Silly me...you regulate to accumulate, right?

Thank the Lord these energy regulators are in place. They’ve shown how tough they are with the energy companies. They’ve told them they’re only allowed to double their prices, until a few weeks later when they might be allowed to double them again.

They should regulate other products, such as soft drinks. They’d announce: “We’ve capped the price of ginger beer, at 4 million pounds per sip”.

By next year we will all be owned by EDF and British Gas. We’ll have to work on their land and raise their chickens.

If we paint and decorate a shareholders’ holiday home, they’ll give us enough gas to make some porridge.

Centrica will be entitled to marry anyone in your house, in return for letting you plug in a one-bar electric fire through January.

Then Ofgem will announce a cap of only three sisters to be taken into servitude, though that may rise next April.

Eventually they’ll become so powerful they will even control energy we make ourselves. So if you try to keep warm by doing exercise, you’ll be charged 20p for every star jump.

Centrica has promised to help people who are struggling with their bills, by giving back the same amount as the profit they make in one day.

Burglars sometimes offer something similar, when for one day a year, perhaps on their birthday, they’ll give you back the toaster they just robbed off you, before coming round the next day and taking it again. Governments of other countries have taken control of the energy companies and set a price for heating that means people have a chance of coping.

But that breaks all the rules of economics as you can’t interfere with profits like that.

For example, BP announced their profits have tripled to £6.9billion in the three months to June.

TORTURE

The billionaire owners of the company would love to hand that money back but it’s their duty to keep it all so they don’t interfere.

It must be torture for them but luckily they’re tough and keep it all, because they’re dedicated to helping out. So the Government has to find other ways to see us through, such as telling us how to use less energy.

Ministers give advice such as: “Pay your energy bills by cutting out unnecessary items such as food.”

They’ll suggest we should save on lighting, by making sure we’re always in the daylight. “If you start each day in Fiji, then keep going round the world so it’s never night-time, you’ll never need a lightbulb which will save vital pennies.” Then the Government will blame immigration, saying: “There are an increasing number of people who have come here from abroad, who use up our electricity by looking at things while they’re under a lamppost.”

So we’re in safe hands, in the same way that if you were in an inflatable dinghy careering down the rapids, it would be such a comfort to see it was being steered by an angry porcupine.

SIP-SIP HOORAY As costs rise