[brooksby]

Can someone please explain how the energy price cap works.

Specifically: in what way is it a “cap”?

I read that the price cap is increased, then will be increased again, and so on and so forth.

I also read that the energy companies’ profits have been increasing massively.

So, in what way is the energy price cap what the chap on the Clapham Omnibus would understand to be a cap (ie. a limit)?

Topic

[Rich_cb]

A sovereign country should be
A sovereign country should be free to join any alliance it chooses.

If Ireland or Scotland wished to ally with Russia and host potentially threatening weapons they’d be within their rights to do so.

Other sovereign nations would also be within their rights to refuse to do any trade whatsoever with them.

Russia shouldn’t have a veto on the actions of its neighbours.

[Rendel Harris]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

A sovereign nation should be free to join any organisation it chooses.

So if Eire, or even a post-independence Scotland, allied with Russia and hosted Russian air bases and nuclear missiles, that would be fine? Cuba had every right to host Russian missiles and the US had no right to intervene?

[Rich_cb]

Russia threw a huge heap of
Russia threw a huge heap of money at Alex Salmond after he left power and Corbyn still has a large following in the UK Labour party so I suspect he’s still of interest to them.

The mere fact that media coverage of the Georgia annexations was fairly lacklustre and even the invasion of Crimea produced no serious talk of military action should indicate to you that Western powers favoured appeasement over any other approach.

Unfortunately this merely emboldened Russia and Putin went from annexing fairly receptive regions to a full blown invasion of a sovereign nation with some war crimes thrown in for good measure.

[Rich_cb]

There has never been any
There has never been any agreement that NATO would not expand towards Russian borders.

A sovereign nation should be free to join any organisation it chooses. Why should Russia have a veto over which organisations Ukraine or Georgia or any other country can join?

Russia has invaded and annexed territory from both Georgia and Ukraine in recent history and each time the decision has been made to appease Russia. That is the ‘language of peace’ I was referring to.

It simply hasn’t worked.

Russian aggression has increased.

If supplying weapons to Ukrainians is such a terrible thing for the West to be doing, what would your preferred course of action be?

[NOtotheEU]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

He probably just gets a fat cheque from Moscow/Tehran instead. If you look at recent history we’ve tried giving concessions to Russia multiple times to ensure peace. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea and The Donbas. The ‘language of peace’ was chosen each time and each time it led to more Russian aggression and more bloodshed. Unsurprisingly, Corbyn wants us to try it just one more time.

Not sure I’ve heard the ‘language of peace’ used towards Russia by Western leaders much at all in recent years but I’m prepared to be corrected if I am wrong.

Ukrainians have suffered under the Soviets, then the Nazis, then the Soviets again. After the collapse of the USSR it has gone back and forth between the West and Russia depending on the leader at the time and ordinary Ukrainians continued to suffer. The West supported the coup in 2014 which changed Ukraine from a Russian puppet state into an American puppet state and created the conflict in the Donbas. Western financial institutions have lent billions to Ukraine on condition they radically restructured their economy including privatisation and social spending cuts making average Ukrainians much poorer. Their fuel price rises since privatising the energy sector make our current situation seem like peanuts. 

Then NATO which is essentially a Cold War relic ‘anti Russia club’ designed to create profits for Americas weapons industry continues to expand closer to Russian borders even after agreeing with the Russians that they wouldn’t. The Cuban missile crisis was averted by both sides making concessions and talking peace.  This time both sides refused to back down and the only losers are the Ukrainians.

If the West wanted peace instead of profits we would have agreed to keeping Ukraine out of NATO and offered to work with the Russians to make Ukraine a prosperous independant nation free to run it’s own affairs while trading and cooperating with Russia and the West. Then the World Bank, the IMF and the European Commission would have to write off the crippling debt.

Putin is killing Ukrainians quickly and openly, the West is just doing the same slowly and quietly while making billions in profit.

[chrisonabike]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

He probably just gets a fat cheque from Moscow/Tehran instead.

I doubt Moscow would pay Corbyn for anything – not now anyway.  The Russians are intensely focussed on getting influence on the levers of power.  Or people have or who may get it (see e.g. reports from the US).  I doubt Corbyn fits the bill!

Rich_cb wrote:

If you look at recent history we’ve tried giving concessions to Russia multiple times to ensure peace. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea and The Donbas. The ‘language of peace’ was chosen each time and each time it led to more Russian aggression and more bloodshed. Unsurprisingly, Corbyn wants us to try it just one more time.

You’re less cynical or more knowledgeable than me.  My take was there were other things on the telly at the time and our leaders didn’t give a stuff.  The annexation of Crimea may have made us briefly put down our chips.   Not even the Ukrainians were taking up arms though, so why poke the bear in its lair?

[NOtotheEU]

chrisonatrike wrote:

I’m still behind the plot on exactly why this invasion by Russia was the straw that broke the camel’s back and meant the UK / Europe / the US actually did something.  It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.  We’re also happy with other regimes invading places and butchering and torturing civilians en masse.  (The UK’s even happy to sell weapons to help).  Closest to the borders / biggest one yet / people who look like us?

Hit the nail on the head – “people who look like us”.

 

[Rich_cb]

He probably just gets a fat
He probably just gets a fat cheque from Moscow/Tehran instead.

