Tag: Economy

I’ve lived in my home for seven years now, when I purchased the property I had to sign two major long term deals with it. 

The first was the mortgage, I got quite a good rate, submit all my papers online and 10 days later, it was approved. I managed this without a mortgage broker and a little searching. It wasn’t hard but it was made to be complex. 

The second deal I had to secure was my energy contract. Lots of companies, tariffs, plans and payment schedules. It made very little sense but I went with the cheapest. 

I’ve renewed both of these deals over the seven years. However I’ve never had to think much about it or plan to do anything else. 

I’m going to focus on my energy contract – because of a war, a pandemic and some market disfunction – little old me is responsible for bailing out states, utility companies, energy producers and providers. It’s incredible to imagine with that much corporate juggernauting they’d all end up so reliant on my budgeting ability. 

I’m surrounded by wind farms that are still producing energy. I live next to an oil and gas equipment supplier that powers half the world. My country has the largest proven oil and gas reserves. We have the infrastructure to mine it, process it and use it. We can even sell it. We produce solar panels in this country, we even have a climate that will provide most houses the ability to self power with enough panels. 

So I remain baffled and annoyed – that apparently the energy is here, as an asset of the state, and yet I am bailing out ten layers of companies. Who apparently would all fail without me, and you. 

Why is energy not provided direct to the citizens of Scotland with the least amount of layers possible? 

We do it with water and it’s pretty cheap, it works well, the billing is simple and in general everyone is happy. Let the companies sell the excess. 

Our energy mix ensures that our wind, solar, hydro all is prioritised for local usage, it can’t really be exported anywhere yet. It’s always cheap because it can’t really be turned off and it wasn’t effected in price by war or pandemic. Instead it’s being bumped up in price artificially because the energy producers failed to have enough product – while making bumper profits anyway – with no incentive to fix this particular problem. 

Following the energy producers making more than ever before, the money had to come from literally everywhere else. This triggered a global financial madness which somehow became rapid inflation. 

In the end, my house, which hasn’t changed at all, now has to cost more per month to buy. Simply because these massive global companies can’t handle themselves. So I get to double/triple/quadruple my out goings to ensure these massive corporations who won’t ever help me, should I suffer a great financial situation – survive. 

It would be easy to be annoyed at them, however they’re very publicly and blatantly opportunistic at every moment, and the politicians hope you are distracted, rather than blaming politicians. 

Our annoyance and our demands must be aimed at politicians though as they can end it tomorrow. They can nationalise these failed industries, they can seize ill deserved profits, they can take back the resources and assets. They could do it tomorrow. They won’t though because they’re happier to join you in being annoyed at companies. 

Our society needs to consider though, how did this happen? What happened to those who are supposed to stand up for us? The government and the opposition – where are they? Or better yet – where are the policies that should ensure only our prosperity?