Latest voting split GE2021 CON voters – politicalbetting.com

tlg86 said:

Pulpstar said:

Could we build a consulate in Calais, and make it clear that you might be accepted if you go through there, but you definitely won't be if you cross ?

Get rejected and cross anyway?

Get removed back to the newly acquired British soil in the gap between Calais & Sangatte ?

RobD said:

Scott_xP said:

Today's @Kantar_UKI Barometer poll is the first in a year to put 'Apply to join the EU' ahead of 'Stay Out'. https://bit.ly/3s02nVT

Low figures for both. "Apply to join" is tied with "Don't know".

I wouldn't know which to pluck for as both are misleading to my view which is stay out but importantly have closer and more productive ties than current policy. Technically that would make me stay out, but it would be misinterpreted.

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Pulpstar said:

tlg86 said:

Pulpstar said:

Could we build a consulate in Calais, and make it clear that you might be accepted if you go through there, but you definitely won't be if you cross ?

Get rejected and cross anyway?

Get removed back to the newly acquired British soil in the gap between Calais & Sangatte ?

And get shot when they leave British soil?

Scott_xP said:

💥 Inside No10: Conservative MPs blame drift and division at the heart of Johnson's operation for the government's recent failings.

A year on from Dominic Cummings departure, four camps have emerged inside Downing Street.

Analysis with @PickardJE https://www.ft.com/content/48eaa083-8bba-40a1-8087-bd07a66b2f1a

The kremlinology is fascinating but really the problem is Boris, just as under Theresa May, getting rid of Nick and Fiona did not noticeably improve matters. Conservative MPs know this but it is safer to blame courtiers than the king.

Because Boris has no identifiable political credo, it is hard to forecast what policies he will favour. Because Boris is weak on detail, he is liable to change his mind once policy implications are made clear.

Take the Paterson affair, which the FT cites, and we have a decision (on what seemed like a clever wheeze to get Boris off the hook) made by an Old Etonian cabal, with a u-turn once Boris was rumbled. The fact (if it is a fact) there are different groups inside Number 10 is irrelevant if they are barely involved.

Dura_Ace said:

MoonRabbit said:

Dura_Ace said:

boulay said:

On the news just now they announced that a 5th person has been arrested in France Re the boat people who died.

How is it that the French authorities can within 24 hours arrest 5 people, they must have enough evidence of their involvement, and not use that intelligence they must have had to arrest them before on people trafficking offences?

It’s another key question I have is why does there not seem to be a big enough intelligence effort to infiltrate the gangs or process to stop these gangs in the same way they target drugs gangs?

Because the French very much want them to leave.

Do you think the UK government would be popping a bollock to stop them crossing to France if the situation were reversed?

Dura Ace, you have such a unique writing style, have you ever thought about writing your auto biography?

Interestingly, I was approached by a publisher of military bios after one of my Sea Harrier talks to see if I would be interested. After some talks about talks I was not interested because they insisted on no obscenity, no highly graphic recounting of what were possibly war crimes, no explicit accounts of what sailors actually do on runs ashore and they hated my proposed title - "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" (Neutral Milk Hotel reference).

Self-publishing is the way forwards! You've got a loyal following on here to get the first sales/pay for the inevitable law suit.

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

Because the customers still need to be provided with and pay for their Gas and Electric usage and no-one else is in a position to either do so and accept the risk of doing so.

This is the direct consequence of a cap being set below market rates

Pulpstar said:

tlg86 said:

Pulpstar said:

tlg86 said:

Pulpstar said:

Could we build a consulate in Calais, and make it clear that you might be accepted if you go through there, but you definitely won't be if you cross ?

Get rejected and cross anyway?

Get removed back to the newly acquired British soil in the gap between Calais & Sangatte ?

And get shot when they leave British soil?

Up to the French.

Brittania can even build a heap of hotels for them there. They're already coining it as it is from the Gov't.

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

NickyBreakspear said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

I think that Bulb has £1.7m customers, so that is about £1k per customer.

£1.7bn is the max cash requirement. The cost to the taxpayer will be far less.

Cost at the moment is expected to be 40% of that (I posted the figure yesterday) - so it's currently £700m.

And remember that the existing companies are having to sub that £400 from their reserves so don't expect prices to fall at any point in the next few years (there is a lot of debt to be made up).

