For our power companies, the cold weather is a welcome and very profitable early Christmas present

Here we go again. A spell of cold weather and our mostly foreign-owned energy companies slam up their prices claiming they are having to pay more for their gas supplies. Lies, lies, lies, lies.

Here are just a few real facts and figures:

1. Our often foreign-owned energy companies make four to five times as much profit in the UK than they are allowed to make in their properly regulated home markets.

2. They are so profitable in the UK that Scottish Power’s Spanish owner Iberdrola recently lent its American subsidiary £800m leeched from its UK customers, as the American subsidiary needed the money to meet investment commitments it had made to US regulators

3. Last year SSE (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy), Britain’s second biggest energy firm, saw its profits increase by 32%. Meanwhile SSE’s eight million customers saw their fuel bills rocket by 9% (well above the rise in inflation), adding £119 to the average yearly bill. All the other energy companies reported increased profits last year of between 25% and 35%.

4. Since 2006-7, the useless UK regulator Ofgem’s budget increased from £18.6m to £32.6m and yet due to Ofgem’s pathetic efforts, the UK is one of the most profitable energy markets in the world. Ofgem has estimated that energy companies will triple their profits this year but does nothing to protect consumers from predatory pricing.

5. As you’ll see in the diagram below (I apologise that I have used this before), our energy companies claim they only increase prices when wholesale prices rise, but actually keep pushing up prices whether the wholesale prices they pay rise or fall.

Btw it would be gratefully appreciated if just a few people would buy some copies of my latest book GREED UNLIMITED. I feel it would be a shame to have to pulp the remaining copies