If you look at recent history we’ve tried giving concessions to Russia multiple times to ensure peace.

Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea and The Donbas.

The ‘language of peace’ was chosen each time and each time it led to more Russian aggression and more bloodshed.

Unsurprisingly, Corbyn wants us to try it just one more time.

[chrisonabike]

The problem for the

The problem for the Ukrainians is that having decided they didn’t want to let the Russians run the place, steal their resources and kill them quietly it’s clear that the Russians were going to kill them noisily and steal their resources until they agreed to the former.

Unfortunately the only “third choice” to standing by or muscling in appears to be that I heard in an interview with some UK military chap right at the start (can’t recall his name).  In summary he said “Ukraine can’t beat Russia. Russia won’t back down.  So the longer Ukraine fights the more will die.  The only way to save lives is for Ukraine’s friends to pressure it into giving up”.  Which he acknowledged was a political impossibility.

I’m still behind the plot on exactly why this invasion by Russia was the straw that broke the camel’s back and meant the UK / Europe / the US actually did something.  It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.  We’re also happy with other regimes invading places and butchering and torturing civilians en masse.  (The UK’s even happy to sell weapons to help).  Closest to the borders / biggest one yet / people who look like us?

[Rich_cb]

That’s just the price that
That’s just the price that generators get paid.

Look at the latest CfDs for solar. About 4.5p/kWh.

While FIT were great for the homeowners able to benefit from them they were essentially just a way of passing money from all bill payers (including the poorest) to (usually wealthy) solar panel owners.

FIT made electricity more expensive for everyone other than the lucky few who could afford to install the panels.

[srchar]

It is effectively a cap on

It is effectively a cap on energy suppliers’ profits. It was never intended to cap energy prices across the board; the intention was to prevent energy suppliers taking advantage of customers who didn’t switch suppliers regularly to get the best deal. Note that we are talking about energy suppliers here, not generators, nor oil and gas companies.

“Energy price cap” is a bit of a misnomer. You can’t cap the price of energy – oil, gas, coal, electricity etc – all are internationally traded commodities, sold to the highest bidder (unless you have a solar panel at home and feed excess back to the grid, in which case you get mugged off).

If you cap the price you’re willing to pay for energy at below market rate, nobody sells you any energy and you freeze to death.

A better way to help during spiking energy prices would be to reduce the rate of tax on energy. Another way would be to stop telling oil and gas companies that they are going to be legislated out of business and give them some certainty of the regulatory environment they will operate in for at least the next decade, preferably two. Otherwise, they will continue to direct profits towards shareholders rather than exploration. A third way would be for everyone to simply use less energy.

We had better hope that the coming winter is mild. And the winter after that. And the winter after that. The era of cheap energy is over, and this is just the beginning.

[NOtotheEU]

chrisonatrike wrote:

Clearly they have a (frequently well-founded) distate for Uncle Sam but Russia clearly isn’t cuddly.

If the two options are Russia, which wants to control Ukraine’s vast resources by sending in Russian troops to die and kill Ukrainians, or America, which wants to control Ukraine’s vast resources by sitting back and watching Ukrainians die in their thousands while enriching their weapons manufacturers can we please have a third choice?

As long as it’s not the UK or the EU because we are sending weapons to the Ukrainians to fight a war we paid for by buying Russian gas, oil and coal.

It’s almost as if war is better for business, politicians and the media than peace.

[NOtotheEU]

Rich_cb wrote:

[quote=Rich_cb]Once Corbyn has finished shilling for Putin on an Iranian funded, pro Hezbollah, pro Assad, pro Russia TV station he’ll get right on it… Delightful chap. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jeremy-corbyn-urges-west-to-stop-arming-ukraine%5B/quote%5D

When Corbyn became Labour leader I couldn’t make up my mind about him, he is a politician after all. I liked some of what he said and thought he did seem to be free from the media and business ties that control most leaders.

Every time I think I’ve finally decided he would have been a poor PM he goes and says something like this and I admire him all over again.

“What I find disappointing is that hardly any of the world’s leaders use the word peace; they always use the language of more war, and more bellicose war.”

He added: “This war is disastrous for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Russia, and for the safety and security of the whole world, and therefore there has to be much more effort put into peace.”

I guess he doesn’t have shares in BAE, Lockheed or Raytheon.

[chrisonabike]

You’ll be accusing him of

You’ll be accusing him of jumping on the bus with Trump next!

(Yes, Trump has blown all which ways on Russia like most things but the general wind is favourable)

Corbyn and a section of the “left” (I agree, we need better terms) are in a bit of a bind on this one I think.  Clearly they have a (frequently well-founded) distate for Uncle Sam but Russia clearly isn’t cuddly.  Especially now Putin wants to reinstate the repressive culture of Soviet Russia, plus external aggression, minus any bigger ideology. (I suppose it’s debatable whether many living there really believed in the ideology either over the last 50 or so years).

[Rich_cb]

Unfortunately the original
Unfortunately the original subsidies for wind generation (ROCs) were terribly designed so they continue to drive electricity prices higher.

The new CfD subsidies are now lowering prices but unfortunately the ROCs will continue to run until 2035 so we’ve got a long time to wait for that particular government mistake to work its way out of the system.

[Author]

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