Thread by @106Euan

I see that #dontpayuk is trending on Twitter. Energy bills 100% need to come down, but non-payment of bills targets the wrong companies: it’s like shoplifting your entire big weekly supermarket shop because their suppliers are price gouging on potatoes. Here’s a thread why: 1)

Say that an unprecedented global event lead to a shortage of potatoes, leading to their market price going crazy. The cost to grow, harvest & sell British potatoes hasn’t risen by much, but suppliers are more than happy to sell at the inflated wholesale price & make a killing. 2)

The supermarket is forced to buy potatoes at these inflated prices and sell them to you with as small a profit margin as possible. You end up paying a fiver a spud, but only a few pence goes to the supermarket and the rest goes to the supplier, who makes huge profits. 3)

If you shoplift your entire weekly shop in protest, the supermarket suffers, but the spuds have already been paid for by the supermarket - which is making tiny profits *or even losses* - and the price gouging supplier still makes a killing. The wrong company has been targeted. 4)

Now replace the supermarket with your energy supplier and potatoes with gas. Wholesale gas prices are driving up utility bills. This includes electricity because the wholesale electricity price is set by the most expensive source, which these days is gas by a huge margin. 5)

Your energy supplier has to buy that gas and electricity, and sell it to you with a very small profit margin, or even a loss depending on your tariff. They’re not exactly raking it in at the moment - that’s why so many of them have gone bust recently and others are struggling. 6)

The original supplier of the gas, however, is making immorally high record profits off global wholesale gas prices while everyone suffers. They could sell gas much cheaper, or pay more tax that could be used to offset your energy bills, but they won’t unless they’re forced to. 7)

This is why we need a windfall tax on gas suppliers like BP and Shell, who are making quarterly profits of billions of pounds while people suffer from fuel poverty. The company you pay your electricity and gas bills to is forced to pay high gas/leccy prices because of them. 8)

A windfall tax on gas suppliers would ensure that, wherever that gas is sold to, the obscene profit margin that these companies are revelling in just now is reined in and used to subsidise energy bills for struggling households. 9)

So I urge people to contact their MP, the Chancellor and the Energy Secretary to demand a windfall tax on gas suppliers, applied retrospectively to the beginning of energy price rises, to help with household bills - no loopholes, no excuses. See next tweet for contact info. 10)

Contact your MP: theyworkforyou.com

Contact the Chancellor: members.parliament.uk/member/4113/co…

Contact the Energy Secretary: members.parliament.uk/member/4134/co…

Remind them that, as shown in this graphic, energy price rises are 100% political and can be easily reduced using a windfall tax. 11)

If your MP refuses to back a windfall tax to reduce energy bills, it only takes evidence of their wrongdoing plus the signatures of 10% of their constituents to recall them and force a by-election, which they will inevitably lose. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_of… 12)