Just Don’t Pay Your Energy Bill…

The so-called ‘Crisis of the Cost of Living’ is avoidable. The 54% energy price cap increase is not inevitable and can be stopped. Just like the poll tax.

Regulator Ofgem announced yesterday that it would be increasing the price cap on energy bills by 54%. Certain MP’s are supporting this increase as a necessary evil to stimulate the energy sector and the wider economy. The French government are facing similar financial pressures but they have enforced a 4% maximum on price cap increases. This highlights that the proposed increased cap is unnecessary and dangerous.

Some British households will experience an almost £700 upsurge in their annual bills. Even if we take in to account the proposed increase to the National Minimum Wage in April, this rise still has the potential to eat up an additional 4% of a minimum wage employee’s income. This is on top of the upcoming 1.25% increase in mandatory national insurance contributions. This is being rightly dubbed, ‘The crisis of the cost of living’. This is the danger of having a chancellor in Rishi Sunak who has more personal wealth than some countries.

Our current economic system uses deregulation under the guise of regulation, to take money from the some of the poorest and hardest working people in society. Let’s make it clear, Ofgem have not ‘regulated’ this ‘cap’. Regulation is about introducing change at a level that is sustainable and maintainable. Ofgem have applied a level of inflation here that is characteristic of unfettered free market capitalism. This new cap provides zero insurance, or assurance, to lower income families. The cap is not fit for purpose if people have to take government loans, or dive into other lending streams to make the payments. Conceptually, this cap is a pacifying device. It is corporate gas lighting. It is regulators telling people they’re protecting them, or doing all they can to help them, when they are in fact causing grave harm.

So how can we stop this?

Everyone should collectively stop paying their energy bills. This might seem like an outlandish idea in a capitalist society, where people’s hopes and dreams are tethered to their credit…