The government is running up huge bills on industrial interventions that fail to deliver good results. Its ill  judged price control on domestic fuel led to the bankruptcy of a large number of suppliers without preventing a subsequent huge surge in the prices consumers have to pay. taxpayers are now going to be sent a big bill to make good the losses at Bulb, now under state ownership.
Many industries which need to burn a lot of gas and or use a lot electricity have faced 20% VAT, carbon taxes and the Emissions trading scheme. this has made energy a lot dearer to U.K. industry than in many foreign competitor countries. this has led to the need for some offsetting* energy subsidy to U.K. industry. this is normally less than is needed to allow the U.K. to be properly competitive but an effective reduction is some of the penal taxation.
I read that the government is now concerned about U.K. steel’s lack of competitive prices. Why doesn’t it simply remove the special taxes on manufacture? It is a nonsense to impose carbon taxes here to price us out of the market, only to import energy intensive products from elsewhere with added CO2 from all the transport.
June 27, 2022
Good morning.
Well what did you expect from a Socialist government ?
If politicians and Civil Spepants think themselves so good a running a business, why are they not in business themselves.
*And as for government interference I think it is a bit late going on about it now: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/theresa-mays-speech-to-the-30-club
*NB Sir John is it a government website so it should be OK.
June 27, 2022
JR,
What did you expect! Your socialist party and govt has been exporting manufacturing abroad while importing their people! Remember Javid doing nothing about steel industry, it was blamed on EU! Socialists always run out of other peoples money!
Left wing eco loon Johnson bragging about his plane with left socialist dictator Trudeau yesterday.
Another ÂŁ493 million of our taxes wasted on Ukraine again yesterday. Is anybody scrutinising where the money is going or check to see no backhanders to family members like US state aid ? Cost of living, highest taxes and Johnson still staffing our hard earned money away.
June 27, 2022
Check? Scrutiny? Are you not satisfied with so called schoolboy errors.
That would require real journalists, those that report news ,not propaganda. Speaking of which a certain extradtion should be blocked , as its clearly not in the public interest. Boris cant even close down the BBC as a tax cut or to save money? Where interference would be welcomed.
Look we are going to upset the US/EU globalists anyway so just get on with it, complete Brexit , take back control.
June 27, 2022
Indeed and now we see the problems caused by the fairly ineffective and rather dangerous Covid vaccines that the government coerced and pushed at people. Even at young people with almost zero risk from Covid.
The risk of being hospitalised with heart inflammation is up to 44 times higher following Covid vaccination, a study in Nature has found. Report on dailysceptics.org. I personally know of two who have developed heart issue post these vaccines.
Boris and his âexpertsâ have certainly has not got the big decisions right. Can we have some proper research and reports into the large excess of non covid deaths we are currently seeing – mainly deaths at home.
June 27, 2022
There is a more interesting John Redwood article on Conservative Home:-
âWhere have all the new Conservatives voters gone â and why?â
âThey wanted more than Brexit in name only.â True.
âThey expected Conservatives to lower taxes, promote more employment, and back business.â True.
âSo why do so many now feel they have not got what they asked for?â The answer to this could be summed by saying the government abandoned manifesto promises and concentrated on Net Zero and other globalist policies. This may put politicians in the good books of people who can make them wealthy but it ignores the voting public.
The prime minister and his government are no longer believed or trusted. So they will not get votes.
June 27, 2022
Spot on, thank you.
We’ve got Lolabour woke, so go broke.
Incandescent rage is an understatement đ«
June 27, 2022
The State’s working hard to encourage dependency across all areas of life including the economy. I admire its collectivist determination. It won’t easily give up the gains it’s made to date without a fight.
ESG Socialism and the State’s demands to comply with its social restructuring agenda has become a 24-7 immersion in progressive propaganda and indoctrination fed by filthy bureaucrats, warped academics and cheerleading politicians with jelly for brains
June 27, 2022
ESG compliance is a real headache for SMEs trying to do business with corporates.
Much of my time is now taken up with “on-boarding” compliance “events (questionnaires) which have to be marked by compliance jobsworths before we can supply. The environmental and diversity elements of these are completely irrelevant to most SMEs and the data compliance is massive overkill.
June 27, 2022
All us going to plan. Tax UK industry into oblivion and make some smoke and mirrors about tarrifs.
