UK General Election 2015

Lucien wrote:

Lagamorph wrote:

Lucien wrote:

Hime wrote:

Fatal Exception wrote:Still filling a leaky bucket though as a lot of the extra money would get eaten by greedy landlords and utility companies.

Those greedy utility companies that charge half as much as council tax for a service that is infinitely more complex.

Eh? The average council tax bill is around the same as the average gas and electricity bill; both are around £1200 per year.

How much Gas and Electricity are you using? I pay £45/month for Gas AND Electric, whilst my council tax is £111/month after 25% discount.

I pay £115 a month for gas/electric, though this hopefully won't be for too long... that's one area I'm looking to fix.

Yeah, that's excessive. What supplier and tariff are you on, and what's your annual consumption?

Fatal Exception wrote:[quote="Hime"][quote="Fatal Exception"]You think the council is a lesser service? I'm not saying there's not massive wastage in most councils (there is) but have you any idea of the sort of thing they provide?

A lesser service in terms of complexity. You can't compare the management of refuge collection, social housing,etc to the generating, transmitting and distributing of electricity, the transmitting of gas, the in depth maintenance, fault repair, testing, expertise, etc that is involved in running these systems almost 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Also, people have done amount of choice in that they can choose both their supplier and how much energy they use. People have no choice with their council tax.

Lesser was perhaps a bad word choice but it baffles me that utility prices are constantly attacked when they are incredibly good value.[/quote]

Why would you ever need to choose a supplier though? It's the illusion of choice. All you do is pick the person who is trying to rip you off the least. Why would I ever want to pick who supplies the council services? I live where I do, so someone sorts out local issues for my area. It's not practical to have market competition. Same with utilities. No one physically unhooks my power or gas, why the strawberry float should I pay different companies for the same service?

I'm not sure why you're comparing the two. They are completely different things. Council tax covers:
Youth services
Libraries
Parks, open spaces and galleries
Leisure facilities, including swimming pools and recreation centres
Social care for the elderly, children and other vulnerable members of the community
Support for the voluntary sector
Planning and building control
Refuse collection, street cleaning and other environmental issues
Maintenance of roads and bridges
Traffic management and road safety
Parking services and control
Elections, registrars of births, marriages and deaths
Cemeteries, crematoria and mortuary services
Consumer protection
Economic development and regeneration
Community development services
Housing, including the provision of social housing, housing strategy and advice and services for the homeless
Housing Benefits and Council Tax administration.

So many separate departments and services. It's comparing apples to oranges.[/quote]
Competition encourages suppliers to be run as efficiently as possible so you don't end up with the layers of middle management and job creation that were rife when the industries were nationalised. The notion that competition only exists between different physical products is ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that there should be competition for the services that councils provide, just that people complain about being ripped off by utility companies when the reality is that they can probably pay less.

Obviously a direct comparison can't be made but very few, if any of the services you mentioned have any technical element. Certainly nowhere near that of a utility company. This isn't exclusive to council tax, there are loads of services that are far more of a rip off.

Hime wrote:

Fatal Exception wrote:

Hime wrote:

Fatal Exception wrote:You think the council is a lesser service? I'm not saying there's not massive wastage in most councils (there is) but have you any idea of the sort of thing they provide?

A lesser service in terms of complexity. You can't compare the management of refuge collection, social housing,etc to the generating, transmitting and distributing of electricity, the transmitting of gas, the in depth maintenance, fault repair, testing, expertise, etc that is involved in running these systems almost 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Also, people have done amount of choice in that they can choose both their supplier and how much energy they use. People have no choice with their council tax.

Lesser was perhaps a bad word choice but it baffles me that utility prices are constantly attacked when they are incredibly good value.

Why would you ever need to choose a supplier though? It's the illusion of choice. All you do is pick the person who is trying to rip you off the least. Why would I ever want to pick who supplies the council services? I live where I do, so someone sorts out local issues for my area. It's not practical to have market competition. Same with utilities. No one physically unhooks my power or gas, why the strawberry float should I pay different companies for the same service?

I'm not sure why you're comparing the two. They are completely different things. Council tax covers:
Youth services
Libraries
Parks, open spaces and galleries
Leisure facilities, including swimming pools and recreation centres
Social care for the elderly, children and other vulnerable members of the community
Support for the voluntary sector
Planning and building control
Refuse collection, street cleaning and other environmental issues
Maintenance of roads and bridges
Traffic management and road safety
Parking services and control
Elections, registrars of births, marriages and deaths
Cemeteries, crematoria and mortuary services
Consumer protection
Economic development and regeneration
Community development services
Housing, including the provision of social housing, housing strategy and advice and services for the homeless
Housing Benefits and Council Tax administration.

So many separate departments and services. It's comparing apples to oranges.

Competition encourages suppliers to be run as efficiently as possible so you don't end up with the layers of middle management and job creation that were rife when the industries were nationalised. The notion that competition only exists between different physical products is ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that there should be competition for the services that councils provide, just that people complain about being ripped off by utility companies when the reality is that they can probably pay less.

Obviously a direct comparison can't be made but very few, if any of the services you mentioned have any technical element. Certainly nowhere near that of a utility company. This isn't exclusive to council tax, there are loads of services that are far more of a rip off.

What's with the obsession that a service has to be technically complex to be more valuable?

I work for an ISP, some of the technical skills and investment needed are crazy, but we still charge £15 a month or whatever.

Minty14 wrote:I work for an ISP, some of the technical skills and investment needed are crazy, but we still charge £15 a month or whatever.

Does the internet cost money to generate?

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Minty14 wrote:I work for an ISP, some of the technical skills and investment needed are crazy, but we still charge £15 a month or whatever.

Does the internet cost money to generate?

