The BBC are going overboard on one of their ‘special’ investigations that has uncovered a shocking figure….500,000 people have been ‘forced’ to have pre-payment meters installed over the last 5 years.
No other news outlet seems in the slightest bit concerned, not even the Guardian as far as I can see. Only the BBC has blitzed us all day with this revelation…..never mind that their own graph shows that there was a huge rise in 2009…
Of course there’s no context…no numbers of people who were cut off pre-2009…and figures for pre-payment meters are only available from 2009 apparently so hard to judge what went on before isn’t it?
This is an old story…the National Housing Federation ran a campaign from 2006 to 2010 to reduce pre-payment tariffs….
From 2006 to 2010, the National Housing Federation lead a national campaign to ensure that prepay meter customers don’t pay a penny more than quarterly billed customers. As of April 2010, all prepay meter customers now pay the same or less than quarterly billed prices.
The campaign was launched in January 2007, when the six million energy customers who pay up front to heat and light their homes via prepayment meters paid over £100 per year more than customers who pay quarterly for the energy. Some prepayment customers were being charged £300 a year more than those on higher incomes paying by online debits.
An old story so why has the BBC disinterred it in such a big way? Can’t imagine that it could possibly be a project to make people think that bad things happen under a Tory government? The next 5 years bringing us an entirely negative interpretation of events with the BBC seeking out stories that paint the government in the worst possible light just as the BBC seeks out the unemployed, single mothers and their ilk who are so cruelly treated by this world.
Speaking of which the BBC illustrated their tale of woe about the pre-payment meters by having on an unemployed single mother, cruelly treated by this world, in debt and forced to have a pre-payment meter…..she wasn’t sure how she’d cope with all the bills and also being taken to court for not paying her Television license……oops what???…suddenly the BBC lost interest and you could hear the strangled tones as the presenter moved rapidly on.
10,000 a year in Wales alone get dragged throught the courts on behalf of the BBC….in the UK as a whole it was 193,000 people in 2012 taken to court.
Why doesn’t 5Live do a special investigation into that? Especially as nearly all the victims will be from the poorest households so (usually) beloved of the BBC.
Best laugh I had all day!
Another FOI assisted story from the hypocrites at the FOI averse BBC.
(And of course non payment of her utility bills is a civil matter, no chance of her getting sent to chokey for that, unlike the non payment of her TV licence.)
Looking at the graph so very estimated numbers:
Gas: 42,000 in 2010; 48,000 in 2014
Electric: 44,000 in 2010; 49,000 in 2014
Only installed in debt problem houses. What’s the big deal?
And how many would be installed in the houses of million new immigrants in that time?
Alan, OFGEM are investigating and when I last looked the Telegraph and Express are running with it.
The biggest laugh I’ve had today is how wrong you are. Again.
Scotty, do you laugh every time you get something wrong? You’d be like the old laughing policeman if you did.
‘Really’, have you really voted here ?
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/end-the-bbc-licence-fe
OFGEM are always investigating. They’re never actually doing though.
now, i hate and despise these rip of crooks and greedy spivs who run these energy companys, i had a one year battle with them over my bill and they disgust me,but the hypocrisy from the bbc and radio 5 live is mindblowing,correct me if i am wrong, but nobody has been fined or jailed for going into arrears with there energy companys,contrast that to the 150,000 of the poorest in society working and on benefits last year who was dragged through the courts and fined and including 50 mainly poor single parent women jailed for commiting this grevious crime of not paying there tv licence,never a phone in from nicky campbell and co about this outrage.
I wonder if green taxes have something to do with this ?
The BBC does not care about poor people, nor does it disproportionately represent them. Anyone that believes this is absolutely delusional. The complete opposite is the case. The BBC is absolutely in the back pocket of the elite and establishment (this is easily provable) and by its very nature can never challenge this overarching power structure if it wishes to maintain its privileged position.
The idea that the BBC will be “seeking out stories that paint the government in the worst possible light” is laughable. What passes for news coverage on the BBC does such a diabolical job of communicating how society actually works that the average person is spectacularly misinformed about virtually everything (not least the person who writes this blog).
You can be 100% certain that the BBC will fudge and obfuscate the worst policies and excesses of this government on a perpetual basis, yet it will still end up looking abysmal, just as every other government in my lifetime has!
Also, what is meant by the expression “BBC seeks out the unemployed, single mothers and their ilk”? What does ‘and their ilk’ refer to? People that are lower class than the author? People that don’t share his views (I’m just assuming it’s a ‘he’ for the sake of argument)?
There are currently 29 million taxpayers, and 11 million economically inactive people in the UK. So there are under three tax paying individuals for everyone without a job. At any given time there are about 500,000 jobs on the market (most of them are terrible jobs, obviously). So you don’t need to be Carol Vorderman to work out that there are going to be a lot of unemployed people at any given time.
What are the ten-million people without jobs supposed to do? Burn themselves to death? Guess what…some of these 11 million people are going to be single, and some of them are going to be parents. What a revelation. I hope the writer of this article is never unemployed, never poor, and never single with a child…but not everyone is this fortunate.
