How privatised energy companies make money vs. a proper business

WONDERING why the country has privatised energy companies when they are so terrible? Here is how they compare with a real business that does not screw over its customers.

Real business: We invest in R&D to create new products people want to buy.
Privatised utilities: We don’t invest in anything, including the basic things our business needs to operate, eg. water pipes and reservoirs. Who gives a shit if the public is surviving on a cup of water a day? They can still pay their bills if they’re not actually dead.

Real business: We increase profits by finding new markets and cutting unnecessary costs.
Privatised utilities: We just increase prices yet again. We can’t raise prices indefinitely, but we’re going to have a bloody good try. If you’re finding it difficult to pay your extremely high gas or electricity bill, we offer a service known as ‘bailiffs’.

Real business: We provide reasonable customer service to encourage customers to come back.
Privatised utilities: Customer what? Why should we be bothered if you’re in a phone queue for two hours that suddenly disconnects you? Who’s going to tell us off? Governments who are full of rabid free-market ideologues and all support privatisation? Hahaha. Yeah, right.

Real business: We are subject to various rules preventing monopolies.
Privatised utilities: There are only a few trains allowing you to get to your job at the required time, all run by the same company. So if we decide to charge £350 to go from Milton Keynes to Euston on a weekday morning, you can suck it up or get used to living on benefits and eating those weird, cheap hot dogs in a jar.

Real business: If we’re unsuccessful, we go bust.
Privatised utilities: If everyone resents our rip-off prices and flakey service, including regulators, the government will bail us out endlessly. We’d only be shut down if we were actually releasing anthrax onto trains or selling toxic water. Even then Tory MPs would be saying it was preferable to socialism, and the Sun would make its f**kwit readers agree.

Real business: These take years to set up, often by entrepreneurs working incredibly long hours and shouldering financial risk.
Privatised utilities: The business comes ready-made by the public sector, and is given to accountants. Their job is to work out baffling pricing structures with the government that make it look as if competition is occurring. Other responsibilities include cutting costs and deciding how to max out our bonus without major shareholders telling us to stop taking the piss.

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Landlords and other people it's impossible to feel sorry for

EVERYONE has their struggles, but some people are impossible to sympathise with. Like these:

Landlords

Has a volatile housing market slightly dented the massive profit you reap from your tenants? However will you cope? At this rate you might have to sell off one of your assets and actually do a hard day’s work for once. And even if you’re a responsible landlord who looks after your property and tenants, you have been unfortunately tarred with the same horrible brush as the others.

Influencers

The newest strain of impossible-to-feel-sorry-for tosser. So what if their media empire has crumbled because they were exposed for being a particularly nasty non-entity? If your career is built on saying ‘don’t forget to smash that subscribe button’ with a straight face then perhaps you’re owed all the bad karma coming your way.

The privately educated

Despite having all the leg-ups that money and good connections can buy, privately educated people will still piss and moan that Oxbridge spaces are being snapped up by the lower classes. And who cares if your Latin GCSE makes you feel alienated from the common man? The misplaced confidence you picked up along the way means you’ll always be fine.

Fussy eaters

A person who’s been served a steak that hasn’t been scorched exactly to their liking will act as if a close family member has just died and expect you to give a shit. They’ll send it back to the kitchen while fighting back tears, apparently overlooking the fact they’ve just casually consigned a cow’s entire life achievement to the bin.

The Tories

They’re on course to win less than a hundred seats at the next election? Just because they masterminded austerity, Brexit, Partygate, whatever Liz Truss was and plunged us into national decline? Aw. The whole party could be jailed for life and the most generous reaction the electorate could provide is ‘meh’.

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