The government will be a big winner from the sky high oil and gas prices. The profits of the U.K. producers will be swollen . The U.K. charges a windfall rate of Corporation tax on these profits at twice the normal rate.
Then there is the big surge in petrol and diesel prices. Over half the pump price is tax, so that will be another big win for the Treasury.
With General inflation heading for 7% all those items that attract VAT will also be chipping in more tax .
If the government gets around to substituting U.K. gas for Russian and Qatari imports that will also be a big boost to the receipts.
Indeed if you added all these up you would probably be close to another Ā£12bn of tax raids on voters, enough to cancel the National Insurance rise.
The Chancellor must change his mind on Ā the big tax raid in April when real incomes will be badly hit by energy prices. He is more than Ā£ 50 bn better off than budget this year already, and now has the further windfall.
He should accept he is overtaxing and start to do something to cut the burdens. Otherwise he will go down in history Ā as architect of one of the worst hits real incomes we have seen.
March 8, 2022
Good morning.
But Sir john didn’t you know, he is a low tax Chancellor. He keeps telling us. /sarc
As others have already noted, we will be offered some tax cuts just before the next GE. In the meantime, because they will not go after all those who fraudulently claimed money during the SCAMdemic, we the honest folk will have to cough up instead.
That is the price we must ALL pay for those who thought it a lovely idea sitting at home doing nothing other than bang their pots and pans every Thursday evening. I’d doubt many will be doing that ever again.
March 8, 2022
+1
Hear! Hear!
March 8, 2022
JRs party has had 12 years to fulfil the promise of low tax. The last election and manifesto promised no tax rises! Taxation at a 75 year demonstrates it was repeated lies.
Add insult to injury people in England get less in return to their N.Ireland, Scottish or Welsh counter parts! JR claims to speak for England! Lothian question not answered and the crumb given was taken away by Gove a month or so ago!! Absolute lying shysters.
Point 4. Of Johnsonās Ukrainian plan not to let Russia normalise the situation in the Ukraine! How about the EU annexing regulating and making laws for N.Ireland!! How about furling your promise not to raise taxes, not normalise it by hiking National Insurance!
Meanwhile Gibraltar allowed to fend for itself in negotiating with the EU! Again, how about point 4 of Johnsonās plan!
Another Ā£400 million pissed away by Johnson yesterday on Ukraine, low taxes are not a priority for this blue socialist outfit..
March 9, 2022
Well said Hope and to add insult to injury, any day now prescriptions still be going up but only in England of course, free to everyone else in this so called union. Like you say Gove took away any pretence of democracy in England. The Tories, there by the grace of England, have done nothing, absolutely nothing to address the WLQ, the upper WLQ, the English Question or the Barnett Formula. They deserve our contempt instead of our votes.
March 8, 2022
Indeed, the highest taxes for 70 years with vast further increases from tax to death Sunak coming through and despite all this vast taxation we have very poor and declining public services too. Sunak started this agenda even before Covid with a 90% reduction in entrepreneurās CGT relief introduced by Gordon Brown (so as to deter investment in the UK). With no inflation indexation either so tax on profits that are not even real.
On top of this we have vast & misguided over regulation and expensive intermittent energy policies yet then the foolish man complains about low UK productivity! Does PPE Oxon. not include any proper economics or did he, Cameron, Hunt, Hammond, Heath, Ed Davey, Cooper, Ballsā¦. miss those lectures? They should also include some lectures on why a state monopoly, free at the point of use NHS is an extremely poor way to run a health service unless you want to kill thousands or indeed an education service.
The bloated, inept, over taxing and over regulating government is the main cause of this, you silly man.
Far smaller government, real freedom, fair competition and real choice please.
March 8, 2022
Spot on.
March 8, 2022
Agreed. The Johnson government is unfit for purpose. The sooner it is gone the better it will be for national energy security, for national food security and for sensible tax policies – provided Conservative MPs have the sense to replace the eco zealot with a pragmatist.
March 8, 2022
Every time you take tax off the people and businesses who generally invest and spend it efficiently and then give the money to governments and civil servants who generally do the reverse, you make everyone much poorer on average. This certainly when we are at the current hugely overtaxed 70+ year taxation high and with OTT red tape everywhere and net zero rip off energy price lunacy on top of this too.
March 8, 2022
Is it the Chancellor or his leader or the faceless civil servants that cannot apply your uncomplicated logic to the problems we are facing?
