Don't Pay UK

[fez]

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...

Not in the slightest. We will use probably 95% of the amount we used every year because we cannot cut back on much. Our bill will have tripled and the only thing that we can cut back on is a few luxuries like running a coffee machine or turning off all our router based electronics at night. Both of which would probably save us about £100 over the course of the year.

We don't live in a world where houses are perfectly insulated and retrofitting houses would cost 10x the savings most would get and thats ignoring the likelihood that the person paying for it wouldn't even get the benefit because they wouldn't live there long enough.

Very little about this is good in any way shape or form. The only silver lining is that the world will give Russia the middle finger and move away from fossil fuels a little quicker and generally insulate ourselves from this sort of thing happening in the future.

 

[sandys]

No. Cause that means they lost 20b. What are you on? That’s not sustainable. Most oil companies were running at a loss during covid.

Shell operate all around the world and probably don’t make a huge amount in the Uk and they are not U.K. based. So as said, should everyone in the world have help with energy bills cause a company makes money on a commodity that is set by the market ?

Typical rant of someone who doesn’t really understand how the oil gas and energy market works. What should companies do. Sell it lower than market rate? Stop supplying ?

Isn't the reason Shell had to change their ticker from RDSB to SHELL because they moved operations to UK recently so could no longer be called Royal Dutch Shell?

Don't disagree with your sentiment, just a matter of fact they can now officially be called a UK company, even if it was done for corporate tax reasons and made no difference to their operations.

Dutch government angered over Shell's plan to move HQ to UK – DW – 11/15/2021

The oil giant has announced it will take up a new tax residency and remove "Royal Dutch" from its name. The relocation follows a Dutch court order to slash its emissions by 2030.

www.dw.com

 

[bigmike20vt]

The only silver lining is that the world will give Russia the middle finger and move away from fossil fuels a little quicker and generally insulate ourselves from this sort of thing happening in the future.

as horrible as it is now, IF this happens that is quite a big silver lining, both giving Russia the finger and definitely moving more to renewables and hopefully building better insulated new homes.

generally i am not a massive socialist however in the short term however, painful as it maybe those with are going to have to help out those without to get through this (done by government of course i dont mean iterally going around paying those on the poverty lines energy bill personally)

 

[GGizmo]

A boycott happens if one company is targetted. So lets say Tesco. If everyone stopped shopping and buying petrol at Tesco for even a day, or longer, then it would effect that company. You can still buy those things at the other chain stores or shops.

We saw with Brexit that the very possibility of UKIP getting an MP elected forced the governments hand to pre-emptively call a referendum in an attempt to head off an anti-EU position.

Big companies and governments become nervous when a sizable amount of the public all move at the same time.

If people doubt that this non-payment tactic can work, then look up the poll tax riots, which eventually contributed to the fall of the Thatcher government.

 

[bigmike20vt]

If people doubt that this non-payment tactic can work, then look up the poll tax riots, which eventually contributed to the fall of the Thatcher government.

I asked about this earlier in the thread but no one replied..... I was wondering what happened to all those people who refused to pay. I was only an early teenager at the time, did the people evading tax ever get pulled up on it or did they get away with it. Perhaps if the latter that is exactly the same sort of thinking for this non paying idea.

The difference is, here i guess people wont need to be taken to court etc to be seriously inconvenienced.... they could just get their meter replaced with a prepayment one, and then if they dont pay they dont get energy.

 

[GreatAuk]

Not in the slightest. We will use probably 95% of the amount we used every year because we cannot cut back on much. Our bill will have tripled and the only thing that we can cut back on is a few luxuries like running a coffee machine or turning off all our router based electronics at night. Both of which would probably save us about £100 over the course of the year.

We don't live in a world where houses are perfectly insulated and retrofitting houses would cost 10x the savings most would get and thats ignoring the likelihood that the person paying for it wouldn't even get the benefit because they wouldn't live there long enough.

Very little about this is good in any way shape or form. The only silver lining is that the world will give Russia the middle finger and move away from fossil fuels a little quicker and generally insulate ourselves from this sort of thing happening in the future.

That may be the case for you, but many people who would be heating their homes to 21 degrees through winter etc, running halogen spotlights, have the TV on in the background even when not watching it etc might think again. It also provides more of an incentive to consider energy efficiency in new purchases.

Provides an incentive for some more radical ideas to be considered too, eg powered body heaters rather than heating a whole house to t-shirt temperatures, or maybe moving away from oven cooking meals so frequently.

Where some investments like extra insulation or swapping to LED bulbs might not previously have made sense higher prices do push the analysis over the edge in some cases.

Retrofitting houses might not be practical in many cases, but higher prices mean it will make sense in more cases, and there should be more motivation for the government to provide grants and set up schemes for supporting things like that in the long term.

High fuel and electricity prices will have an impact on things like choice of car too - big SUVs might lose some popularity. Look at what happened in America after the 1970s oil crisis.