Net zero above all else.
Farage has your measure in yesterday’s Telegraph.
June 27, 2022
Indeed and what a sick, anti science, joke electric cars are. The save no co2 compared to keeping an old car even if charged on low carbon electricity and they will not be, cost far more to run about 4 times more, need huge amounts of energy to manufacture car and battery plus replacement battery after a few years. Then they charge them off diesel generators transported on diesel trucks to places like CO26 and Glastonbury!
What a sick deluded joke this war on CO2 plant food is! The solutions they push wind, solar, EVs, heat pumps⊠do not even work, CO2 is not a serious problem anyway and China, Russia, India, Germany⊠will continue with cheap reliable coal, oil and gas regardless!
July 1, 2022
Well said, LL. It’s appalling how even those who SHOULD know better continually bang on about ”the dangers of CO2” and never address the so-called ”carbon footprint” of producing these alternatives anyway, including their eventual problematic disposal. What a pity we couldn’t have had meaningful discussions on all this before the last election – but then this ”net zero” tosh wasn’t included clearly in the Con manifesto, was it? Or did I miss something?
June 27, 2022
It is very odd isnât it?
Almost as if the govt. were trying to de-industrialise us!
Return us to the Stone Age evenâŠwithout necessary skills.
What a notion!!
I really must stop this conspiracy theorising.
June 27, 2022
+1
June 27, 2022
Truth usually comes to light eventually.
June 27, 2022
That was their aim whilst we were in the EU. Lots of EU (UK’s) money to subsidise car and van production in Turkey and other EU Countries etc. Now we’re out they should be encouraging the reverse but hey, Bunter has a planet to save and loads of virtue signalling. Taxes to think up. He will therefore break international law instead of removing carbon and other such taxes for our industry for his unproven climate change religion.
It is madness to export our industries whilst allowing the dirty production elsewhere and then shipping it back in dirty ships!
So we won’t be allowed to frack but import our gas from…………Quatar, woodchips from America and coal from………Russia, when we have our own.
This Governments energy policy and its Ministers are all idiots missing from a village somewhere, a special kind of stupid.
June 28, 2022
Everhopeful: “Almost as if the govt. were trying to de-industrialise us!
Return us to the Stone Age even …”
“You will own nothing and be happy” Claus Schwab.
I don’t know if someone who has starved to death is happy?
June 27, 2022
Of course it’s bananas to “impose carbon taxes here to price us out of the market, only to import energy intensive products from elsewhere ‘. However as the MSM don’t challenge government over this, or even expose this ludicrous state of affairs, most people don’t think about it or how this situation may also be related to their energy, food and other bills.
Until this happens this government isn’t going to alter course. What a tragedy for them and us.
June 27, 2022
MSM is more interested in reporting on Ms Thunberg addressing Glastonbury than investigating the costs and implications of our approach to outsourcing net-zero. Outsourcing net-zero is so misguided as to rank alongside Dennis Healy’s taxation policies in government stupidity
June 27, 2022
Or get rid of red diesel to make food more expensive at a time when food prices are soaring and food banks across the country. Pay farmers to let their land go wild! Better still give up your fishing grounds to EU while importing fish!
Only JRs party.
June 27, 2022
+1
June 27, 2022
Good points. The government has put a fair amount of thought into helping domestic consumers cope with the ‘cost of living crisis’ – but it hasn’t done nearly enough to help businesses.
P.S. Another barbed comment about the government’s performance on R5L this morning: the government is unable to see the next crisis – even though everyone else can. Perhaps your fellow backbenchers need to agitate more for prompt action. I get the impression that the PM is just reacting to Press reporting rather than having departments ‘horizon-scan’.
June 27, 2022
This government believes that every problem is âinternationalâ or âglobalâ but never due to a domestic policy like net-zero
June 27, 2022
Perhaps a majority of backbenchers enjoy the infrequent trip to Westminster, and London, have a nice chat with networking mates, pose on the green sofas and feel the status they don’t get at home? Why bother about questioning Bills and voting on the Electorate’s likely reaction? Just go with the flow after all they only need to have any concern about 18 months henceforth.
June 27, 2022
………The government has put a fair amount of thought into helping domestic consumers cope with the âcost of living crisisâ………. No, no, no. They created this with their money printing schemes. Switzerland, Japan and many others don’t have the inflation we have brought about by the ……….Bank of England.