But then again it could be all three not a basic clue between them how real economics in practice really works.
March 8, 2022
Or it could be that they are putting in place an agenda to impoverish us all?
I noticed no hesitation in imprisoning us in our houses and all the other terrible things they did.
Why would they worry about robbing us rotten? The elite has always done that!
March 8, 2022
It has to be deliberate. I still claim that not even Boris can be so thick, but he maybe thinks we are! If Boris truly believes in net zero, then it appears he is willing to sacrifice the UK and it’s people in order to save the rest of the world. It won’t work, and our involuntary and enforced sacrifice will have been for nothing.
March 8, 2022
+1
March 8, 2022
Net zero by 2050 was a pledge on the first page of the 2019 Conservative manifesto.
It is quite amusing that you are all getting your knickers in a twist about something most of you voted for.
March 8, 2022
Johnsonās 2020 budget 11 days before covid lockdown was a high waste/spend and tax budget that any socialist party would be proud of. Even May criticised it in parliament as did many former Tory ministers.
JRs party has an appalling 12 year economic record. It failed on every promise. Despite many claims and repeated promises it did not even try to balance the structural deficit, it kicked the can down the road then abandoned it. Worse than Labour. Yes, LL, worse than Labour despite your claims to the contrary.
Ā£5 million a day from our taxes to house illegal immigrant criminals in four star hotels, Patel now hiding the figures so she will not be criticised!! This is how dishonest they have become. What did Cameron say about openness/ transparency being the best disinfectant!
March 8, 2022
+ very true.
March 8, 2022
Rishi is a limp dumb really. He is like so many fake tories in the present parliament.
No real tory would entertain net zero and its ruinous effects.
March 8, 2022
I think that there was some muttering about reviving U.K. gas production and evenā¦fracking!
BUTā¦how can we trust anything they say?
March 8, 2022
I don’t. That alongside their ever decreasing grasp on reality living in a world of rainbow flags and emotional meme’s/emotional incontinence I feel very endangered.
I am absolutely terrified we are going to be led into a war with Russia and possibly China because of their inabilities.
The thought of this with such people at the helm, is giving me sleepless nights.
March 8, 2022
100%
March 8, 2022
The mutterings, for that is all they are, are designed to put off people like our kind host and to quieten the masses until next time. Then the same trick will be done and so on. Mark my words.
March 8, 2022
+1
The best one was limiting immigration to āthe tens of thousandsā!!
And now we trudge back to jingoistic rhetoricā¦
And there was me thinking flags and patriotism were supposed to be ā badā.
March 8, 2022
Everhopeful. The only way fracking will come is if Boris has a chat with Farage . He’s the only person with anything sensible to say in the media recently concerning energy. As far as I am aware they are still concreting over the fracking sites. Anyway with new technology it is not fracking anymore.
March 8, 2022
Agree.!
Wonder if NF will get anywhere with his demand for a referendum on greencr*p?
March 8, 2022
Don’t believe them. They are cementing the two fracking sites tomorrow so they can’t be used. Eco lunacy and vandalism at its worst. We are importing Russian gas and coal whilst banning our own production on land and in the North sea. Total lunatics. Gas from Qatar doesn’t come all the way on electric powered ships. Being lied to all the time by this useless Government.
March 8, 2022
The battle lines have been really drawn up by the religious renewable energy save the world disciples and zealots.
On Farage last night you had a expert going on about dirty fossil fuels, not enough shale gas, oil capacity and so on. You could almost hear the hooves and snorting of the horses from hell and damnation rising up if we consider anything but wind turbines on and off shore.
For God’s sake this is a real crisis we are involved in and who gives a stuff what state the fuel is that will break the shackles that constrain us? Whatever we can produce must benefit us as a country financally in jobs and taxes and more profits to our ever diminishing industrial base.
March 8, 2022
Nothing dirty about CO2 or indeed burning natural gas. The other real pollutants (mainly from coal or diesel can be dealt with. We are after all idiotically burning imported wood at Drax so as to pretend on CO2 figures which has similar problems to coal.
March 8, 2022
Correct
March 8, 2022
T T you are absolutely right. That fellow on Farage last night criticised every alternative method of generating electricity and avoided any discussion on the one renewable that is 100% reliable namely ‘tidal streams’. Around our coasts we have hundreds of suitable sites which are running 24/7 and totally unaffected by the weather and don’t litter the landscape with hideous windmills.