Not even considering changes it might incentivise in commercial and office environments.

Edit: agree with your last paragraph though.

 

[Freakbro]

I asked about this earlier in the thread but no one replied..... I was wondering what happened to all those people who refused to pay. I was only an early teenager at the time, did the people evading tax ever get pulled up on it or did they get away with it. Perhaps if the latter that is exactly the same sort of thinking for this non paying idea.

The difference is, here i guess people wont need to be taken to court etc to be seriously inconvenienced.... they could just get their meter replaced with a prepayment one, and then if they dont pay they dont get energy.

I never paid mine and had a running battle with the Council for years over it, even threatened with prison at one point!, lol, before they wrote it off (I didn't actually owe it, but due to administrative issues I had a bill issued, and my protestations got lost in the noise of all the defaults and stonewalled in the face of inflexible bureaucracy).

But overall, yes a lot of people refused to pay and ended up not paying https://www.theguardian.com/society/1999/apr/14/guardiansocietysupplement4

The rebels have finally got away with it, writes Chris Wheal. Six years on from the hated levy, up to £5 billion arrears will be written off

Can't pay, won't pay - and now they won't have to pay. The sloganeers who consistently refused to acknowledge the tax that sowed the seeds of Margaret Thatcher's downfall have got away with it. Six full years after the poll tax's demise, an estimated 4,000,000 people who declined to pay as much as £5 billion of the controversial levy are now immune from prosecution. Outstanding money will never be recovered.

According to figures compiled by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa), non-payment of poll tax in its first year in England and Wales represented 12.8 per cent of the amount billed; in the second year, non-payment rose to 21 per cent, or more than a fifth. And it was a problem to the end. Reluctance to pay grew even stronger. In the tax's final year, 1992-93, councils had to send a reminder to an astounding 88 per cent of those billed.

As many as 28 per cent were issued summonses, 22 per cent received liability orders and 9 per cent had the bailiffs sent round. Even then, many still did not pay. The most recent Cipfa figures are for the year 1996-97 and are almost certainly understatements. They show that, at March 1997, £550 million in poll tax was still outstanding in England and Wales. In addition, however, councils had accepted that a huge further amount would never be collected. English and Welsh councils alone had by then written off as bad debt a total of more than £3 billion.

 

[dowie]

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.

Or it's not quite the full story perhaps? Like re: that big difference in price is this guy adjusting quickly after wholesale price changes etc. if he happens to have needed to resupply after a drop and adjusts quickly whereas some franchise station is selling some other batch of fuel at a higher price and might adjust downwards in a few days then perhaps that's your big difference? One guy I used to work with owned some petrol stations as a side hustle, he used to say there wasn't much profit from the fuel itself but rather it's more like a good sales funnel for the shop.

That sort of stuff does drive these campaigns, reports of big profits and everyone thinks their high bills are the reason etc..

A boycott happens if one company is targetted. So lets say Tesco. If everyone stopped shopping and buying petrol at Tesco for even a day, or longer, then it would effect that company.

Sure if you're buying food and petrol still but just not buying it at Tesco then they lose a day's profits... what exactly does that achieve?

The silly facebook campaigns have been more along the lines of campaigning for people to not buy fuel on a particular day - even if you did get everyone to do it whats the point? So long as people are still using their cars then they'll just fill up on other days, they're still buying the same amount of fuel across several days, it just means more customers on the days before and/or after the fuel strike day.

If people doubt that this non-payment tactic can work, then look up the poll tax riots, which eventually contributed to the fall of the Thatcher government.

But that's the government and they can just write it off... an energy company can install a pre-payment meter, not allow you to switch because you have an outstanding debt etc..

 

[V F]

A boycott happens if one company is targetted. So lets say Tesco. If everyone stopped shopping and buying petrol at Tesco for even a day, or longer, then it would effect that company. You can still buy those things at the other chain stores or shops.

We saw with Brexit that the very possibility of UKIP getting an MP elected forced the governments hand to pre-emptively call a referendum in an attempt to head off an anti-EU position.

Big companies and governments become nervous when a sizable amount of the public all move at the same time.

If people doubt that this non-payment tactic can work, then look up the poll tax riots, which eventually contributed to the fall of the Thatcher government.

People were organized back then, not today. Plus it was a different mindset and culture then. There is no organization today.

 

[Zenduri]

A boycott happens if one company is targetted. So lets say Tesco. If everyone stopped shopping and buying petrol at Tesco for even a day, or longer, then it would effect that company. You can still buy those things at the other chain stores or shops.

We saw with Brexit that the very possibility of UKIP getting an MP elected forced the governments hand to pre-emptively call a referendum in an attempt to head off an anti-EU position.

Big companies and governments become nervous when a sizable amount of the public all move at the same time.

If people doubt that this non-payment tactic can work, then look up the poll tax riots, which eventually contributed to the fall of the Thatcher government.