Even that £400 both does depend on how winter plays out and how the market changes - you best bet long term is to get as energy efficient as possible.

Sorry to have missed your post yesterday. Where does the 40% figure come from?

The £400 average per house figure comes from conversations at 2 different energy firms - as the figures matched, it's probably a good estimate (and it's for now through to April).

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

It has gone bust, but with too many liabilities for any other business to take it on without a huge loss, and if they shut it down now, consumers will get shafted. So the government has to take the hit.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap certainly isn't irrelevant, if there was no cap the customers could be moved to the rest of the big 6 on a SVT which would allow them to run at a normal profit.

Pulpstar said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap certainly isn't irrelevant, if there was no cap the customers could be moved to the rest of the big 6 on a SVT which would allow them to run at a normal profit.

I don't know if it's true, but someone on here said all of Bulb's customers are on variable tariffs. So they wouldn't be going bust.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap isn't irrelevant. Suppose you are supplying 1m homes and you are told to supply another 200,000? How do you do that except by buying at the current variable market rate.

Now Bulb may have had a strange (to you) business model of dynamic price changes to reflect the current market price but 1.7million customers liked that business model, it wasn't illegal and it made sense to people who I suspect were market savvy.

The issue really is a very simple one, the cap needs to reflect current market prices and it very clearly doesn't - and equally those people who are happy to be on a dynamic pricing model should have been left on it sans cap.

rawliberal said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

It has gone bust, but with too many liabilities for any other business to take it on without a huge loss, and if they shut it down now, consumers will get shafted. So the government has to take the hit.

It's not really 'the government' taking the hit though, is it? Surely it's either energy bill payers, taxpayers, or both?

eek said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

Because the customers still need to be provided with and pay for their Gas and Electric usage and no-one else is in a position to either do so and accept the risk of doing so.

This is the direct consequence of a cap being set below market rates

No, it's a direct consequence of a bunch of chancers exploiting a deregulated market and failing to hedge their costs when their revenues were capped.

The proper suppliers have played a smarter game.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Pulpstar said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap certainly isn't irrelevant, if there was no cap the customers could be moved to the rest of the big 6 on a SVT which would allow them to run at a normal profit.

If the cap were the cause, all the suppliers would have gone bust. The problem is that, as with Northern Rock, the failed companies were buying in the short-term markets but selling to consumers at prices fixed over the long term.

That's the reason for Bulb going bust yes, and its their failed business.

Its not the reason why the Big 6 won't take on Bulb's customers on a SVT though.

Malmesbury said:

People who are in France seem to think that taking a RIB across the Channel is a good idea. This strongly suggests that they see the UK as much better than staying in France.

Getting to Germany from France would be fairly trivial by comparison.

Most refugees in France don't try to come to Britain. Obviously some do and take huge risks to do it, but the balance is around 4:1 preferring France or feeling that their chances are better there.

Those are two facts that are not really in dispute. Perhaps if it was less dangerous it would be more even, though?

eek said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap isn't irrelevant. Suppose you are supplying 1m homes and you are told to supply another 200,000? How do you do that except by buying at the current variable market rate.

Now Bulb may have had a strange (to you) business model of dynamic price changes to reflect the current market price but 1.7million customers liked that business model, it wasn't illegal and it made sense to people who I suspect were market savvy.

The issue really is a very simple one, the cap needs to reflect current market prices and it very clearly doesn't.

Don't fall for Tory spinners moving the goal posts. The cap is not why Bulb and the other two dozen chancers went bust. That is as I have explained. CCHQ wishes to ignore the 22 failures and explain instead why the sensible suppliers do not want to take over Bulb's contracts. And that is so they can blame Ed Miliband for what was actually Conservative legislation and regulation.

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

After being roughly range bound between 25-75 pence / therm for more than a decade, natural gas spot prices went through the roof this Autumn (for a variety of reasons) and are now trading at something like 4-5x the long term average. Current prices are about 225p / therm: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/uk-natural-gas

In 2019 (IIRC) the UK government had put in place a price cap on the price / therm gas companies could charge (mostly to prevent outrageous money grubbing by companies looking to exploit clients who’s only option was to be on pre-payment meters I think). As a result, any gas supply company who hadn’t hedged their natural gas supply contract & was buying gas on the spot market went from being profitable to losing a ton of money on every single customer overnight. Once they’d burnt through their reserves, bankruptcy was inevitable. Previously, customers of a bankrupt supplier would be quietly taken up by other players in the market, but who wants to take on a £1000 / annum / customer liability right now? Absolutely no-one, unsurprisingly.

