Duke energy bill

Sir Keir Starmer’s proposed energy price cap freeze could end up costing the same amount as the Government’s coronavirus furlough scheme, the boss of a leading think tank has said. The Labour leader unveiled a plan on Sunday to freeze the cap on electricity and gas prices at its current level of £1,971 for six months from October. It would shield households from the predicted rise to £3,600 this autumn and beyond that in the New Year. Sir Keir’s plan would last for six months, but on Monday morning he appeared to suggest that the freeze could remain in place for longer. Labour said it would cost £29 billion for six months and Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, pointed out that if it was in place for a year it would cost roughly the same as the furlough scheme. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which was in place from March 2020 to September 2021, cost the Government approximately £70 billion. Mr Johnson told the BBC Radio 4 … [Read more...] about Keir Starmer’s plan to freeze energy price cap ‘could cost as much as Covid furlough scheme’

If there's one thing that this Government is really good at, it is doing nothing. They have turned it into an art form – a meeting here, a conflab there, briefed details of a hastily-arranged emergency summit designed to show purpose yet utterly devoid of substance. Seeing to do rather than actually doing is how Boris Johnson’s administration will be remembered. If the race to succeed him is anything to go by, it is a style of leadership that may persist. Nowhere is this troubling approach more evident than the response to the energy crisis. The latest predictions for bills are frightening for those on low incomes: £4,267 a year by January, which is £650 more expensive than previously thought; and more than £4,400 annually by April, according to analysts at Cornwall Insight. Meanwhile UK households owe £1.3bn to their energy suppliers, three times higher than a year ago, with six million households more than £200 in debt on average, according to Uswitch, and winter is still … [Read more...] about Lib Dem plan to solve the energy crisis is radical – but at least they have one

Energy companies have been accused of an “unacceptable” level of customer service by the regulator during Storm Arwen , including switching off their callback service to avoid logging their failures. Ofgem said customers were left “having to cope in appalling conditions” in the wake of the storm in November 2021, with nearly 4,000 homes without power for over a week, in a damning report released on Thursday. Customers struggled to reach their network providers as call centres became overwhelmed after a million homes were left without power, leaving them with inadequate communication on when it would return. Three network operators highlighted in the report have agreed to pay an additional £10 million to affected communities, on top of the £30 million in direct compensation already paid out. One of them, Electricity North West, switched off its callback function in an apparent move to avoid being fined by Ofgem, which logs calls as unsuccessful if they are not returned … [Read more...] about Energy companies switched off callback services during Storm Arwen to avoid fines

By Jayne McCormack Published 3 hours ago comments Comments Share close Share page Copy link About sharing Stormont ministers are due to hold further talks with the Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi later to discuss how people in Northern Ireland will get a £400 discount on energy bills. Households in Great Britain will start receiving it from October . Stormont politicians have been calling for the same timetable in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is in a different energy market to the rest of the UK. In May the Treasury initially said the lack of a functioning executive at Stormont meant it was unclear how the scheme would reach Northern Ireland . Last week the chancellor visited Belfast and met Stormont's economy and communities ministers, as well as Northern Ireland's Utility Regulator . Afterwards Mr Zahawi said the Treasury could act in the … [Read more...] about Cost of living: Chancellor to hold more talks on energy bill discount

F rench President Emmanuel Macron has accused Russia of using energy as a “weapon of war” as the chief executive of oil and gas giant Shell warned gas rationing in Europe this winter was possible. Mr Macron yesterday told citizens to "prepare for a scenario where we have to manage completely without Russian gas." "The summer, early autumn will be very hard," he said. "Russia is using energy, like it is using food, as a weapon of war." He said the government would prepare a "sobriety plan" to conserve energy, which would start with turning off public lights at night when they aren't useful. "We need a general mobilisation," Mr Macron said in a televised address for Bastille Day. Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell, echoed the French president’s remarks, saying Russia had shown it is “able and willing to weaponise energy supplies.” Mr van Beurden said Moscow had “surprised” the market and told governments to be prepared for the Kremlin to restrict gas further. “For a … [Read more...] about Macron says Putin using gas as ‘weapon of war’ amid rationing fears