I'm not saying energy should be cheaper, I was just addressing Hime's insistence that technicality = cost.

But yes, there's a hell of a lot of costs involved in delivering internet connectivity.

Minty14 wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Minty14 wrote:I work for an ISP, some of the technical skills and investment needed are crazy, but we still charge £15 a month or whatever.

Does the internet cost money to generate?

I'm not saying energy should be cheaper, I was just addressing Hime's insistence that technicality = cost.

But yes, there's a hell of a lot of costs involved in delivering internet connectivity.

If someone uses more internet, does it cost you more money? Surely all you do is provide the connection. You're a gatekeeper. Hell, BT do pretty much all the actual infrastructure stuff through Openreach, which is why we all pay line rental.

Also, fun fact, EDF Energy make very little profit from residential customers, and some customers are actually costing money. The bulk of the profit is from business contracts, which banana splits like Martin Lewis conveniently fail to mention.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Minty14 wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Minty14 wrote:I work for an ISP, some of the technical skills and investment needed are crazy, but we still charge £15 a month or whatever.

Does the internet cost money to generate?

I'm not saying energy should be cheaper, I was just addressing Hime's insistence that technicality = cost.

But yes, there's a hell of a lot of costs involved in delivering internet connectivity.

If someone uses more internet, does it cost you more money? Surely all you do is provide the connection. You're a gatekeeper. Hell, BT do pretty much all the actual infrastructure stuff through Openreach, which is why we all pay line rental.

Yes, it does. BT and the like charge more depending on how much traffic you put through their host links. Transit agreements are based on levels of traffic.

More traffic also means more cost in terms of more kit in at our points of presence, upgrades to existing equipment, rack space, power an sometimes more frequent faults.

BT provide a means for end users to connect to our network, but there is still a whole ISP infrastructure once you get past the exchanges and interconnects.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Also, fun fact, EDF Energy make very little profit from residential customers, and some customers are actually costing money. The bulk of the profit is from business contracts, which banana splits like Martin Lewis conveniently fail to mention.

If only low income families knew that long suffering shareholders were only generating profit from their business contacts maybe they'd stop whining about having to skip meals in order to heat their houses in winter. That banana split Martin Lewis should concentrate on raising awareness instead of trying to help regular people save money.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Also, fun fact, EDF Energy make very little profit from residential customers, and some customers are actually costing money. The bulk of the profit is from business contracts, which banana splits like Martin Lewis conveniently fail to mention.

If only low income families knew that long suffering shareholders were only generating profit from their business contacts maybe they'd stop whining about having to skip meals in order to heat their houses in winter. That banana split Martin Lewis should concentrate on raising awareness instead of trying to help regular people save money.

I bet these people find the money to keep the TV turned on though. Funny, that.

strawberry float off

I'm curious, what do you think is a "fair" price for the UK average consumption of 3200 kWh for electricity and 13500 kWh for gas?

Council tax is extremely unfairly distributed, they need to reassess property values and create more progressive tiers of taxation or just scrap it all together and pay it out of central government according to population. To their credit, this is exactly what the Lib Dems have pledged to do should they get the opportunity. I know people are always putting them down on not being reliable but they did manage to implement their key policy of raising the tax allowances so on tax at least they have a good record of getting their way.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:[quote="Somebody Else's Problem"]Also, fun fact, EDF Energy make very little profit from residential customers, and some customers are actually costing money. The bulk of the profit is from business contracts, which banana splits like Martin Lewis conveniently fail to mention.

If only low income families knew that long suffering shareholders were only generating profit from their business contacts maybe they'd stop whining about having to skip meals in order to heat their houses in winter. That banana split Martin Lewis should concentrate on raising awareness instead of trying to help regular people save money.[/quote]
Which employment or welfare services in the UK don't provide enough that a family can't afford £50-£90 to pay for energy? Sounds like an issue of poorly managed finances than a service ripping customers off.

Minty14 wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Minty14 wrote:I work for an ISP, some of the technical skills and investment needed are crazy, but we still charge £15 a month or whatever.

Does the internet cost money to generate?

I'm not saying energy should be cheaper, I was just addressing Hime's insistence that technicality = cost.

But yes, there's a hell of a lot of costs involved in delivering internet connectivity.

Only because utility prices are commonly attacked for prices being too high. I just like to point out that what consumers are getting is incredibly good value fur money considering the complexity of the networks involved.

Kanbei wrote:

SquintyMcSquint wrote:I'm watching the Election Debate from the other day. Farage audience comment. strawberry floating cringe.

He properly sounded like Cal when he said that.

The wind was taken out of his sails after the Dimbleby comment. He looked kinda mortified for the rest of debate.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Also, fun fact, EDF Energy make very little profit from residential customers, and some customers are actually costing money. The bulk of the profit is from business contracts, which banana splits like Martin Lewis conveniently fail to mention.

Yes what a banana split he is

Dual wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Also, fun fact, EDF Energy make very little profit from residential customers, and some customers are actually costing money. The bulk of the profit is from business contracts, which banana splits like Martin Lewis conveniently fail to mention.

Yes what a banana split he is

He told people to freeze their energy prices right when they were coming down. A lot of people ended up on tariffs they couldn't get out of while prices were dropping around them.

Luckily most of the "evil" big six allow customers to change at any time without exit fees, but most of the "good" smaller suppliers have extortionate exit fees on their tariffs.

Energy tariffs are a deliberately garbage idea and utilities should be state owned and non-profit. Crying over companies making 'very little profit' is risible.

They don't love you MCN, don't love them.

Tineash wrote:Energy tariffs are a deliberately garbage idea

Yeah, the idea that people should pay for what they use is stupid. And no state-owned organisation has ever been massively wasteful with a jobs for the boys mentality.