So now the government is looking at the gas prices & thinking: we /really/ don’t want to add £1500 to the average household bill at this point in time, with the economy in a fragile state after covid. Oh, plus the headlines we’re going to get over the winter if we don’t do something are going to be dire: Grannies freezing to death do not make good copy for the government after all. Hence the thinking that it’s probably cheaper in the medium term term to pay out the difference between spot gas costs & the price cap over this winter for those companies that go bankrupt because they failed to hedge effectively & then decide what to do longer term in the spring.

On topic, the most interesting thing is so few voters switching between the two main parties.

Pulpstar said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap certainly isn't irrelevant, if there was no cap the customers could be moved to the rest of the big 6 on a SVT which would allow them to run at a normal profit.

These Cos should have some hedging in place though. Bit of the old risk management. To me it looks like they more took an agricultural punt on the market. Eg back when yield curves were steep and positive some operators would just lend long and borrow short and so long as things stayed stable they'd count the profits and pretend they were smart.

kinabalu said:

Pulpstar said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap certainly isn't irrelevant, if there was no cap the customers could be moved to the rest of the big 6 on a SVT which would allow them to run at a normal profit.

These Cos should have some hedging in place though. Bit of the old risk management. To me it looks like they more took an agricultural punt on the market. Eg back when yield curves were steep and positive some operators would just lend long and borrow short and so long as things stayed stable they'd count the profits and pretend they were smart.

How can you effectively hedge if there's a cap ?

eek said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap isn't irrelevant. Suppose you are supplying 1m homes and you are told to supply another 200,000? How do you do that except by buying at the current variable market rate.

Now Bulb may have had a strange (to you) business model of dynamic price changes to reflect the current market price but 1.7million customers liked that business model, it wasn't illegal and it made sense to people who I suspect were market savvy.

The issue really is a very simple one, the cap needs to reflect current market prices and it very clearly doesn't - and equally those people who are happy to be on a dynamic pricing model should have been left on it sans cap.

Interesting. I didn't know that Bulb sold at very variable rates. The cap basically makes their model impossible.

Different situation to the unhedged cowboys.

Burgessian said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sleazy broken Scottish Nationalism on the slide

A poll by YouGov for The Times finds that 40 per cent of people say they would vote yes in another referendum, a drop of one point compared with the company’s last survey in May.

The proportion of people who would vote no remained at 46 per cent, while 9 per cent said they were unsure, up by one point. The remainder would not vote or refused to say.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/voters-lose-interest-on-union-question-25mzsz3r8

Astonishing that despite Brexit and PM Boris Sturgeon has actually managed to see Yes fall by 5% below the 45% it got in the 2014 referendum.

No wonder Salmond and Alba are so furious and of course no prospect of a legal indyref2 under this Tory government either

Wait till you see how much No has lost since the 2014 referendum.

Quite. 46/86 is 53%. Which is down. Margin of 7 percentage points or so as opposed to 10 in 2014.

The point, guys, is that no-one is interested in IndyRef, whatever their theoretical inclinations are if there was one.

Not gonna happen.

Eventually Nicola will depart the stage, as will Boris.

And yet here you are commenting on it.
Since you’ve been predicting Sturgeon will be leaving daily and twice on a Tuesday since last year, can we call you Burgodamus?

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sleazy broken Scottish Nationalism on the slide

A poll by YouGov for The Times finds that 40 per cent of people say they would vote yes in another referendum, a drop of one point compared with the company’s last survey in May.

The proportion of people who would vote no remained at 46 per cent, while 9 per cent said they were unsure, up by one point. The remainder would not vote or refused to say.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/voters-lose-interest-on-union-question-25mzsz3r8

Astonishing that despite Brexit and PM Boris Sturgeon has actually managed to see Yes fall by 5% below the 45% it got in the 2014 referendum.

No wonder Salmond and Alba are so furious and of course no prospect of a legal indyref2 under this Tory government either

The actual Yes figure is 46.5% - which is above the 2014 referendum figure.

But of course you are muddling figures which include and which exclude DKs.

