Off Topic The Politics Thread

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Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

  • Stay in

    Votes: 56 47.9%
  • Get out

    Votes: 61 52.1%

  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
i think hes saying if the french can escort them into british waters then they can also pick them up and take thewm back to france
i think hes upset the border force and the rnli are being used as a taxi service in an illegal people smuggling ring
 
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David C Bannerman
@DCBMEP
· 13h
Apparently the real reason the French can’t recall their Ambassador from the UK, as with Australia & USA, is because they are part of the EU and thereby bound by its common foreign policy for relations with the UK. Whoops!
 
This energy crisis is fun, isn’t it? Capitalism at its best. The privatised and fragmented retail energy business close to collapse as smaller providers go bust buying expensive wholesale gas, and the taxpayer doubtless to step in to bribe, sorry ‘loan’ cash to the bigger providers to take over all the customer accounts left at risk. Then pass on the price rises to us.

Meanwhile food supplies threatened by a lack of the carbon dioxide needed for virtually all elements of the food processing system, from stunning animals before they are killed to packaging. The shortage is caused by US owned CF Industries stopping production at its two fertilster plants in the U.K., and apparently making fertiliser also provides 60% of the UKs carbon dioxide needs. They are closed because wholesale gas prices are so high that it’s not profitable to continue production.

Thankfully we have the most economically left wing government since the seventies as far as industry is concerned (it and it’s followers are in denial about this of course) despite its ‘conservative’ badge, and populism demands that they will somehow pay their way through this. But it’s not a policy, it’s a staggering from one expensive crisis to the next, loading the future with debt.

Johnson ‘this will get better as the market sorts itself out’. He’s a cretin. We have had little wind energy because of the weather, fires removing supplies of energy from Europe, maintenance reducing our own gas production, issues at nuclear plants, reopening coal fired stations… and gas prices now 5 times higher than last year, going up more than anywhere else. Central planning please.

The certainty - those least able to pay more will be given no choice.
 
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This energy crisis is fun, isn’t it? Capitalism at its best. The privatised and fragmented retail energy business close to collapse as smaller providers go bust buying expensive wholesale gas, and the taxpayer doubtless to step in to bribe, sorry ‘loan’ cash to the bigger providers to take over all the customer accounts left at risk. Then pass on the price rises to us.

Meanwhile food supplies threatened by a lack of the carbon dioxide needed for virtually all elements of the food processing system, from stunning animals before they are killed to packaging. The shortage is caused by US owned CF Industries stopping production at its two fertilster plants in the U.K., and apparently making fertiliser also provides 60% of the UKs carbon dioxide needs. They are closed because wholesale gas prices are so high that it’s not profitable to continue production.

Thankfully we have the most economically left wing government since the seventies as far as industry is concerned (it and it’s followers are in denial about this of course) despite its ‘conservative’ badge, and populism demands that they will somehow pay their way through this. But it’s not a policy, it’s a staggering from one expensive crisis to the next, loading the future with debt.

Johnson ‘this will get better as the market sorts itself out’. He’s a cretin. We have had little wind energy because of the weather, fires removing supplies of energy from Europe, maintenance reducing our own gas production, issues at nuclear plants, reopening coal fired stations… and gas prices now 5 times higher than last year, going up more than anywhere else. Central planning please.

The certainty - those least able to pay more will be given no choice.

There were 70 energy 'suppliers' (they should more accurately be called retailers, I would say) in the UK at the start of this year and there are expected to be as few as ten by the end of the year with so many going bust. Why not re-nationalise the whole thing and go back to just one? Central planning indeed.
 
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There were 70 energy 'suppliers' (they should more accurately be called retailers, I would say) in the UK at the start of this year and there are expected to be as few as ten by the end of the year with so many going bust. Why not re-nationalise the whole thing and go back to just one? Central planning indeed.
These 70 firms don’t actually generate or provide any of the infrastructure for energy supply. They simply buy energy (from the same sources) and contribute to the various companies providing the infrastructure, and sell power under a variety of packages. Price differences result from their competitive attempts to capture customers and cost differences in their back office and billing systems. They add absolutely no value but obviously put up prices so they can make a profit. Simply middle men in the supply chain, competing for those customers who shop around for the best prices. The best prices seem to have been provided by the small, weak, traders and now the big ones, the ten that will be left, are reluctant to pick up these customers on good, cheap, non profitable deals. So the government ie the taxpayer, will have to bribe them to do it.

I find the structure of the U.K. energy market completely bewildering.
 
These 70 firms don’t actually generate or provide any of the infrastructure for energy supply. They simply buy energy (from the same sources) and contribute to the various companies providing the infrastructure, and sell power under a variety of packages. Price differences result from their competitive attempts to capture customers and cost differences in their back office and billing systems. They add absolutely no value but obviously put up prices so they can make a profit. Simply middle men in the supply chain, competing for those customers who shop around for the best prices. The best prices seem to have been provided by the small, weak, traders and now the big ones, the ten that will be left, are reluctant to pick up these customers on good, cheap, non profitable deals. So the government ie the taxpayer, will have to bribe them to do it.

I find the structure of the U.K. energy market completely bewildering.

That's why I said they should be called retailers rather than suppliers. You described this government as economically left wing - a genuinely left wing government would re-nationalise all the utilities and other natural monopolies.
 
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Blimey, i turn my back for one minute and theres a riveting debate about metric measurements. ****in hell does anyone truly care either way? I mean really care? Did it upset people so much, does it upset people now its apparantly changing back? People will still shop where they shop, will still use the same traders etc. Traders will still sell to the same people. All a bit ****in pointless really, but i suppose it truly comes down to someone forcing us to do something over someone else forcing us to do something. Im off to eat a chicken kebab and watch Newcastle v Leeds. Got an early appointment for some bamboo tattoo tomorrow.

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There were 70 energy 'suppliers' (they should more accurately be called retailers, I would say) in the UK at the start of this year and there are expected to be as few as ten by the end of the year with so many going bust. Why not re-nationalise the whole thing and go back to just one? Central planning indeed.

Absolutely agree the utilities and trains should be re-nationalised, and any profits pumped back into improving the networks……it’s strange though that many on the left, who agree with re-nationalisation, also are vociferous in their support of the EU, who in the future are making it neigh on impossible to do that very thing, and look to open up much of Europe’s rail network to the private sector.
Of course that’s a simplistic view and the rules are very complicated, however the principle stands…the EU is not the saviour of working people.