Don't Pay UK

SDK^ said:
All that will happen is the long term anti bill payers will be put on a pre-payment meter. Meaning if they don’t add their own energy credit (at higher cost than a DD account) then they have no gas or electric.
Basically putting themesleves in a worse position and making it harder in the future to get any credit.
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Indeed if the numbers arent high I agree with you, things like this its a numbers game, need to hit that critical mass.
 
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413x said:
People protesting by not paying will not make the energy companies lower prices lol.

What might happen is more government debt as government help out.
Or more firms go bust or just leave the UK.

Remember, these big boys are international.
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To be fair the organiser is targeting Ofgem aka the government not the suppliers and extractors. The plan seems to be to get enough people to make it politically uncomfortable for the government to ignore.
 
Caracus2k said:
For heavens sake! Are we really going to go down the simply disproved argument of 'unchecked capitalism' when the simple answer as to why people in the UK pay more for petrol and diesel than people in Spain is the taxation levied on these fuels by the respective governments!


This is a long running trend (for the UK to be amongst one of the most highly taxed countries for petrol and diesel) for much longer than the last decade and through multiple governments from coalitions, Labour and the Conservatives

So much like many people on these pages you seen to not have the faintest idea of what the words you throw out mean!

'Unchecked capitalism' - what absolute nonsense

The Spanish just choose to (directly) tax their population less and consequently pay out less per capita as a result. Some older figures but I doubt the long standing pattern has changed...

If you think cutting government taxes AND spending less (per capita) will help constrain 'unchecked capitalism' in the UK then please feel free to advocate on that basis!

It really is funny that you blame my view on 'reading the Daily Mail' when you resort to such nonsense as blaming 'unchecked capitalism' for the UK's current fuel price and give Spain as an example of somewhere doing better in this regard.

'herp derp mUh uNChecKeD cAPitaLISm....' apparently you need to stop reading so much nonsense on the internet!

The blame bit for the UK government was in quotes ' '

....maybe you should go look up what that means? (hint in means I was indicating that the UK government can't actually do that much to influence the prices we are paying for petrol, diesel, electricity and gas without causing some major issues elsewhere like for example a massive loss of tax revenue or environmental issues)

And as has previous been said it doesn't really matter that we get most of gas from Norway because we aren't the only customers for their gas and so if the worlds supply is affected elsewhere this will still affect the price we pay for gas from Norway
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yeah you dont understand at all do you - wait for the recession of the capitalist boom/bust cycle.
 
BowdonUK said:
If everyone didn't spend money on certain services, like petrol, or going to a particular superstore, for 1 day, it would put a dent in the business spreadsheet.

The mere threat that people can all get together and do something at the same time is what the big boys fear.
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Doubt it, if people were still consuming the same amount of fuel then they'd just end up with more being spent in the days immediately prior to or after.

If everyone were to collectively buy less fuel, use less energy over an extended period of time then of course demand would come down as would bills both from decreased use + lower prices per unit of energy/fuel.
 
BowdonUK said:
If everyone didn't spend money on certain services, like petrol, or going to a particular superstore, for 1 day, it would put a dent in the business spreadsheet.

The mere threat that people can all get together and do something at the same time is what the big boys fear.
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A dent perhaps, but would they care much at all? The covid lockdowns caused a bigger dent than any protest ever will and yet the companies are still operating.

Looking at it differently, if all this upset and complaining leads to further, more anarchist behaviour we (the people and the gov) will look weak in the eyes of the Russians.
 
Caracus2k said:
doesn't seem to chime with what the BBC website says on the matter...

In June of this year OPEC + were producing 'some two and a half million barrels a day less than in spring 2020'

and since then we have had:

'For July and August, Opec+ had agreed to add more than 600,000 barrels a day to the market.
But after the latest meeting, Opec+ decided it would raise oil output by just 100,000 barrels per day from September in what some analysts described as an insult.''

With there having been no other increase in oil production in June (in fact a small decline from the previous month for the OPEC members)

So that's still around 1.2 million barrels a day short by September of this year assuming OPEC meet their targets (which they have failed to do previously, see above)

The facts are simple... oil producers could (not immediately) increase output by 'pumping' investment into increasing extraction.... but they are not stupid and can see a looming world recession on the horizon which will likely dampen the demand for oil and so why would they increase production and do their own legs when the worlds economy takes a downturn when they can say that their existing extraction infrastructure is, in some places, near capacity (which is true) whilst they sit back and reap the financial rewards in the here and now of higher prices?
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There's likely also a lagging impact on production rates from the lack of exploration / production optimisation investment during COVID. Typically when oil prices crash exploration and drilling is the first thing that gets postponed / cancelled by E&P companies, including the state owned ones.

Don't forget that oil and gas fields naturally decline over time - if you're not investing in increasing production, either through improved recovery methods, new drilling, etc, your volumes will fall (except for relatively new fields which are on plateau).
 
BowdonUK said:
If everyone didn't spend money on certain services, like petrol, or going to a particular superstore, for 1 day, it would put a dent in the business spreadsheet.

The mere threat that people can all get together and do something at the same time is what the big boys fear.
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Boycotting a local garage just hurts the owner of that garage not 'big oil'.
 
Protests are only effective if you get a critical mass of people protesting. In terms of fuel it’s a drop in the ocean Shell, Bp would barely notice.
As far as essential services go they’ve got you by the balls.
 
sadly it is too far from where i live, but a mate of mine who lives in the North West and a garage near him continually sells fuel for less than the major sellers, at the moment over 20p less - or was a few weeks back I have not spoke with him about it for a while.. He claims even with that he still makes enough profit.

now either this guy is getting some black market fuel to sell, or the other 95% of fuel stations are making a disgraceful profit.
 
High energy prices for domestic customers might actually be a good thing imo, provides a real incentive to reduce energy usage and value energy efficiency.

The problem is that income has not risen with prices, meaning that in the short term there will be huge suffering. Solutions to this would might involve raising minimum wage and universal credit significantly, maybe raising threshold for income tax too.

The magnitude of the cost would be a bit of an issue though... Could only be a short term measure before longer term solutions were brought in...
 
danlightbulb said:
I stand surprised. Good on Shell at least. No point having a discussion about whether it is enough, they could probably have doubled everyone's salary and still made billions in profit.
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I mean, its nice but you have to appreciate the tone deafness of it. "We are involved in a massive part of why the cost of living has skyrocketed but we aren't giving our staff a bonus to help with that, we're doing it because we made sooooo much money".
 
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