Socialism & Energy Prices

So Ed Miliband has confirmed that he does want a return to
socialism.

He intends on bringing in price controls for energy bills,
to freeze prices for the first 20 months of a Labour re-election.

This is not very clever, except in terms of populist
politics in which case it is very clever. 
Let me explain both parts.

Overall consumers are very unlikely to notice any difference
to their total energy bills from now to 2020 whatever government is in charge
and whatever policy they may or may not threaten/implement.  If this policy of price controls is
implemented (or it looks guaranteed that Labour will win in 2015) then energy companies will simply raise prices by 20% instead of
the usual 10% prior to the winter of 2014.

Of course this is very clever as all of a sudden, 6 months
before the election Labour will be able to spin about how much energy prices
have risen under the Tories and how they are going to put a stop to this.  Except hopefully the public are not dumb
enough to fall for Labour deceit once again.

By the way gas bills more than doubled the last time Labour
were in charge.

May I also take the time to point out the chronic lack of
investment in power generation in the UK between 1997 and 2010, and the agreement
to costly carbon-reducing EU targets. 
This and the fact that we are a significant gas importer are why bills
have consistently gone up.

There are ways to reduce your energy bills both in the
short-term and medium term.

In the short-term, simply use less energy.

In the medium term, if we want energy prices to fall, then
we need sources of cheap energy.  Coal is
cheap yet we have/are shutting all our coal plants to meet emissions targets.  Fracking has seen consumer gas prices plummet
in America.

But if you really want socialism, as this is what Red Ed is
promising, along with alluding to land grabs from companies refusing to build
houses whilst land prices are increasing (albeit Boris did allude to something
similar in London) then take a good look at Venezuela and the Chavista
revolution, and how such socialist policies in an oil-rich company have crippled the economy and had knock-on effect to the population.

What has happened to their energy supplies?  And food supplies?

Don’t fall for socialism. 
It doesn’t work.

Oh one last thing. 
Who brought in the Climate Change legislation that gave us the EU policy
to push up the price of energy?