I don’t know who they are helping but its not my wife and I. All we have had is Bunters tax grabs.
June 27, 2022
Do you think your/our leader is capable of understanding the last paragraph …………………..
June 27, 2022
Meanwhile, said Leader is continuing with his AWOL and ostrich, strategies.
June 27, 2022
This is just the implementation of the second ( or whatever number) phase in the bloody Reset.
The previous one or more left us with a world where we no longer have servicesâŠeverything has to be done online. And it doesnât work very well.
Canât phone the Dr or dentist. No wonder the b*stards plan to do away with landlines.
Surely every politician is privy to and approving of this dystopian pantomime?
June 27, 2022
Reported yesterday record number of millions waiting for doctor appts! Johnsonâs answer give more visas and allow more mass immigration!
June 27, 2022
+1
And now apparently the doctors are threatening strike action for a 30% rise!
Johnson is obviously going for standing room only!
June 28, 2022
Hope: Linton on Ouse â healthcare: North Yorkshire has had a recent announcement to the effect that the areaâs Clinical Commissioning Group in agreement with the Home Office, has announced a bespoke service for the Asylum Seekersâ healthcare, a âpremiumâ package, will be delivered. Out of the hat. Just like that. It was pointed out that the major hospital of the area received an appalling quality assessment in recent times ( shortage of nurses etc., ) and there are many in N Y who are unable to access dental & GP services. The point was made that our processing of Asylum Seekers overall was taking too long and the gist being, rather than setting up special health and accommodation services, we may as well just rubber stamp these people into the UK, get them into the system and in effect let them join the queue like the rest of us for said services. On the one hand I would disagree with that stance but in the spirit of FGS I just give up!! – maybe just do that as itâs obvious there is no control anyway, well, only by non-governmental bodies to the detriment of British / UK citizens it seems, then maybe it has some merit. This followed on from the mention of Napier Barracks Folkestone Asylum accommodation now having been deemed unlawful by our High Court & a breach of the Equalities Act. ( Source GB News 27/6 Mark Steyn Show )
June 27, 2022
Maybe also âŠstop interferingâŠin anything!
Another ÂŁ50 BILLION to Ukraine.
June 27, 2022
âUkrainians are ready to die for the European perspectiveâ von der Leyen.
Endless war, predicted by Orwell and revealed by the one who CAN be deported.
Ukraine endless death.
Arms trade endless profit.
Shame! Shame!
* I think our share of the bung is only ÂŁ1.2 billion.
June 27, 2022
It’s a populist cause hijacked by Boris in an act of self aggrandisement among the right-on luvvies, Everhopeful. Even Sir Paul McCartney was waving a Ukrainian flag at the end of his Glastonbury gig.
June 27, 2022
+1
I know and he has dropped âBack in the USSRâ either from his repertoire or he just didnât sing it at Glastonbury.
June 28, 2022
This year’s BLM.
June 27, 2022
The government needs to end interfering full stop
Stop its high taxes, stop its aid, stop its subsidies, stop its social engineeringâŠstop being woke
June 27, 2022
+Agree 100%
June 27, 2022
All cover to prevent people thinking how awful Bunters administration is.
June 27, 2022
+1
Absolutely.
Smoke and mirrors!
June 27, 2022
And how much are Germany giving everyday to fund Russia’s war for energy? How is this war going to end I wonder. Plus when it does will it just be another pause by Russia?
June 27, 2022
+1
An absolute disgrace.
And encouraging the easily-led to go and fight and then abandoning them when ( as mercenaries?) they face the death penalty at Russian hands.
Ukraine as a theatre of war has been called a âmeat grinderâ.
War everlasting
It suits the globalists down to the ground.
June 27, 2022
Every industry in the country would love it if the government stopped interfering, but every industry has to put up with this government’s monumental Brexit red tape and Brexit staff shortages
June 27, 2022
Gary Megson
You mean socialist red tape and welfarist labour shortages.
There is nothing that cannot be made better with a cut in taxes, a cut in government and an real effort to put our own people back to work.
The importation of better able people to cover the patent inadequacies of our fake schooling (record A level results), our fake universities (record first class degrees) and our lack of work ethic simply must end.
