ENERGY PRICE RISE AND FREEZE, AND PAUL FLOWERS

8.2%

Power supplier SSE announced an 8.2% price rise. SSE Director of Customer Services Tony Keeley explained the increase saying “We have just found out that there is still some money in the UK that we don’t own yet”.

Speaking from his lair in a hollowed out undersea volcano in the Caribbean Keeley said that SSE only have a 5% profit margin with the other 95% going on wholesale gas prices, government levies and undersea volcano hollowing out.

TONY KEELEY

Up to 11% of every household bill goes on government programmes to save energy, reduce emissions and tackle climate change.

Tackling climate change means that a lot of people in the UK are freezing because other people somewhere in the world are too warm and want the sun turned down a bit. I’m assuming therefore that the government are using our money to build a giant thermostat for the sun.

That wouldn’t be the stupidest thing they’ve ever come up with. In fact it’s only about number 17 on the list of top 20 of Stupid Government Ideas.

Meanwhile energy is now centre stage in politics with Labour leader Len McCluskey’s Deputy Ed Miliband calling the price rise “a cost of living crisis”.

He has promised a temporary price freeze if Labour wins the next election and if anyone knows about cold its Ed Miliband. He’s now an expert on the subject after getting the cold shoulder from his brother ever since members of the Labour party put their X in the wrong box on the leadership ballot form and elected the wrong Miliband.

Political analysts were asked if Ed Miliband becomes the Prime Minister could he make good on his price freeze promise. They were unanimous, in laughing at the thought of Ed Miliband ever becoming the PM.

Miliband described SSE’s decision as a “scandal” and accused the government of “letting energy companies get away with this”. The PM David Cameron branded Miliband’s price freeze promise as a “con” saying that he did not have control over world gas prices.

The Labour deputy leader does not accept this claiming that Cameron does have control of world gas prices because he’s posh and posh people control everything. No they don’t. Lord Rothermere basically owns the Daily Mail and he can’t even control his own journalists to stop them writing stories about Miliband’s father being a Marxist and Ed’s policies being so funny that he’s a Groucho Marxist.

The powers that be and the powers that want to be can argue all they want over energy prices but when it boils down to it (that is if anyone can still afford the gas to boil anything) the consumer will be one who will bear the brunt of the increases. And anyway the government are secretly quite happy about the energy price increases. The reason being. It’s led to people forgetting that they are paying £1.36 or so for a litre of petrol and even more for a litre of diesel. But there was great news from the Chancellor on that front because George Osborne stated categorically that he was freezing the 2p annual fuel duty increase. Thanks to George the motorist will only be paying a reasonable and quite justified £1.36 per litre instead of an utterly outrageous £1.38. We are all saving a whopping 2p, brilliant. Although what can you do with 2p. Quite a lot actually, if you are Barry Scott (whoever Barry Scott is) because Barry uses 2ps to illustrate how clean Cillit Bang gets your two pence peices. Let's be honest here the Cillit Bang advert is less of an advert and more of a public service announcement because there is nothing worse in the world than having a pocket full of dirty 2ps.  A good money saving tip, at least psychologically anyway, is always only work out what your car gets to the gallon. For example, saying "My car gets 30 miles to the gallon" doesn't sound too bad. Finding out that your car gets 7.5 miles to the litre and that litre costs £1.36 is frankly just depressing. Knowing that makes you realise that you'd be better off going around in a rented chaffuer driven Limo.

THE NEXT BANK SCANDAL

PPI Payment protection insurance, CPP card protection plan, the mis-selling of mortgages, Libor....................is there anything the banks haven’t been up to. Apparently not, and the latest scandal about to hit the headlines involves hole in the wall cash machines. Seems that whenever a customer inserts a bank card to withdraw money the machine collects a tiny bit of their DNA and uses the DNA to create an exact clone which they then put to work in a factory in the Far East sewing together English Premier League football tops.

This in effect means that if you use a cash machine there’s a 99% chance that there’s another you working for nothing in a sweat shop somewhere. Basically the banks are taking identity theft to a whole new level, which is ironic really considering that CPP was supposed to be an insurance against this kind of thing happening.

This story is about to break in the sister publication to the British Medical Journal of Evil. Do you think for one minute that the Hadron Collider in Switzerland is actually being used to accelerate particles?

The whole thing is just a front for a huge cloning programme. Why do you think the Swiss have so many bank vaults? It’s because they need somewhere to store the clones before Swissair flies them out to China.

The banks have put aside billions to cover the compensation payments but the customers who’ve been replicated won’t receive all their compensation. They’ll have to split it 50/50 with their clone.

Bad though this is in itself it the situation could be a lot worse. Fortunately Jedwards management doesn’t allow them access to their own money and therefore as they don’t have bank cards they haven’t been cloned by ATM’s.

So thankfully there are still just two of them.
On the Libor scandal. The banks got off very lightly because the average man in the street and everyone who works for the Financial Services Authority hasn't actually got a clue what Libor is. The banks were fined a few million, but as they'd made billions they were hardly having to visit the Department of Social Security offices begging for a crisis loan.

SANTANDER ADVERT BAN

Santander has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority over an ad for their 123 Account that features Irish golfer Rory Mcilroy. The ASA received 27,000 complaints from people left terrified and traumatised by the advert in which a woman closes her fridge door to find Mcilroy standing in her kitchen staring at her like some sort of cross between a serial killer and a registered sex offender. Many of the complainants have been so traumatised that they haven’t been able to go anywhere near their fridge ever since.

A spokesman for Santander said “When we talked to his agent about appearing in the ad the agent maybe should have mentioned to us that Rory was just a big bit scary and creepy, so it’s not really our fault”.

He added “It’s just as well that we didn’t go with the director’s idea to over dub the ad with the Psycho shower scene violin music or we’d been in even more trouble with the ASA”.

True, because the over dubbing of the Jaws theme was alarming enough.

It has to be asked though why Santander put the ad out in the first place. Surely when the ad agency showed the company’s bosses the commercial before it was aired at least one of them should have asked “So we’re trying to frighten people into taking out a 123 Account are we?”

“Actually, yes”.

“Well you’ve nailed it”

FLOWERS.

It to be asked how did the Reverend Paul Flowers ever get to be the chairman of the Co-operative Bank? On the other hand maybe the crystal meth and crack cocaine he allegedly bought was produced by Fairtrade crystal meth and crack cocaine farmers in the Third World. Therefore he was adhering to the Co-op’s ethical policies which is surely some sort of good news for the troubled company whose new slogan is……

THE CO-OPERATIVE, GOOD WITH FOOD, CRAP WITH MONEY.

It’s also transpired that Flowers committed gross indecency with a man in a public toilet. Doesn’t that show his commitment to the Co-operative because it means that he’s more than willing to go the extra mile to persuade George Michael to switch the millions he has in accounts over to the Co-op.