Castles Made of Sand

 

So, the government finally steps in over the forced imposition of pre-payment energy meters on the most vulnerable of consumers, and not before time; although I suspect that without the media outrage, it might simply have let things be, hoping that their usual three wise monkeys approach would carry them through. The old truism that 'an Englishman's home is his castle' unfortunately has never applied to the hoi polloi, but only to the privileged, and I still find the concept of a warrant of entry, applied in the absence of the householder, offensive and extremely troubling: much like being robbed, it violates and debases one's personal space: home. You can't see that happening to your average Duke, can you?

Welcome as this grudging shift in governmental attitude is, it still ignores the fundamental issue here: that under our current, 'deregulated' fantasy-island system of energy supply, the raw fact is that the energy 'providers' who have hitherto imposed these bloody thumbscrews on the poor - and now the impoverished middle-classes as well - are also finding themselves impoverished, by that very scam of a system they so eagerly signed up for when Westminster offered them an apparent free-for-all gold rush, much like the private care Klondike of the last three decades.

Under a stable economy - at least one which wavers and jitters as little as possible [cf my post of August 01, 2020 referencing out of control systems]  - this model of so-called 'retail' energy selling just about functions: just. Throw in a Truss grenade, a pandemic and a war or two, to muddy the waters - frankly, muddying is actually all it does - and the patsies who signed up for the get-rich-quick scheme of energy retail, suddenly realize they themselves are in negative equity. Negative profits do not a healthy business make, and it must be especially galling when your wholesale suppliers are bleeding you dry under an understandable and necessary price cap imposed by the government of the day, whilst coining the biggest profit bonanza for decades under the smokescreen conveniently provided by Russia and a rogue virus. Clue: this is all smoke and mirrors...

The energy producers, on the other hand, are paying out far more in shareholder and executive dividends than they are investing in alternative energy and society in general: they don't care about you, me or the environment [cf last night's rant]. They control the wholesale price of their products, no matter whatever else is happening in the world; not war, not pandemic, not famine. They simply, expediently, exploit the effects these factors have on 'the markets'.  Meanwhile, the so-called energy 'suppliers' have no alternative but to squeeze the end-users of that energy - us, the captive victims of this ludicrous charade - until we can no longer afford to use the very commodity - energy - the suppliers 'sell'. If this is not the very exemplar of capitalism gone wrong, I don't know what is. A free market economy it just ain't.

If this fundamental flaw in capitalism is not addressed in full and soon, then supply chains across the world will break down completely and everyone will suffer the consequences: another Great Depression will definitely be in the offing. Seriously, folks: the dust-bowl beckons, and only solid, multinational state cooperation to take control of the markets, break up the energy giants and return ownership of our planet's resources to its inhabitants, can avert what could be the worst humanitarian crisis we've ever suffered. Some form of International Socialist thinking has to be agreed on, to apply the brakes to these idiots, before we run completely out of road here...