British Gas Inflates Profits

British Gas, the company that has won the ‘How Many Pensioners Can You Kill This Winter’ Award for the last sixteen years, has announced record annual profits of over £600m. The announcement has left some declaring the profits as ‘obscene’ and there have been calls for the board to step down. Admittedly, that might be going a bit far. After all, who ever heard of a board being asked to step down because they made their company a shed load of money? Anyway, let’s concentrate on the massive profits and even huger (well, not really but it sounds inflammatory so let’s go with it) price hikes. Boo hiss British Gas etc.

Thanks to British Gas, even the KKK were freezing their bollocks off.

So, after being directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of pensioners last year through hypothermia, frozen arteries and lethally undercooked baked beans, British Gas are swimming in moolah. The reason for the profits may lie in the 15% price rise on the average household gas bill last year. Of course, there may be other reasons. An increase in the sale of British Gas ‘Freddy the Friendly Flame’ cuddly toys or perhaps the company’s autumn fashion collection, nattily titled, ‘Boiler Kitsch’. OK, quite clearly the price rise was the main contributing factor to the kind of rise in profits that would have the average Executive pre-ordering his Bentley quicker than you could say ‘hefty dividend’.

So, what do the public, particularly those of pension age, think of British Gas’s new found wealth? Maud Miggins, an old lady from Hartlepool with a fag hanging out one side of her mouth and wearing rollers in her thinning blue hair, let loose with this rather dated rant, “Those figures are unbelievable. I mean, I’m on a pension of tuppence a month and out of that I have to feed my family of forty seven, re-tile the roof, bury four cart-horses a week and clothe most of the kids. How the hell can those at the gas company sleep at night, knowing we’re all here in our one-up-one downs, freezing our over-used tits off? I tell you, it’s right grim up north.”

Peter Piper, a pickled pepper picker from Pickering, told us, “It’s just not fair. We’re the customers, lining their pockets we are. And what do we get in return? Higher bills and less heat. What next? It’s enough to make you go back to setting fire to the kids just to keep warm. Eeee, them were the days.”

Marvin Melting, a representative from British Gas read this statement to the gathered press corps outside the company’s headquarters recently. “We at British Gas sympathise with those who feel they pay too much for their household gas. The rise in prices last year was a fair and true reflection of the increase in the price of gas in today’s market. Have you ever tried to haggle with a gas monster in the North Sea? They’re nasty creatures at the best of times but you just try asking for a bulk discount. People, it’s not pretty. Please believe us when we say that the price people are currently paying is the best possible in the present climate. As for the profits, we will be investing them into researching and developing new energy sources. Indeed, we have just spent over ten million pounds on flying all our executives to Hawaii to look into the renewable energy initiatives being used on the golf courses out there.”

As more pensioners look set for another winter of cowering under seventeen blankets while burning their war medals to keep warm, it seems the energy suppliers are deaf to all the pleas for concessions. The government is currently considering bringing ‘Project Fatburn’ into effect, which allegedly involves setting fire to John Prescott in order to keep everyone north of Preston warm for up to three months.  NJ