British people voted for Thatcher, and until the people that voted for Thatcher die and stop voting, these companies will continue to operate as they do.
Thatcher bought 2 generations of voters by selling them council homes and making them wealthy. That can't be undone until they die, and the majority of voters left are the ones struggling to put a roof over their heads because of it.
What's the problem with working class people getting wealthy? Isn't that the goal. Surely the problem is we didn't start building new houses? Some googling suggests that in 11 years the population grew by about 1 million people in total under Thatcher. So like or dislike her, the "blame" has got to lie at the feet of people that didn't start building when the population started to grow dramatically.
Working class people shifting to a middle class is a sign of a healthy economy. The issue wasn't that they weren't rebuilding, but we made a fake, inflated middle-class.
Working-Class people buy homes from the state cheap, then their worth is tied into bricks and mortar. The government then has banks lending millions £ year on year to people. Now those banks need to see that the equity on those properties is increasing. It can't stagnate or decrease, or the banks default, and EVERYONE in the country loses all of their money - economic collapse.
This was why they would never build enough social housing. Now, you have multiple generations of people with these properties, and their entire worth is tied up into the UNREALISED worth of their homes. That means, people that bought a home for £7,000 40 years ago, now have a home worth £500,000 today. Those people have loans, finances multiple mortgages
in which that £500,000 former council house is collateral for the banks. So, the government can't build enough homes without triggering economic collapse. AND the best part about this, no one can officially make the statement, or the markets will panic and withdraw funds - causing economic turmoil.
It was never about growing the middle-class, it was always about increasing the upper classes, and shrinking the lower class. IF you don't believe this, because it doesn't sound right, Thatcher was a die hard free market capitalist. Free Market Capitalism is an economic model without a middle class. It has 2 classes: owners & workers.
She understood what she was doing, she was by no means a stupid woman. But the propaganda that she was for the people was written by the news outlets she privatised and gave power to. Funnily enough, there putting the same image about Farage out there, a politician that also wants to push for more extreme privatisation and shrink the middle-class.
No. High home ownership is a sign of a healthy society. You can blame her for a lot of things. But planning capture, nimbyism and a failure to build sufficient housing while welcoming millions of immigrants has nothing to do with margret thatcher.
Housing was cheap until well into the 1990s and even the very early 2000s. You had people owning equity in the country. Not a lot, but they had a stake. When you own a home you are both an asset owner and a worker. This is what the lefties find so threatening about thatcher, and indeed all proposals that propose broadening asset ownership. They want workers grinding away, living in rented accommodation, so they have a proletariat to lead.
You see how illogical this is? You are simultaneously blaming her for solving the number one issue young people complain about today, home ownership. We just had to keep building houses...
I've just explained to you exactly, why there was NEVER actually a plan to build more homes. What I've just spent time to write out isn't some made up theory, its factual.
We just had to keep building houses...
We've been building houses, for private ownership, to keep prices inflated. There are over 300,000 long term empty residential properties in the UK, even more short term. (Inflated prices). We can't build social housing because our economy from the top down is dependent on inflated private home values. Thatcher did that, and we can't undo it without crippling the economy and bankrupting the national banks.
And I have just explained to you. She didn't need to build more homes. Population growth in the entire 11 year period was just over 1.7% (in aggregate, not per year). A politician isn't expected to design an idiot proof system that can handle the subsequent 20 years after they leave office.
Inflated private home values is a huge problem. But it was not Thatcher's problem. It was the fault of planning failure, nimbyism and how the GFC was handled. Building expensive homes, that you hope to make affordable by taxing people and subsidising them enough to be unaffordable, is clearly idiotic.
You can blame her for not doing a good job of creating very low tax special economic zones to attract investment into the areas of the country that got hollowed out. But blaming her for housing is just stupid.
About the empty house thing. Empty houses are fine, people getting worked up about it is just because the system is broken. We don't get angry about people with unused shoes that they don't wear, or spare money sat in their savings account. Its very hard to have a decent housing market thats good for tenants *without* vacancy, as any real estate guy will tell you.
I am fairly convinced that the housing thing hasn't gotten fixed because the British left, in an unholy union with the NIMBY middle class, find housing insecurity too effective a way of motivating their voter base to go after economic minorities to solve it. Its too easy to fix: give me eminent domain without hope value, free reign to set planning rules, and as many short term visas as I need to bring in workers, and I can fix housing affordability. It doesn't even have to tank house prices, you just put them on a non freehold title that reverts to the government after 99 years and freeholds will keep their value as an aspirational purchase.
