British companies are paying the highest electricity prices of anywhere in the developed world, official data have shown, after costs more than doubled in the past five years. The Telegraph has the details.
The cost of power for industrial businesses has jumped 124% in just five years, according to the Government’s figures, catapulting the U.K. to the top of international league tables.
It is now about 50% more expensive than in Germany and France, and four times as expensive as in the U.S.
The figures will fuel concerns about the future of U.K. industry amid warnings that high energy prices are crippling domestic manufacturers.
They underline the challenge facing Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who wants industrial businesses to switch away from gas to electricity-powered processes.
Frank Aaskov, the Director of Energy at lobby group U.K. Steel, said: “High industrial electricity prices have for too long damaged the competitiveness of U.K. steelmaking, and many in the wider manufacturing sector will be feeling the same pressure our steel companies do.
“The Government should tackle steep electricity costs and make the U.K. a fruitful place to invest, while enabling growth and improving competitiveness.”
The electricity price paid by U.K. industrial users per kilowatt hour rose to 25.85p in 2023, the data show. That compares to 10.43p as recently as five years earlier and 8.89p a decade ago.
It also far outstripped European rivals and allies such as the U.S. and Canada. The equivalent price was 17.84p in France, 17.71p in Germany and 6.48p in the U.S.
Across all the 31 member countries of the International Energy Agency, which collates the data, the median price was 17.70p per kilowatt hour, with Britain’s price higher than any other country.
Worth reading in full.
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How about a Tik Tok dance? It helped in the past
I could bang a pan with a wooden spoon if that would help.
I actually hadn’t heard of that as an thing (clapping/banging a pan) before the first occurrence. I wondered WTF was going on. When I did realise what it was the sight of BoJo on the TV news standing on the steps of No 10 clapping made me want to puke.
There is so much I could say on the subject of NHS but I will try and keep on topic. As one NHS worker said to me, doctors prescribe drugs to solve the symptoms without determining the root cause (eg lifestyle,diet). Almost all drugs have side effects. And the winner is ….the pharmaceutical companies. The answer so far has been more money needed to pay for this so called ‘free service’ which will be paid for by you and me (the taxpayers). I won’t be clapping for this failed institution any time soon.
I so despise every facet of the state that I’m enjoying watching our sainted NHS crash and burn. There are no solutions to this mess that don’t eventually involve spending every last penny of the country’s wealth on RNHS. We’ll be destitute, but at least we’ll be able to get our privates chopped off on demand.
On 5th July 1948 after much planning and political wrangling the UK government implemented one of the most radical reforms in healthcare provision in the world at the time.
The NHS was announced to the general public through a leaflet sent to every household.
The quality of available healthcare did not change. Just the way we paid for it.
No. It rained hospitals, ambulances, porters, nurses, doctors, beds, operating theatres, surgical instruments on 5th July – stuff we had never had before and would never have but for ‘our’ Holy NHS. Come the day, heaps of The Poor™️ were no longer blocking the gutters in their death throes.
”You are all paying for it…”. Maybe then, but soon enough ‘all’ weren’t and increasingly fewer were paying for it, and we certainly have millions of immigrant hordes who haven’t paid a brass farthing, nor ever will… but who are first in the Everqueue.
The mortality stats tell the same story. No change in the overall trend in reduction of death rate after the inception of the NHS. A distinct small step down in infant mortality but as it had fallen from 20% in 1900 to about 3.5% in 1947 the majority of the possible improvement had already been accomplished. death rates among men over 45 and under 85 actually stopped improving at around that time and didn’t resume improving until the seventies.
Prior to NHS ‘free’ GP services were funded by local councils – so from local taxes, not central government taxes.
Thing was, the original NHS didn’t fund many elective things which are now offered – and not just because the technology didn’t exist.
Quite so. The arrangements put in place by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments were such as to ensure that more and more patients received treatment without financial anxiety. The overall plan – supported and extended by the original Beveridge report – was to use the state as a coordinating agency, stitching together the well established and multiple provisions supplied by private, local and charitable sectors.
Excellent! Well deserved. It’s what they keep voting for.
More people unable to pay their mortgage – that’s the reward for hiding under the bed during the Fakedemic.
Electricity on ration – great because they want to save the planet and no plastic too to save the fish.
Also adding to the list, the ever increasing gene therapy injured.
Yet surgeries – unasked – send frequent requests to healthy people for blood tests for diseases they don’t have….
This is a data collection exercise – our health data sent to China for analysis. NHS very keen to analyse our poo as well. Digital data is very desirable and biological data too.