Make the Government pay the price "at the ballot box", say the unions. Yes, but why not also rather more literally? Why do the unions still fund New Labour? Why?
Meanwhile, from the Campaign for Public Ownership:
Calls for a 'windfall tax' are sure to increase following the news that the 'Big Six' energy companies hiked their shareholder dividends payouts by 19% according to new research. The suppliers paid £1.64bn in dividends in 2007, £257m more than in the year before, a study commissioned by the Local Government Association found.
While calls for a windfall tax are understandable, the Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the only long-term solution to the problem of energy company profiteering is to restore the energy companies to public ownership.
The problem lies in the ownership structure of the energy companies. All of them are Public Limited Companies, whose overriding aim is to maximise profits for shareholders. That's what PLCs do. Instead of reacting with horror to the entirely predictable news that PLCs are putting the interests of shareholders before Britain's long-suffering energy consumers, we should instead be calling for the government to take the one step that will lead to lower energy prices in the long term. Restoring the energy companies to public ownership will mean that prices can be lowered, as there will be no shareholder dividends to pay.
And public ownership is British ownership. If you don't believe in public ownership, then you don't really believe in national sovereignty, so that you are not a conservative.
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A question someone I know raised the other day, which does not always figure into the equation: don't a large number of pension-providers invest in the energy companies? And so share dividends to these companies keep pension funds ticking over?
ReplyDeleteI can't find any definite proof of this, but it does seem a reasonable objection to re-nationalisation: would the Campaign for Public Ownership similarly support a national pension fund derived from the profits from fuel?
I can't speak for the CPO but, personally, yes, pensions are certainly something to which these vast sum could and should be diverted under public ownership.
ReplyDeleteThere are others as well, of course: the revenues involved are enormous.