I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where does the 100 billion extra we would all pay in bills disappear to?
Much of it overseas, including to Putins mates. Presumably worsening our trade balance too.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we would all pay in bills disappear to?
No one has yet paid those bills. They are forecasts. It the price continues to fall then maybe no-one needs to pay such bills.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
The ongoing crisis at Zap plant continues to get an undersized amount of news coverage in this country.
Ukraine seems to have made some fairly stunning progress in the last 24 hours. The prospect arises of them opening up a second kill zone south of Kharkiv, similar to the one between Kherson and the Dnipro. There’s a plausible route to Russia facing a collapse in both the south and around Izyum simultaneously.
And so we see the increased pressure at the Zap plant! Biden dismisses out of hand with a cheerful smile Ukraine’s desire for Russia to be labelled a state sponsor of terrorism. Ukraine has dismissed the US request to enable a managed shutdown of the plant, which would leave two Ukrainian regions without power. And Russia continues to play its games there.
As far as I see, it’s Russia’s last card. The gas card has been played and it’s not going to achieve much. Are they desperate enough to play the zap card? What would the American response be?
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
I believe that the German windfall tax announced the other day will include renewable energy companies for that very reason.
As @LostPassword explained the other day (and @rcs1000 had already mentioned), most (all?) renewables suppliers are actually getting the agreed strike price for their energy - the difference between high power bills, and the agreed strike price, is clawed back by HMG. This is because usually the Government subsidises these providers if the wholesale energy cost is below their agreed strike price, but in circumstances where this is reversed, the money flows the other way.
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
Ukrainian armed forces seem to be making progress on two fronts today. Russian social media is bewildered and even more dementedly angry than usual. With the Chechen tyrant, Kadyrov apparently taking a back seat, another area comes into focus: a friend of mine in Minsk says that tensions have sharply increased in Belarus. For the moment, at least, Russia seems firmly on the back foot.
Belarus is an interesting one. Only a couple of year back they had massive pro democracy demonstrations. How long that stays under cover is something I wonder about. With the Russian army in retreat might be just such a time.
I'm sure a lot of them consider Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya a President in exile.
Actually, the longest-serving Government-in-Exile are the Belarusian Democratic Republic, since 1919:
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
In general echo your sentiments, including that others may and will feel differently, and most of us will feel conflicted. Even if we are NOT Scottish Nationalists!
BTW (also FYI if not WTF) the classic WWI poem of the poppy is itself of two minds methinks on this point:
IN FLANDERS FIELDS John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
Ukrainian armed forces seem to be making progress on two fronts today. Russian social media is bewildered and even more dementedly angry than usual. With the Chechen tyrant, Kadyrov apparently taking a back seat, another area comes into focus: a friend of mine in Minsk says that tensions have sharply increased in Belarus. For the moment, at least, Russia seems firmly on the back foot.
Belarus is an interesting one. Only a couple of year back they had massive pro democracy demonstrations. How long that stays under cover is something I wonder about. With the Russian army in retreat might be just such a time.
I'm sure a lot of them consider Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya a President in exile.
Actually, the longest-serving Government-in-Exile are the Belarusian Democratic Republic, since 1919:
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
In general echo your sentiments, including that others may and will feel differently, and most of us will feel conflicted. Even if we are NOT Scottish Nationalists!
BTW (also FYI if not WTF) the classic WWI poem of the poppy is itself of two minds methinks on this point:
IN FLANDERS FIELDS John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
You should ask where the extra money you are paying is going and why they can’t pay a decent chunk of it back. I’ll do the same. We all can.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
Maybe, but he was still the Unionist aka Tory MP for Peebles and South Mid-Lothian. (Though Donaldson wasn't a MP - sorry for slip.)
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
People really don't have the first clue
I think we can shorten it to about that. I'm constantly being surprised by how little I know about so many things.
That's why we jump at the chance to lecture on the things we do know! And get maddened when people who do not insist they do, and might fool others who do not.
Will there be a windfall subsidy when prices eventually drop?
There already is, in that we have agreed minimum prices, and have rescued failing companies. Bail-outs aren't just for bankers.
Losing all your investment is not in fact a good outcome, and it's unlikely to happen to shareholders in the companies that will pay most of the tax. What I mean is that, if prices doubling triggers cry for a windfall tax, will a reversion to normal trigger the windfall giveaway?
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
Tidal is more reliable. Pity the Welsh barrage project was cancelled by the Treasury. A certain Ms Truss was Chief Secretary at the time I think.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
You should ask where the extra money you are paying is going and why they can’t pay a decent chunk of it back. I’ll do the same. We all can.
Starmer has already stated 8 billion can be raised in a windfall tax but that has already been spent
This is additional to the billions they already are paying in tax
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
I’m in my mid 30s and I just about remember visiting my Great Grandmother and hating being sent out of the sitting room to fetch some toys because she didn’t have central heating and it was the only room in the house that wasn’t ice cold. She lived to a ripe old age but I wouldn’t willingly go back to that feeling.
Remember getting chilblains? Very irritating feeling.
Thank christ (well not personally) for the simple feelings of never really being very cold or hungry.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
We have a wood burning stove. But we took it out because my wife can't really breathe when it's on. Which is quite a drawback. It's now sat in the shed and I dread the day I have to move it again because it is possibly the heaviest thing I own which is not a car nor a building.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
You should ask where the extra money you are paying is going and why they can’t pay a decent chunk of it back. I’ll do the same. We all can.
Starmer has already stated 8 billion can be raised in a windfall tax but that has already been spent
This is additional to the billions they already are paying in tax
Are you not at all curious what is happening to the extra no you are paying and why it cant be paid back?
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
Edit: written May 1915 on checking further.
That would be the Regulars, Territorials and "Kitchener Needs You" volunteers who had done the fighting Not the mass conscript armies, not yet: that was later in 1916 onwards.
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
I think the excessive mawkishness of poppyism with its depictions of soldiers as sacrificial victims is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the immediate aftermath of 1918 remembrance services were more about valour and bravery, and could be quite jingoistic.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
In general echo your sentiments, including that others may and will feel differently, and most of us will feel conflicted. Even if we are NOT Scottish Nationalists!
BTW (also FYI if not WTF) the classic WWI poem of the poppy is itself of two minds methinks on this point:
IN FLANDERS FIELDS John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
As I was saying...
Just saw your comment! And as with Lucky generally share your view.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I don't think there's really any pressure on her to carry on, or at least I hope not. It's sad enough with those US Supreme Court Justices desperately trying not to die when the wrong person is in office. I know some people are nervy about Charles taking over the reins during the reign, but it's not a serious worry.
After 70+ years of doing it, and without her life partner by her side, and her religiosity, I assume she really does just want to do as much as she still can officially. But she clearly cannot, at least physically.
