Don't Pay

[clv101]

Over 60k now on Twitter.

There's two things going on. A lot households simply can't pay these new rates. Separately, a lot of households don't accept the perceived injustice of the energy companies and commodity traders taking many billions in profits off these elevated bills. They just see a needless wealth transfer from the many to the few. It is within the government's gift to increase taxation on the companies so they make reasonable profits not excessive profits.

Additionally, more and more people are seeing the £400 'support' payments as simply a gift of public money to private companies. Giving to individual people is just a trick as every penny slides smoothly to the energy companies. It isn't a £15bn package for the people, it's a massive transfer of public money to private companies.

[kenneal - lagger]

Meanwhile BP announce record profits and spend the money not on investment in renewables but in share by backs. The case for a huge windfall tax mounts by the hour.

[clv101]

Another day, now over 80k followers on Twitter.

[Mark]

Energy bills: Charities warn people against not paying:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62435432

[clv101]

Up to 90k now on Twitter, but rate of growth might be slowing.

[dustiswhatweare]

The 'establishment' fight back begins. Looks like a few phone calls have been made. I imagine this will intensify.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... y-campaign

[Potemkin Villager]

Yes indeed, whoever the UK is lucky enough to have as their new premier come
September will have a very challenging in box to greet them when they move
into no 10!

I would hazard a guess that unfortunately it will not be long before the Parkinson's
Law bit about folk rising to their level of incompetence will become very apparent
with even direr consequences than those pertaining at present.

Martin Lewis offers the following advice on how to tie the feckers up in well deserved knots!

" DO NOT refuse to pay your energy bill in October. Below is how you can make a stand and hurt your energy supplier without getting into debt/damaging your credit rating:
1. Cancel your DD & pay for what you use each month.
2. You then need to write a letter of complaint to your energy supplier. Once that complaint had been raised, your energy supplier can't take any debt collection work on your account, so they can't pass your details to the credit reference agencies etc. That bill gets put on hold whilst they try to resolve your complaint.
The energy company might offer you a small reduction - DON'T accept it. Keep the complaint open & hold strong.
3. Eventually, they will send you a letter of 'Deadlock'. A letter of Deadlock is a letter that is sent to you from your energy company saying they gone as far as they can with your complaint & can't go any further, so your only option now is to take it up with the energy Ombudsman.
For every complaint the Ombudsman receives, they charge your energy supplier £500 for every claim they have to investigate.
4. The energy companies also have limitations on how many complaints they're allowed open as well as a turnaround time of how fast they have to respond to a complaint & get a complaint closed. If they don't respond to them fast enough & don't resolve the complaints or they have too many complaints open, the energy firm will also get hit with a fine from the Ombudsman.
This is how your hurt an energy company. This will also put them in breach of their licensing conditions
& put their ability to trade at risk.
So if you want to fight these extortionate price hikes
1. Raise complaints
2. Do NOT close them
3. Take them to the Ombudsman
You can also submit a “subject access request” at the same time as the above. This means the energy company has a legal obligation to provide you with every piece of information they have on you; including telephone conversation transcripts, past bills, everything! This is time consuming for them to collect and is a huge hassle for them however they legally have only one month to comply."

[clv101]

93k on Twitter.

I'm increasing thinking we're (they're) framing this 'energy crisis' all wrong. Why are we talking about £4000 bills, why are we making this the consumer's problem?!

Remember the banking crisis? That was framed completely differently, there was no suggestion that the banks would raid millions of personal bank accounts to bail themselves out. The government saved the banks with 10s £bn public money. The personal accounts were protected.

With the energy crisis, the government could act in a similar way, bail out the retailers, protect the customers. This time it's a much simpler problem as unlike with the banking crisis where the money was *lost* this time we know exactly where it is (with the oil and gas companies mostly), and the government has the tools to recover it.

[johnny]

With the energy crisis, the government could act in a similar way, bail out the retailers, protect the customers. This time it's a much simpler problem as unlike with the banking crisis where the money was *lost* this time we know exactly where it is (with the oil and gas companies mostly), and the government has the tools to recover it.

...or apply some time tested and true techniques to access local domestic forms of energy?

[kenneal - lagger]

The US has a huge problem with methane leakage from fracked shale fields which the government are now looking to enforce some action on. The UK shale beds are a lot more fractured than the US ones so if we mobilise the gas it it going to leak a lot more than in the US. The UK is also a lot more densely populated than the US so any problems with leakage are going to be a lot worse in the UK than they would be in the US.

We rely on underground water supplies a lot in this country and again because of the more dense population any contamination of water supplies is going to affect a lot more people. The fracking companies would not be taking on individual farmers in this country they would be taken to court for damages by very large companies with the wherewithal to push for an expensive settlement.

Why invest in the last century's technology, more gas which we won't be able to use soon, when we could invest in renewables which produce electricity at about a quarter the cost of gas.

[BritDownUnder]

I don’t want to reignite the fracking debate but I am pretty sure that fracked gas could probably be extracted from the Forest of Bowland without the water supply for London or even Manchester being compromised.

A lot of claims about the quantity of gas that is frackable have been made. I think it is worth trying it in one relatively remote area of the UK given the imminent gas crisis.

[kenneal - lagger]

But then, BDU, there is the problem of liberated gas finding fissures that lead to the surface, a problem which is a lot less prevalent in the US but is still very measurable and worth the government legislating about in the recent climate change act.

[clv101]

Campaign finally hit 100k followers on Twitter, growth has slowed now though.

[Catweazle]

The Daily Mail has already started the character assassination of organisers and linking them to "Corbynistas". "Middle class university dropout" is already in play, lookout for "Russian sympathiser", "radical left" and "champagne-socialist" coming soon.

[Mark]

Revealed: MPs have claimed £420,000 to heat their second homes since 2019:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-m ... rgy-bills/

No utility bill worries for our MPs.....

George Freeman, who is a minister in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, claimed £1,565 for electricity and other fuel. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, claimed £1,548 for gas and electricity. Treasury ministers Simon Clarke and John Glen also claimed expenses for household energy. Meanwhile, the government’s attorney general, Suella Braverman, racked up a £3,945 energy bill, which she charged to taxpayers. And the disgraced former health secretary, Matt Hancock claimed a staggering £4,800 on energy costs – mostly during the pandemic.

But Labour MP Liam Byrne claimed the most on energy in his second home, charging taxpayers some £7,808 over three years.