Call this a right-wing government?

 (For the avoidance of doubt, this is SATIRE. It does not reflect my actual views.)

Why won't the British government properly protect the interests of sensible, self-sufficient citizens?

Last year, having correctly predicted that energy prices were about to rise dramatically, I took the sensible precaution of arranging a fixed-price deal with my supplier that will protect me from price rises until September 2023.

This option was open to anyone in the UK but a startling number of people did not take it. Instead, they decided to chance their luck. And, boy, did their luck not hold out.

Still, that's what happens when important financial decisions have to made in the free market economy. Some people win and some people lose.

And we can't have the alternative. You know what that would mean:

• bulk buying for the whole nation to get economy of scale and equal pricing for all
• some people would be paying a tiny bit more and some people would be paying an awful lot less

Someone has to stand up for those who would be paying a tiny bit less. Like me. Because I'm smart and have a fixed-price deal.

But now the government is going to stab me in the back.

How dare they charge me to bail out the mistakes of others?

The government has introduced a price cap to protect people from ludicrously high bills. They are restricting the utility company's abilities to charge whatever they like for energy.

I don't need that. I protected myself.

This is going to be paid for through taxation and a levy on energy bills for many years to come. So I'm going to be forced to pay to bail out utility companies and people who didn't have the foresight to fix their energy prices.

The money to pay for this bailout is going to be borrowed from banks. Not the Bank of England (which the government owns), but other banks (which they don't). So interest charges will accrue.

The government is forcing me, through taxes and levies on my bills, to bail out utility companies, people who didn't think to fix their utility prices and, additionally, to pay interest to banks for a loan I neither want nor need.

I'm being ripped off

Imagine things the other way around. Imagine if I had fixed my energy prices at a high rate and then the cost of energy fell.

• Would the utility company help me with my bill?
• Would the government give me money towards my costs?
• Would other people be taxed to help me pay my bill?
• Would the government borrow from banks to help me pay my bill then pass on the interest charges to other member of the public?

I think we can agree the answer would be 'NO' to all of those questions. (Except, perhaps, the last because there's nothing governments like more than giving money to banks for almost no reason -- here's an example. Or if you prefer it phrased less respectfully, here's another.)

In this case, the utility company has made the mistake of agreeing to supply energy to me at a price that means they will make a loss. Well boo hoo. That's the free market for you.

They've also failed to arrange long-term sensible prices for buying the energy in for resale. That means they can only buy it at a price most of their customers can't afford. Which isn't going to be great for sales.

So they either have to expect to sell much less of it (and ride out the hideous consequences, both for their financial position and the cold population) or they sell at a loss and either have to dig into their reserves or declare bankruptcy.

How dare the government charge me to prop up the finances of a failing company? Let them go bankrupt so a proper capitalist can take them over and run them properly.

But if I'm expected to help them through these dark times, I want something more than just a bill for supporting them. I want shares in the company. Because otherwise I'm paying money into large corporations and getting nothing at all back for it.

And that is a rip off. Another example of large companies as benefit scroungers.