It is hard to tell who are becoming more discredited, the major energy companies or their so-called regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets.
The cartel, let's call it what it is, make billions of pounds while the regulator dishes out occasional fines in the millions.
These fines are, of course, passed back on to the same consumers Ofgem is meant to be there to protect in the first place. It's the post-Thatcherite version of paying people to dig holes and then fill them in again, only no-one develops muscle tone.
Ofgem operates on entirely the wrong paradigm and was specifically created to do so. Take the example of buying crisps. We enter the store, weigh up whether Walker's or Golden Wonder do our favourite flavour and then compare the store's own brand. We make our consumer choice and buy our crisps.
But buying your gas or electricity is emphatically not the same thing for most of us. Of course, we all know people who are enthusiastic switchers. It's their hobby. Credit cards, telecoms, insurance and energy, they relish chopping and changing. Most of us are not like that. We have other things like work or family to fill our days. Baking or knitting or sport are enough to occupy any spare time. We don't actually enjoy the hassle and bureaucracy of changing providers.
The energy giants know it, and although the regulator's raison d'être is promoting competition, they know it too. As a result the energy cartel gets to keep mocking the public, joyously hiking their tariffs the instant spot prices for gas or oil rise, and then waiting for ever and a day before lowering them when the commodity price drops.
And so we see the consequence of this most light-touch of regulation. Ofgem's own analysis suggests the big six will make an average £115 profit per household in the year to come, a rise in prediction from just two months ago of £9, and that is after recently announced cuts of between 5.1% and 1.3% by the companies in response to plummeting international prices.
To be clear, E.ON, British Gas, Scottish Power, npower, SSE and EDF have all announced cuts to their gas prices in recent weeks but the profit they make from each household is set to increase significantly, according to their own regulator.
Ofgem chief executive Dermot Nolan, while wringing his hands during a grilling by MPs and saying this is "clearly a cause for concern" still fell back on the mantra that making it easy to switch suppliers was the answer.
At least he didn't actually use the phrase "asymmetric price transmission" but he did use the euphemism for it, "rockets and feathers effect". We would prefer the more honest term, "rip off".
He even said in evidence to MPs that Ofgem found "strong evidence that wholesale prices rise and retail prices move quickly but that actually they don't fall in the same way."
Everyone anxiously clutching a gas or electric bill knows that. The question is, what is the supposed protector of consumers, his own organisation, Ofgem, going to do about it?
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