Around midnight London time, on the night of a week from Tuesday, the world may actually see a new dawn. Note that this will be the world, not just the United States. Narrow as we are (not!), what will this mean for our gas bill?
Perhaps, even though even The One, does not have almighty power, financial markets will settle down, and the key word here is down. This isn't about getting a return ON money, this is all about getting a return OF money. To get money back is a victory, making money will be what it always has been: mostly a matter of luck.
UK gas and power prices will continue for a short while with their meandering journey avoiding the obvious: something is going to happen and they won't like it. Competition Commission? Probably, but before that they may have to fight off an unlikely attacker in the form of Ofgem finally waking up, or simply thrashing about in it's death throes?
The UK Energy industry is good in parts, but rotten to the core in the customer facing part of what actually DO people pay, what part have they in price discovery (none) and how there is what we call a secret but they call "commercial in confidence",cabal of energy consultants, switching sites and lazy suppliers ripping end-users off. All the while Ofgem confuses choice with actual competition. But that is ending. Old models in everything are dead. Ofgem succeeded in pulling the wool over energy buyers eyes for years because it was enabled by a Labour government, inexperienced in commercial matters, who worshiped at the altar of McKinsey and the rest of the management consultants. Effectively, government was privatised, and we all did pretty well out of it for years, even when reality intruded on dogma as has happened in energy earlier than in banking or housing. There are many parts of government, the press and political parties who let thirty years of anti-government ideology prevent them from taking any kind of effective action. But everything is changing. Everything. Can you hear it Ofgem?
Here's something for them to read from one of Gordon Brown's greatest admirers, Paul Krugman Nobel Laureate in Economics 2008.
Reaganesque rhetoric about the magic of the marketplace and the evils of government intervention sounds ridiculous
Choice breeds confusion in a no touch regulation marketplace, not competition. Why are there at least 12 separate tariffs for each supplier? Is there any connection between the lack of a simple metric, a wide range of choices and the fact that actual energy switching in business is lower than even the derisory standards of domestic supply. Of course there is.
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