so then kent, if you bought your paper for your printing press 2 years ago at a higher price than it is now, you don't think it would be right and proper to recoup your expenses but to pass on your current savings now on a "first in last out" costing principle?
And if BG were not posting profits, you would be calling for heads to roll because of mis-management presumably..
They have not got time to investigate this winters high prices, they are still investigating summer 2004s' high prices.
But since the whole Of(gas/electric/water/comms) -series of "regulators" exist only to create public service "jobs"........and the "head" of each usually ends-up on some company board or other after doing exemplary service as a seat warmer.....
GNV....I see where you are coming from in your arguement.
But all the consumer sees is higher charges for their bills, and then see BG make 50+% profits.
Something does not sit well with me here.
Then analyse how they did it and emulate their model..
The company states their profits were due to...
" The company was able to achieve the huge rise in profits due to new additions in gas and electricity customers as well as making operational improvements ".
Whatever that means.
What somebody should do is dig round in the archives for 1986 and dig out the promises of benifits to the comsumer that Maggie made claim to as the reason to sell off British Gas. And see if they have come true..............maybe if they haven't we can get "lawyers for you" to sue her for mis-representation !!!
But on the other hand, how many on here bought the shares in BG when it was floated to try and make a quick buck ??? If you did...........chickens coming home to roust springs to mind .
John
Kentswingers - you missed an aopportunity to make a better margin and STILL give your customer good value. Now he/she might expect the same deal if they come back again, and you won't be able to do it (unless you have another windfall stock of paper) - this is a chance to make profits from long term investment.
BG try to do this every year, however they (and the other gas companies buy their gas from the wholsesale market at future prices - this means they are buying ahead between 6 and 12 months. If the market collapses and the wholesale gas price falls, they are still tied to their future price parcel of gas bought when it was expected to be a completely different price.
They have to do this to secure supplies for customers as we are not self sufficient in gas (North Sea gas is all but gone now). The real problem occurs when we get a spike in very cold weather, or a prolonged cold spell - the future parcels they bought are going to run out, and they have to buy from the open market to top it up. When demand is high (i.e. cold weather), the price is high and we (UK) get stung in a sellers market (remember, we have no reserves and no storage), so we get higher prices.
The only way we (UK) can combat this is to either find some gas reserves for ourselves (we did that, now it's run out) OR ...... we start to store it like most other European countries, then we can buy loads when it's cheap, and use it when the time comes (so we are isolated from the price peaks).
Incidentally, Brown was warned about this by his own advisers, the Conservatives and ofgem, but STILL they leave us exposed.
Have a coal fire fitted instead .........
What if you are in a smokeless zone ?
And: Storage of large quantities of any highly combustible material is a very long duration project....because of the inevitable planning enquiry and objections.
Which is why any new nuclear is going to be built on existing sites....greenpeace reckon that they can stop any nuclear power station for over 30 years by using the planning legislation.
Has anyone come across a graph that compares the variation over time of the price of domestic gas and the cost of raw gas? I've looked about not found one. I have no doubt it would be damning.
Exactly the same shape of graph as that for pump-petrol vs barrels of oil.
The trouble is Darth is that there are loads out there, all in league together...
The banks....the petrol stations...the building societies...to name just a few.
They up the prices for fuel as soon as the price of oil increases, but when it comes down they still keep the prices artificially high.
When the oil price went to a record price last year petrol was going up on a weekly basis, but the price of oil has halved, yet the price of petrol has still remained almost what it was at the record levels of oil last year.
You cannot beat the system that they use to justify keeping prices high, and raking in record profits.
