And why is UK so dependent on gas? Because Margaret Thatcher ruined a well run public infrastructure for short term gain and made producing electricity from gas the most viable option for making money fast because who cares about long term stability? And also, who cares about ordinary people gets worse outcome out of privatization as long as rich people can get richer?
Tom Nicholas has an excellent video about this, How energy privatization is bankrupting Britain
Even before the recent increases in the wholesale cost of gas, energy suppliers have been steadily ratcheting up prices. Outside of the global oil shocks of the 1970s the average price of electricity consistently went down under nationalization. Adjusting for inflation the average Brit was paying 36 percent less to turn the lights on in 1990 than they were in 1946.
Far from driving down prices attempts to introduce competition to the market have actually reversed that trend. Between 1998 and 2019 the average domestic electricity rate increased in real terms by a whopping 80 percent.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent spike in wholesale gas prices energy bills in the UK have risen even further at a ridiculous rate in 2020 the average annual UK Energy bill was around 450 pounds by 2022 it was 2500 pounds and in 2023 it's expected to be a full three grand.
Worse still, these final couple of figures would be even higher were it not for the government's introduction of a price cap this will see the UK government hand over up to 140 billion pounds in subsidies to energy suppliers to ensure that ordinary Brits can turn the heating on far from Maggie Thatcher's dream of an energy industry in which the free market drives down prices then what we've ended up with is one in which the government is panding private companies cash by the bucket load so there is a lot of anger in the UK
