Energy Bosses Decide Against Becoming Fabulously Wealthy At Slightly Slower Rate Suggested By Regulator

The UK's energy suppliers have donated a rope to Ofgem and a helpful diagram showing them how to piss up it, in response to the market regulator's polite request asking them if it wouldn't be too much trouble for them to take a few moments to briefly consider the remote possibility of maybe passing a tiny little fraction of the huge drop in wholesale energy prices on to their increasingly impoverished customers, if they wouldn't mind, that is.

EDF Energy executives on a fact-finding trip to the Frankfurt Motor Messe took time out from drooling over their newly-ordered Lamborghini Polygón coupés to say: "Nom d'un nom! We would of course be 'appy to reduce tareefs eef, 'ow you say, market conditions allow. Malheureusement, 'owevair, zees beautiful car she cost 1.1 million euros. Lamborghini, zey are only making fifteen of zem and we need zem all, or else zose cons from E.On will be flaunting zem all around zer glorious Fatherland - and our valued victims en Angleterre will surely agree zat zis cannot be allowed to 'appen, n'est-ce pas?"

Meanwhile, E.On directors were too busy slavering at the new Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Gullwing to care what their French counterparts were saying. One of them, however, pointed reporters in the direction of the revoltingly ugly Peugeot iOn electric car, in the hope that any remaining UK customers still able to scrape together the money for a new car after settling their energy bills would buy one and plug it into the mains for several hours a day.

British Gas, whose senior management had just signed contracts for the first McLaren MP4-12C supercars off the production line, shook their heads sadly as they warned that prices were likely to remain at historically high levels because the soaring cost of paperclips meant that their penurious customers may well find more price hikes just around the corner, despite some slight reduction in the wholesale costs that British Gas pays to its sister companies for electricity and gas.

"Well, there you are - we asked. Job done for another year," smiled Ofgem chiefs apologetically, squeezing a few tears out of their pet crocodile before wandering off to see if they could put their names down for any remaining luxury dream cars not yet snapped up by energy bosses.