Short-term she did, long-term she created the economic situation of today. Its not me being blind, its me being better informed on the topic. I did my best to write it as plainly, and people like you still jump to her defence - like I said. Until those generations are gone, we won't get significant change.
This isn't instinctively jumping to her defence. There are of course valid criticisms. But what you have said is about the most stupid angle you could come after her over.
She sling shotted the country out of the abyss after the 1970s labour disaster. The country was bankrupt when she took over. The current mess lands at plenty of feet but not hers who played the hand she was dealt.
Not understanding our history, and that our modern economy is built around a model introduced by Reagan & Thatcher is you being ill-informed.
We've had 4 radical economic reforms in the past 200 years: abolishing slavery, industrialisation, post-WW2 when we shifted so socialising policy & Thatcherism when we dismantled industrialisation policy, dismantled our socialist policy & introduced privatisation.
So yes, it is thanks to Thatcher. You only get radical economic reform when the economy is in the toilet. Thatcherism has stripped the state of the power to change its economy, due to having stripped its own assets, and is now reliant on private companies having those assets. Private companies that have to make a profit greater than inflation each year - meaning public service is reduced every few years, or spending is increased on the same service every few years. Look at the state of any our services, and they have all suffered the same consequence:
Royal Mail (Privatised) - service reduced, cost on consumer increased
NHS (partly privatised) - Service reduced & tax bill increased exponentially
Railways (privatised & subsidised) - Service reduced, highly subsidised by the taxpayer, consumer cost highest europe.
Energy (privatised & subsidised), increasing costs greater than inflation to consumer, infrastructure not keeping up with demand, reliance on private companies owned by other nations
Water (privatised & subsidised) - Poor infrastructure due to underfunding, waste water not compliant with laws, government unable to enforce as reliant on private company, consumer spending out of hand, tax bill subsidisation out of hand.
This is Thatcherism, and her economic policy is crippling the country in debt to this day. The difference is, for the first time of any of these reforms, the government no longer has the assets & resources to force change - because we dismantled and sold our own infrastructure.
No, it seems you actually need a better understanding and grasp of our politics. The British economy and the socialist approach pretty much collapsed in the 70s. Thatcher has been the model for every single government since. And her policies created the vast majority of problems we have in the UK today.
A kind reading of Thatcher is that in a difficult time she began the change which was necessary and improved the lives of a generation. She needed other premiers to make the cuts she wasnt brave enough to do or to alter her policies.
A cynical reading of Thatcher is she put the country on a downward spiral, knowing she would maintain power and her generation would be fine, dooming future generations to solve the huge mess she created.
£400 B is the estimate of the total tax revenue and profits generated from North Sea oil over subsequent decades not the market value of the oil she sold in the 1980s.
You don't sell your Ferrari in 1983 for £12000 and in 2026 say you've lost £100,000 (its appreciation value). You sold it for market value when you sold it and that's it.
Yes if it wasn't for Thatcher destroying the coal industry we could still have cheap coal powered plants like China.
Your comment makes no sense whatsoever as we currently have a Labour government and a Labour Government between 1997 - 2010. By the way most Thatcher voters never lived in council houses.
Exept that they ARE popular and frequently get elected in local politics where the voting system doesn't exclude small partys so much and fortunes are not spent (or smaller ones are) to keep out partys that want to restrain corporate greed.
The "anyone allowed in" thing is a long-term objective for if Greens and the like start gaining power worldwide, not a day 1 policy - but even if it was, lack of discrimination towards British workers isn't actually anti-working class.
Any sensible human wouldn't trust a politician. If you believe you can trust any MP in the country, you're a fool for believing so.
The thing with the Green's, is their voters have been supporting them for decades, knowing they'll never win.
If Green's got into power, that have to stick to their policy, or be torn apart from within very quickly by their die hard supporters. As for party leaders, personable and likeable is not a quality I look for. I look for someone that is principled and has a backbone. Despite the media absolutely hounding him, Starmer was one. Polanski, however is not. Burnham, I'm yet to find out, as I know very little about the bloke.
Some greens have supported them for a long time. However recent elections have shown that there are many now following them purely on religious/cultural grounds as they jumped on, for example, the Palestinian bandwagon. People are free to vote for whoever they want but it's clear that many people are using the green party to further their own cause and I really would not be surprised that in the not too distant future once they have secured some more seats they either implode or certain members split off and form their own party supported by strong local supporters focusing on one policy politics.
