Mine was Scottish Power rather than SSE but to my mind there's not a fag paper between the lot of them.
I don't understand what was achieved by selling off the old gas and electric boards apart from a short term financial injection and persuading simpletons that they were share owning Tories and should vote for Maggie.
I'm under no illusions that the old gas and electric boards were efficient, well run companies but how about getting a top industrialist to run them on private sector principles and in turn every penny of profit would mean lower prices and the rest would be returned to the taxpayer to keep taxes down rather than pay shareholders dividends (I don't buy the claim that they only make £54 per customer per year either). I'm sure even the landed, property rich cash poor gentry with enormous draughty old houses wouldn't mind a bit of that right now.
In short, they're all at it, once one's been fined it will be like dominoes.
Now heres the thing, im a sort of tory well ukip now but near enough. But selling off our energy companies was a massive mistake, one that blair and brown were happy to continue. I have always thought that we should keep some companies like the energy ones from being sold off.
I see Sweden set out a plan over the next 20 years to have all their energy needs met from within their own country, really do not see why we can not do similar.
I find my own personal political view becoming ever more blurred because selling off our energy companies was wrong and i do not think it brought up standards, which is why im worried by this weeks developments in the NHS.
There is also a growing sense in me that something is very deeply wrong with this country, when i heard they were thinking of dropping the minimum wage. A couple of years ago i took a job for a few months down in southampton docks and i worked with hard working guys there who were on that and they could barely afford to live as it was.
To cap all that the fact that so many jobs are zero hour contracts or less then 30 hours a week, im starting to worry and am now of the thought that the tories have gone to far. I agree with cuts and we need to make more and painful cuts but the getting rid of employment law is a worry and does not strike me as the right thing to do.
Often when people have said about the torries doing things for their rich friends i just thought they had a chip on their shoulder but im starting to think they may have been right. Scary thing is blair was excatly the same and i imagine millband would be to.
We should be setting out a target over the next 30 years to bring back all our energy needs to belong to the state and to be met internally in this country.
Like you i can not believe that we could not run it better then a private company putting all the profits back into development of better energy technology. I wish we had civil servants who could actually think creativetly.