Professor Curtice would not be impressed.

It is 40% including DKs, so in terms of all voters below the 45% from 2014 as I said

Nigelb said:

SandyRentool said:

eek said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

Because the customers still need to be provided with and pay for their Gas and Electric usage and no-one else is in a position to either do so and accept the risk of doing so.

This is the direct consequence of a cap being set below market rates

No, it's a direct consequence of a bunch of chancers exploiting a deregulated market and failing to hedge their costs when their revenues were capped.

The proper suppliers have played a smarter game.

But the cap makes it impossible for the 'proper suppliers' to take on the customers of your bunch of chancers.

Why should they take them on? They have hedged based on their requirements for their own customers, not somebody else's.

Of course, I advocate nationalised utility suppliers, like we used to have. Providing a public service in the supply of essential energy supplies. Not operating a bloody casino.

I expect that those who set up the suppliers with the oh so clever names made sure that they trousered plenty of cash before the brown stuff hit the fan and the taxpayer is, yet again, left to wipe up the mess.

LostPassword said:

eek said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap isn't irrelevant. Suppose you are supplying 1m homes and you are told to supply another 200,000? How do you do that except by buying at the current variable market rate.

Now Bulb may have had a strange (to you) business model of dynamic price changes to reflect the current market price but 1.7million customers liked that business model, it wasn't illegal and it made sense to people who I suspect were market savvy.

The issue really is a very simple one, the cap needs to reflect current market prices and it very clearly doesn't - and equally those people who are happy to be on a dynamic pricing model should have been left on it sans cap.

Interesting. I didn't know that Bulb sold at very variable rates. The cap basically makes their model impossible.

Different situation to the unhedged cowboys.

Same situation. If you sell to consumers over the long term at any price below the cap, you need to make sure you can buy the stuff at lower prices over the same long term.

A rich selection of local by-elections today. Firstly we have the Conservative defence in the North Yorkshire PCC. Then there are Labour defences in Basildon, Halton, Newcastle under Lyme, Nuneaton and Bedworth. In Wandsworth there is a WIA elected as Labour defence. There are Con defences in Hambledon, Tunbridge Wells, and West Suffolk. The Lib Dems have a single defence in Wirral. Finally there the the unusual ones ( some very unusual!), In Allerdale there is a Non-Aligned defence; in Lancaster an Ind elected as Labour defence; and in Wigan a Ind defence after months of legal argument.

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sleazy broken Scottish Nationalism on the slide

A poll by YouGov for The Times finds that 40 per cent of people say they would vote yes in another referendum, a drop of one point compared with the company’s last survey in May.

The proportion of people who would vote no remained at 46 per cent, while 9 per cent said they were unsure, up by one point. The remainder would not vote or refused to say.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/voters-lose-interest-on-union-question-25mzsz3r8

Astonishing that despite Brexit and PM Boris Sturgeon has actually managed to see Yes fall by 5% below the 45% it got in the 2014 referendum.

No wonder Salmond and Alba are so furious and of course no prospect of a legal indyref2 under this Tory government either

The actual Yes figure is 46.5% - which is above the 2014 referendum figure.

But of course you are muddling figures which include and which exclude DKs.

Professor Curtice would not be impressed.

It is 40% including DKs, so in terms of all voters below the 45% from 2014 as I said

Just to point out the fallacy in this particular variant of HYUFDomathics.

In an election or referendum, the DKs are ignored.

To generate an opinion poll result comparable to an election, the DKs have to be excluded fromt he calculation. So only the 40 percentage points for Yes and the 46 percentage points for No are counted.

The percentages haver to be recalculated eg 40 divided by (40 plus 46) gives 46 and a half true percent. Which is up from 2014.

Pulpstar said:

kinabalu said:

Pulpstar said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap certainly isn't irrelevant, if there was no cap the customers could be moved to the rest of the big 6 on a SVT which would allow them to run at a normal profit.

These Cos should have some hedging in place though. Bit of the old risk management. To me it looks like they more took an agricultural punt on the market. Eg back when yield curves were steep and positive some operators would just lend long and borrow short and so long as things stayed stable they'd count the profits and pretend they were smart.

How can you effectively hedge if there's a cap ?