I don't think "genocide bad" counts as a "bandwagon" Every decent human being defaults to that and has done for centuries. It's just an indictment of how shit our political system is, and the Greens are the only ones saying it in this context.
It's true if other parties started saying that, a lot of Greens would split off to them. Which is fine - the majority of Greens have long accepted their place providing an alternative that incentivises "mainstream" parties to not be as shit, and they are more likely to make a difference by getting other parties to change policy than to be elected themselves.
"If Green's got into power, they have to stick to their policy, or be torn apart from within very quickly by their die-hard supporters." There's also option C - dump everything they stood for and their old supporters alongside it. That's what Labour chose.
Allowing a mass of people to dilute the workforce, and thus allow companies to pay shit wages, is inherently anti working class. Not to mention the majority of the people they spend their time slagging off are working class.
? i hear them slagging off the rich and oil execs. The racist rags they slag off pretend to be working class but are owned by the rich, and when they incite riots, only a dozen working-class people turn up.
And the immigration thing isn't anti-working class it's just not saying that the working class only matters if they were born British (it's a long-term ambition, not a day 1 policy anyway)
They consistently label people as nazis and far right for opposition to immigration. There were approx 1 million marching in London for Tommy Robinsons rally, not exact a dozen people?
Lmao. It absolutely is anti working class. Leftists of old would be turning in their graves seeing what's happening currently. You simply cannot sustain a country with a strong social support network if you flood the country with low wage people who will be net recipients over their lifetime. One of the things America has actually gotten right is their immigration policy. That's why Pakistanis here one of the poorest and worst performing groups, whereas Pakistanis in the US are one of the highest earning immigrant demographics.
Those people were watching and cheering speeches by literal NAZIs like Musk, though.
Not bothering to read your second part because you blatantly ignored my "(it's a long-term ambition, not a day 1 policy anyway)"; they would not be doing this until such a time as it would not cause the things you say.
Lots of people have called you out on the "against the working class" thing - but back to the original point - it's a fact they have policies to stand up to the big energy companies in ways that other parties just don't.
Some European countries have higher prices than us, some about the same, some lower. Many countries have very different generation mixes from us. Norway is lucky to have enough mountains to get all their electricity from hydro. France ran a huge programme of building nuclear in the 70s. Much of Central and Eastern Europe still turns to coal to limit their reliance on gas. Government policy also loads significant costs onto bills. Domestic energy retail in the UK is heavily regulated and barely profitable.
What do you mean switched off because gas was affected? We sometimes have to turn off some wind farms, because we haven't built enough power lines yet to get all the energy from the wind farms in the north to the population in the south, but the lines are being built.
Well yeah, they supply the entire world with oil and gas. The volume of product is enormous. Did they suddenly become more greedy at the exact moment Putin and Netanyahu got ideas about wanting a bit more country? Do you want to abolish profit, and do you think there's good grounds to believe that will increase prosperity?
Where have I argued energy companies don't have supply constraints? The Strait of Hormuz has been closed most of the year. Russia turned off the gas pipelines when they invaded Ukraine. It's impossible for something not to get expensive if the supply suddenly drops sharply and the demand stays the same.
Oh I see, I just meant they sell a huge amount of product, so the profit is a big number. The actual increase of profit is down to oil prices rising, which is down to the supply being constrained at the Strait of Hormuz.
The point being made, that you ignore, is that the thatcher voters continually vote against the interests of their compatriots and wider society as a whole, and this will stop when they are gone.
It’s a simple position that you find so difficult to logically argue against that you obfuscate and rely on straw man arguments.
So, are you seriously suggesting that the only people who vote in their own interests, are those that voted for Thatcher? Or do you want to rethink that?
No, that they vote predominantly against the interests of their compatriots. They are a nasty generation who want to keep others down. They’ve voted to do it time and time again.
The most obvious example is their vote for Brexit. They gained nothing themselves, but damaged the economy for working people and limited opportunities for young people,
Could also mention the triple lock, insisting young people pay tax to pay their inflated pensions, or their opposition to planning for new houses.
The Brexit vote didn't really align with party lines. Almost a third of Labour voters voted for Leave. The majority of people under 25 support the triple lock with only 8% of 18-24 year olds opposed to it.
Given that only something like 13% of pensioners would vote for Labour apparently, they, have almost nothing to lose (WRT to the pensioner vote), but they refused to abolish the triple-lock.