David Herdson felt there were preparations for this sort of situation years ago
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
I believe that the German windfall tax announced the other day will include renewable energy companies for that very reason.
As @LostPassword explained the other day (and @rcs1000 had already mentioned), most (all?) renewables suppliers are actually getting the agreed strike price for their energy - the difference between high power bills, and the agreed strike price, is clawed back by HMG. This is because usually the Government subsidises these providers if the wholesale energy cost is below their agreed strike price, but in circumstances where this is reversed, the money flows the other way.
Ah - so HMG is getting back the excess profits of the renewable suppliers? OK. We need a blackboard and a wet towel showing where these excess profits are going, It seems to me that only a small proportion is going to buying gas on the open market.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
You should ask where the extra money you are paying is going and why they can’t pay a decent chunk of it back. I’ll do the same. We all can.
Starmer has already stated 8 billion can be raised in a windfall tax but that has already been spent
This is additional to the billions they already are paying in tax
Are you not at all curious what is happening to the extra no you are paying and why it cant be paid back?
I and others have answered your question to be fair
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
Yeah. We've sort of got a Regency but aren't saying it. And are pretending we haven't. Which is the worst fudge of all.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I agree. One would have hoped she could have “done” all of this off camera (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and we could have all suspended our disbelief.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
Maybe, but he was still the Unionist aka Tory MP for Peebles and South Mid-Lothian. (Though Donaldson wasn't a MP - sorry for slip.)
“Although the Germans are appalling enough, they cannot win, but the British and French bourgeoisie can and they are a far greater enemy. If the Germans win they could not hold their gain for long, but if the French and British win it will be infinitely more difficult to get rid of them".
- Hugh MacDiarmaid, poet and founder of the National Party of Scotland, June 1940
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
I think the excessive mawkishness of poppyism with its depictions of soldiers as sacrificial victims is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the immediate aftermath of 1918 remembrance services were more about valour and bravery, and could be quite jingoistic.
I think we're still on the line of 'Ok, it's a bit much but each to their own so stop whinging about seeing poppies' to 'Enough with the damn poppies already'.
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
Edit: written May 1915 on checking further.
Died Jan 1918 of pneumonia in Boulogne. There was me stupidly half-thinking he must have died in 1915 because that's what the poem says.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
I’m in my mid 30s and I just about remember visiting my Great Grandmother and hating being sent out of the sitting room to fetch some toys because she didn’t have central heating and it was the only room in the house that wasn’t ice cold. She lived to a ripe old age but I wouldn’t willingly go back to that feeling.
We hardly have the heating on in winter. Just a few hours in the morning and evening if it's really cold. I don't know why some people like it to be so hot in their homes.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
Careful, you’ll be put on a little list.
Don’t tell him, Pike.
I was annoyed when the Commerative Airforce stopped staging the re-enactments of the Hiroshima bombing, using their B-29.
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
I think the excessive mawkishness of poppyism with its depictions of soldiers as sacrificial victims is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the immediate aftermath of 1918 remembrance services were more about valour and bravery, and could be quite jingoistic.
The poets, the ones that survived anyway, seemed to have set their faces against the jingoism though.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
You should ask where the extra money you are paying is going and why they can’t pay a decent chunk of it back. I’ll do the same. We all can.
Starmer has already stated 8 billion can be raised in a windfall tax but that has already been spent
This is additional to the billions they already are paying in tax
Are you not at all curious what is happening to the extra no you are paying and why it cant be paid back?
I and others have answered your question to be fair
No you haven’t. Seriously. You’re not at all curious. In Norway the excess will go into their sovereign wealth fund. Instead the British state has to borrow more.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
Tidal is more reliable. Pity the Welsh barrage project was cancelled by the Treasury. A certain Ms Truss was Chief Secretary at the time I think.
I have a recollection that Greg Wallace was the Minister responsible no?
But to be frank, the Civil Service seems to have successive Governments thoroughly house-trained on this stuff. Did you see my post that they'd taken it upon themselves to delay a decision on the coking coal mine till the Winter? The information is all there, it's a straightforward Ministerial decision, and yet the Civil Service has grandly shelved it because they are 'not ready to present their advice'.
So the Tory position, as advocated on this thread, is that the £8 billion raised by a windfall tax on the upstream producers is only a fraction of what is needed to keep bills down, so let's not bother.
Well my income tax won't pay for 40 new hospitals, so let's not bother with that either.
BTW, my suggestion for a targeted approach is to let everyone have the first £1000 worth of gas and leccy for free, then pay the new rate on everything in excess of that.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
Maybe, but he was still the Unionist aka Tory MP for Peebles and South Mid-Lothian. (Though Donaldson wasn't a MP - sorry for slip.)
“Although the Germans are appalling enough, they cannot win, but the British and French bourgeoisie can and they are a far greater enemy. If the Germans win they could not hold their gain for long, but if the French and British win it will be infinitely more difficult to get rid of them".
- Hugh MacDiarmaid, poet and founder of the National Party of Scotland, June 1940
He wasn't in the SNP then! They threw him out for being a communist. And at that time ...
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
Tidal is more reliable. Pity the Welsh barrage project was cancelled by the Treasury. A certain Ms Truss was Chief Secretary at the time I think.
I have a recollection that Greg Wallace was the Minister responsible no?
But to be frank, the Civil Service seems to have successive Governments thoroughly house-trained on this stuff. Did you see my post that they'd taken it upon themselves to delay a decision on the coking coal mine till the Winter? The information is all there, it's a straightforward Ministerial decision, and yet the Civil Service has grandly shelved it because they are 'not ready to present their advice'.
Maybe ministerial priorities require allocation of resources into other projects?
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I noticed that the back of her hand was very bruised - purple- when she greeted Liz Truss. A cannula? It seems cruel, though it is in her own hands to retire. I wonder why she doesn't.
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
I think the excessive mawkishness of poppyism with its depictions of soldiers as sacrificial victims is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the immediate aftermath of 1918 remembrance services were more about valour and bravery, and could be quite jingoistic.
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? — Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.
The latest Culture Secretary looks like another BBC hater . The Tories seem determined to destroy the organization and I hope this becomes an election issue . They have become so arrogant that they think they can do anything , perhaps they need to be reminded that the voter group who would be most appalled if the BBC ceases to exist as we know it is where they get their strongest support .
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
Careful, you’ll be put on a little list.
Don’t tell him, Pike.
I was annoyed when the Commerative Airforce stopped staging the re-enactments of the Hiroshima bombing, using their B-29.
Can't replace the mainspar on a B-29, or even remove it, IIRC. So that sort of manoeuvre is not great practice in a preserved aircraft.