I would ask you, Sir John, why has the government done very little in implementing this very obvious renewable method? It was raised years ago at the same time as wind power but side lined without serious explanation.
March 8, 2022
The issue isn’t income (taxes and debt), the real issue is State spending but then our kind host conveniently chooses to skip around such a politically problematic area of State finances for fear of upsetting various vested interests that now appear to believe they have a divine right to ever increasing levels of funding irrespective of how well they do their jobs
When was the last time you saw a public sector strike by the unions? That’s because the Tories throw cash at Labour’s public sector to keep them silent.
The taxpayer is abused to finance party politics rather than to finance the efficient provision of well run public services
The whole scam is now abusive and a deviation from what went before.
1997 is the date that the UK signed its own death warrant
March 8, 2022
DOM
There is never any mention by the Chancellor and the Treasury Dept how they will address the waste that hemorrhages out of every government department on a near daily basis.
The quickest easiest way to adjust the books is stop the waste.
March 8, 2022
+1
And what about the money that was ālostā during the errrrrā¦.plague?
Canāt remember the amountā¦but it would pay my energy and tax bills a few times over.
These people who tax us and fine us and strip us to the boneā¦no such rigour for them!
Think of those poor Post Office workers.
And now SAGE-wringing about āerrors of judgementāā¦RUBBISH!
March 8, 2022
So much waste in government almost everywhere you care to look. Much of government does positive harm. Start perhaps with pensions costing circa Ā£5 million for failed government employees like Cressida Dick there are thousands of them. We have a limit of Ā£1,070k now frozen before the 55% tax cuts in for most people. State sector employees should never get more than this a pension of perhaps Ā£30k tops should apply they get the state one of circa Ā£8k on top of this anyway. A 100% tax on state pensions over this would be a good start and on any state sector pay above that of the PM.
March 8, 2022
The Tories were happy to write off billions to fraud from lockdown which sparked Lord Agnewās resignation for what he called school boy errors!! No embarrassment just keep raising taxes.
March 8, 2022
Turbo. Funny you should mention waste. My best friend is an administrator in the NHS dept for Speech and Language. She was telling me last night that they have several thousands of pounds of unspent money from their budget again this year so they are all going to get new chairs even though there is nothing wrong with what they’ve got and new I pads with the pens that go with them. There is also nothing wrong with the I pads they have now. It’s just throwing money away as it can’t be carried over to next year or used by another dept. What an absolute joke.
March 8, 2022
How ridiculous, but unfortunately common. I am sure some bright spark could work out a system to reward the ‘good’ department heads and their workers, while saving the NHS much need funds. A privately owned business would never allow such wastage, but would reward those who enabled savings.
March 8, 2022
+1 and this is repeated thousands of times over across all the state sector.
March 8, 2022
I agree. The number and amount of quangos grow and the remuneration of its members. Council Officers and executives, Government branches on eye watering salaries for what? The risk or decisions they have to make? No. There could be cuts right across the public sector and no one would notice. We certainly don’t need all the numbers of politician’s of all persuasions, from Councillors, to Majors to Police Commissioners, MP’s, Lords. etc. They all need a crew cut!
March 8, 2022
All too true.
March 8, 2022
Most in the public sector are on low pay. The problem we have are those at the top who take a disproportionate amount of the funding. Often they are ex employees who return as contractors. I know people who took redundancy one week and returned on 120k the next week. Why is this allowed to happen? And why do these organisations need diversity and net-zero managers who command such high wages. It’s as if these jobs attract a premium, the Woke premium. We see a virtue signaling elite who are treated better than the ordinary people. Those in power perpetuate this situation. Another area is the charity sector which needs radical reform.
March 8, 2022
Christine. Thrre is much truth in what you say.
March 8, 2022
There has also been suppressed activity during the pandemic – airlines out of use, public facilities closed down … much of the NHS doing nothing.
Surely we are in Carbon Credit and Net Zero can be pushed back a bit too ?
——–
SAGE has been disbanded under the clatter of Ukraine. Many of their members will go off to work in climate change according to one Guardian report.
So. Those who wanted us to mask up and lock down to “keep safe” are now often the ones (notably BBC employees) demanding a no fly zone over Ukraine bringing us into direct conflict with Russia.
The Greens are those who directly empowered Putin and made him so strident against a weakened West and Remainers wanted to bring us within sniper distance of this psychopathic despot’s country.
