YOU reporting BP profits tripling for the second quarter, the government raking in enormous increases in taxes from energy (reason for saying no to Scotland’s independence referendum right there) and BP shareholders reaping a 10% increase in dividends. Aren’t we being ripped off? (The National August 2.)

So, when Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng tells us the taxpayers’ cash being doled out to consumers to help mitigate the extortionate prices charged in our energy bills “would go some way to helping people”, does he really think our heads are zipped up the back like the muppets he seems to take us for? (Winter energy help to be paid out across six months, July 30.)

Isn’t the help proffered just a sticking plaster to cover a profusely bleeding gaping wound?

Energy prices are now disconnected from production cost, the difference the bloated profits energy suppliers are creaming off; Kwarteng’s Tory government allowing them to.

READ MORE: Ofgem says energy price cap will be updated quarterly to 'provide market stability'

Privatisation was supposed to improve service and reduce consumer prices. Under “Sid’s” con (remember him?), somehow shareholders would get investment return while consumers would also get a better deal. Isn’t the reality woefully different? Shareholders get the dividend, where’s our price benefit in this scam?

Tory government has turned Brexit Britain into a treasure island for the wealthy, where unfettered control of privatised utilities like the energy companies created a cartel that’s seized the opportunity afforded to rack up prices, our pips now squeaking like an alley cat on heat.

Since the first 15% hike, prices have skyrocketed further and faster, more so now the excuse of Russia restricting gas and the mystical “free energy market” is deemed responsible, but not suppliers’ greed, who’ve taken our locally produced electricity, and our own North Sea gas, and used the excuse of “market forces” to fleece us to fill their profit coffers.

It is record profits for them, but a choice between heating and eating for us; their greed and incompetence acceptable to them and our Tory government.

As with in-work benefits which replace fair and realistic wages that should be paid from companies’ profits, Kwarteng and his Tory cronies’ latest “support” wheeze is no more than a government scam, a trick to feed the profits of energy companies effectively stealing from us. Wouldn’t Kwarteng and his cronies be just as well giving taxpayers’ money directly to the companies to bolster their profits, contributions to the Tory party deducted at source?

In France’s nationalised energy market, their current increase pales into insignificance compared with ours. Indeed, EDF trading in our market will repatriate excess profits made here to benefit French consumers and lower and/or constrain their tariff increases – our largesse another “unintended” Brexit consequence serious political observers knew all along was bound to happen.

Aren’t our “family silver” utility service sectors privatised by Thatcher, and those sycophantically following her rip off dogma and determined to perpetuate and expand it, now operating like a de facto taxation network scam creaming off private profit?

Isn’t it disgusting and intolerable that the poor and working poor are forced into financial hardship, and have to choose between eating and heating while being coerced into funding excess profits to the wealthy who are perpetrating this fraud on us while our Tory government, who should be protecting us from the ravages of unfettered commercial greed, has abandoned us to suffer the harsh financial punishment being meted out to us by greedy utility service companies selling our energy assets back to us?

And why do we even have the illusion of an energy cap? What’s its purpose if not to control a market that is out of control?

READ MORE: Ofgem: 'Negligent' energy regulator let bosses raise bills, MPs say

Shouldn’t government enforce a realistic cap to rein in energy suppliers’ greed, and claw back every penny of excess profit for as long as it takes until the market is restrained to sensible pricing and realistic profits?

This is necessary because companies allowed to get away with their “usury” will not act responsibly on their own volition.

Wasn’t “Sid” really just a latter day Dick Turpin emboldened to remove his mask by Thatcher’s government promoting the interest of their commercial Tory party donors and their donations that are its reward for services rendered?

Only independence can sort this!

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh