As everyone reading is aware, we need to buy gas and electricity to heat our homes, clean ourselves and cook food. Unless you are fortunate enough to live in a self-sufficient compound with infinite resources, or a planned economy, you will have to pay someone else to provide you with energy.
We, the general public, have come to accept this. We go to work, we pay our bills, we heat our homes, cook our food etc.
Most of us are, or should be, aware of the Standing Charge. Brought in by D. Cameron’s government (and not undone by any government since) it is a levy that all consumers of energy (pretty much all of us) should pay each day in order to “maintain the energy network and infrastructure”.
The energy companies claim also that it is to protect them from non-payers, to help vulnerable households and “to keep you connected”.
They keep avoiding the fact that our charges, as well as the price of our energy is going into the bank accounts of those who own our energy companies. Those who own, profit from, yet do no actual work within our energy companies.
The standing charge is regulated by Ofgem, like all the “Offs” is an independent body to supposedly regulate private companies. All they are though, are toothless regulators set up to legitimise private ownership.
These charges are paid by all energy consumers, on top of bills (the payment for energy consumed). We are encouraged to save energy, for environmental and cost of living reasons. But how can we save what little money we have, when it is literally being taken from us WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING?
For some it is 20p a day, for others it is 71p a day.
Would any other business charge you just for the right to buy essentials from them?
Does your baker (if you have one) charge you a fee to keep his ovens lit, though you buy only two loaves a week?
Does your corner shop charge you 30p a day for the right to buy a pint of milk or a newspaper?
Does even a supermarket charge you daily, as a customer, to do your weekly big shop?
Under our capitalist system, of course supermarkets, landowners, entrepreneurs, will find ways of making extra money they don’t deserve, but is anything as blatant as charging EVERYBODY for gas and leccy we ALL NEED, but may or may not use?
The standing charge is nothing but a criminal, sinful act of extortion. The companies who provide us with essential needs are acting no better than gangsters. Worse than gangsters, even. At least you can avoid a gangster if you don’t take drugs or gamble like a madman.
We all need warm homes and cooked food.
Ofgem are considering dropping the standing charge by winter 2025. That’s really nice of them, probably spurred on by several petitions. I was going to provide a link to them, but they were not worded well enough to gain the required amount of signatures. None of them explicitly stated the following.
We need nationalised energy now, we needed it last year and the year before.
There is only one argument against nationalising energy and it is this.
If we do not have a government run by workers, within a planned economy, then our nationalised energy will be sold off again as it has been before.
If we as a class can not agree on this, then we are fucked.
Chris Haws
January 2025
Class Consciousness Project 
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