Sir Ralph Halpern, the businessman, who has died aged 83, was the colourful chief executive of the Burton Group during the 1980s who turned the ailing tailor into a “multi-niche” high-street retailing group valued at £1.6 billion; to tabloid readers, however, he was the “Bonking Burton Boss” who featured in a notorious kiss-and-tell story that painted him as a “five-times-a-night” stallion. From making a loss of £100 million in 1977, the Burton Group, as it became, went to pre-tax profits of more than £180 million in 1987. It owned Topshop, Topman, Topgirl, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Principles, Harvey Nichols, Debenhams, employed 35,000 staff at some 2,000 outlets and had interests in property and credit cards. At one time £1 in every £8 spent on clothes in Britain were spent at Burton Group stores. A dapper, twitchy figure in his Burton suit, 5ft 10in tall and a mere 12 stone – “10 stone without his wallet,” his minder remarked – Halpern led the company in unquestionably virile … [Read more...] about Sir Ralph Halpern, flamboyant chief of the Burton Group who built it into a “multi-niche” retail empire – obituary

Investors dialling into corporate earnings calls are increasingly liable to hear the same worrying phrases again and again: "deterioration", "slowdown" and "pull back" were increasingly common between April and June, according to analysis of more than 700 transcripts by Barclays. More often than not, executives' concerns trace back to how much consumers can afford to spend as inflation soars to 40-year highs. Fears are particularly acute in Britain, where people buying everything from Spotify subscriptions to meals out and new shoes accounts for around two thirds of UK GDP. Official data on Friday showed the economy shrank 0.1pc in the three months to June compared with the previous quarter, when GDP grew by 0.8pc. It has led to renewed fears that a squeeze on consumer spending will push the UK into recession, with inflation set to climb even higher as energy bills soar over winter. The Bank of England says consumers are already cutting back . Many are trading down to … [Read more...] about Why fragile Britain will struggle to bounce back

There is something unreal about the Tory leadership battle. It feels like a general election, with the two remaining candidates remorselessly slagging each other off in briefings, hustings and on broadcast media ; indeed, it gets some of the same profile in terms of the airtime and column inches devoted to it. But actually — as Liz Truss seems rather more readily to appreciate than her opponent — it is much more like a beauty pageant than an election, with the judges confined to a small but far from electorally representative group of Tory Party activists. It is these people the candidates have to convince; the Foreign Secretary’s pitch appears to be much more in keeping with that end than that of Rishi Sunak, who would have been the choice of the parliamentary party had it been the method of selection. Ms Truss says what she thinks the grass roots want to hear, which is return to the smaller state, lower tax, self help, non-interventionist agenda of Conservative rule before … [Read more...] about Liz Truss will probably beat Rishi Sunak, but lose the next general election

What the hell did you think would happen? For the better part of two years, we paid people to stay home , and covered the cost by printing money. In other words, for two years, the amount of goods and services being produced fell, while the amount of money in circulation rose. You don’t need a degree in economics to know that more money chasing fewer products means inflation. Most of us grasp the concept of a postponed reckoning. If you took two years off work, and maintained your income by borrowing, you’d be a lot worse off. We all understand that with reference to our own lives. So why do we struggle to extend the same reasoning to our nation’s finances? Perhaps because it is human to prefer sweet falsehoods to bitter truths. It would be lovely if there really were a way to get back to growth and stable money without significant cuts. And, politics being politics, various fools and opportunists are now stepping forward to claim that this can somehow be done. First, there are … [Read more...] about Britain is in crisis because of the arrogance and delusions of the lockdown fanatics

It is now not long before a new Prime Minister takes office. Amid the flurry of plans and promises, it is high time to sketch out the nature and scale of the challenge that lies ahead. Of course, we are currently passing through a period of acute difficulty, associated with high energy and other costs. Moreover, the pressure from this factor will only get worse over coming months. Yet believe it or not, this crisis will pass. The really important questions concern what happens then. Make no mistake, before this crisis hit us we were already in a bad way, with productivity growth down to nugatory levels and overall performance weak. What is the essence of this problem and what needs to be done? I have been rereading Nigel (now Lord) Lawson’s memoirs of his time in government in the 1980s, entitled “The View from No 11.” They make fascinating reading. Most people will know that, beginning in 1979, Mrs Thatcher’s government faced a tough task trying to improve the performance of the … [Read more...] about Our ailing economy needs another dose of Thatcher’s shock treatment