June 27, 2022
Strikes and staff shortages all over Europe. And elsewhere. Its lockdown (mainly) which has caused them. A policy loudly trumpeted by the left and by many of those now moaning on about Brexit. And only finally faced down – in the teeth of hysterical objections – by Brexit Boris.
June 27, 2022
I see Lufthansa have cancelled over a thousand flights in Germany due to staff shortages. Same in USA – staff shortages. No-one told us Brexit would affect the entire world !
June 27, 2022
……but every industry has to put up with this governmentâs monumental Brexit red tape and Brexit staff shortages. Do get out a bit Gary. Staff shortages apply in the EU and the rest of the world following the pandemic. The red tape is EU driven. Why do the EU have financial equivalence with China but refuse us the same? Answers on a post card! They are not our friends.
June 28, 2022
Time action
The majority of countries and people in Europe are our friends and allies as well
June 28, 2022
I agree Bill
But Timeaction never criticised “countries and people in Europe”
He spoke only of the EU.
June 27, 2022
Gary
Funny how those supposedlyâBrexitâ things also affect the EU, isnât it?
June 27, 2022
You Again Gary M. Do you really believe that every industry preferred the EU’s red tape and interference?
June 28, 2022
Pauline
No but they preferred free access to their market
June 28, 2022
It wasn’t free. It cost every taxpayer in the country and it cost every business in the country for the benefit of very few.
June 27, 2022
You are quite right, Sir John, but when has this government done anything to help the UK? More money is spent on each illegal immigrants than on a Brit.
Boris has a lot of glory seeking to do, and the Brits are just the cash cows. Boris is too busy throwing money at the Ukraine, and anywhere else that will make him look good on the world stage. This includes being the first country to hit net zero, regardless of the damage to the UK, he will have a ‘first’ to his name. My dislike of Boris is turning into something far worse. How can he be so neglectful of his duties to the UK and Brits? FGS GET RID OF HIM! He is a one man demolition crew.
June 27, 2022
The government is enjoying interfering in industry to the detriment of manufacturers and consumers. Fiat has announced no more sales of new petrol cars in the UK, 8 years in advance of the 2030 ban. Others may well follow shortly. To hell with consumer choice, formerly a Conservative principle, and to the UK car industryâs future prospects as the overall number of new car sales declines more quickly. All exactly as Johnson (and Gove, his biggest advocate of the petrol and diesel car ban) want.
June 27, 2022
This interfering Govt needs a Minister for Antonyms to run the Treasury
1. decontrol.
2. denationalise.
3. leave be.
4. let alone.
5. not meddle.
6. not tamper.
June 27, 2022
Government which does least governs best
June 27, 2022
Yes. Defence of the Realm is its priority.
Leaving folk in peace should be adequate for happiness to thrive.
June 27, 2022
EU membership is interference in preventing non EU people with good English working here, whilst those with no English ca.. Doesn’t that strike you as absurd?
June 27, 2022
If this article does not show that we have a load of clowns running the country then nothing will.
June 27, 2022
Yup. Left wing policies make you poorer and never work. No change no chance
June 27, 2022
We have a Corbyn government with no opposition. Perhaps worse, as I have a feeling that Corbyn would have been forced to exploit our own energy and farming resources. The worst of all worlds.
June 27, 2022
The government is clearly working for its puppet masters and not the people. It is a malevolent threat to all aspects of our life.
June 27, 2022
PS. Your party made the same mistake with Theresa May. You allowed her to stay leader even though everyone could see the harm she was doing to the country, you allowed her to stay and do even more harm. The same applies to Boris. You (your party) must not care about the destruction being imposed upon the UK, because you had the chance to get rid of him, and blew it!
June 27, 2022
If the government cannot see all of this then they are truly unfit for purpose.
Basic common sense has long been dead as far as our ruling elite was concerned, but you would expect the occasional lesson on economics to be learned and acted upon …. Or are we now governed by some unthinking automaton?
June 27, 2022
VAT on fuel isn’t a problem for most businesses, as we just subtract it from the amount we collect from sales.
Let’s get things into perspective. Our NI payments are five times our fuel bill, business rates twice and corporation tax four times.
The real problem is tax.
If the government is worried about the competitiveness of British industry, it should reduce the tax take.
