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“This is the exciting bit… I love this bit”, says Alfonso, a locksmith about to assist debt collectors breaking into someone’s home in order to fit a pre-payment meter on behalf of British Gas owner Centrica. Let’s face it: who wouldn’t be excited at the prospect of kicking someone’s door down, especially if there were sick and disabled people present, as well as senior citizens and children? Fuel poverty can be so much fun. Christ above: what is this country coming to?
Of course, fuel poverty is anything but fun for the people who are suffering from it. And anyone who is on a modest to middle sized salary will have felt a degree of pain from the staggering increases in fuel costs. But don’t worry. help isn’t on the way.
As ever with these things, Centrica did what all companies do when they want something done: they did it on the cheap. They sub-contracted the debt collection business to a grubby company called Arvato Financial Solutions who clearly relish fucking over very poor people and forced their way into their homes. However, Centrica big cheese Chris O’Shea is sorry. He’s very, very sorry. “I am really, really sorry,” he told Sky. “This is not who I am, this is not the standard I set myself, it’s not the standards I set the company, it’s not who we are, it’s not how we do business, there’s no excuse.” But it is who he is and it is how he does business. Centrica signed up a company who then kicked people’s doors in. Spare me the world’s smallest violin.
If it’s not a good day to be a victim of Centrica’s bully boys, then it’s definitely a good day to be a Shell shareholder as the company announces 2022 profits of *checks notes* £40 billion. If that doesn’t explain, in very simple terms, what Britain looks like today, then that’s it. I am not interested in the reasons why Shell’s profits are so obscenely high but I am very interested in ensuring that the government redistributes some of that money to the kind of people who are being broken into in order to have a pre-payment meter fitted.
These pre-payment meters work a treat when you are poor because there is no chance of running up further debts. Poorer people have no money so they can’t afford to put the gas and electric on at all. Everyone’s a winner, except of course those poor people who are freezing to death. I doubt somehow that Mr O’Shea has had his door kicked in to have a meter put in. Still, he’s “really, really sorry”, so that’s all right, then.
Utility bills are going up again in April, this time by a paltry 40%. I expect that Mr O’Shea won’t be the only “really, really sorry” person by then. Even our tech bro prime minister could be struggling to heat his brand new indoor swimming pool by then, especially now that his wife has generously decided to stop dodging tax in this country. They’ll be down to their last quarter of a billion quid soon.
I wonder how the locksmith guy who loves to break into people’s houses feels today? Like shit, I hope. Gloating at poverty is never a good look. He certainly won’t be gloating when he signs on at his local Jobcentre. And by the way, if you really need financial solutions, avoid Arvato. They really are the dregs.