March 8, 2022
We’d still be in lockdown had Boris listened to SAGE and not his own back benchers. Now it is SAGE being locked down. Thank God !
Wrong on just about every prediction and by wide margins.
March 8, 2022
You have 162,000 dead and counting. Except your government has stopped counting because the people it is killing now – still well over 100 a day – donāt actually matter.
March 8, 2022
You know, full well, that the government’s measuring of COVID deaths, in an Omicron environment, is completely unfit for purpose.
BTW, I looked at the figures for Greece today. Last year, it was touted as an example of how to keep deaths down. Now? It’s death-rate exceeds our own. I suspect that this government’s successful vaccination programme accounts for the reversal in comparative fortunes.
March 8, 2022
Andy,
Of or With ?
With co-morbidities and shielded or not ?
Vaccinated or not vaccinated ?
We simply cannot trust these figures but where is the public outrage about SAGE being disbanded ?
March 8, 2022
PS Andy
What gets me is that most of those people telling us to mask up, lock down, stay at home, stay safe are now calling for NATO to enforce a no fly zone against Russian forces (most notably the BBC.)
WW3 won’t do much for net zero targets either.
March 9, 2022
Who is telling you to lock down and to stay home these days?
March 8, 2022
Silly boy! Daily death rate according to ONS in, for example 2020, was 1665.75. So what has your figure of over 100/day have to do with reality?
March 9, 2022
That is what it is right now.
139 dead on Monday, 210 dead yesterday, according to the DM.
Silly boy.
March 9, 2022
With or from?
How old?
What co morbidities?
PS
Over 500,000 die every year in the UK
March 8, 2022
Rather like the predictions for the climate computer modelling experts. How on earth can they predict the climate in 100 years when they do not even have most of the input data such as Volcanic activity, populations, dates of fusion coming in, the millions of inventions, innovations and genetic modifications (man made and natural) of crops, plants, animals, sun spot activity, meteor impacts, when fusion with become cost effective and practical…
The solutions proposed to cut CO2 (wind, solar, bikes, walking, public transport, heat pumps, electric vehicles, burning wood imported on diesel ships and trucks do not even work. Not even just in CO2 terms if you do the maths. Even if the UK were to hit net zero tomorrow if would do nothing beneficial for the world climate anyway quite likely the reverse.
Get fracking, drilling, mining and more more R&D into better nuclear, fusion, better batteries, synthetic fuels, fuel cells, better insulation systems particularly retro fit ones…
March 8, 2022
Boris listened to his back benchers to keep his job. The same is going to happen with his net zero lunacy if he doesn’t do a handbrake turn.
Vote power, not poverty is very catchy.
March 8, 2022
Not locked down according to reports, NLA. (If only!) It seems that some of the SAGE economic hit squad is now being redeployed to the next big Project Fear operation, the Great Green Reset. We can look forward to more government-paid experts telling us why we need to pay Ā£2 or more a litre for petrol, and have to accept smart meters, more wind farm subsidies, more green taxes on air travel, etc. etc.
Who knows, there may even be a job for Neil Ferguson…
March 8, 2022
Hat Man – Yes. I meant to put that in my original post and why I wrote about SAGE and their reassignment Greenism. Forgot to do it.
March 8, 2022
No, SAGE were quite correct in their predictions.
March 8, 2022
No they were not.
On Omnicron they were out by a huge margin.
March 9, 2022
Careful, lad, the story was that they weren’t predictions, just ‘scenarios’, remember?
March 9, 2022
They gave a range of possibilities before the virus characteristics were better known and reality came within that.
The flakies only remembered the extreme, however.
They were right.
March 9, 2022
Twaddle
Their predictions were hugely exaggerated.
Especially Omnicron
Project Fear Mark 2
March 10, 2022
Omicron, the Greek letter for Ī§ĻĪ¹ĻĻ ās sake.
March 10, 2022
Cryptic but a potential illustration that you are obviously the most clever person on here heffy.
March 12, 2022
Did you ever doubt it, P2?
March 8, 2022
Really, youād think that even billionaires would want to keep their heating and tax bills down!
A greater prize must be a-glittering in them there hills?
I mean, ( present company excepted) we know an MPās salary donāt go farā¦or why would they sanction a rise at such an awkward moment?