If prices rocket miles above the cap and stay there for ages all companies without big reserves will go bust. But those with some hedging in place - eg forward buy contracts - have a degree of protection and have bought themselves time. It seems some of these outfits neglected to do any of this, hence are front of the queue for falling over.

Andy_JS said:

On topic, the most interesting thing is so few voters switching between the two main parties.

To me that is to be expected. The voter who jumps between the two is a rare beast. Apparent red-blue swings are the superficial reading of a multitude of more complex movements in voting intention.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

LostPassword said:

eek said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap isn't irrelevant. Suppose you are supplying 1m homes and you are told to supply another 200,000? How do you do that except by buying at the current variable market rate.

Now Bulb may have had a strange (to you) business model of dynamic price changes to reflect the current market price but 1.7million customers liked that business model, it wasn't illegal and it made sense to people who I suspect were market savvy.

The issue really is a very simple one, the cap needs to reflect current market prices and it very clearly doesn't - and equally those people who are happy to be on a dynamic pricing model should have been left on it sans cap.

Interesting. I didn't know that Bulb sold at very variable rates. The cap basically makes their model impossible.

Different situation to the unhedged cowboys.

Same situation. If you sell to consumers over the long term at any price below the cap, you need to make sure you can buy the stuff at lower prices over the same long term.

Lets say all the companies buying gas have hedged to buy long at a capped cost.

The problem at the moment is lack of supply. Who gets cut off first?

NickyBreakspear said:

How many energy companies are left?

This website has a list, though it was last updated a few weeks ago, so it doesn't show Bulb as bust yet.

https://www.theenergyshop.com/energy-suppliers

Seems like there are still a surprisingly large number (around 40).

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sleazy broken Scottish Nationalism on the slide

A poll by YouGov for The Times finds that 40 per cent of people say they would vote yes in another referendum, a drop of one point compared with the company’s last survey in May.

The proportion of people who would vote no remained at 46 per cent, while 9 per cent said they were unsure, up by one point. The remainder would not vote or refused to say.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/voters-lose-interest-on-union-question-25mzsz3r8

Astonishing that despite Brexit and PM Boris Sturgeon has actually managed to see Yes fall by 5% below the 45% it got in the 2014 referendum.

No wonder Salmond and Alba are so furious and of course no prospect of a legal indyref2 under this Tory government either

The actual Yes figure is 46.5% - which is above the 2014 referendum figure.

But of course you are muddling figures which include and which exclude DKs.

Professor Curtice would not be impressed.

It is 40% including DKs, so in terms of all voters below the 45% from 2014 as I said

Here we go again. So you agree that a majority do not explicitly support the Union?

Anabobazina said:

SandyRentool said:

Nigelb said:

SandyRentool said:

eek said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

Because the customers still need to be provided with and pay for their Gas and Electric usage and no-one else is in a position to either do so and accept the risk of doing so.

This is the direct consequence of a cap being set below market rates

No, it's a direct consequence of a bunch of chancers exploiting a deregulated market and failing to hedge their costs when their revenues were capped.

The proper suppliers have played a smarter game.

But the cap makes it impossible for the 'proper suppliers' to take on the customers of your bunch of chancers.

Why should they take them on? They have hedged based on their requirements for their own customers, not somebody else's.

Of course, I advocate nationalised utility suppliers, like we used to have. Providing a public service in the supply of essential energy supplies. Not operating a bloody casino.

I expect that those who set up the suppliers with the oh so clever names made sure that they trousered plenty of cash before the brown stuff hit the fan and the taxpayer is, yet again, left to wipe up the mess.

The privatised energy ‘system’ is tragedy played as farce. Which raving idiot decided that having a bunch of fake suppliers competing with each to supply exactly the same stream of energy, which is in fact supplied by somebody else, was ever a good idea?

Nationalise it FFS.

I remember when utilities, the railways, car manufacturers et al were "nationalised". Also, more laughably known as "in public ownership". They were all totally and utterly shit. And sorry, for all their faults, much much shitter than they are today. The man in Whitehall really does not know best.

CON: 39% (-)
LAB: 36% (+2)
LDEM: 10% (+2)
GRN: 5% (-3)

via
@Kantar
, 18 - 22 Nov
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1463816123326115842?s=20

rcs1000 said:

boulay said:

On the news just now they announced that a 5th person has been arrested in France Re the boat people who died.