Fascinating report on World Tonight of the discovery of a skeleton which had a successful foot amputation 30 000 years ago in Indonesia. They lived for nine more years. Pushes back the origins of surgery by thousands of years.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
Tidal is more reliable. Pity the Welsh barrage project was cancelled by the Treasury. A certain Ms Truss was Chief Secretary at the time I think.
I have a recollection that Greg Wallace was the Minister responsible no?
But to be frank, the Civil Service seems to have successive Governments thoroughly house-trained on this stuff. Did you see my post that they'd taken it upon themselves to delay a decision on the coking coal mine till the Winter? The information is all there, it's a straightforward Ministerial decision, and yet the Civil Service has grandly shelved it because they are 'not ready to present their advice'.
Maybe ministerial priorities require allocation of resources into other projects?
What resources? A commercial company wants permission to do it. Truss should announce tomorrow it's going ahead.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I noticed that the back of her hand was very bruised - purple- when she greeted Liz Truss. A cannula? It seems cruel, though it is in her own hands to retire. I wonder why she doesn't.
Duty to her last breath. It’s who she is. Even that can be managed surely in a way that avoids the prurience that follows ‘HM doesn’t attend X’ stories. I know it matters hugely in the British constitution what she does, but given the mountain of fudge in that constitution there is surely a way not to put a 96 year old through the ringer or create stories like this. Just say from here in HM and Charles will share the work and leave it at that.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
You should ask where the extra money you are paying is going and why they can’t pay a decent chunk of it back. I’ll do the same. We all can.
Starmer has already stated 8 billion can be raised in a windfall tax but that has already been spent
This is additional to the billions they already are paying in tax
Are you not at all curious what is happening to the extra no you are paying and why it cant be paid back?
I and others have answered your question to be fair
No you haven’t. Seriously. You’re not at all curious. In Norway the excess will go into their sovereign wealth fund. Instead the British state has to borrow more.
Because Norway has less than 1/10th of our population, that's why. The Norwegians are net exporters, we are net importers.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
Tidal is more reliable. Pity the Welsh barrage project was cancelled by the Treasury. A certain Ms Truss was Chief Secretary at the time I think.
I have a recollection that Greg Wallace was the Minister responsible no?
But to be frank, the Civil Service seems to have successive Governments thoroughly house-trained on this stuff. Did you see my post that they'd taken it upon themselves to delay a decision on the coking coal mine till the Winter? The information is all there, it's a straightforward Ministerial decision, and yet the Civil Service has grandly shelved it because they are 'not ready to present their advice'.
Maybe ministerial priorities require allocation of resources into other projects?
What resources? A commercial company wants permission to do it. Truss should announce tomorrow it's going ahead.
I simply find it hard to believe ministers who want to approve projects are unable to get things moving if they want. Some large applications take months or even years waiting for a minister to decide to call things in for example, and that's usually politically driven (since if they simply did not it would return to the locality who made the decision initially), so I don't think massive delays are entirely down to the civil service but lack of ministerial will playing a part.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
Tidal is more reliable. Pity the Welsh barrage project was cancelled by the Treasury. A certain Ms Truss was Chief Secretary at the time I think.
I have a recollection that Greg Wallace was the Minister responsible no?
But to be frank, the Civil Service seems to have successive Governments thoroughly house-trained on this stuff. Did you see my post that they'd taken it upon themselves to delay a decision on the coking coal mine till the Winter? The information is all there, it's a straightforward Ministerial decision, and yet the Civil Service has grandly shelved it because they are 'not ready to present their advice'.
Maybe ministerial priorities require allocation of resources into other projects?
What resources? A commercial company wants permission to do it. Truss should announce tomorrow it's going ahead.
Truss is emphasising that local communities should dictate whether fracking, onshore wind, housebuilding, farting, etc, etc. take place at all. She's hardly likely to start ordering owt at all.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
UK coal consumption in 2001 was 64 million tonnes. In 2021, because of the growth in wind power, it had declined to 7 million tonnes.
Wind pushed coal out of the grid, and if we build more of it then we can push gas out of the grid too.
Edit: In terms of electricity production the decline was even more pronounced, from 51 to 3 million tonnes.
So the Tory position, as advocated on this thread, is that the £8 billion raised by a windfall tax on the upstream producers is only a fraction of what is needed to keep bills down, so let's not bother.
Well my income tax won't pay for 40 new hospitals, so let's not bother with that either.
BTW, my suggestion for a targeted approach is to let everyone have the first £1000 worth of gas and leccy for free, then pay the new rate on everything in excess of that.
The windfall tax has already been paid into the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
It needs pointing out though that in the scheme of things it does not raise substantial sums and those relying on it doing so are not being straight with the public and need to expand on how they would fund the £92 billion or so shortfall
And re your last sentence you do know the cap is likely to be 6,000 in April
The latest Culture Secretary looks like another BBC hater . The Tories seem determined to destroy the organization and I hope this becomes an election issue . They have become so arrogant that they think they can do anything , perhaps they need to be reminded that the voter group who would be most appalled if the BBC ceases to exist as we know it is where they get their strongest support .
Honestly had to readjust halway through that post when I realised "they are so arrogant they think they can do anything" was meant to be about the government ratherthan the BBC. Not least because after 12 years of Conservative PMs we are still living in a culture dominated by the left. If the government thinks it can do anything it doesn't appear to be trying to follow up on its ability.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Who do you think gets those profits, pray? Do you imagine it is some greedy fat bloke with a bald head and a white cat on his lap? No, it is mainly pension funds. In the real world not inhabited by those who don't have to not understand business, profits are taken when margins change. No company would say, "oh no, we can't possibly make any more money, please take it back" anymore than those in the public sector fret about how much more pension they get than everyone else. "Oh, no I can't possibly have more pension", says Dr. Smith, "that really wouldn't be fair".
These companies were hugely profitable before gas prices went up. They and the pension funds will be fine if they give me some of my extra 200 quid a month back.
I would like some of my money back from the money that the last Labour government unnecessarily splurged on public sector pensions, particularly GPs, but it's not going to happen.
If you don’t the taxpayer footing the bill for things you must really hate the Truss plan. Not only will the taxpayer foot the bill our kids will be paying the interest.
Even with Strarmer windfall tax he would still need 100 billion plus so borrowing is inevitable
So where is the 100 billion extra we all pay in bills disappearing to?
I think you have been informed by posters on here about the windfall tax and the amount it would return including the amount Starmer would hope to raise
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
You should ask where the extra money you are paying is going and why they can’t pay a decent chunk of it back. I’ll do the same. We all can.
Starmer has already stated 8 billion can be raised in a windfall tax but that has already been spent
This is additional to the billions they already are paying in tax
Are you not at all curious what is happening to the extra no you are paying and why it cant be paid back?