March 8, 2022
See how far an NHS junior doctors salary of just under Ā£30k goes after tax, NI, commuting costs, council tax, lunch, student loan interest of ~ Ā£6k per annum and their rent goes. Zero is left for heat, light, food, holidays, a car, clothesā¦ no wonder the NHS are so short of decent doctors and that ~ 50% of UK trained doctors refuse to work for the NHS and either leave the profession or the country! Treated appallingly by the NHS too very often with lack of specialist support when needed and usually blamed when things go wrong. What a waste of very expensive training of 5 or 6+ years.
March 8, 2022
Spot on LL. My son is a Junior Doctor in a busy central London hospital, the hours are unbelievable and they are dumped on from all directions. Ā£1,ooo a month for a room with student debt and higher taxes about to kick in, Sunak singling out Junior Doctors not to receive the 3% heās promised the rest of the NHS staff, morale is very very low and many are thinking of leaving the profession including my son. After six years at Cambridge, what a waste. The very least this useless Government could do would be to scrap all tuition fees for medical degrees on condition they continue to work for the NHS for a number of years. After all 78% of all student debt is written off by this wasteful Government, just not for Doctors and the professions the country needs.
March 8, 2022
I have a junior doctor in my extended family. I felt very sorry for her having to work so hard, for so long, to earn much less that TfL pays a CIRCLE LINE Tube driver.
March 8, 2022
Well apparently they can make new laws to lock us all in our homes at a moment’s notice, but are not able to pass a law banning this stupid pay rise of 40 quid a week whilst the public struggle to get to work or heat homes or put food on the table. The excuse is that ‘someone else has decided they must have the rise and nothing can be done about it’. Seeing as they arranged this system, it’s nice work if you can get it and you can if you are an MP. Crocodile tears for the poor do not wash, we can all see what’s going on.
March 8, 2022
Quiteā¦our sovereign parliament passes the buck once more.
March 8, 2022
+1
March 8, 2022
The Chancellor is going to be busy …
The Public Accounts Committee recently published a report dated 23rd February, “Achieving Net Zero: Follow Up”.
The summary is :- Government still has āno clear plan for how the transition to net zero will be fundedā or āhow it will replace income from taxes such as fuel dutyā, and āno reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households, businesses or government itselfā.
And it won’t achieve global net zero so what is the point?
March 8, 2022
Dixie, I came across this quotation this morning (honestly!):
Whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift 1726
(Naturally, I exclude our host from this observation)
March 9, 2022
… and who could concrete it over, so that *no* blades of grass grow any more, works for Wokingham Borough Council and their corporate cronies.
March 8, 2022
Why would anyone sensible and with any understanding of science and climate want to achieve net zero in the UK. To be 0.00001 Centigrade cooler (possibly if all other things are the same they wonāt be) in 100 years perhaps? Have Russia, China and India sighed up to this insanity?
March 8, 2022
How much CO2 will be released from bombs and fires in Ukraine and the massive rebuild that will be required there once this is all over, I wonder?
March 8, 2022
Plus a little more CO2 and very, very slightly warmer (perhaps) is probably (ON BALANCE) a net positive for plant, tree and crop growth & for humanity anyway. Keep the vast sum that net zero will cost and spend it on adapting as needed be it hotter or colder, wetter or dryer and for research into better nuclear and fusion etc.
March 8, 2022
……….and CO2 is a trace gas that feeds all plant life on the planet. 0.04% of our atmosphere yet apparently its responsible for all that non existent climate change! Without CO2 there would be no life at all on the planet. It is still not proven. Pollution, extract our own energy until we have viable alternatives. Bunter has lost the plot and found eco lunacy when he met Carrie!!
March 8, 2022
Well, the government may be a big winner with their coffers swollen but Joe public won’t.
It will just be more for them to offer out to others abroad and their pet poodles and projects here.
March 8, 2022
Ooooo!
Iāve just thought of a way to make Net Zero work!
Letās have a Doomsday Book type account of everyoneās income and assets and then make a charge on EVERYONE at exactly the same %. ( Or maybe a better mathematical solution?).
Make the charge 75% on total assets plus a bit on top if you run a private jet or more than one household or a swimming pool etc etc.
Why not go global with it?
Dom can oversee it all?
Virtue signalling might just become a thing of the past?
March 8, 2022
The public will not tolerate Sunak’s being a tax-profiteer and will make their protest in May. He should be pressured into reducing (or capping) VAT immediately.
