Turning a profit

I was watching the news over the weekend when a spokesman for one of the big energy companies (they're pretty much all owned by the French, aren't they?) was wheeled out to justify the 8% hike in energy prices. This figure, well above the inflation rate, was, he explained, necessary to maintain the 5% profit margin the shareholders had a right to expect. And that was the end of that. 5%. Who plucked that figure out of the air and said it was perfectly reasonable for us, the customer, to maintain this vast flow of cash out of the pockets of the ordinary and into the far, far deeper pockets of the wealthy? Was it you? I doubt it. Was it millionaires David Cameron and George Osborne perhaps? Naturally any signed-up members of the ruling elite would also support it; after all, without a healthy profit, how can the wheels of finance work- why, without it the whole capitalist machine would simply grind to a halt and society fall apart overnight. Allegedly.

But I say, how about 4%? Or even 3%? Do you know what? Those huge energy companies would still make billions of £s each year, and we'd have a little more cash in our not very deep pockets, money to improve our quality of life. And maybe then these shareholders would think twice before they spent £65,000 on a drinks bill in a Mayfair restaurant, as was reported over the weekend when two Russian oil magnates became locked in an "I'm richer than you" contest and spent £130,000 between them in a single evening, apparently mainly in order to impress their respective girlfriends. These are the obscene beings we encourage to live in Britain with our incredibly generous tax laws. These are the people who buy apartments in Park Lane for £20 million and pay for it out of petty cash. Do they insist that a 5% profit margin is necessary to maintain their standard of living? Or perhaps much more?

Let's put a stop to this excessive profit making. We could start with the energy companies, by limiting their profits to, say, 3%. And when we've done that we could go after the big supermarket chains, who I understand operate even healthier profit margins, nearer 10%. Why should they go on bleeding ordinary citizens white? So they can "develop"? From what I see, that just means setting up more and more outlets in places that don't even want them anyway, as has happened right here in Cardiff, as well as around Britain. They're not going to rein themselves in. It's up to us.