How is it that the French authorities can within 24 hours arrest 5 people, they must have enough evidence of their involvement, and not use that intelligence they must have had to arrest them before on people trafficking offences?

It’s another key question I have is why does there not seem to be a big enough intelligence effort to infiltrate the gangs or process to stop these gangs in the same way they target drugs gangs?

France is following a perfectly sane policy (and which is the same as the policy in both Switzerland and Norway) of encouraging asylum seekers to self deport.

If an asylum seeker in Northern Ireland was walking towards the Irish border, should we tackle him to the ground to prevent him leaving the country?

If Northern Ireland became a magnet to migrants as a stepping stone to getting into the Republic and the build up of migrants was causing problems in Northern Ireland the surely the best thing to do would be to tackle the migrant and every other one, remove the idea that it’s a stepping stone to RoI and then other migrants might think, “hang on there isn’t much point massing in Northern Ireland anymore as the buggers keep arresting us and sending us back home”.

So whilst it’s initially harder work to deal with the problem the longer term benefits are worth it.

I know it’s a bit of a crap analogy but it would be like the Dutch police saying they aren’t going to stop drug traffickers from loading ships to the UK with drugs because the drugs are the UK’s problem when they get there - that’s true however the knock on effect would be that it draws more and more players to the Netherlands to traffick drugs to the UK as they won’t be dealt with and then you get the associated problems in the Netherlands of increased rival drug gangs etc.

If they find a way to make it pointless/impossible to send drugs from the Netherlands then there is less pull to drugs gangs to be based there for the purpose of trafficking to the UK thus reducing their own problems.

rcs1000 said:

boulay said:

On the news just now they announced that a 5th person has been arrested in France Re the boat people who died.

How is it that the French authorities can within 24 hours arrest 5 people, they must have enough evidence of their involvement, and not use that intelligence they must have had to arrest them before on people trafficking offences?

It’s another key question I have is why does there not seem to be a big enough intelligence effort to infiltrate the gangs or process to stop these gangs in the same way they target drugs gangs?

France is following a perfectly sane policy (and which is the same as the policy in both Switzerland and Norway) of encouraging asylum seekers to self deport.

If an asylum seeker in Northern Ireland was walking towards the Irish border, should we tackle him to the ground to prevent him leaving the country?

Is this an Essay question, or were you really expecting a quick answer?

Flatlander said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

LostPassword said:

eek said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap isn't irrelevant. Suppose you are supplying 1m homes and you are told to supply another 200,000? How do you do that except by buying at the current variable market rate.

Now Bulb may have had a strange (to you) business model of dynamic price changes to reflect the current market price but 1.7million customers liked that business model, it wasn't illegal and it made sense to people who I suspect were market savvy.

The issue really is a very simple one, the cap needs to reflect current market prices and it very clearly doesn't - and equally those people who are happy to be on a dynamic pricing model should have been left on it sans cap.

Interesting. I didn't know that Bulb sold at very variable rates. The cap basically makes their model impossible.

Different situation to the unhedged cowboys.

Same situation. If you sell to consumers over the long term at any price below the cap, you need to make sure you can buy the stuff at lower prices over the same long term.

Lets say all the companies buying gas have hedged to buy long at a capped cost.

The problem at the moment is lack of supply. Who gets cut off first?

Industrial users - initially those on interruptible contracts.

HYUFD said:

CON: 39% (-)
LAB: 36% (+2)
LDEM: 10% (+2)
GRN: 5% (-3)

via
@Kantar
, 18 - 22 Nov
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1463816123326115842?s=20

Labour only up 3% on the general election and the LDs actually down 2%. Interesting, after nearly 12 years of Conservative or Conservative-led government.

geoffw said:

Flatlander said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

LostPassword said:

eek said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

The cap isn't irrelevant. Suppose you are supplying 1m homes and you are told to supply another 200,000? How do you do that except by buying at the current variable market rate.

Now Bulb may have had a strange (to you) business model of dynamic price changes to reflect the current market price but 1.7million customers liked that business model, it wasn't illegal and it made sense to people who I suspect were market savvy.

The issue really is a very simple one, the cap needs to reflect current market prices and it very clearly doesn't - and equally those people who are happy to be on a dynamic pricing model should have been left on it sans cap.

Interesting. I didn't know that Bulb sold at very variable rates. The cap basically makes their model impossible.

