Last week, British Gas, Britain’s biggest energy provider, announced rises in electricity prices by 12.5% as from next September. Other energy providers will no doubt follow suit. Why do they raise prices nearer the time when winter is round the corner?
This big energy firm which supply electricity and gas to Brirish homes are holding their consumers to ransom. Their excuse is that the prices of transport and distribution have gone up, that is what is driving the increase. The company says that the even though the price of energy itself has not gone up, but the costs of transmission have gone up. But then when the price of energy or transport falls, customers never receive the benefit!
We need to have power, we need to use gas and electricity to stay warm in winter and cannot revert to using cow dung or wood for cooking and heating. People who suffer most from the indiscriminate rises are retired senior citizens who have nowhere to go during the day, and to avoid heating bills, they stay in cold and damp houses and suffer from depression and other illnesses and be a burden on the health service.
The solution is to nationalise the companies providing the indispensable utilities like gas, electricity and water and or subsidise the cost of these utilities. Instead of giving aid to foreign countries which in fact carry a chip on their shoulders against us, let the charity begin at home!
Dinesh Sheth
Newbury Park, Ilford