How fascinating to see the Biden Administration reaching out to such nasties as Venezuela and Iran for more oil while being resolute in suppressing production in the US. The American public will make their protest in November.
P.S. BTW, I finished my window-resealing project. The effects are substantial, immediate and cheap: Ā£20 well-spent.
March 9, 2022
President Biden is to ban all US purchases of Russian oil. Effectively holding the customer hostage on price. These people are so bloody dumb !
March 11, 2022
Another simple job is to block a chimney with a pillow in a bin bag which cuts down the draughts and heat loss.
Don’t light the fire though …
March 8, 2022
The Government appear absolutely clueless, and completely out of touch with reality on virtually every front now.
March 8, 2022
This Pretendy Conservative Government is a parasite …… it is sucking the life out of and killing its host, the British people.
I’m afraid the only solution is a very strong medication applied wherever the parasite appears.
The first dose becomes available on 5 May 2022. Repeated doses will be necessary until the parasite is killed or sufficiently weakened to become controllable with regular, smaller doses.
March 8, 2022
My Conservative Council does a good job and I want to keep them in.
Local issues.
March 9, 2022
That is what happened to a particular nasty when we held a GE and the Euroelections. When they realised that this nasty was going to lead them to lose their seats they got rid.
March 8, 2022
No there won’t be more tax revenues. People will have less spending money left once they have paid higher energy bills, driving the economy into recession. Then there’s the energy bills for the have-nots, which will fall to the hard working as it always does.
Then the Department for Business Extinction and Import Substitution (credits due) will be carrying on its work of destroying British industry, so where will the country get the foreign currencies needed to buy in the oil, gas and coal we don’t mine ourselves?
March 8, 2022
Dr. Michael Crichton: Letās be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If itās consensus, it isnāt science. If itās science, it isnāt consensus. Period.
March 8, 2022
OT but I see those SWIFT banking sanctions on Russia have been watered down by the EU to make them virtually worthless, Russia’s two biggest banks have been excluded from them so that the EU can keep on paying Russia for gas and those payments have increased massively to reflect the price increases. Not sure why UK is so vocal on Russian sanctions when the EU undermine them. Still, as we have been told many times by Andy, at least the adults are in charge in the EU so they must know what they’re doing right ?
March 8, 2022
When tax in its myriad forms is a major component in the cost of fuel, inevitably the government are the beneficiary. The more important question is as always, what they do with it. I leave it at that.
My question is why do they appear so inept at what they visibly do. The handling of genuine documented refugees who wish to join relatives in the UK. If I was writing a skit on cockup this is a subject. No anticipation, no reception setup on the Polish border, no transport system, air, road, or rail to Calais or direct to the UK. Meanwhile for a final laugh, economic migrants are free to sail the Channel with food, income, and accomodation to welcome them. As Victor Meldrew would intone, ” You couldn’t make it up.”
Then we get to our own in house problem of fuel cost and impoverishment. The answers are staring us in the face, but government remains lamped, despite having you, me and many others point it out to them in detail. Do they have a political death wish. Perhaps they think it takes our mind off the ghastly leadership of our police force, the knife and drugs crime, our not so smart death trap motorways, partygate, the NIP, fishing,et cetera.
March 8, 2022
No chance. Get ready for a ramp up of the defence budget where incidentally many of the big projects are late and/or over budget. MOD still not fit for purpose. Tory government continues to think waste/inefficiency/fraud levels acceptable.
These are one of the main causes of our need for more tax. Why donāt you and the rest of Tory MPs take real action and vote, fight etc against the Cabinet rather than informed but toothless puff pieces.
Yesterdayās topic was a typical example of supine allegiance to the āPartyā being more important than the voters.
And on a similar track you continue to let Johnson fob you off with BS about getting Brexit done. Now get ready for the problems with Putin to be used as an excuse for EU reintegration on the grounds of mutual security.
A PM with a track record of broken promises and worse, kept in power by you and your colleagues solely for political expediency. What do you expect?
March 8, 2022
Well, Iām deliberately driving less than I used to. Iām saving up reasons to drive into my local town. That also means less spending in cafes and on pub lunches. Less spending on everything, really. It seems I will not be contributing much to the local economy and will try very hard not to give the government even more of my money.