I and others have answered your question to be fair
No you haven’t. Seriously. You’re not at all curious. In Norway the excess will go into their sovereign wealth fund. Instead the British state has to borrow more.
Because Norway has less than 1/10th of our population, that's why. The Norwegians are net exporters, we are net importers.
We get the minimum benefit from the extra profits to offset the costs. That’s weird. Our national resources should offer us some protection. They don’t. That’s weird.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
Maybe, but he was still the Unionist aka Tory MP for Peebles and South Mid-Lothian. (Though Donaldson wasn't a MP - sorry for slip.)
“Although the Germans are appalling enough, they cannot win, but the British and French bourgeoisie can and they are a far greater enemy. If the Germans win they could not hold their gain for long, but if the French and British win it will be infinitely more difficult to get rid of them".
- Hugh MacDiarmaid, poet and founder of the National Party of Scotland, June 1940
Never mind that, read this
The Man In The Moon
The moonbeams kelter i the lift, An Earth, the bare auld stane, Glitters aneath the seas o Space, White as a mammoth's bane.
An, lifted owre the gowden wave, Peers a dumfoun'ered Thocht, Wi keethin sicht o a' there is, An bodily sicht o nocht.
O/T it's great to see the Russian frontline collapsing in Ukraine.
It's not wise to make predictions about wars but hopefully this might persuade the doubters that Russia can actually lose this thing.
It's a bit daft not to send weapons now because you are scared Russia will cut off the gas.
Had the west had slightly more courage back in March/April when making decisions to supply kit to Ukraine, it’s not inconceivable the invasion could have been defeated by now.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
Careful, you’ll be put on a little list.
Don’t tell him, Pike.
I was annoyed when the Commerative Airforce stopped staging the re-enactments of the Hiroshima bombing, using their B-29.
Can't replace the mainspar on a B-29, or even remove it, IIRC. So that sort of manoeuvre is not great practice in a preserved aircraft.
They weren't actually dropping Mk.1 - I think the simulated item weighed a lot less than 4.4 tons.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
Does this count as the first verified sighting of 2022 poppywankerism?
#verynormalcountry
Sorry to piss on your parade but perhaps you should find out some facts before jumping in.
The monument, which will go up beside the A46 between Newark and Lincoln - if they can raise the last £180,000 they need to finish it - will not have poppies dropping out of the bottom of it. That picture was done as a mock up by a private individual as a suggestion to the scheme about how it could look on Remembrance Day anniversaries if they thought it a good idea. The monument itself will be the Lancaster on its own supported on a steel structure.
I know this because I was one of the archaeologists doing the excavations in advance of construction (there is an Iron Age pit alignment running across the site) and have helped with fund raising for the project.
Who’s particular parade are you pissing on? If someone mocks up a version with a Lancaster dropping poppies from its bomb bays and it pops up on Facebook from something called ‘British Updates’, feel free to argue that it’s not a prima facie case of poppy wankersism.
Anyway, Nige thinks that mock up looks stunning, perhaps it’s at him you should be directing your inchoate outrage.
It is a fail on the lines of the alleged Japanese Christmas lights display of a huge Santa nailed to a cross. Same mythos, incompatible elements of it.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
It’s definitely not a poem I know by heart but I had a vague memory that it had a non pacifist tinge to it. The difference between a poem written at the end of 1915 and the end of 1918 I guess.
I think the excessive mawkishness of poppyism with its depictions of soldiers as sacrificial victims is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the immediate aftermath of 1918 remembrance services were more about valour and bravery, and could be quite jingoistic.
The poets, the ones that survived anyway, seemed to have set their faces against the jingoism though.
There's some very mixed imagery in the Great War memorials - St George, sometimes with an actual (presumably German) dragon was popular. Some are very much the brave soldier answering the call of King and Emperor. But others were much more about sacrifice and mourning, rifles reversed, etc. And others were functional (libraries, community halls, etc.). Andf some just baffle. The arguments at the time make those over the Maggie Hambling statue of Ms Wollstonecraft a squabble in a kindergarten by comparison.
Just a quarter of voters believe Liz Truss is the best prime minister, a poll for The Times finds, with Labour maintaining a 15 point lead over the Tories.
The YouGov poll suggests the new prime minister is yet to enjoy a bounce with only 23 per cent of voters thinking she will do a better job than her predecessor, Boris Johnson...
...The YouGov poll found that 25 per cent of the public thought she would make the best prime minister compared with 32 per cent for Starmer, with 40 per cent of voters unsure.
Compared with Boris Johnson, 23 per cent expect Truss to be better, 23 per cent worse and 40 per cent much the same.
Asked which of a list of words people associated most with her, “Out of touch” was top on 33 per cent and “incompetent” followed on 22 per cent.
The highest ranking positive terms were “capable” and “enthusiastic” on 11 per cent. Ten per cent of voters described her as “weird”...
With Truss’s energy policy yet to be formally announced, only 18 per cent think she has the right policy to bring down bills compared with 38 per cent who think she doesn’t, and 44 per cent undecided.
On inflation, 14 per cent think she has the right policies to bring prices under control, 41 per cent says she doesn’t and 45 per cent are undecided.
So the Tory position, as advocated on this thread, is that the £8 billion raised by a windfall tax on the upstream producers is only a fraction of what is needed to keep bills down, so let's not bother.
Well my income tax won't pay for 40 new hospitals, so let's not bother with that either.
BTW, my suggestion for a targeted approach is to let everyone have the first £1000 worth of gas and leccy for free, then pay the new rate on everything in excess of that.
The windfall tax has already been paid into the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
It needs pointing out though that in the scheme of things it does not raise substantial sums and those relying on it doing so are not being straight with the public and need to expand on how they would fund the £92 billion or so shortfall
And re your last sentence you do know the cap is likely to be 6,000 in April
5he first tranche of the windfall tax, yes. But they're still making windfall profits. So the tax should levied again.
But because it was a Sunak tax, suddenly it is unimaginable to the Dizzy Lizzy pompom wavers.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I noticed that the back of her hand was very bruised - purple- when she greeted Liz Truss. A cannula? It seems cruel, though it is in her own hands to retire. I wonder why she doesn't.
Duty to her last breath. It’s who she is. Even that can be managed surely in a way that avoids the prurience that follows ‘HM doesn’t attend X’ stories. I know it matters hugely in the British constitution what she does, but given the mountain of fudge in that constitution there is surely a way not to put a 96 year old through the ringer or create stories like this. Just say from here in HM and Charles will share the work and leave it at that.
There's all sorts of provisions for regencies and stuff. I imagine, and hope, that this is being driven by her wishes. But I greatly fear she has invited her last PM to form a govt. Just delighted phatboi is out of the picture for the mourning.