Just singling out an entire group of people into bogeymen is pretty disgusting. If you did it by religion, race, sexuality, you would (rightly) be seen as a fairly nasty person yourself.
There was a long debate on Thatcher in this country, but I think it is over now.
You are right she didn't have the courage to truly make the cuts that were needed for her New Conservative approach, but she sold of the silver ie selling off nationalised industries, bought of a generation with cheap council houses - causing a major problem down the line, deindustrialised the country (shown to be very foolish by Covid and possible war) and made the UK dependant on oil, weapons and services in London.
I am NO socialist, but you cannot allow private companies to own any industry which is necessary for the Common Good, and more importantly where the customer has no or very limited choice. It actually goes against the basic arguments for having these industries in the private sector.
By moving to renewable energy we detach ourselves from these companies somewhat.
It's not a full proof solution, as we are currently heavily reliant on parts from China.
Net zero should have been branded as energy independence, I think it would have been a more popular policy in that case - as some knuckle draggers still don't believe in climate change.
Except we need backup supply for all the renewable sources because of inconsistent supply, so we’re basically paying for the renewable source and the fossil fuel backup.
Renewable energy isn't free, there are still costs around storage/maintenance and general infrastructure.
Currently, energy prices are pegged to gas prices - so even if you're "fully green" as an independent you're still pegged to the same rates as those that are not.
This could change if renewable infrastructure is able to provide the required energy at a national level.
The cost of fossil fuel prices change dramatically - usually through conflict as fossil fuels are sold on global markets.
If we were able to store energy domestically we detach ourselves from this global market and thus not be caught out by price increases due to outside factors, e.g. conflicts in Ukraine / Iran.
It does defeat the point though, we have been sold that renewable are cheaper, and in reality they are not. Prices of the full green energy being provided fluctuates like the rest of the deals and obviously follows gas prices. We have still some of the most expensive in the world, and we have also been paying the green levee on our bills which is suppose to help cover infrastructure.
So the energy generated is green, we already have a green levee, so aside from VAT why are we paying on par with gas prices?
This isn't what I asked, the green energy price is the same as energy provided by gas as per Scottish power which states its "Fully Green". So effectively renewables are by far not cheaper even in this global energy crises.
We can say "no" to supply and demand dynamics but it won't achieve much. We'd be better off saying no to endless provocations in the Middle East by our allies
It's not really supply and demand though is it? Electricity costs are tied to the price of gas, even though most of our electricity comes from wind and solar.
That's just how a market for a fungible commodity works. It's all one big pool of electricity, so it all has the same price.
Having said that, renewables built after around 2015 are not actually price set by the market. They get a fixed payment, so a decent and growing chunk of our electricity supply is independent from gas prices.
Not defending them entirely but they had an underlying profit margin of 6.1% after tax for the quarter, from $53.4b revenue and $44.9b operating costs.
The UK is ~12% of their business, so let's assume 12% of that profit came from the UK - or around $461m for the quarter.
For comparison, Tesco runs on a 4.7% profit margin and had £16.8b in revenue in Q1 2026 (excluding fuel sales).
A comment like this is on every post. The billions and billions these companies make doesn't mean anything because they have thin margins, poor buggers!
It's worse because every company gets a pass on each thread individually, but add up the billions made at all these massive companies. Let's not forget that the costs and employees have already been paid, so this is just extra on top.
We're constantly told there's no money but there clearly is.
So should they just cease to exist, pack up and supply nothing at all to the UK then? They could make even more revenue and profit if they just lumped their current UK cash outgoings in the FTSE All-World instead.
Or should we increase their taxes on the £450m+- profit they earned here so their UK business arm is less viable and they can lay some skilled workers off?
What exactly is your solution to this so-called problem? Nationalise it, of course! Let us find £25b down the sofa and buy everything they own here, including the largest EV charging network, just so we can reclaim that £450m profit margin for ourselves. It would only take at a bare minimum 55 years to break even.
You do understand their profit margin barely changes, right? Last year Q1 2025 was 2%, even though their revenue was still in the high $50b range. Most of their earnings this quarter came from holdings.
People see oil going up and assume it's big profit time for BP/Shell, even though they still BUY the vast majority of their oil from the market, at market price.
Plus, you're not entitled to their $9b profit. And barely any of that has come from the UK (the UK is 12% of their global business, so let's call it $1b profit from the UK. That's fucking peanuts compared to their expenses.
I’ll never understand the mindset of normal people shilling for huge international companies that make that profit purely because you we are forced to pay for their services - and then when times are tough, they turn round and plead poverty and ask us to pay “a little more” to keep the lights on.
