Dearest Reader(s):

We are about to become victims of the biggest robbery this country – and possibly the world – has ever known.

We have been warned – threatened – by the UK government that our energy prices are about to go through the proverbial roof from October. This is on top of the increases that many have experienced for most of 2022, if not before.

This has struck terror in the hearts of many citizens of the UK, as they wonder how they are going to find the money to pay for this same energy that, just one month ago, cost significantly less.

In the UK, there is a so-called ‘regulator’ for energy supplies, and, like all other British ‘regulators,’ it begins with the letters ‘Of’ – in this case, Ofgem. As I’ve said already, many households in the UK have experienced massive price rises already and, instead of looking out for the consumer like a regulator is supposed to do, it raised its cap on energy prices – in other words, the maximum amount an energy company could charge its customers.

On 26 August 2022, Ofgem announced that it was raising its price cap from an average of £1,971 per household to £3,549! That’s a rise, in one go, of around 80%.

This is unbelievable. But, you know what, instead of saying, you know, our customers are paying enough as it is for something that is essentially intangible, so we’ll keep the prices as they are for now, you could almost hear the drools of saliva hit the floor as the shareholders and senior executives saw just how much money they could make instantly.

It’s out-fucking-rageous.

I would like to ask our brand spanking new prime minister Liz Truss – rhetorically of course – a few questions.

First – is this almost nightmarish price hike a piece of fake news, designed so that your first act as prime minister will be to find a mythical £100bn of public money – tax-payers’ money – to fund payments to every household to cover this hike, so that they will feel more inclined to vote for you should you decide to call, I don’t know, a snap election in the near future and guarantee yourself five years as an elected prime minister with an elected government and a mandate?

Secondly, and giving you the benefit of the doubt on the first question, and assuming this £100bn to be genuine, which is scary, where is this money coming from? From government borrowing, eh? Adding it to the national debt, eh?

This question in itself invokes so many sub-questions, it is difficult to know where to begin. First of all, isn’t that precisely the sort of fiscal policy that might be suggested by someone like, I don’t know, Jeremy Corbyn, the most arch-Labour leader Labour has had since the days of Wilson and Callaghan, ie, pre-new Labour, and the leader that put that party back forty years from which it still stands no chance of recovering? That leader they’ve got now, sounds like the school bully in the year above moaning to the teacher while his voice is just breaking. Gimme an ‘H’! Gimme an ‘-opeless!’ What have you got? Sir Kier Starmer.

I digress, as ever. Apparently, the man tipped to be Ms Truss’ new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, wrote recently in the Financial Times that to pay for the PM-elect’s plan, the growth rate of the economy will just magically be increased to pay for the extra burden of debt, partly funded by…oh God, I can barely bring myself to write these words…shrinking the public sector.

Christ! The British public is now exactly where the Tories want them – too cynical and jaded to even get upset beyond writing a few cheap and insulting comments on BBC News, or perhaps a blog such as this one. There’s too much at stake – too much telly to miss, too many liberties are at risk if you were to take to the streets and protest, for example. No, the time for that is gone, and the Tories know it. That’s why the government is allowing Ofgem, on behalf of the energy suppliers, to get away with this.

Of course, we have to be careful when we say ‘energy suppliers,’ because we are actually just talking about a few men and women at the top – not the actual energy suppliers who come to your home and turn on your energy, and/or fix it when it inevitably goes wrong. And, doubtless, they take 99% of the misdirected heat from the customers too afraid to tackle the people who will really benefit from all this.

Make no mistake – just because your energy bills will be going up 80% in October, after the 24% rise here and the 37% rise there – your energy is not going to be 80% better quality, is it? You’re still going to have to call out the engineers just as often, wait in call centre queues for just as long, or tied to ridiculously lengthy contracts just because they gave you a nice pen.

Ofgem’s website (https://www.ofgem.gov.uk) is, unsurprisingly, rather low-key about the destruction they are about to wreak on the finances of many households in Britain. You can get help, they say, or maybe even a grant, if you can’t afford your energy bills. They recognise the fact that everybody needs to use energy of some sort, but their automatic right to take your money regardless whether the price hike is worthy or justified is a given.

I actually LOL’ed (Laughed Out Loud, for the less clued-up to the lingo) when I saw Ofgem’s definition of the price cap as a “backstop protection from the government, calculated by Ofgem.”

Since gas prices are suddenly at a 30-year high, (that’s the excuse that the government’s ‘regulator’ are using (I’m sorry, I just cannot write the word ‘regulator’ without ‘inverted commas’ around it) and our bills are going up by around 80% of what they are now (that’s after the other rises), does this mean the following:

• That everything that needs energy to be manufactured – bread, cars, jewellery, puppets, Elvis wigs – are going to go up by a similar percentage so that those manufacturers can cover their own costs?
• That all of the staff who work for the energy companies – the engineers, the fitters, the call centre staff, are all going to have their wages increased by anything like 80%? No, of course not! You’re lucky if you can squeeze 1% out of them! Funny, that…
• That the salaries of the staff that we have really needed over these past two and a half years – doctors, nurses and other hospital staff – will be increased by anything like 80%? No! We saw how the government, and the local NHS Trusses (ho, ho! I bet that joke will come up at some point in the tabloid press – you’re welcome!) have thanked their staff for all their hard work and commitment.

Oh, and back to this squeezing of the public sector that Mr Kwarteng wrote about in his recent article? We know that the Conservatives will use any and every excuse to do exactly that – sack one more librarian, one more road sweeper, one more rubbish bin operative. How is that going to help when the smell of shit starts wafting through Windsor, Kew, Westminster, and rural Sussex? Your collective Tory turds are going to be blocking up your pipes because there’s no-one to fix your drains.

The very same CEOs of these energy companies are going to have to make use of their new yachts to escape the smell of their own shit – but make sure you have returned your library books and put them back on the shelf yourself, otherwise the machine will generate an automated notice of a small fine on it, and your world will come collapsing around you.

And what’s going to happen when COVID comes back, as it inevitably will, because it’s never gone away, has it? Where will all the district nurses be to administer whatever vaccine is the flavour of the week? You’ll be asking for even more volunteers to do the job for no pay.

There we are. Welcome to post-Brexit Britain. Yes, energy prices are rising sharply across Europe, but the UK still holds the 2nd place for the highest cost of electricity per unit in Europe. How this equates with the gas prices I don’t know. All I do know is that there will be many people across the UK who will be struggling to feed their families – not just because of the price hikes themselves, but because of the tax and inflation that is sure to follow.

Hopefully, the British public will wise up to the fact that they can no longer trust the major political parties to look after them and put their best interest first; we need to take a chance and elect the GREEN PARTY who will convert all our energy to renewable, and give Putin the middle finger with his blackmailing and grabbing us by the balls. x