So the Tory position, as advocated on this thread, is that the £8 billion raised by a windfall tax on the upstream producers is only a fraction of what is needed to keep bills down, so let's not bother.
Well my income tax won't pay for 40 new hospitals, so let's not bother with that either.
BTW, my suggestion for a targeted approach is to let everyone have the first £1000 worth of gas and leccy for free, then pay the new rate on everything in excess of that.
Either leave them be because random “windfall” taxes are bad policy (makes us a less safe bet for investment) or nationalise them, compensating their owners (and then subside the cost of heating for those on benefits). The real answer of course, is that we never should have privatised gas, electric, or water (water privatisation being more of a fiction and a concession arrangement anyway) in the first place.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
Maybe, but he was still the Unionist aka Tory MP for Peebles and South Mid-Lothian. (Though Donaldson wasn't a MP - sorry for slip.)
“Although the Germans are appalling enough, they cannot win, but the British and French bourgeoisie can and they are a far greater enemy. If the Germans win they could not hold their gain for long, but if the French and British win it will be infinitely more difficult to get rid of them".
- Hugh MacDiarmaid, poet and founder of the National Party of Scotland, June 1940
Never mind that, read this
The Man In The Moon
The moonbeams kelter i the lift, An Earth, the bare auld stane, Glitters aneath the seas o Space, White as a mammoth's bane.
An, lifted owre the gowden wave, Peers a dumfoun'ered Thocht, Wi keethin sicht o a' there is, An bodily sicht o nocht.
MacDiarmid btw
On a Raised Beach [extract]
All is lithogenesis — or lochia, Carpolite fruit of the forbidden tree, Stones blacker than any in the Caaba, Cream-coloured caen-stone, chatoyant pieces, Celadon and corbeau, bistre and beige, Glaucous, hoar, enfouldered, cyathiform, Making mere faculae of the sun and moon, I study you glout and gloss, but have No cadrans to adjust you with, and turn again From optik to haptik and like a blind man run My fingers over you, arris by arris, burr by burr, Slickensides, truité, rugas, foveoles, Bringing my aesthesis in vain to bear, An angle-titch to all your corrugations and coigns, Hatched foraminous cavo-rilievo of the world, Deictic, fiducial stones. Chiliad by chiliad What bricole piled you here, stupendous cairn
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
You're quite a poor debater. You did have to acknowledge previously that 'it isn't that simple', and here, you've just acknowledged it again. Indeed, you state that 'unprecedented amounts of electrical storage' will be a 'gamechanger', yet you've insisted up-post that reliability is a total non-issue. So why would the game need to be changed?
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I noticed that the back of her hand was very bruised - purple- when she greeted Liz Truss. A cannula? It seems cruel, though it is in her own hands to retire. I wonder why she doesn't.
She has dedicated her life to the job. This has either been a great sacrifice for her, compared to the live of quiet ease she might have lived, or a great privilege. Either way, why would she stop now?
If she only did it because she felt it was her duty to, then it would make all the years of duty and sacrifice unnecessary were she to walk away from that duty now. She could have chosen to walk away from the duty when her husband was still alive and they could have enjoyed life together a bit more.
Ultimately the energy price cap freeze is the only answer. And most of it will have to be borrowed. We can argue at the margins. However. I'm more concerned by the lack of any proposed action to increase supply. (No solar farms, no tidal, no onshore wind. New nuclear and drilling are years and years away). Nor, seemingly, anything at all to encourage a reduction in demand, other than price. A public information drive, plus an order to turn down heating and unnecessary lighting on public buildings would seem to be easy wins here. Blackpool Illuminations is full steam ahead.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
I noticed that the back of her hand was very bruised - purple- when she greeted Liz Truss. A cannula? It seems cruel, though it is in her own hands to retire. I wonder why she doesn't.
What work has she done in the past year other than take a weekly phone call from Boris Johnson and get visited by him and Liz Truss for formalities yesterday? (Edit: maybe she takes calls from the Lord President of the Council too. But she doesn't prance about handwaving any more.)
She isn't even mentioned on the Court Circular nowadays.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
Surely it is time for a Regency. It is not abdication so she doesn't break her oath but it gives her some well-earned rest. She is clearly not up to it and it is cruel to expect her to carry on.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
It will not even raise 8 billion as the windfall tax has already been used by Sunak in the 37 billion including the £400 October grant
Also where has 200 billion borrowing come from paying it back v the bills which has been ruled out
I expect tomorrow business will receive similar support but directed at small businesses with different schemes for large companies, whose shareholders will be required to take the hit before intervention
It is true the public want a windfall tax but Truss needs to stick to her guns as the windfall tax is a political ruse which raises very little compared to the message it sends to these companies that we need their investments in billions into the North Sea
I thought Truss response to Blackford was excellent saying he wants a windfall tax on profits from the companies he wants to stop producing oil and gas in the North Sea
But Woolie, Big G my debating society friends, you have to ask why previous Tory governments have used windfall taxes. Including Lady Thatchers. In 1981 Thatcher’s chancellor Howe accused high street banks of escaping a recession so he took equivalent to around a fifth of their profits from those 12 months of hardship for families. 1982 the Thatcher government did the same when when oil prices soared, and imposed a windfall tax. North Sea oil firms argued extra taxes would limit investment, but the industry flourished.
So like I said, why do you think the Thatcher government did this, was it just for a bit of money? Or was it important to them to position themselves as being on the side of working people of this country.
I’m not painting as standing beside Truss on this your politics is to the right of Margaret Thatcher, though some will put you on the spot with that. I think I am flagging up the difference of really rubbish politics from you and Truss, instead of what was very smart politics from Thatcher and her team. But this point sadly seems lost on you and many other Truss rampers. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately you have not explained how you would deal with mitigating peoples energy bills over the next 18 months and certainly have not provided an explanation of just how much windfall tax you would raise
To assist, and in Starmers own words, Labour would cap the rise until April at a cost of 29 billion made up of a 8 billion windfall tax, 14 billion by cancelling the £400 grant in October and 7 billion by lower inflation and borrowing costs
Now this is just until April when the cap is due to raise to £6,000 so to retain the cap where is the money coming from, as the windfall tax has already been used as has the 14 billion saving of the £400
The truth is Labour would have no choice but borrow
Not at all. The windfall profits relate directly to the the extra money we all pay.
They don't. At all.
Of course they do. Where does the extra 200 quid I pay each month go? It goes to the firm that tak s gas out of the North Sea. Since their costs haven’t gone up, it pure profit on top of the profits they already made. They don’t need it.
Or to companies from Norway or Qatar. Should we invade or just send a note asking nicely? We have already imposed a windfall tax on those companies we can get some back from.