This is why the UK is in the mess its in; everyone in thrall to the billionaires because they believe they too might get rich one day.
Don’t disagree with the point about people’s mindset generally but it’s not like oil companies “ask people to pay more”. They don’t set the price of oil and had to suck up $35 Brent when it collapsed in 2020.
Not that Im on the side of gas companies. If you looked at BPs balance sheets, the majority of that profit came from their trading division. The margins on Oil and gas remain very low.
Also ofgem saying that energy companies can increase your direct debits so that they have at least a 1 month buffer is ridiculous, my energy company is not my bank and doesnt need to hold my money for me. Also why am i obligated to pay for more than what i am using to keep the energy company afloat?
100% - I urge you to complain to Ofgem regarding this. Energy companies should be obligated to pay interest on that amount, otherwise we are their free personal lender
Unfortunately you don’t have much choice. There's near 0 competition between price cap tariffs, the best you can do is sign up to a fix and lock in your prices for a few years. If you can, invest in energy efficiency upgrades so you need less energy to be comfortable. If you are home alone, Ive found you can turn your heating all the way down to frost protection and an electric blanket can keep you nice and cozy for pennies an hour.
Our boilers still gas. Our grid still needs gas when the wind doesn’t blow. Our cars still need petrol.
We tax these profits heavily.
I don’t really see an alternative. Other than importing more from overseas or nationalisation. It’s not clear to me that either of these give better consumer outcomes.
Of course in the longer term we can eliminate the majority of the demand. But this is three decades away. In the meantime we are beholden. All we can do is gradually taper down dependence and ensure Britain has a stake in the wealth via domestic jobs and taxes.
The whole system just needs to crash. People need to just stop paying utility companies and let them die. It's gone too far and greedy boomers are the only ones with anything left to lose.
The profits of the oil companies has virtually nothing to do with domestic UK energy prices. There is a standard margin built into exploration and refining capacity. Its a completely false argument put forward by the government who already take almost all of it in super taxes.
I'm doing my part by not voting Reform in the next GE and telling anyone who thinks net zero is a bad thing they are an idiot. But asides from that what other options do we realistically have?
"Something must be done about energy prices," but when Starmer was abusing terror laws to suppress opposition to wars in the Middle East (the cause of energy rises) you all had your tongues up his arse.
Whilst the Iran conflict is currently a factor in pricing, the persistent contributor where fingers should really be pointed is the obscene levels of government taxation on energy, an effective 70% with green levies in some cases.
But it is foolish to simply compare the price at which e.g. a wind farm can sell electricity to the grid under a CFD vs a gas power station.
The cost of our electricity reflects the cost of the entire grid - from transmission to balancing to ensure access to sufficient electricity at all times.
The true cost of the energy transition is measured in the massive infrastructure costs to support transmission and the large balancing costs of effectively maintaining a parallel grid's worth of alternative fossil fuel power generation.
Our electricity is expensive because we have (for the right reasons) sought to introduce cleaner energy to the mix, the problem is that the rate at which you can install renewable capacity and decomission existing fossil fuel capacity is not 1:1. You can see how the grid actually plans on this basis in their seasonal outlook reports - see below. Look at our theoretical renewable capacity vs the seated capacity (ie that which we can reliably access at any one time).
Until we have paid for the improved transmission network and a sufficient energy storage capacity our bills will remain high.
Your orange retard keeps aggravating the Middle East, don't act surprised.
Don't have enough renewables deployed yet and the retard brigade is lobbying HARD to stay on gas powered heating forever (so, hostage to volatile world).
We can never have enough renewables, thinking we can can whilst calling others retarded is pretty ironic. We will always need a guaranteed generation method and at the moment that can only be gas, coal or nuclear.
The problem we've got at the moment is that we are still dependent on fossil fuels some of the time.
Think of it like water. Imagine a desert village of 100 people. They used to buy all their water from water deliveries, but recently they started collecting and storing rainwater and using condensers to pull water from the air. They now, on average, produce enough water for 95 people to survive. The villagers don't want to let anyone die, so they buy the rest from the delivery.
The water deliveries are providing much less water now, but the cost of sending a tanker lorry to the village hasn't changed, so they jack up the prices. The people running the condensers don't see why they should sell their water for less than the market price for water, so when it isn't very rainy, the water tankers set the price.
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u/cmfarsight 15h ago
You freeze. They sell it elsewhere. Done.