June 18, 2008

Household energy bills could increase by as much as 40% this winter, the BBC has learned, as oil and wholesale gas prices hit record highs.

The increases could mean households paying £400 more a year on average for their gas and electricity, senior industry sources have said.

Bad news for you and me, of course, because just like eating, fuel for heat and transport is essential in this country - and thus it is brilliant news for the voracious appetite of Gordon Broooon's Treasury.

Not bad news for the UK energy companies, either - who have already shared a delightful £70bn in windfall (that is, virtually handed to them in return for peppercorns) profits since Thatcher sold them off to the lowest bidders.

Facts:

1) There is no less oil available for sale in the world today than there was six months ago.

2) The City boys, in That Fancy London and other financial centres worldwide, are instead making a killing literally betting that shortages might be ahead.

3) A shortage of anything makes it a yet more valuable commodity than it was before - or in other words, it pushes the price up.

4) If there's a threat of a shortage of anything you either really need or really want - food, fuel, millennium editions of Playboy (yes, got one) - people rush out to buy it today before it gets yet more expensive tomorrow - perpetuating the "shortage" myth, cementing its increased value, and thus pushing its price up even more. Or "capitalism", as it's also known.

5) The taxman - aka the Government - takes his usual exorbitant percentage, albeit at a massively raised net worth.

6) The fuel retailers - Shell, BP etc - make just as much profit as they did yesterday, while wringing their hands and shrugging their shoulders and saying: "Well, what do you want us to do? It's a global market. If we don't buy oil at the price the Arabs sell it, we won't have any."

7) The Arabs will carry on buying London, New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney and Moscow. And snow. And why not? Didn't someone once say - possibly - that the Sheikhs would inherit the earth?

8) The world will keep on turning, whatever the weather, and no matter how many wind turbines try to change its direction. Because it, unlike the termites that populate it, is reliable like that.

9) You'll be ever so slightly more skint than you should be, when the prices do eventually settle down (which is when Gordon Broooon will say he was right all along.)

10) And when will that be, exactly, oh Proooodent One? Gordon? Mr Brooooon? Er, are you there.....?