Different situation to the unhedged cowboys.

Same situation. If you sell to consumers over the long term at any price below the cap, you need to make sure you can buy the stuff at lower prices over the same long term.

Lets say all the companies buying gas have hedged to buy long at a capped cost.

The problem at the moment is lack of supply. Who gets cut off first?

Industrial users - initially those on interruptible contracts.

German industry is increasingly worried about this, loads of them expect to have to shut down in December and January because gas supplies will be diverted to heating people's houses.

In news that will surprise exactly no one, early reviews suggest that Peter Jackson's Get Back is far too long.

Anabobazina said:

SandyRentool said:

Nigelb said:

SandyRentool said:

eek said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

Because the customers still need to be provided with and pay for their Gas and Electric usage and no-one else is in a position to either do so and accept the risk of doing so.

This is the direct consequence of a cap being set below market rates

No, it's a direct consequence of a bunch of chancers exploiting a deregulated market and failing to hedge their costs when their revenues were capped.

The proper suppliers have played a smarter game.

But the cap makes it impossible for the 'proper suppliers' to take on the customers of your bunch of chancers.

Why should they take them on? They have hedged based on their requirements for their own customers, not somebody else's.

Of course, I advocate nationalised utility suppliers, like we used to have. Providing a public service in the supply of essential energy supplies. Not operating a bloody casino.

I expect that those who set up the suppliers with the oh so clever names made sure that they trousered plenty of cash before the brown stuff hit the fan and the taxpayer is, yet again, left to wipe up the mess.

The privatised energy ‘system’ is tragedy played as farce. Which raving idiot decided that having a bunch of fake suppliers competing with each to supply exactly the same stream of energy, which is in fact supplied by somebody else, was ever a good idea?

I’m now on my fourth fake cowboy ‘supplier’ in 12 months. Sick of emails, bills and meter readings. It’s the definition of boring chores.

Nationalise it FFS.

The issue is the energy price cap, companies are unable to charge the market rate, Bulb specifically only has a single standard variable rate tariff. The reason they went bankrupt is because they were unable to push that variable rate up to the market rate for gas. Get rid of the price cap and a lot of the problems in the sector go away. It was and remains a terrible policy. It was shit what Ed Miliband proposed it and it was shit when Theresa May implemented it and it's shit today. A completely unnecessary distortion of the market that will simply see companies gold under the weight of losses vs wholesale price gas.

Andy_JS said:

HYUFD said:

CON: 39% (-)
LAB: 36% (+2)
LDEM: 10% (+2)
GRN: 5% (-3)

via
@Kantar
, 18 - 22 Nov
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1463816123326115842?s=20

Labour only up 3% on the general election and the LDs actually down 2%. Interesting, after nearly 12 years of Conservative or Conservative-led government.

For the benefit of comparing like with like

14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
39% 34% 8
23-27 Sept
43% 30% 11

The take out there is Kantar finding more Labour support each time they poll?

Nigel_Foremain said:

Anabobazina said:

SandyRentool said:

Nigelb said:

SandyRentool said:

eek said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

Because the customers still need to be provided with and pay for their Gas and Electric usage and no-one else is in a position to either do so and accept the risk of doing so.

This is the direct consequence of a cap being set below market rates

No, it's a direct consequence of a bunch of chancers exploiting a deregulated market and failing to hedge their costs when their revenues were capped.

The proper suppliers have played a smarter game.

But the cap makes it impossible for the 'proper suppliers' to take on the customers of your bunch of chancers.

Why should they take them on? They have hedged based on their requirements for their own customers, not somebody else's.

Of course, I advocate nationalised utility suppliers, like we used to have. Providing a public service in the supply of essential energy supplies. Not operating a bloody casino.

I expect that those who set up the suppliers with the oh so clever names made sure that they trousered plenty of cash before the brown stuff hit the fan and the taxpayer is, yet again, left to wipe up the mess.

The privatised energy ‘system’ is tragedy played as farce. Which raving idiot decided that having a bunch of fake suppliers competing with each to supply exactly the same stream of energy, which is in fact supplied by somebody else, was ever a good idea?

Nationalise it FFS.

I remember when utilities, the railways, car manufacturers et al were "nationalised". Also, more laughably known as "in public ownership". They were all totally and utterly shit. And sorry, for all their faults, much much shitter than they are today. The man in Whitehall really does not know best.