People are really overthinking the success of this scheme. The Poll Tax rebellion worked because the people refusing to pay were refusing to pay 1 body, the government, and it hit the Gov directly.

Dont pay UK etc want 1 million people to withhold payment on Oct 1st but realistically if those 1 million were evenly spread out over the top 5 suppliers its only 200k each, which while horrific for any companies books to have that many people refusing to pay, its less impactful than 1million people per company. The Government is insulated from the non payment scheme too as it doesn't directly effect them, it hits private companies and even then it's aimed at the wrong private companies. The issue is the likes of Shell/BP not overcharging while the likes of EDF, British Gas still have to buy the energy at whatever the market dictates so the real villains here wont be touched.

Energy companies (EDF/ British gas etc) would complain to the government, the Government will say they have put measures in place, £400 here, £600 for those on benefits etc etc and nothing would change. The worst that could probably happen is if a large chunk of people that dont pay are with a smaller supplier, it could drive that supplier out of business and then its the SOLR issue all over again or a BULB mk2 where the government is having then to spend money it doesn't want to spend to prop a company up.

 

[Freakbro]

People were organized back then, not today. Plus it was a different mindset and culture then. There is no organization today.

Which on the surface of it seems strange, since we have far more tools for mass organisation than we ever did back then.

 

[200sols]

Which on the surface of it seems strange, since we have far more tools for mass organisation than we ever did back then.

Were people organised back then? As in did millions of people really plan something together? Or did it all just snowball in relatively short time.

 

[413x]

People are really overthinking the success of this scheme. The Poll Tax rebellion worked because the people refusing to pay were refusing to pay 1 body, the government, and it hit the Gov directly.

Dont pay UK etc want 1 million people to withhold payment on Oct 1st but realistically if those 1 million were evenly spread out over the top 5 suppliers its only 200k each, which while horrific for any companies books to have that many people refusing to pay, its less impactful than 1million people per company. The Government is insulated from the non payment scheme too as it doesn't directly effect them, it hits private companies and even then it's aimed at the wrong private companies. The issue is the likes of Shell/BP not overcharging while the likes of EDF, British Gas still have to buy the energy at whatever the market dictates so the real villains here wont be touched.

Energy companies (EDF/ British gas etc) would complain to the government, the Government will say they have put measures in place, £400 here, £600 for those on benefits etc etc and nothing would change. The worst that could probably happen is if a large chunk of people that dont pay are with a smaller supplier, it could drive that supplier out of business and then its the SOLR issue all over again or a BULB mk2 where the government is having then to spend money it doesn't want to spend to prop a company up.

Yeah worst that can happen is exactly that.
Maybe octopus go under let's say.
Many would be even more worse off.


I do wonder if everyone didn't pay, what would happen? Would we soon run out of power as no company would supply us with resources?

Government wouldn't be able to pay for long.

 

[Doobedoo]

The population is more divided than ever brexit is/was an example of this. People also would’ve gathered more and actually socialised face to face. It was different when I was growing up we all knew each other, you’d be sent by your mum to go and borrow a cup of milk or sugar across the road. It’s very different now.

 

[Freakbro]

Were people organised back then? As in did millions of people really plan something together? Or did it all just snowball in relatively short time.

A bot of both probably. There was certainly more political activism, Thatcher was a very polarising figure combined with people generally more willing to get up off their arse and do something about it.

 

[Doobedoo]

Yeah worst that can happen is exactly that.
Maybe octopus go under let's say.
Many would be even more worse off.


I do wonder if everyone didn't pay, what would happen? Would we soon run out of power as no company would supply us with resources?

Government wouldn't be able to pay for long.

I don’t think we will be the only country with disgruntled, struggling citizens. This is going to be a common theme over the next year, expect civil unrest across Europe.

 

[Hagar]

The population is more divided than ever brexit is/was an example of this. People also would’ve gathered more and actually socialised face to face. It was different when I was growing up we all knew each other, you’d be sent by your mum to go and borrow a cup of milk or sugar across the road. It’s very different now.

People can't be bothered to walk across the road and vote. Not many seats are completely safe in a 100% turnout.

 

[CapitalOne]

wrong thread!

 

[Doobedoo]

People can't be bothered to walk across the road and vote. Not many seats are completely safe in a 100% turnout.

Not everyone cannot be bothered some people do not believe that makes much difference. I mean look at the 2 candidates jostling for position as we speak and look what came before. Hardly inspiring motivation to give a hoot.

 

[McPhee]

I do wonder if everyone didn't pay, what would happen? Would we soon run out of power as no company would supply us with resources?

Government wouldn't be able to pay for long.

Probably government bail-outs.

Imagine the irony. People don't pay their bills, the suppliers need to be bailed out to the tune of tens, or maybe even hundreds, of billions of pounds. The creation of new money for the bail-outs devalues the pound and causes inflation to rise further. Overall, it turns out that not paying the bills was more expensive than paying them