I’m starting a candle-making company.
Not for those fancy ones that smell of peppermint and braised lamb.
I’m talking classic candles.
The type of candles you find in the bottom drawer when the power goes out.
Good, solid, functional, dependable end of days candles.
Because it’s starting to look more and more like that’s where we’re headed.
It’s 30 years since the famous headline “Will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights” spelled the end for Neil Kinnock’s prime ministerial ambitions.
Now it’s 2022 and we can barely afford to turn them on.
Everything it seems is on the rise – sea levels, in-work poverty, support for Marine Le Pen among Tory voters.
And, of course, energy costs.
So if you’re one of those new bourgeoisie-types that uses “electricity” or “gas” then I’m afraid it’s bad news.
Unless, of course, you also happen to own an energy company.
Or better yet – you set up an energy company, oversaw its demise, and then kept your £250,000-a-year salary from the failed business at the taxpayers’ expense.
Someone like Bulb Energy CEO and co-founder Hayden Wood.
Costs are rising and what can we do?
Mr Wood appeared in front of a parliamentary committee on Tuesday and apologised for Bulb Energy entering special administration in November.
Special, I guess, because it’s forecast to cost us taxpayers £2.2billion by the end of next year.
The same amount it will probably cost to charge your phone by the end of next month.
Not infuriating at all to listen to the CEO and Co-founder of @BulbUK say he's still getting paid £250k a year of taxpayers money to oversee the transition of a company he ran into the ground. Meanwhile the customers' of his failed business struggle to pay soaring energy costs
— Sean O'Neil (@s_oneil88) April 19, 2022
Now I’m a bourgeoisie-type. I use electricity and gas every day – in fact I’m using it right now.
I’d argue that it’s damn near impossible to navigate the fluorescent, flickering, often freezing world of UK 2022 without it.
We’re connected forever now, the ol’ bulb and chain.
But can we afford to be?
And if you think it’s bad now…
After steadily increasing from August, my energy bill has officially doubled.
Energy bosses attending the same parliamentary meeting as Mr Wood say the prices will go up again in October.
It will be horrific, they say. They don’t know what their customers will do.
The answer, for some of course, is freeze to death in the dark.
Or starve to death if they decide to choose heating over eating.
But hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. October is months away. Maybe the gatekeepers of power (use whichever way you like) will have grown a conscience by then.
They’ll decide that it’s maybe not worth the body count of poor, elderly and ill folks for an extra zero on their zero-heavy dividends.
They’ll remember that with great power (again use whichever way you like) comes great responsibility.
And if not, well there’s always that mandatory government loan that’s not a loan (that definitely is a loan to help you out in the short term while landing you in debt you didn’t ask for in the slightly longer term).
You know that energy rebate we’re getting?
The £200 we have to pay back
Well, with Sunak’s shitty idea comes admin costs
As much as £28m
Which will be recovered via our energy price cap
Making our bills even higher
What a financial wizard he is https://t.co/EMxHcTV4c7
— Marina Purkiss (@MarinaPurkiss) April 16, 2022
But there’s still plenty to be angry about for now.
Take Mr Wood and his continuing £250,000 per annum salary from Bulb Energy for example.
Why are we the ones being made to pay for the failure of Bulb Energy?
I don’t know much about Mr Wood but the one thing I’m fairly confident about is that he’s not very good at running an energy company.
Bulb Energy bosses turned a company which raised £70million in funding into a £2.2billion black hole within eight years.
I’ve not even started my candle making company and I’m pretty sure my books look a lot healthier than that.
Now I know what you’re all thinking – he did apologise – which for today’s privileged elite seems to be the same as actually facing any consequences for their actions.
And yes, it would also be remiss of the administrators to remove Mr Wood while there is a war going on in Ukraine.
But as a taxpayer, and one of Bulb Energy’s 1.7million UK customers, I’ve got a question that I sure am confused about.
Why do we need to pay the bills from our energy provider while also paying to bail out our energy provider, while at the same time paying the £250,000 wages of the guy who oversaw the demise of our energy provider that we now need to bail out, despite paying our bills?
That’s a lot of our money propping up one failed business. I doubt Too Hot To Candle would get the same treatment.
And do our lights shine any brighter for this added expense?
Nope. But they do cast one hell of a shadow on our bank balances.