June 27, 2022
“It is a nonsense to impose carbon taxes here to price us out of the market, only to import energy intensive products from elsewhere with added CO2 from all the transport.”
“In a world of oversupply, with low rates of world inflation, being the customer has its advantages. All the time we remain in the EU we have to impose high tariff barriers on food from the rest of the world. Out of the EU we can cut or remove tariffs, and can bargain for a better deal for our exporters at the same time. The EU would be silly to make it dearer and more difficult for us to buy their products, when there is plenty of choice elsewhere.” (CO2 not a problem back then. Buying things from the EU APRIL 21, 2017 JR Diary) đ
June 27, 2022
The government needs to admit that the enormous increases in energy costs. both domestic and industrial, are a direct result of Boris green revolution and the governments policy of net-zero
June 27, 2022
My impression is that outside vacination and Ukraine our government does not know what it is doing. It is a never ending story of ineptitude and lack of resolution. Net Zero and its accompanying energy policy is systematically destroying the UK its enterprise and people.
June 27, 2022
agricola
Brilliant comment.
June 28, 2022
On your two exceptions, Agricola, I’d say it’s more the case that our government doesn’t know the harm it has been doing.
June 27, 2022
We have a champagne socialist calling the shots.
How do we get rid of her?
June 27, 2022
John Miller
Get rid of him before he finds a job for her
June 27, 2022
If only the nonsense you describe were being done by an official Labour Government you could then put down a confidence motion to get rid of it. As it is alas, we have to endure the clowns we have got.
June 27, 2022
Let’s be fair. How can any of this come as a big surprise.
The parliamentary party is split:-
Too many remainers
Too many with their own secret agenda’s
Too many not properly qualified for their positions held.
Too much talk and nothing else.
Broken promises. Immigration, bonfires of quangos and red tape
No concept of how to stamp out waste.
Do not listen to experts when employed to write investigative reports. Sir Dieter Helm is one in a long list
The Lemming like charge to achieve Net Zero not properly costed.
Until the party across the board starting at Central Office accept that seismic change is needed, this country is going down the tubes.
June 27, 2022
Unfortunately that is what Governments do, they think they are experts at everything, unfortunately for us most of them have never run anything in their lives where their OWN money is at risk, thus we end up with farcical, complicated and expensive policies.
June 27, 2022
Spain has cut VAT on energy to 5%. We should go further and cut VAT to zero for both domestic and business to remain competitive. The green subsidy needs to be ended whereby the poor are subsidising the rich. We should also be cutting corporation tax to at least 15%. Growth rather than stagnation is required to lift us out of the mess politicians have got this country into.
June 28, 2022
Christine.
SPAIN has cut VAT on energy?
Funny, I thought EU countries were not allowed to do that.
Mind you, I did know we were the only country that did obey the rules!
June 27, 2022
Government policy is to price fossil fuels out of the market with carbon pricing and emissions trading etc. So why aren’t they celebrating the current increase in gas prices ? It’s exactly what they want isn’t it ?
Just wait till they tell us all to install heat pumps for ÂŁ15,000 each.
One wonders what the LibDems will demand as the price for a pact with Labour ? PR voting in elections I assume. At that point the Conservatives will be finished as we’ll be able to vote for a real conservative party without wasting our votes.
June 27, 2022
The word âgovernmentâ in this piece needs to be replaced by âunelected civil service and quangosâ.
It was Ofgem who failed to regulate the retail electricity market by allowing hundreds of companies to supply consumers without checking their financial position and industry capabilities. In essence they allowed a scam to take place, for which the consumers are paying.
With regard to steel, this is just another example of the net zero CO2 lunacy designed by our fifth column Marxist civil service to destroy our economy. It is unnecessary, pointless and unworkable.
The Net Zero Strategy is coupled with massive levels of immigration, legal and illegal, to destroy our social harmony and our ability to exist as an independent nation.
June 27, 2022
Off topic, if anybody wants to see a list of 45 self-righteous virtue-signalling hypocrites there is one here:
https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/57820/Html?subType=Standard#_idTextAnchor003
How can it possibly be true that a Bill introduced into our sovereign Parliament “breaks international law”?
If I wrote here that we should disapply certain articles of a treaty would I be breaking international law?
