BG Gas & Electricityl Increases

To be announced tomorrow there's a suggestion it will be 8%. Tough for those paying bills but helpful for our industry - or what's left of it!

Interesting development. That's two of the six. Wonder when the others will follow suit.

Next week would be my guess.

Another positive point for installing renewable then. Anything to try to future proof against the ever rising cost of energy.....

I'd imagine most will follow suit in the next few weeks. The exception being EoN which has a pledge not to raise prices in 2012. Bets on them to announce a rise early Jan 2013 however are almost a dead cert.

According to the BBC News the reasons:

Higher price of Gas on the International Market
Distribution Costs
and get this one - Green Measures such as Insulating Homes and Renewable Energy -- Oh and I just heard that ad for Free InsultAion by BG ....
Bet that as well as been a Green Deal Provier they'll blame the costs of running the Green Deal next year (remember who actually pays for that ...)

I'm not surprised to see British Gas raising prices by 8%; Southern Electric warned in mid-August that they'd be raising by 9% in mid-October.

It sounds as if BG are just playing catchup - hoping to gain SE's customers by waiting until the last moment to announce a price rise which actually becomes effective at about the same time.

Note that rising costs are more a function of money losing its buying power. The rampant credit expansion and now quantitative easing is pouring vast quantities of new money into circulation, which is reducing the value of what was already in circulation.

Inflation is the value of money going down, rather than the cost of items going up.
In times when money was not freely printed - money being backed by having to hold gold equal to the value of all bank notes in circulation - it was normal for the price of goods to slightly decrease over long periods.
But nowadays, in order to fund all the benefits and welfare systems which are demanded - including expensive medical care and other emergency services - the government is unable to tax sufficient money from the population to pay for it, so the government has to resort to borrowing into existence or printing the shortfall. This, as mentioned, is what is causing money to lose its buying power (or the price of everything from oil to gas to houses to rocket in price in the last fifteen years).

Inflation is a stealth tax, and is the price we must pay for "mother government" and the welfare state.........unless we're all prepared to pay more tax, which also reduces our available spending power.

Well I'm with British gas and put a 4kw on my roof 2nd of march so got the high tariff not long fitted a Voltis unit
swings and roundabout suppose. They will get an extra £100 a year supposedly if you have gas and elec from them

Southern electrics prices are going up on the 15th and I got a call yesterday purportedly from british gas asking if I wanted to move, I wonder why?

FB. said:

I'm not surprised to see British Gas raising prices by 8%; Southern Electric warned in mid-August that they'd be raising by 9% in mid-October.

It sounds as if BG are just playing catchup - hoping to gain SE's customers by waiting until the last moment to announce a price rise which actually becomes effective at about the same time.

Note that rising costs are more a function of money losing its buying power. The rampant credit expansion and now quantitative easing is pouring vast quantities of new money into circulation, which is reducing the value of what was already in circulation.

Inflation is the value of money going down, rather than the cost of items going up.
In times when money was not freely printed - money being backed by having to hold gold equal to the value of all bank notes in circulation - it was normal for the price of goods to slightly decrease over long periods.
But nowadays, in order to fund all the benefits and welfare systems which are demanded - including expensive medical care and other emergency services - the government is unable to tax sufficient money from the population to pay for it, so the government has to resort to borrowing into existence or printing the shortfall. This, as mentioned, is what is causing money to lose its buying power (or the price of everything from oil to gas to houses to rocket in price in the last fifteen years).

Inflation is a stealth tax, and is the price we must pay for "mother government" and the welfare state.........unless we're all prepared to pay more tax, which also reduces our available spending power.

Click to expand...

sorry to burst your bubble, but it's all got a hell of a lot more to do with the reduction in output from the North Sea gas field, which are now outputting less than half the annual output they had 10 years ago, resulting in us having to import the difference in LNG on the world markets that's far more expensive than just piping it direct from the north sea.



At the same time as this we've actually been seriously increasing the capacity of gas fired power plants in the country, with another 3GW opening this year in anticipation of the closure of the much cheaper old coal plants in 2016 - plants that were baseload plants, and have been operating on limited hours running for the last few years, and will be increasingly limited up to 2016.