March 8, 2022
I watched a few minutes of Caroline Lucas being allowed to lie through her teeth on C4 last night. She claimed that even if we produced our own gas the prices would still be the same. A completely useless Cathy Newman left that unchallenged. Current price of a litre of petrol in Qatar is Ā£0.42/ltr and in UK Ā£1.55/ltr. So even with “Over half the pump price is tax” locally produced fuel would be significantly less than the exported price.
March 8, 2022
I propose that the go-ahead for fracking be given, but with a selling price cap placed on the producer and with the gas being used exclusively in the UK. The producer would still get a healthy profit on their sales and the gas supply companies would get a proportion of their supply at below the price of imported gas. There is NO WAY that this would not suppress the cost to the end-consumer. Only an eco-zealot couldn’t see that.
P.S. Last time I filled a petrol tank in the Middle East, it cost me less than Ā£5 – at a time when it would have cost Ā£50 here.
March 8, 2022
Sorry tax it isn’t over half of the pump price. It’s about 150% of the production price !!!
March 8, 2022
Its not just the fuel but the exportation of our manufacturing industry who can’t compete with lower power costs abroad. But we import these products without counting the carbon cost to do so. Totally disingenuous Government of fools.
March 8, 2022
If the Chancellor is not responding to the above good news, then he must be working to another plan that doesn’t involve our general well being. Certainly he is proving his status as a high tax high spend chancellor — Gordon Brown must be in awe at his ability to get away with all of this.
With the new Highway Code rules, that introduce fines for various irrational rules, we are being squeezed all ways. WHERE, I ask, are the carrots?
Never mind that we pay so much tax for petrol these days- that is made far worse for us, and provides much more to the Treasury, simply because the new polluted fuel is so inefficient and we have to fill up more often.
No way is this a government for the People.
March 8, 2022
Engineering Explained (YT) has a very video on this.
March 8, 2022
Sir J is talking about an extra billion here an extra billion there….and yet the average council up and down the land has an average budget shortfall of between twenty and thirty million – cutting services and rising council tax…..they’re forgotten to whom they serve
March 8, 2022
The incompetence of those who govern us is beyond belief. I sometimes wonder whether Sunak is an EU mole, intent on carrying out his masters’ wishes in making Brexit a failure. The Treasury forecasts are always wrong. Are the experts not capable of constructing a proper Excel spreadsheet? Where are people with experience?
And further to Dixie’s point, it has been obvious for many years that Net Zero is just Boris’ version of sweet nothings that he whispers into Mrs Johnson’s ear at night.
March 9, 2022
No one need do a blind thing to “make” brexit a failure.
It does that all by itself – it is intrinsically damaging to most aspects of life for the country and for its people.
March 9, 2022
Highest current economic growth in the G7
All your ridiculous Project Fear predictions lying in tatters.
March 8, 2022
Easy one to implemet would be to raise the VED on all the vehicles that have benefited for years paying Ā£40 and raise it to Ā£200 at the same time all EVs that at the moment pay nothing place a Ā£250 tax on them as they use the roads and facilities. It will not in the grand scheme of things solve the debt problem but “every little helps”
March 8, 2022
Iām not sure how BPās loss on divesting its Rosneft stake would impact on its corporation tax payment, but apart from this you are understating your case.
Inflation at 7% will no doubt swell tax revenue given that income tax and other thresholds are frozen in money terms. The decision to renege on the triple lock guarantee for state pensions will impact on the deficit too.
March 8, 2022
………………..The decision to renege on the triple lock guarantee for state pensions will impact on the deficit too………..and the voting public will not forget after 12 years in office, just what have the Tory’s achieved? A former conservative party has lost its way on everything. To woke/pc to notice or take necessary action. It takes a war in Ukraine to wake them up on their ridiculous energy policies.
March 8, 2022
With all the horrendous information coming out of the Ukraine which will no doubt have a massive impact on our financial situation in both the short and long term.
That being the case how is it that when the Ukraine gave up its nuclear capability three countries agreed to defend it should ever it be threatened, they were ,Russia, United States and Great Britain and two other countries not part of the treaty undersigned it.
Why didn’t the USA and GB kick off when he took Crimea back or at least drew a final line in the sand? It would seem all our political classes have a lot to answer for. How much is this going to cost us I ask myself?
March 8, 2022
You mean the ‘UK’.
March 8, 2022
Turbo. If Ukraine still had nuclear weapons perhaps Russia would not have invaded. Notice the SNP moaning yet again about Faslane and nuclear weapons. I hardly think it’s a good time to give them up. But then when did the SNP ever do anything for the betterment of the UK?
