What will electricity companies do if a million UK customers say they won’t pay their bill? We might find out in six weeks or so.
A group called Don’t Pay UK are gathering pledges from fed-up UK consumers, and so far 75,000 Brits have signed up. The Twitter account @dontpayuk started in June, and already has 91,000 followers. The group draws inspiration from the Poll Tax protests thirty years ago which likely ended Margaret Thatchers reign as PM.
As commenter MrGrimNasty says the latest estimates have the UK energy bill price cap at a [shocking] £4,700 by April next year, remember it was about £1200 hardly 2 years before then.
With 12 million people in the UK facing energy poverty, there may be plenty of takers in the civil disobedience movement. The nation is only 6km away from 1,000 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. OK, so it’s 6 kilometers of solid rock, but if it were war-time, how long would that take? (Especially when the hole is already drilled. The hardest rock apparently is the paperwork just to stop it being concreted back in.)
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Don’t Pay UK
It’s simple: we are demanding a reduction of energy bills to an affordable level. Our leverage is that we will gather a million people to pledge not to pay if the government goes ahead with another massive hike on October 1st.
Mass non-payment is not a new idea, it happened in the UK in the late 80s and 90s, when more than 17 million people refused to pay the Poll Tax – helping bring down the government and reversing its harshest measures.
The group DontPayUK, looks pretty polished. They are organizing mass leaflet drops, signing up local volunteers, and promise that they will only do this if a million people sign up and agree to cancel their direct debit payment if the price hikes keep coming.
Ofgem begs customers not to boycott paying their gas bills
Brits have been urged not to take part in a growing civil disobedience campaign over the rise of energy bills.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Ofgem’s CEO Jonathan Brearley warned this could hike up costs for everyone.
After his interview with the BBC, Don’t Pay tweeted: ‘Boss of Ofgem on £300,000 a year tells us to suck it up.
h/t Graham Lloyd, The Australian, John Connor II