Ofgem calls for ministers to rethink price cap.

Have you a link backing up your claims about Frances energy. 

Ah ok, so you don't believe in the principle of high-risk customers having to pay more?  If you want to follow that logically then you remove risk from everything, because it might hurt "the poor".  So you will gladly pay more for car / home insurance, pay higher rates of interest of loans / mortgages / credit?

Ok you continue to use the French as an example lol.  Personally I would use somewhere like Norway, rather than a nation that relies on mega-expensive nuclear and has the second highest tax burden in Europe because their utilities are heavily subsidised by the tax payer.  Did you even know that EDF lost billions when the French Government kept prices artificially low and now has massive debts close to £100b?  The same with their railways, they are billions in debt and Macron cannot reform them because of the  having loans to pay for things arentunions.

You foreign ownership point is boring, pointless, dog whistle politics.  You do know that France actually buys gas / electricity off the UK and other countries right?  Should that be allowed in your view?  You do know that governments invest in other countries right?

Do you even understand our energy market?  We issue licences to drill gas / oil and then we tax the shit out of them (40%)... although we currently tax them 75% because the price is very high.  The providers ("middle men" as you call them) then buy energy which they sell to their customers, and competition between the providers drives down prices.  Your assertion that these "middle men produce bog all" is a child like argument.  Should we ban supermarkets and make everybody buy from the farmer?  Should I have flown over to Germany and picked up my Merc from the factory? lol.

Our utilities were sold off because they were all shit.  They were shit because nobody wanted to pay the price of production, they were impossible to reform because of politics, and they suffered from massive under investment... because British people don't like high taxes so there is not much left in the pot after health, welfare, education and state pensions.

Personally, I would like to live in a UK that was more grown up and can accept that we are living way beyond our means and therefore we ALL need to pay more taxes.  It is never going to happen though...

Again, you keep accusing "middlemen"  of "producing nothing", yet bizarrely rejected my idea that supermarkets "produce nothing" and your local Merc dealership "produces nothing", yet nobody has a problem with that.  They buy energy off the market and sell it to consumers, that is literally what capitalism is lol.  Remember, millions of people enjoyed months / years of way below market rate prices during the crisis, that is why so many energy providers went bust. 

Meters were in use long before privatisation to cut the risk of bad debt, and YES credit is essential in modern society:

    1) Would YOU be prepared to more to for your car insurance so that a high risk 17 year old could pay the same as you?

    2) Would YOU be prepared to pay higher interest of your credit and mortgage so that a person with a bad credit history could benefit from the same rates as you?

Do you understand why we sold off our gas and oil?  It was because there is virtually none left, and it was far cheaper to import it.  If we used 100% North Sea oil / gas it would be gone within FIVE YEARS!

    "The United Kingdom has proven reserves equivalent to 2.6 times its annual consumption. This means it has about 3 years of gas left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves)."

    "The United Kingdom has proven reserves equivalent to 4.8 times its annual consumption. This means that, without imports, there would be about 5 years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves)."

As for energy security... did we run out of electricity and gas during the crisis?  Nope, however your precious France did... we sold them a bunch of our electricity because so many of their old and failing nuclear plants were out of action lol.  Yes the price spike has been shit, and help should be provided to get low-income families through.  Everybody else however should just suck it up, and remember the decades of cheap prices they enjoyed prior to post-covid / Ukraine.  Claiming we would have been shielded had we still been nationalised is utter bollocks... as I have already shown... we would have run out of gas / oil decades ago!!!

Why do I talk about why privatisation happened... you want an argument with zero context where you can just spout out the negative and pretend we would have been ok but for the nasty capitalists? lol

Why do I talk about oil / gas reserves... YOU keep talking about middle men that produce nothing, what the fuck would a nationalised energy company be without any gas / oil reserves... oh yeah a middle man hahaha.

I notice you cannot answer my simple questions about equality:

1) Would YOU pay more for car insurance so that a high risk 17 year could pay the same as you?
2) Would YOU pay more for credit / mortgage so that a person with bad credit enjoyed the same rates as you?

I just re-editing to address Bulb, because I missed it out.

"Your bulb question is just whataboutery, the government obviously fucked that up... I am not defending privatisation... I am calling bullshit on people that claim it was all rosy before privitisation and that there has been no benefits."

I notice, YOU the champion of equality, STILL, cannot answer what you would do about some pretty basic equality measures:

1) Would YOU pay more for car insurance so that a high risk 17 year could pay the same as you?

2) Would YOU pay more for credit / mortgage so that a person with bad credit enjoyed the same rates as you?

They are not irrelevant, they strike at the heart of the matter.  People are on meters because they are high risk, if everybody was on the same rate YOU would have to pay more.  Are you willing to do that?

Again, you keep accusing "middlemen"  of "producing nothing", yet bizarrely rejected my idea that supermarkets "produce nothing" and your local Merc dealership "produces nothing", yet nobody has a problem with that.  They buy energy off the market and sell it to consumers, that is literally what capitalism is lol.  Remember, millions of people enjoyed months / years of way below market rate prices during the crisis, that is why so many energy providers went bust. 

Meters were in use long before privatisation to cut the risk of bad debt, and YES credit is essential in modern society:

    1) Would YOU be prepared to more to for your car insurance so that a high risk 17 year old could pay the same as you?

    2) Would YOU be prepared to pay higher interest of your credit and mortgage so that a person with a bad credit history could benefit from the same rates as you?

Do you understand why we sold off our gas and oil?  It was because there is virtually none left, and it was far cheaper to import it.  If we used 100% North Sea oil / gas it would be gone within FIVE YEARS!

    "The United Kingdom has proven reserves equivalent to 2.6 times its annual consumption. This means it has about 3 years of gas left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves)."

    "The United Kingdom has proven reserves equivalent to 4.8 times its annual consumption. This means that, without imports, there would be about 5 years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves)."

As for energy security... did we run out of electricity and gas during the crisis?  Nope, however your precious France did... we sold them a bunch of our electricity because so many of their old and failing nuclear plants were out of action lol.  Yes the price spike has been shit, and help should be provided to get low-income families through.  Everybody else however should just suck it up, and remember the decades of cheap prices they enjoyed prior to post-covid / Ukraine.  Claiming we would have been shielded had we still been nationalised is utter bollocks... as I have already shown... we would have run out of gas / oil decades ago!!!