We are currently exporting domestic gas because we lack storage. Tax that as well. By your argument a windfall tax pays for at least half the excess costs.
We import 6x what we export.
So your solution to us facing a shortfall in domestic energy is to deprive the profits of domestic energy generators while leaving us even more exposed to foreign energy market turmoil than we are already? 🤦♂️
These companies can afford to give me some of my money back. They are not hard up. They are hugely profitable without excess war profits. They should do their bit.
They will be doing so, there already exists Corporation Tax and other taxes to get taxes from profitable companies.
The issue we have is insufficient domestic energy has left us critically exposed to global market turmoil. Responding to that by suppressing further investment in domestic energy generation is cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
It's in poor taste to have the poppies dropping from an instrument of death mid-flight. I mean, the Lancaster bomber looks cool, and I love the floods of poppies installations we saw a few years back, but I don't think they really add to each other here.
The crews of bomber command made one of the biggest sacrifices of WW2. All weapons or military aircraft are "instruments of death", but hey, if you want to insult the memory of those who gave their lives that is up to you. Pathetic Scottish Nationalists probably hate it because the SNP were often Nazi sympathisers. Looking at that video I posted I imagine a very large number of them still are.
I don't believe that is what I've done. I am not disparaging the bravery and sacrifice of those crews just because I have failed to admire a piece of public art that has been erected in their name. The emblem of the poppy is used to remember the fallen of the world wars, but there's a dignified and quite important symbolical separation between the presence of the poppy and the heat of warfare. This feels inapposite. However, if others draw inspiration and comfort from it, that's fine.
I can't speak for SNP supporters because I am not one. Many would indeed reflexively dislike any commemoration of WW2, probably not because they are Nazi sympathisers, but because they're not comfortable with celebrating a period marked by national unity in the face of common challenges. However, I don't think criticism of this particular sculpture can be put down just to that.
I haven't watched the video btw, I'm not interested in seeing nasty Nats at play.
As for Nigel Foremain's assertions, consider those MPs:
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
By any yardstick, Ramsay was mad as a box of frogs.
Maybe, but he was still the Unionist aka Tory MP for Peebles and South Mid-Lothian. (Though Donaldson wasn't a MP - sorry for slip.)
“Although the Germans are appalling enough, they cannot win, but the British and French bourgeoisie can and they are a far greater enemy. If the Germans win they could not hold their gain for long, but if the French and British win it will be infinitely more difficult to get rid of them".
- Hugh MacDiarmaid, poet and founder of the National Party of Scotland, June 1940
Never mind that, read this
The Man In The Moon
The moonbeams kelter i the lift, An Earth, the bare auld stane, Glitters aneath the seas o Space, White as a mammoth's bane.
An, lifted owre the gowden wave, Peers a dumfoun'ered Thocht, Wi keethin sicht o a' there is, An bodily sicht o nocht.
MacDiarmid btw
On a Raised Beach [extract]
All is lithogenesis — or lochia, Carpolite fruit of the forbidden tree, Stones blacker than any in the Caaba, Cream-coloured caen-stone, chatoyant pieces, Celadon and corbeau, bistre and beige, Glaucous, hoar, enfouldered, cyathiform, Making mere faculae of the sun and moon, I study you glout and gloss, but have No cadrans to adjust you with, and turn again From optik to haptik and like a blind man run My fingers over you, arris by arris, burr by burr, Slickensides, truité, rugas, foveoles, Bringing my aesthesis in vain to bear, An angle-titch to all your corrugations and coigns, Hatched foraminous cavo-rilievo of the world, Deictic, fiducial stones. Chiliad by chiliad What bricole piled you here, stupendous cairn
Golly, not come across him in that mode before. A bit too G M Hopkins for me.
I haven't watched PMQs (even the snippets on the news). I suspect, as others have said, the initial civility won't last and we'll be back to the usual slanging match.
I'd have thought your first PMQs would be the easiest for any Prime Minister as you have the advantages of time and novelty. Starmer will no doubt have learned plenty from the initial skirmishes and we'll see how his approach varies from that he came to apply to Johnson in the coming weeks.
So, on to the great Energy Price Freeze - any hope I had the Truss administration might have been worth supporting is immediately blown apart by this piece of stupidity in extremis.
Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.
It is short-termist, a panicked solution predicated on 3-4 months of a zombie Government which did nothing and prepared for nothing. Ideologically, even a windfall tax on the energy companies isn't on the table so they will make grotesque profits and pay their CEOs grotesque salaries which will regularly be pointed out.
There's little or no incentive to use less gas or electricity - why bother? The Government's going to pay the bill - more accurately, our children and grandchildren will end up paying.
It's simple - there's no time or thought to see if those who can afford to pay the increased energy bills could actually do so - the billionaire in his mansion, the poor man at his gate - all will be treated the same. It's equality, Jim, but not as we know it.
To add to this legacy, we'll have Ben Wallace taking more money for Defence (you do know there's a war on?) and Truss angling for her tax cut. It's obvious the public sector is going to be looking at some very tough decisions this year complicated further by the cost of the changes to the social care legislation.
“Having read yesterday there was a notion of recouping some of the loan by defraying future price reductions it now seems Truss and Kwarteng haven't got the cojones to even do that. Instead, in pure Sunak style (the irony not lost on me), the whole lot (£100 billion, £200 billion, take your pick) is going to be met by borrowing so future generations will be paying for this nonsense which means they won't be able to do the things they want because they'll be paying billions in debt interest we will have passed on as our legacy.”
I think the irony is lost on you actually, you do need to watch PMQs.
The irony not just of a politician presiding over the biggest tax take since the war, who has been in government the last 10 years, ticking off the opposition for a windfall tax proposal, but her own solution to the crisis now means working family’s paying the £200B back in TAX and on BILLS for decades.
I was left open mouthed. The irony is just INSANE.
Yet everyone parrots, didn’t she do well, what a great day she had.
It was surreal. She was like some Spike Milligan sketch - Maggie Thatcher in a Dalek.
“I. Am. A. Dalek. Thatcher. You - will - be - disgraced.”
The alternative is a million freeze to death this winter? The ridiculous windfall tax extension will raise, according to Labour perhaps 8 billion quid. Enough for a couple hundred in handouts to each family or a monthish of cap freeze. The fact they are obsessed with it suggests they have nothing to offer as a solution to the massive shit we are in. Its a massive, massive distraction
Before central heating most people didn't freeze to death during the winter. How did they manage? Just curious.
Many had coal fires or electric bar fires, usually in one room.
There's something rather lovely about a coal fire. Can you put coal in a wood burning stove? Asking for a friend.