In this economic system, it’s a mathematical certainty that there will be an underclass, so suggesting that these people are somehow undeserving of a voice is a dire and unsustainable argument in the first place, and then suggesting that the BBC somehow gives them a disproportionately large voice is just an absolute joke.
You’re right Chris – the BBC does not care about poor people. But then, socialists don’t care about poverty either – they only care about state control because they are the ones most likely to be in control if they could ever turn Britain into a socialist state.
The BBC like to portray themselves as if they have compassion for the poor in order to further their political agenda. As someone who personally knows people who work/worked for the BBC, I can inform you that back in the 80’s there was an almost militant movement against Thatcherism within both Broadcasting House and Shepherd’s Bush. Please note that in those days (and I would guess today too) the Labour party were deemed to be friendly towards arts and entertainment.
We have to ask ourselves the question of how the BBC can find plenty of people in the embarrassing position of being in debt and having pre-payment meters, but they struggled to find anyone on zero-hours contracts and food bank users to talk to before the election. Zero-hours contracts and food banks were BIG talking points a few months ago, but I only heard ONE person on the BBC in the 2 months running up to the election talking about his zero-hours contract and how it fitted nicely into his lifestyle. I didn’t hear ANYONE talking about their use and experiences of food banks – only people talking on behalf of people they ‘know’.
The problem with the BBC is that they avoid talking to people on certain subjects, because if they did so it would shed far too much light on the REAL issue.
The BBC are happy to talk about the symptoms of poverty, rather than the causes, because if people began to realise that poverty is less to do with lack of money and more to do with lack of personal responsibility, Labour’s push towards more state and welfare spending would make their position redundant and forever unelectable.
Talking about how much they care about the poor is their meal ticket. Reducing poverty is therefore their biggest enemy. That is why they hated Maggie so much. She was interested in increasing wealth and increasing freedom whereas the Left are about redistributing wealth to themselves and creating a dependent client base. Socialism is just Feudalism with new slogans.
Check out your standing order charge (aka ‘Green Initiatives’) currently I’m paying £5 a week before I ‘ve flicked a switch or turned on a gas tap.
The principle of being forced to pay for something you don’t want before paying for what you do seems well established in many areas now.
Nobody can be ‘forced’ to have prepaid meter , but the electricity companies have a right to protect their revenues.
There is of course no mention of EU imposed VAT and ‘green’ taxes added to fuel bills .
The BBC should do a simple comparison.
The number of people jailed for failing to pay a utility bill v the number jailed for failing to pay their television licence.
Is the latter is higher, they should simply shut down out of embarrassment.
Ah, but clearly cooking and heating are not as vital as EastEnders or Strictly.
I remember the last words of a chav ‘muvver’ before the prepaid meter was installed , “they can’t cut me off , I’ve got five kids”!
For those sympathetic to the “poor” getting power free remember the adage “what has no cost has no value”. I remember visiting a person in sheltered accommodation where everything was paid for and the temperature was a constant 80 degrees F in her flat. If something is free you can guarantee that many people will take advantage regardless of the cost to others and whether they could afford it or not
Food banks?
Bus passes?
The local paper reports the chap who goes from Dereham to Hunstanton weekly for his fish and chips. That is six individual bus journeys which the tax payer pays an averaged fare of about £1.50 each for.
I think Gordon calculated likely take up on the number of council reduced fare passes in existence!
There are many “entitled” now happy to have a day out at the seaside or travel round when on holiday who would not have been seen dead on a bus before they were free.
But the cat is out of the bag and suggesting cutting entitlement back is another matter!
I would like to know what the national average per household for gas units and electricity units.
I’m aware that a number of variables come into it, but if households that are having these meters installed are are way above the national average questions need to be asked. Whilst without doubt there are genuine cases, I would wager that many are lacking in the IQ department and need education on saving energy. Maybe its something as simple as running their 60″ TV’s, Sky boxes and other paraphernalia connected to it all day…. 😉
The national average power consumption is the ‘home’, a unit beloved of journalists as it can be made smaller when describing ‘renewables’ and larger when describing polluting fossil-fueled plant.
Had a 6 month battle with British gas and N power over my mothers bills and in the end got full pay backs and apology’s from both due to the help of Energy watch ! now wonder what happened to them ? any ideas BBC ?
BBC is typical of socialists with lots of money. They`ll do all in their power to help the poor – except get off their backs.
Socialist are happy to spend other people’s money. They call their greed “social justice”. Fill your boots Kinnock even successfully halted attempts to reform EU corruption. He is a professional politician has become a multi-millionaire (with money taken from the tax payer) by making speeches about how much he cares about inequality. Hypocrite is too mild a word for that cunt.
Interesting that “by court order” becomes “forcibly” in the hands of the BBC. I wonder how many of these meters WERE installed with the use of force? I’m thinking the grand total of none.
However, they were hoist by their own petard; Radio 5 talked to one woman who had had one installed – who promptly noted how it had helped them budget better.
Ba boom!
Are the McBeeb willing to sacrifice the licence fee they receive from the poor in order to help them out??? Errmm, I think not.