Even if the Bill had been passed and become an Act it would only enable ministers to propose regulations to disapply certain provisions of the Northern Ireland protocol, and until some such regulation is put in place it seems rather premature for Germany to be fuelling up its revenge weapons:
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-uk-tough-brexit-johnson-scholz-merkel/
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-terrifying-german-revenge-weapons-of-the-second-world-war
when so far Germany has suffered no injury for which it might reasonably seek revenge.
June 28, 2022
Andrew Murrison made an interesting point in the debate yesterday:
https://hansard.parliament.uk//commons/2022-06-27/debates/2FA67D37-816A-4F05-AFE2-AFD4CC4D4B5F/NorthernIrelandProtocolBill#contribution-765AA889-C47C-4BAD-AC5F-2CB001C0E33B
Many contributors today have talked about the doctrine of necessity, but what they have not mentioned is that there is a second part to that doctrine; it is a lesser part, but it is germane nevertheless. It does not deal with grave or imminent peril; it allows parties to rescind an obligation if to do so would not
âseriously impair an essential interest of the states towards which the obligation exists or of the international community as a whole.â
Where in this Bill, and where, indeed, in triggering article 16, would the threat to the single market come from? Indeed, I would argue, as Ministers certainly have, that the Bill is helpful in many respects to the single market, and it certainly is to the internal market”
By googling for the passage he quotes I find that this is in Article 25 on page 80 here:
https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/commentaries/9_6_2001.pdf
“Draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, with commentaries”
dated 2001.
I am not a lawyer but I will nonetheless mention that I had been thinking more in terms of “supervening impossibility of performance”, Article 61 in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:
https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf
given that the attitude of the EU makes it impossible to achieve the purposes of the protocol.
June 27, 2022
Why not abandon the ban on new ICE engines from 2030 ? EU has said it wants to ban them from 2035, but Germany has said NO.
More money for Ukraine, yet you can’t even pay a decent state pension.
The so called 5th largest rconomy in the world ! What sort of economy ? Not one that does anything useful like engineering.
Still, large numbers of the populace will continue to celebrate the so called royal family, thus perpetuating snobbery and exclusion. Why doesn’t the government sell the royal family off to Disney, like they’ve done with the rest of industry.
June 27, 2022
I like coming to this site to find suggestions for how the government could dig itself out of the current mess. Just for a little while I feel reassured and optimistic that there are at least some in politics who could do better than they’re doing at the moment. But then the grim reality bites, when I read and digest e.g. the very sober and stark analysis offered today in Conservative Woman by the City economist Ewen Stewart, ‘Sanctions â whoâs harming who?’ As he says, ‘A third of a year into war, the only conclusion one can sanely draw so far is that the Westâs sanctions have been an unmitigated disaster in self-harm, undermining domestic prosperity while causing serious inflationary and monetary dislocation.’
The other day Johnson told us that he would only resign if the country stopped supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. That’s it then. There is no way any sane country could continue to self-harm economically like this, so Johnson has to go.
June 27, 2022
[…] Read more about Stop interfering in industry […]
June 27, 2022
As we were told by very intelligent people at the time âGetting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiationâ, 27 July 2016.
Guess who it was? der Einzelgaenger?
So either these people were not so intelligent or probably nobody listens to them.
June 28, 2022
Blame the sabotage (Benn Act) effected by the 2017-2019 rogue Parliament. Those saboteurs (I could use a much stronger word) removed all the UK’s negotiating power and gave it to the EU. Were Brexiters expected to foresee that many UK politicians would deliberately harm the whole of the UK because they lost a democratic referendum?
July 6, 2022
Bla bla bla, Shirley. Lord Frost and Boris Johnson (and UK negotiators now rid of Olly Robbins from July 2019) had the full year 2020 to produce the TCA signed on 24 December 2020. From Friday 13 December 2019, following the GE, practically all previous Remainer MPs had been decimated and had lost their seats.
It might be tough for you to accept that your favourite politicians might not have been as clever as they pretended to be, but keeping saying it is all the fault of the â2017-2019 rogue Parliamentâ is simply wrong (I could use a much stronger word: idiotic maybe?)