In what way were gas, water and electric “shit” under public ownership? You turned on the light switch, the lights came on, similarly gas and water. The cost was reasonable: maybe some privatized suppliers have been cheaper since but you didn't have to keep searching out the best “deal” every year or two.

British Leyland I grant you, but I don’t recall the products of GM/Vauxhall or Chrysler/Talbot (whatever it became) being any much better than Austin-Morris-Rover in the 70s and 80s.

As to the trains, BR in its last years did seem to be getting it right: InterCity was profitable and cross-subsidized the other sectors, eithout the. Fleet renewal was underway too.

Maybe telecoms was best privatized though. Having your phone hard-wired into the wall seems unbelievable today!

SandyRentool said:

Andy_JS said:

On topic, the most interesting thing is so few voters switching between the two main parties.

To me that is to be expected. The voter who jumps between the two is a rare beast. Apparent red-blue swings are the superficial reading of a multitude of more complex movements in voting intention.

True, although when it's clear there's going to be a change of government, such as 1979, 1997 and 2010, you probably get a much higher percentage. So it's a sign that if anything changes at the next election it's likely to be in the direction of a hung parliament, although we knew that already.

Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

Cyclefree said:

Anyway, today is Elimination of Violence Against Women Day, I am told.

I am not, on the whole, a fan of all these "Days".

But it is worth remembering that, as of today, in Britain so far this year 127 women have been killed.

328 days of the year. 127 women killed.

1 woman killed every two and a half days.

Most do not even make the local let alone national news. If this number were killed in one go, we'd never hear the end of it. But one here and there all over the country every few days, most in domestic settings, most by people known to them, overwhelmingly by men - well they just become routine, part of the daily background, unknown, forgotten and not cared enough about for anyone to do anything effective to understand why this happens and what can be done to change it.

And this rate of killing is broadly the same year after year.

Let's compare it to the 20 years the British Army spent in Afghanistan - a largely pointless undertaking, mostly remembered for the sad convoys through Wootten Bassett and people paying their respects.

457 soldiers killed, 405 through enemy action. Ca. 23 a year.

I do not diminish their sacrifice or the loss their loved ones suffer.

But these women too have a name and people who loved them and miss them and this weary acceptance of their deaths really will not do.

Still, we have a "Day", I suppose. Must we be content just with that?

Or, I suppose, we could compare it with the roughly double number of male homicides over the same time. Do they get a "day"?

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MaxPB said:

Dura_Ace said:

Phil said:

ping said:

Jeez. £1.7bn of taxpayers money to keep bulb running.

Outrageous.

The solution is simple. Ditch the cap to keep these companies solvent. If the govt is going to spend money, it should be on protecting the poorest via UC, not directly subsidising energy bills.

The company has gone into “special administration”. I presume (but can’t find anywhere) that this means the shareholders have been wiped out as they would be in any company that goes into administration. The only difference here is that it’s being kept running in order that people continue to receive gas supply.

As a country we have a problem - gas prices have just spiked enormously, after being relatively stable for a decade or more. Many, many people rely on gas for heating & cooking. Keeping the gas flowing is therefore a matter of national security.

Clearly, the only long term solution is for gas prices to rise & people to shift off gas. But quadrupling everyone’s gas bills right now is going to cause havoc - I can see why the government has decided that re-nationalising the gas supply industry is the simplest & most effective option open to them in the short term.

Can somebody who understands this shit (ie not me, I chose my financial advisor because I approved of his car) explain why they can't just let this utterly pointless husk of a company go bust?

The idiotic energy price cap.

The cap is largely irrelevant. Think Northern Rock. The problem is buying short and selling long. When the short-term price peaks, Bulb (or NR) is stuffed. And as with Northern Rock, the political cost of letting consumers take the hit is too great.

It can be seen as a failure of regulation but apparently PB Tories only see these when Labour is in office. And the only reason for mentioning the cap is so the Tory spin team can blame Ed Miliband for Conservative legislation.

With respect, I’m pretty much the opposite of a PB Tory and I think the cap is crap.

Either have a free energy market, sans cap, or nationalise it all.

We currently have the worst of all worlds.

As I said upthread, if the government is to throw taxpayers cash at the problem, it should be in the form of a UC boost for the poorest.