Established 2005 Registered Charity No. 1110656

Scottish Charity Register No. SC043760

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Deja vu

December 01 2025

On the illusion of choice and how the energy industry encapsulates so much wrong with the UK. By André Rostant

The British climate is getting consistently milder, which is of little consolation to those dying from the cold in their homes, among whom over 4,900, many elderly, did not survive the 2022/23 winter. Nor is heating the sole issue: research by the Tressel Trust raised the spectre of 14.1m people in the UK experiencing food insecurity in 2024. Median UK private rent is £16,248, while median UK take home pay is £29,500. By way of distraction, we are offered a pseudo choice of which company we want to oversee our freezing, from among a small select cartel…

Déjà vu

St Fergus, spires twinkling, extracts gas for Scottish Power that kettles might keep whistling in every home at every hour. Over the Channel at Gravelines the nuclear reactors broil. Across our country, wind turbines wave goodbye to gas and oil. You may object, “I live in Hackney, what has this to do with me; why should I care what happens in Scotland, or over the sea?” Then one day your snazzy ringtone heralds a caller who will enquire, “With your high bill, might you wish to change your energy supplier?” This is the happy morning you are presented with the chance to have your boudoir lit by Electricité de France. You can turn your boiler tartan, Scottish Power will make it so. With this new deal so much cheaper, can you possibly say no? Naturellement, once you acquiesce, as fast as the French are able they will start off from Dunkirk with a pretty new copper cable to roll out under the channel, up the Thames and Barking Creek, and convey to you the sparkling Gallic energy you seek.

Not to be outdone, in Aberdeen folk will throw their cabers down, they will set to digging trenches and laying new pipe from the town, through Aberdeenshire, Angus, Northumberland, but they will pause at York for crustless sandwiches, tea, balm cakes, crumpets and small talk. With renewed zeal they will hustle their pipeline to complete until by way of Tottenham Hale, they have burrowed to your feet. So, when you toast your muffins in your Caledonian grill, romantic Highland dreaminess will give you an extra thrill. That same ringtone will tempt you with a new mobile provider, with zettabytes and yottabytes, with bandwidth ever wider. When you succumb, turn off your phone, look up into the night where you will see that especially for you they have launched a satellite.

The Northern Lights dance as poor Scots lie freezing in their beds; the shadow of St Fergus gas plant falls on winter dead. Each year all o’er Britain’s sceptred isle, nearly 5,000 die for want of heating, many alone, most old, most wondering why. Though ever in hot water, Andrew, sacrificial anode of the Royal Family still finds the time to summer nearby at Balmoral, with 50,000 acres to go hunting, shooting, fishing. A lifestyle few could e’er afford, but not for want of wishing. While up the road, Trump cheats cheerily on one of his golf courses; that’s when he’s not at Turnberry riding on his many horses. Yes, the people who own half of Scotland could all fit in a 747; this circumstance differs only slightly for residents of Devon. Over the whole UK, 1% own 70% of a land in which wealth inequality has grown by half in the last eight years: it’s out of hand. We reel, dazzled by the cup and ball trick of consumer choice. A lot of us have come to think nobody listens to our voice.

Want to know what is going on? Just three publishers you will find control 90% of UK print reach and nearly half of what flows online. They ensure that daily we are regaled with 20 brands of breakfast oats, and those same reports lean heavily on scrutinising little boats. Go climb up lampposts with your flags, paint roundabouts red white, and haunt hotels where huddled migrants cower in confused fright. Chant the old refrain, that garbled mantra of some “native” revolution. Sadly nothing that you do comes even close to a solution. Those migrants don’t own shares in British Gas; nobody can because, like council housing sold and not replaced that is now in landlords’ hands, the democratisation of shareholding was an outright con. Somebody tell Sid most of our profitable public assets are now gone. The hands of friends of friends and corporations grasp on and on…

Though of late it barely snows, it rains a lot, which makes me wonder why we pay so much for water that simply falls out of the sky. As Tressel wrote, if all the air could be contained by a company, they’d charge us at the market rate, so enjoy breathing while it’s still free!

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