June 27, 2022
We are largely a post-industrial country; such manufacturing that we have is foreign owned, and in the case of steel, Indian owned, so what is ‘UK steel’? We have been told that we would focus on high tech, you know, chippie thingies but no, apparently Newport Wafer Fab was taken over by the Chinese under this government’s watch or rather that of Kwasi Kwarteng’s and they are now intending to close the factory in Wales and transfer manufacture to Shanghai. What are we good at that is left? Banksterism or Monopoly under its original name leading to busts that have to refinanced by taxpayers? How about book publishing? We thought we had a winner with wizards but apparently the authoress blotted her copy-book by claiming that sexual dimorphism was encoded in biology – well I never! What should we do which doesn’t offend somebody, or wreck the planet according to some think tank? How about war with Russia? Of course, the Russians wouldn’t like it but as we have been told repeatedly, they are beyond the pale anyhow.
June 27, 2022
How many other companies do you think will go broke Sir John. We’ve had the fertiliser manufacturer in Cheshire. Boris has approved the sale of a defence contractor which we will not be able to replace because all the patents will go to America.
Boris is determined to destroy us, our manufacturing and defence sovereignty, and food and energy security, all for his ‘green’ fantasy. He does nothing either to protect our cultural foundation, all he wants is personal publicity through big hollow announcments.
June 27, 2022
Bulb’s financial history caused me to comment about them several years ago. They lost ÂŁ28m on turnover of ÂŁ183m, then ÂŁ129m on turnover of ÂŁ823m and ÂŁ63m on ÂŁ1,521m in the year to March 2020 (last published accounts, which contain warnings about their business model and lack of capital and need for further finance). It seems their bankers overindulged in forbearance, and OFGEM likewise. The latest report from their receivers dated 24th June doesn’t make pretty reading either, with ÂŁ901m of support already drawn down. It’s really time OFGEM got back to protecting consumer interest. Making them net zero champion is precisely the wrong direction to go.
June 27, 2022
A genuinely Conservative government would cut taxes: Corporation tax, carbon taxes, VAT and income tax.
Energy prices would fall, businesses would become more profitable, investment would increase, inflation would fall, people’s standards of living would rise, and a virtuous circle would be created, with MORE corporation tax eventually being paid as the economy would boom. Everyone would be happy and the Conservative Party’s ratings would rise.
It is so obvious that you have to wonder why it is not being done. There are only three possible answers:
i. Johnson and Sunak are mentally retarded;
ii. Johnson and Sunak are too frightened of the socialists in the Treasury to do what is right;
iii. Johnson and Sunak are socialists themselves, NOT Conservatives.
(i) and (ii) seem too far-fetched, so I have to conclude that (iii) is the right answer. The only question then is why Tory MPs put up with it. Why don’t you enlighten us, please?
June 27, 2022
Yes Sir John.
Is there really no way YOU can change the incompetent way this country is being run?
June 27, 2022
There is a big interest on I’d cards on Facebook. Primarily based upon the idea it will sort out the actual true numbers of illegals living under the radar.
Would it work I ask myself?
Pound to a pinch, if it would these politicians that plague the whole Westminster at the moment would reject it.
June 27, 2022
My money’s on Andrew Bridgen for PM. Anyone that’s for fracking and speaks in a straightforward and direct manner gets my vote. He’s also an ardent Brexiteer. What’s not to like? Give him a nudge in the right direction please John.
June 28, 2022
FUS
Would be happier with our host as the leader and Andrew as his running mate. FGS when will the decision makers get their heads out into the sunshine? Its as if the party as we know it has arranged its own suicide pact. It cannot go on the credibility is just flowing down Lifelogics drains!!!
June 28, 2022
“Why doesnât it simply remove the special taxes on manufacture?”
An excellent point, Sir John. Your colleagues in Cabinet must be extremely irritated that you constantly, crisply point out simple and effective solutions to problems of their making that they seem perfectly capable of exacerbating without advice… đ
Germany subsidises its industries (as does the Netherlands its greenhouse production) through a highly reduced industrial energy tariff. No fulminating in the Bundestag or the Staten-Generaal about ‘breaching international treaties’ . I wonder why. Could it be that their parliamentary representatives are not working 24/7 to favour the EU at the expense of their own country’s economy?!
June 30, 2022
Dear Sir John
Mr Gove secretary for levelling up has just put a stop to Jim Ratclffes plan to explore fracking with his company Ineos in Yorkshire
This seems extraordinary as fracking in Yorkshire would help with levelling up with new jobs and investment
Can you do anything?