Matthew Revell

I like Matt Wright, as a broadcaster. He’s got a friendly smile and a chummy way about him. He also likes Hocus Pocus by Focus. However, he’d really do better to stick to the sort of fluffy subjects at which his show excels.

When I was a child – very young – I couldn’t understand why the government didn’t just do everything. After all, they were there to do the best for everyone, right? Experience and a little reading soon rid me of such naive thinking. Sadly, Wright and his guests – perhaps spurred on by Northern Rock’s bungled nationalisation – appear to cling to such childish notions.

Today’s lead topic on The Wright Stuff was, “Is gas a rip-off?” Here are some of the wonderful insights that Wright and his guests shared with the audience:

• Gas privatisation was supposed to make gas bills cheaper but they just keep going up.
• They say they need the money for windmills but I bet they’ll still charge us for electricity when they’ve built the windmills, even though the electricity will be free to them.
• We need evidence that they’re spending this money on windmills and not just giving it back to (evil) shareholders! If they were nationalised, then we’d have access to that information.
• There’s only one other gas supplier in my area and a few weeks after switching to them they put their prices up too.
• I don’t have time to switch my gas supplier.

(These aren’t direct quotes.)

That last one is my person favourite, particularly as it was uttered by Natalie Cassidy (y’know, her what used to be Sonia in Eastenders and, no, I didn’t realise she was a fount of political and current affairs wisdom, either). Three things to say to that:

1. Is anyone really that busy after they leave Eastenders?
2. If you choose not to switch gas suppliers, tough. What do you want? Someone to choose the brand of toothpaste you buy as well?
3. Switching gas suppliers is not hard: there are so many companies vying to help you choose and even the tax-funded Ofgem will help you out. Hell, I even got paid £15 as an incentive by such a website last time.

Let’s look at the others, though, starting with the idea that utility privatisation hasn’t worked because gas bills have gone up recently. It shows a stunning lack of awareness, or self-delusion, to ignore the other factors that have led to our recent rises in utility bills:

• dwindling North Sea reserves
• increased demand from across the globe, not least China
• the woefully under-reported renewables obligation, which is the largest contributor to recent bill rises.

Now, I’ll give it to them, they did say that British Gas are “claiming the rises will pay for windmills” or something similar, but the immediate leap to demand nationalisation is worryingly indicative of the current political climate. Nationalisation, as Chris Mounsey points out, doesn’t have a particularly glorious record. Anyone remember the British-owned car industry? I just about remember the pre-privatisation days of British Telecom, when phone usage was a luxury thanks to high pricing. Granted, new technology has always contributed to the lowering of phone prices but competition has been the driver of both that new technology and lower bills overall.

Let’s touch briefly on wind power: the renewables obligation goes to subsidise electricity generated now, so rather than being free, that electricity is costing more. Wind turbines will require investment to build and ongoing maintenance, along with transmission costs. Wind power, also, is not reliable nor particularly efficient and requires generation from other sources (coal, gas, nuclear, for example) to back it up when it’s either too windy or not quite windy enough. So, this is the Goldilocks of power generation and just like Goldilocks in the story, it can’t go for that long without needing a lie down; it’s the energy source with ME. So, no, your electricity won’t be free and nor should it be.

As for there being just one alternative gas supplier in a given area: that’s simply untrue on mainland Great Britain. So, if you do switch and find that eventually your new supplier raises prices, there are other suppliers to whom you can turn.

On LugRadio we were sometimes berated for discussing subjects we knew little of. However, our audience was (is) intelligent enough and well-read enough to pick us up when we were wrong. And besides, LugRadio is a purely hobby operation where the presenters don’t have the luxury of a professional research team or of actually being paid to know what the hell they’re talking about. The Wright Stuff’s daytime TV audience is probably only just one notch above that for Jeremy Kyle and almost certainly takes what its presenters say at face value.

Doubtless nationalisation will come up on tonight’s Wolverhampton Politics Show. Tune in at wcrfm.com on 101.8 FM in Wolverhampton between 7pm and 8pm tonight.