These 2 factors are by far the biggest causes of fuel price rises.

In addition to this, the decline in output from both North Sea oil and since 2000 is also largely responsible for most of the other economic problems in this country, as it's led to ever growing balance of trade deficits as we're essentially bleeding huge quantities of money in the form of energy payments to the Gulf. It's not a coincidence that the only 2 periods that we've had a positive trade balance, and actually been paying debts off in the last 40 years have been when North Sea gas and oil output was exceeding our annual demands, so we were net exporters of energy. Unfortunately, these periods also coincided with historic low gas and oil prices, and we're now importing the stuff at record high prices (well, record highs for the post war period).



Not that I'm denying that the government is attempting to inflate away its debts (amongst other things, like massively increasing the banks cash reserve levels) via Quantitative easing, but that's only a minor factor in the energy price rises, and ignores the actual over riding cause of the problem

FB. said:

I'm not surprised to see British Gas raising prices by 8%; Southern Electric warned in mid-August that they'd be raising by 9% in mid-October.

It sounds as if BG are just playing catchup - hoping to gain SE's customers by waiting until the last moment to announce a price rise which actually becomes effective at about the same time.

Note that rising costs are more a function of money losing its buying power. The rampant credit expansion and now quantitative easing is pouring vast quantities of new money into circulation, which is reducing the value of what was already in circulation.

Inflation is the value of money going down, rather than the cost of items going up.
In times when money was not freely printed - money being backed by having to hold gold equal to the value of all bank notes in circulation - it was normal for the price of goods to slightly decrease over long periods.
But nowadays, in order to fund all the benefits and welfare systems which are demanded - including expensive medical care and other emergency services - the government is unable to tax sufficient money from the population to pay for it, so the government has to resort to borrowing into existence or printing the shortfall. This, as mentioned, is what is causing money to lose its buying power (or the price of everything from oil to gas to houses to rocket in price in the last fifteen years).

Inflation is a stealth tax, and is the price we must pay for "mother government" and the welfare state.........unless we're all prepared to pay more tax, which also reduces our available spending power.

Click to expand...

Quantitative easing hasn't put any noticeable amount of money into the economy, all it has done is shore up the banks balance sheets. The reason Gas and Electricity prices are going up is that it's a finite resource and is a classic case of supply and demand- Winter is coming so demand will go up, hence the justification for the price increase.


*edit Gavin beat me to it

I did some work in a shop selling Woodburners on Monday - their phones didn't stop ringing and the footfall through the door was impressive too.

Somecamel said:

Quantitative easing hasn't put any noticeable amount of money into the economy, all it has done is shore up the banks balance sheets.

Click to expand...

Take a look at this link, which shows a very strong correlation between QE and commodity prices:
Keep Buying the Precious Metals Bull Market

Somecamel said:

The reason Gas and Electricity prices are going up is that it's a finite resource and is a classic case of supply and demand- Winter is coming so demand will go up, hence the justification for the price increase.

Click to expand...

Yes, supply and demand play a factor, but if supply gets too tight, prices rise, which then attracts new entrants and new investment to provide what's in short supply. Back to the old chestnut of not a big enough profit margin for companies to want to take the political risk. Only the other day, Miliband at some Labour Party party hinted at how - if he was elected - he'd give the utilities a whipping. So which utilities in their right mind would want to invest with such threats?

Have a read of this interesting article on Europe's utility companies and the cost to consumers:
The cheapest energy in Europe

FB. said:

Take a look at this link, which shows a very strong correlation between QE and commodity prices:
Keep Buying the Precious Metals Bull Market

Click to expand...

that's not the real economy though, although it's certainly added to inflation.

All that's done is artificially bump up bank profits and bonuses, and create yet another bubble that's going to burst at some point soon, and leave the banks in a right mess again and probably begging for handouts again. We should have done an iceland IMO and sacked the lot of them off in the first place, then got on with building up the actual real world economy instead of the fantasy casino economy the banks have created out of little more than bluff and illusion.