Last week, British Gas, Britain’s biggest energy provider, announced rises in gas prices by 3.8% to take effect from 1 October. Other energy providers will no doubt follow suit.They raise prices in around summer time when people may not be using their central heating or other such energy consuming devices and hence may not feel the pinch at the time.
This big energy firm which supplies electricity and gas to Brirish homes are holding their consumers to ransom. British Gas has said that it was reluctantly raising prices as there was a 20% rise in prices in the cost of buying wholesale energy since April.
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 others.
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
