted? No of course you don’t, you’re not that stupid.

Energy retailers went bust because they couldn’t properly hedge their obligations.

Using TTF made energy cheaper for all of us for best part of 2 decades. Like most of these things it’s a zero sum game and it catches up with you eventually.
 
metalblue said:
If only it was so easy. Do you really thing the government could have ripped up existing energy supply contracts and renegotiated the terms to base them off oil prices after the TTF horse had well and truly bolted? No of course you don’t, you’re not that stupid.

Energy retailers went bust because they couldn’t properly hedge their obligations.

Using TTF made energy cheaper for all of us for best part of 2 decades. Like most of these things it’s a zero sum game and it catches up with you eventually.
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I believe the government could have introduced some emergency legislation to temporarily change the basis of calculating the wholesale cost of energy. If you compare UK electricity prices with EU countries, our prices were higher than everyone else’s during the period of high costs, and not only that there was huge variation country by country, so surely if it was all the EU’s fault as you suggested, they’d all be paying similar amounts to us.
There’s also a reasonable chance there were force majeure clauses in the energy supply contracts that could have been invoked.
 
west didsblue said:
I believe the government could have introduced some emergency legislation to temporarily change the basis of calculating the wholesale cost of energy. If you compare UK electricity prices with EU countries, our prices were higher than everyone else’s during the period of high costs, and not only that there was huge variation country by country, so surely if it was all the EU’s fault as you suggested, they’d all be paying similar amounts to us.
There’s also a reasonable chance there were force majeure clauses in the energy supply contracts that could have been invoked.
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The government cannot force the suppliers in to UK to renegotiate, no matter what legislation we might dream up. That leaves them either doing nothing or doing something to keep energy prices down. The government choose to give the money to households to help. Personally I think that was a mistake, we should have all used less energy (we use five times the energy our parents did despite the population only going up by about 20%) - but I guess being socialist or eco friendly only goes so far eh?

There we different factors at play in different countries - even if Brexit had never happened we would have had exactly the same outcomes. You will not find a single credible reason for our energy prices being linked to Brexit. Nor did I blame the EU, I was merely rebutting that the tories and Brexit were to blame by stating some facts as to cause and effect. There were definitely historical reasons why we were hit in a particular way.

Force majeure merely prevents penalties kicking in at contract termination you’ve still got to negotiate a new contract and once the facts were known they would never give positive cost outcomes.
 
metalblue said:
There we different factors at play in different countries - even if Brexit had never happened we would have had exactly the same outcomes. You will not find a single credible reason for our energy prices being linked to Brexit. Nor did I blame the EU,
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I think you did.
metalblue said:
Why were energy prices tied to the TTF rather than oil price which caused the eye watering price rises caused by loss of refining capacity? Two words “European Union”.
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And I never mentioned Brexit either.
 
west didsblue said:
I think you did.

And I never mentioned Brexit either.
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I didn’t. That fact you choose to see it that way says more about you and your preconceived ideas. The decision to peg against TTF has saved consumers millions, up until it all went wrong.

You didn’t mention Brexit, my original post was to someone whom had.
 
metalblue said:
I didn’t. That fact you choose to see it that way says more about you and your preconceived ideas. The decision to peg against TTF has saved consumers millions, up until it all went wrong.

You didn’t mention Brexit, my original post was to someone whom had.
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You blamed the EU for wholesale energy being tied to TTF. It’s literally what you said. The decision to tie energy costs to the marginal rate (which is almost always TTF) is nothing to do with the EU, and whilst it has worked well for many years, the shock of TTF going up by hundreds of percent in a very short period meant that it became a really bad way of calculating the wholesale price as far as the consumer was concerned, but brilliant for the non-gas energy producers, who suddenly were making huge windfall profits. It was within the government’s power to make a temporary change to the pricing formula but they chose not to. Anyway it’s all academic and we aren’t going to agree so I’ll leave it there.
 
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