[hibeejim21]

Funny hearing the BBC and SKY falling over themselves to provide excuses for the coming winter energy crisis yet not one person is asking why our prices are double the average of Europe. Must be another Brexit benefit.

Simple answer 'Privatisation'. The whole point of a free market economy is it's meant to add competition and lower prices but it does the exact opposite because when one company puts there prices then the rest will follow and the cost of living is rising while wages are stagnating.

Our energy companies are foreign owned as are the railway franchises as is a lot of public services in the UK. The right wing media want us to be in control of our own destiny and to 'take back control' but the minute publically owned energy or railway is mentioned they have a meltdown and start shouting 'Communism' or 'Marxism'. UK rail operators are owned by European companies and our ticket prices and tickets rises are subsidising cheap travel in Europe and to add insult to injury the European train operators are state owned meaning UK passengers are funding state owned systems. We as consumers and passengers are being mugged off.

It's a more complicated answer.

We have left the European internal energy market and no longer take part in market coupling, which is intended to keep levels on the price of cross-border electricity within Europe. The tories wanted to keep the possibility open of benefiting from lower electricity prices (indeed several tory ministers boasted about it being an advantage of brexit). However it means we are also exposed to greater price jumps as a result - which with our lack of storage is currently driving prices up in Great Britain. . In the summer months, when gas is cheap, europe puts ten to 20 percent of their annual requirements in storage facilities. In the UK, it's less than two percent. This is one of the reasons why price fluctuations are hitting us hard.

Fragmentation of the market has meant ofgem have had to push up the cap with this crisis, and thats why a lot of the smaller outfits are going out of business. It's a complete racket being an energy provider in the UK.

As Theo points out we now have a situation where we are paying an American company millions to supply CO2 at a loss, so we can have bread,meat and fizzy drinks.

What a time for the UK food industry.