Anthracite only
A coal fire in one room, but it would heat the brickwork and lend heat to the whole house.
Requiring a lot of coal. And in a single-skinned house without central heating it was often necessary to have a fire in the fireplace to keep the walls dry.
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
Oh yes, I'm not claiming it was a great solution. Just that it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.
I grew up in a brick cottage with that arrangement. The "warming the rest of the house" bit was pretty theoretical.
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
This is absolute bullshit and I have not acknowledged it. There is no "problem" of unreliability, the energy we generate from wind is used as it stands. Yes there are extraordinarily rare times wind generators are paid not to generate energy, but that is always true for all forms of energy since energy demand peaks and troughs, and it is not a problem.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
Forgive my ignorance, here, but isn’t the *problem* that gas *solves,* intermittent supply, especially from renewables.
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Toilet trouble?
Boris Johnson and Liz Truss may be responsible for London Bridge falling down.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
It seems to me that the biggest windfall winners are the nuclear and renewable suppliers who are getting much higher electricity prices yet their cost base hasn't changed at all. Why are we focusing just on oil and gas producers?
The Ofgem price cap is designed to give the marginal energy supplier buying gas on the open market a 1.9% return. But that is only about 5-10% of UK energy supplies. (Gas is about 40% of the energy mix and only a sixth of it is LNG bought on the open market). So all the other electricity suppliers shelter under this high cap and make a fortune.
Surely it would be better to freeze prices and subsidise the purchase of gas on the open market - or don't subsidise it at all and let 5-10% of UK electricity close down temporarily as uneconomic and ration a bit?
Firms who aren't on contract sell their product (in this case electricity) at the market rate. The market rate for electricity being the marginal rate set by yes LNG as it stands.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
As we've discussed, and you acknowledged, it isn't that simple. With greater and greater volume of wind and solar, the problem of unreliability gets worse, not better. This bakes gas into the system. That's why, with vastly more renewables than we had 20 years ago, gas use (afaik) has not declined significantly.
Tidal is more reliable. Pity the Welsh barrage project was cancelled by the Treasury. A certain Ms Truss was Chief Secretary at the time I think.
I have a recollection that Greg Wallace was the Minister responsible no?
But to be frank, the Civil Service seems to have successive Governments thoroughly house-trained on this stuff. Did you see my post that they'd taken it upon themselves to delay a decision on the coking coal mine till the Winter? The information is all there, it's a straightforward Ministerial decision, and yet the Civil Service has grandly shelved it because they are 'not ready to present their advice'.
Maybe ministerial priorities require allocation of resources into other projects?
What resources? A commercial company wants permission to do it. Truss should announce tomorrow it's going ahead.
I simply find it hard to believe ministers who want to approve projects are unable to get things moving if they want. Some large applications take months or even years waiting for a minister to decide to call things in for example, and that's usually politically driven (since if they simply did not it would return to the locality who made the decision initially), so I don't think massive delays are entirely down to the civil service but lack of ministerial will playing a part.
If even Boris can't sign it off as he leaves with a flourish of his quill, there's clearly a serious issue of the Civil Service going rogue. Everyone bar green extremists knows (and has said) that this project makes sense. JFDI.
Have we done this? HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting. Not a good sign at all.
Seems she is struggling
Quite frankly it’s remarkable that she has time and energy for this at all. The system should look after her properly. There’s something not quite ok about a setup that puts a 96 year old in a difficult position. Surely some sort of British fudge is possible that allows her private rest. She should have the freedom to choose whatever she does. Goodness knows she’s earned it.
Surely it is time for a Regency. It is not abdication so she doesn't break her oath but it gives her some well-earned rest. She is clearly not up to it and it is cruel to expect her to carry on.
Sure, but nobody is making her do this presumably. She can't be in much doubt od Charles's willingness to step in. Kindest to let her carry on as long as she wants to.
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Donaldson
"An informant of MI5 told the desk officer Richard Brooman-White that in the event of a German invasion of Britain, Donaldson had told him that he intended to set up a puppet government akin to that of Vidkun Quisling in Norway. As a result of this information, Donaldson was arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B, sent first to Kilmarnock Prison and then to Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. He was held for six weeks. No evidence was ever produced and Donaldson was never charged."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Maule_Ramsay
"One of the last members to join the Right Club was Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk at the Embassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. On 20 May, after the US ambassador had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was extremely worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyed parliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extend Defence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged in Brixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. [...] Ramsay was finally released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He immediately returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275 Statute of the Jewry passed under King Edward I."
International oil and gas taxation is extremely complex and is not the magic bullet you think it is
Once….
Ukraine seems to have made some fairly stunning progress in the last 24 hours. The prospect arises of them opening up a second kill zone south of Kharkiv, similar to the one between Kherson and the Dnipro. There’s a plausible route to Russia facing a collapse in both the south and around Izyum simultaneously.
And so we see the increased pressure at the Zap plant! Biden dismisses out of hand with a cheerful smile Ukraine’s desire for Russia to be labelled a state sponsor of terrorism. Ukraine has dismissed the US request to enable a managed shutdown of the plant, which would leave two Ukrainian regions without power. And Russia continues to play its games there.
As far as I see, it’s Russia’s last card. The gas card has been played and it’s not going to achieve much. Are they desperate enough to play the zap card? What would the American response be?
HMQ cancels virtual Privy Council meeting.
Not a good sign at all.
ETA while I am at it, In Flanders fields which started the whole poppy thing is a pretty stark poem, saying basically Kill a lot of germans to avenge us or we'll come back and haunt you.
If renewable firms which are not on contract rates are making profits then good for them, good that they invested in renewable energy before it was as profitable and this should be and is attracting vast investment into new renewables in this country.
Attract investment into renewables and we ultimately stop needing LNG or Gas at all, deal with Climate Change, and have cheaper energy as gas falls out of the market price. Win/win/win/win/win. Why would you want to stifle that now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rada_of_the_Belarusian_Democratic_Republic
BTW (also FYI if not WTF) the classic WWI poem of the poppy is itself of two minds methinks on this point:
IN FLANDERS FIELDS
John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
That's why we jump at the chance to lecture on the things we do know! And get maddened when people who do not insist they do, and might fool others who do not.
Edit: written May 1915 on checking further.
This is additional to the billions they already are paying in tax
Thank christ (well not personally) for the simple feelings of never really being very cold or hungry.
We have a wood burning stove. But we took it out because my wife can't really breathe when it's on. Which is quite a drawback. It's now sat in the shed and I dread the day I have to move it again because it is possibly the heaviest thing I own which is not a car nor a building.
After 70+ years of doing it, and without her life partner by her side, and her religiosity, I assume she really does just want to do as much as she still can officially. But she clearly cannot, at least physically.
