Council owned energy companies

[fillyboy]

I was reading an article last week on Guido Fawkes site about the number of 'council owned' energy companies that have gone into liquidation, owing in excess of a hundred mill, (tax payers money).
I was quite surprised insofar as why are councils setting up energy companies in the first place, they clearly don't have the expertise.

£114 Million Lost By Council-Owned Energy Firms - Guido Fawkes (order-order.com)

Seems mainstream media has caught up as more cases come to light.

London council energy firm nets millions in grants but supplies just 476 homes (msn.com)

A LONDON council has raised eyebrows after taxpayers have handed over nearly £40m to its subsidiary energy company in the past five years, yet the provider still only serves 477 customers – and all but one are residential dwellings.

B&D Energy is wholly owned by Barking and Dagenham Council.

Since it was founded in 2016, the firm has benefitted from multiple government grants and loans.

 

[transam]

Councils

if they are any thing like the council around here they are a waste of space IMO

They sent some bailiff around here years ago to collect council tax

me being a stalwart of the community and they sent a bailiff around here

granted I owed the money

but that’s not the point

 

[transam]

I recall when it first started it was called the poll tax

that trialed it in Scotland first

than it came down here we all got taken to court

me and my mate turned up at the magistrates court and there must have been a couple hundred people crammed into the waiting room to
Go up before the beak

before you entered the building there were protestors on the door telling every one to stick together as there is strength in numbers

out of two hundred there were only 4 people who refused to cough up
Me
My mate
His brother
And some bloke who never turned up any way

we told the council solicitor to
Basically go and do one

stick together they said

yeah 4 of us all the rest caved in a did some dirty deal

 

[ReganAndCarter]

Thought we sold off all our energy and water cos off to foreign investors. It's more than a little worrying that The Chinese, Americans, Europeans, etc own our basic services - and we wonder why our prices are the highest in Europe. The same countries buying our utilities often have governments that would never allow the sale of their own utilities to foreigners.

 

[big-all]

I recall when it first started it was called the poll tax

that trialed it in Scotland first

than it came down here we all got taken to court

me and my mate turned up at the magistrates court and there must have been a couple hundred people crammed into the waiting room to
Go up before the beak

before you entered the building there were protestors on the door telling every one to stick together as there is strength in numbers

out of two hundred there were only 4 people who refused to cough up
Me
My mate
His brother
And some bloke who never turned up any way

we told the council solicitor to
Basically go and do one

stick together they said

yeah 4 of us all the rest caved in a did some dirty deal

ehhh then it goes to collections and iff you dont pay when asked again you are now in contempt off court so then if you dont pay its a criminal offence ??

 

[Slogger]

They are a disgrace .There should be only one ENERGY company and it should be nationalised then run for the good of the people with very little if any going to greedy share holders .Same goes for Gas .

 

[Notch7]

What is weird is that Guido doesn’t mention which political party these councils are or who owns theses energy companies.

We need to follow the money.

the failure is either inept greens or greedy capitalists…..or could it be Kabour councils attempting nationalisation by the backdoor.

 

[JohnD]

Thought we sold off all our energy and water cos off to foreign investors. It's more than a little worrying that The Chinese, Americans, Europeans, etc own our basic services - and we wonder why our prices are the highest in Europe. The same countries buying our utilities often have governments that would never allow the sale of their own utilities to foreigners.

As any Tory will tell you, national utilities must not be nationally owned (except, of course by a foreign nation) and public ownership of public services is a terrible idea. You only have to look at the splendid results of selling off the railways, water and sewage companies to see how well they've done.

The citizens of the UK do not agree, so our government will take care not to ask them.


https://weownit.org.uk/public-solutions/support-public-ownership

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/utilities/explore/issue/Nationalisation_of_utilites

 

[JohnD]

 

[JohnD]

"Southern Water sentenced to pay record £90 million in fines for widespread pollution after pleading guilty to 6,971 unpermitted sewage discharges.

The sentence follows 51 guilty pleas to widespread and long term breaches of environmental law by Southern Water between 2010 and 2015. The offences were found to be caused by deliberate failings, causing major harm (Category 1) to protected areas, conservation sites and oyster beds".

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-90m-fine-for-southern-water-following-ea-prosecution

"The court were told Southern Water deliberately presented a misleading picture of compliance to the Environment Agency, hindering proper regulation of the company."

"The Environment Agency has worked closely with Ofwat, the economic regulator, which imposed a £126 million penalty on SWS in 2019 as a result of the company’s regulatory failings over the same period. Today’s sentencing is part of the criminal investigation into permit breaches and environmental harm."

 

[ReganAndCarter]

Sadly, that about sums it up. We've sold our family silver and wonder why we pay a fortune to use our own plates and cutlery that now belong to foreign investors.

Don't forget to tell Sid!

 

[JohnD]

The citizens of the UK do not agree, so our government will take care not to ask them.

 

[gas112]

.

 

[big-all]

i am not sure being overly pedantic or commenting in the odd mistake some make is the best solution not that anyone has chosen posting in this thread have chosen that path
i personally am riddled with mistakes and some times get it wrong but only through mistakes that i try not to make rather than deliberate manipulation misdirection and misinformation that others seem to resort too
when i left education in the 1960s i dont know iff there was any recognism off conditions like being illiterate or dyslexic or similar situations even a bit autistic
but the point is i have gone through life as a train driver for half my working life then a chippie for the next 25 years and at no stage was my lack off "education" or " diagnosed "conditions" ever come up apart from on forums where people rightly point out my many many many grammatical /spelling /composition/ and many other mistakes where on explination by me that my mistakes where not through layzeness but because my brain would take 10 times longer iff i got everything right on the spelling front so would answer 10 times more problems and get it perhaps only 80% correct on the gramer punctuation and composition
any way trying to say more understanding and less i am better than thou

 

[fillyboy]

FFS! Do you have some kind of deficiency that makes you take everything literally?

Bravo, you've found a company that's the exception. Hair well and truly split. Crack on.

There's more than a few exceptions. A number of utility companies are foreign owned, I won't deny that, there are also a number of PLC's where the purchase of shares is open to the public, of course that public might consist of 'foreigners' or 'foreign hedge funds', or do you think 'foreigners' should be banned from buying shares?
It's worth noting that EU rules make it 'less easy' to have a state run utility than it was in the post war years. I suspect were going to see a drift back to state ownership, both here and in the EU, covid's had a devastating effect on business, and some businesses can't be allowed to fail, or for that matter, be controlled by Russia.