David Herdson felt there were preparations for this sort of situation years ago
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2018/04/21/the-palace-is-laying-the-groundwork-for-a-regency/
We've sort of got a Regency but aren't saying it. And are pretending we haven't.
Which is the worst fudge of all.
- Hugh MacDiarmaid, poet and founder of the National Party of Scotland, June 1940
She should make Charles Regent though, I understand her reluctance to abdicate, in view of her uncle.
But to be frank, the Civil Service seems to have successive Governments thoroughly house-trained on this stuff. Did you see my post that they'd taken it upon themselves to delay a decision on the coking coal mine till the Winter? The information is all there, it's a straightforward Ministerial decision, and yet the Civil Service has grandly shelved it because they are 'not ready to present their advice'.
Well my income tax won't pay for 40 new hospitals, so let's not bother with that either.
BTW, my suggestion for a targeted approach is to let everyone have the first £1000 worth of gas and leccy for free, then pay the new rate on everything in excess of that.
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
1917
They lived for nine more years.
Pushes back the origins of surgery by thousands of years.
You are obsessed about an utter non-issue. Over the coming years we have dramatic and unprecedented amounts of electrical storage coming online too which is an absolute gamechanger.
The reason gas use hasn't declined significantly is because the even more expensive and dirty coal use dropped out first. Gas use declines after coal use does, but as it stands we aren't generating enough renewables to stop using gas. If we do, then gas use would stop, just as coal has.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-62499981
Many can't go back to what they or their parents or grandparents did before central heating because they haven't got a fireplace and chimney and because using for example a 2kW electric bar fire would be horrendously expensive.
It's a bit daft not to send weapons now because you are scared Russia will cut off the gas.
She's hardly likely to start ordering owt at all.
Wind pushed coal out of the grid, and if we build more of it then we can push gas out of the grid too.
Edit: In terms of electricity production the decline was even more pronounced, from 51 to 3 million tonnes.
It needs pointing out though that in the scheme of things it does not raise substantial sums and those relying on it doing so are not being straight with the public and need to expand on how they would fund the £92 billion or so shortfall
And re your last sentence you do know the cap is likely to be 6,000 in April
Not least because after 12 years of Conservative PMs we are still living in a culture dominated by the left.
If the government thinks it can do anything it doesn't appear to be trying to follow up on its ability.
The Man In The Moon
The moonbeams kelter i the lift,
An Earth, the bare auld stane,
Glitters aneath the seas o Space,
White as a mammoth's bane.
An, lifted owre the gowden wave,
Peers a dumfoun'ered Thocht,
Wi keethin sicht o a' there is,
An bodily sicht o nocht.
MacDiarmid btw
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/london-statues-and-monuments/london-wwi-memorials/
The YouGov poll suggests the new prime minister is yet to enjoy a bounce with only 23 per cent of voters thinking she will do a better job than her predecessor, Boris Johnson...
...The YouGov poll found that 25 per cent of the public thought she would make the best prime minister compared with 32 per cent for Starmer, with 40 per cent of voters unsure.
Compared with Boris Johnson, 23 per cent expect Truss to be better, 23 per cent worse and 40 per cent much the same.
Asked which of a list of words people associated most with her, “Out of touch” was top on 33 per cent and “incompetent” followed on 22 per cent.
The highest ranking positive terms were “capable” and “enthusiastic” on 11 per cent. Ten per cent of voters described her as “weird”...
With Truss’s energy policy yet to be formally announced, only 18 per cent think she has the right policy to bring down bills compared with 38 per cent who think she doesn’t, and 44 per cent undecided.
On inflation, 14 per cent think she has the right policies to bring prices under control, 41 per cent says she doesn’t and 45 per cent are undecided.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/voters-still-undecided-about-truss-in-poll-6pqng589r
But because it was a Sunak tax, suddenly it is unimaginable to the Dizzy Lizzy pompom wavers.
This happens if the Queen is permanently unable to carry out her constitutional role due to health or similar.
No sign of that so far.
All is lithogenesis — or lochia,
Carpolite fruit of the forbidden tree,
Stones blacker than any in the Caaba,
Cream-coloured caen-stone, chatoyant pieces,
Celadon and corbeau, bistre and beige,
Glaucous, hoar, enfouldered, cyathiform,
Making mere faculae of the sun and moon,
I study you glout and gloss, but have
No cadrans to adjust you with, and turn again
From optik to haptik and like a blind man run
My fingers over you, arris by arris, burr by burr,
Slickensides, truité, rugas, foveoles,
Bringing my aesthesis in vain to bear,
An angle-titch to all your corrugations and coigns,
Hatched foraminous cavo-rilievo of the world,
Deictic, fiducial stones. Chiliad by chiliad
What bricole piled you here, stupendous cairn
As we discussed, wind providers are currently paid to switch off when the grid is full, or if connectivity can't take the power. With more wind, which will come and go in the same peaks and troughs, accentuating them, this issue will not go away. We are nowhere with storage (do you have a source of any ground being broken on this, or just hopeful 'in the future' stuff?), and we're unlikely to make much progress on this whilst the constraint payment system exists.
THAT is why my statement that it is 'not that simple' is self-evidently true.
If she only did it because she felt it was her duty to, then it would make all the years of duty and sacrifice unnecessary were she to walk away from that duty now. She could have chosen to walk away from the duty when her husband was still alive and they could have enjoyed life together a bit more.
She'll do the job to the bitter end.
However. I'm more concerned by the lack of any proposed action to increase supply. (No solar farms, no tidal, no onshore wind. New nuclear and drilling are years and years away).
Nor, seemingly, anything at all to encourage a reduction in demand, other than price.
A public information drive, plus an order to turn down heating and unnecessary lighting on public buildings would seem to be easy wins here.
Blackpool Illuminations is full steam ahead.
She isn't even mentioned on the Court Circular nowadays.
https://twitter.com/AskAnshul/status/1567397893975474177
If we want to ditch gas, we need something to replace it that has the same profile: quick to turn on and off and not reliant on other variables. Or large capacity batteries which hold their storage for weeks. Or very large-scale pumped hydro. I don’t think either are viable enough to replace gas, at least, not yet.
It’s looking like, in the near future, generating cheap, low/no carbon energy is going to be easy. Getting that energy to people/industry at the time when they need it is the hard bit. I recon gas is going to be around as the least worst electricity generation source of last resort for some time yet.
At the risk of stating the obvious, wars can escalate.
Hosting Boris Johnson and Liz Truss yesterday then formally swearing in Liz Truss as First Lord of the Treasury and the other cabinet ministers is beyond the Queen.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/queen-postpones-privy-council-meeting-after-doctors-tell-her-to-rest-wmvdfrqjx
Republic or Regency now.