March 8, 2022
Yep as the price of taxed goods and services goes up, so does the tax take.
Gas and electricity suppliers suggest the price will double, as will the tax income from those services from the Vat which is applied.
Inflation is good for the government tax take, and for minimising the value of the debt.
March 8, 2022
The oh so clever bods at the Treasury and even Chancellors do not seem to grasp the simplest of economic facts that most people only have a certain amount to spend and once gone that’s it until the next pay day. If we spend our money filling up the bank accounts of oil and gas producers to obscene levels and the government tax coffers, we have nothing left to spend in the real economy which pays for everything. Result – unemployment, lower tax take from industry and employees, the country weakens for the future and a bigger benefits handouts bill. Why can we not have a proper strategic budget framework, not one just designed by incompetent politicians and an incompetent Treasury who always get their forecasts wrong and only look a couple of years ahead to the next election?
March 8, 2022
The Government is set to make billions through fuel tax and vat receipts due to the increase in prices. This predisposes that vat and import duty comes to us and doesn’t go to the EU.
Sunak must cut these taxes to help ordinary British people get through this crisis.
March 8, 2022
Why are we still giving British foreign aid to countries signing new oil and gas deals with Russia? In effect we are funding Putin with tax payers money.
March 8, 2022
Pakistan signed new trade deals with Russia and refused to condemn at UN while the PM gives British taxpayer money to Pakistan! Johnson is an absolute shyster. He thinks this will help his popularity at our expense. It just makes me loath his actions more.
March 9, 2022
Sending money also to India (who have said they don’t want it) Brazil, Mexico, China, who also refuse to condemn Putin. I doubt Johnson even knows about it, he is so devoid of any knowledge of this country or his actual job, but can spout endlessly Latin and Greek mythology. That’s him to a tee – a mythologist.
March 8, 2022
āRussian billionaires more welcome in UK than Ukrainians fleeing war.
2 million have now fled Ukraine, but UK takes 300. This is what the British people want?ā
This is todayās tweet from Guy Verhofstadt. More in touch with British public opinion than any Brexitist I ever met.
March 8, 2022
Most flee to to the nearest safe nation.
Are you and Guy opening up your posh homes?
Oh no?
What a surprise.
March 8, 2022
With 3 million plus EU citizens in the UK, we have already done our bit for Ukraine by making spaces available for them to backfill.
March 9, 2022
This Brexitist has just paid a visit to the DEC donations page; I suggest you do the same and spare us your mindless hate.
March 8, 2022
Sir John, I read that Labour wil be putting forward a motion to scrap the increase in NICs. I trust that you will be consistent and true to your principles and will vote in favour of the motion. You will, won’t you?
Reply there was no vote as we listened to the Ukraine Pres instead. I voted against last time
March 8, 2022
Why does the Treasury need this additional tax?
What extra unpopular spending is planned for which it feels it shouldnāt be seen just printing the money?
More Civil Servants with higher pay?
Increasing subsidies for renewables?
Increased levels of immigration?
Increasing cost of HS2?
March 8, 2022
The Electorate ought to be running out of space on the report card for this Government.
Noting Pros & Cons, the latest Cons
ie. ‘He should accept he is overtaxing and start to do something to cut the burdens. Otherwise he will go down in history as architect of one of the worst hits real incomes we have seen.’
Is Rishi trying hard to lose the next GE?
March 8, 2022
Love it. Farage on GB News talking about how Trump forecast Harmony would be in trouble relying on Russia for their energy. What a laugh seeing all the German delegates laughing at him. They are in the mucky and messy. Farage and Trump right again. How come Farage is talking sense?
March 8, 2022
Germany not harmony. Blooming phone.
March 8, 2022
I suspect the real reason Sunak doesn’t want to abandon the NI rise is not the money, but establishing the principle of pensioners paying NI.
People who spent their lives paying NI for the previous generations of pensioners are now the first to be asked to also foot the bill for their own! While being refused the CPI pension increase (while inflation soars to the level that increase actually would have been, around 8%) and being hit by massive fuel cost rises.
That is the most shocking thing I have seen from a supposedly-Conservative government. and as we know, these things are never actually abolished these days. Even Labour’s 50p tax band wasn’t abolished, only reduced to 45%.
I suggest that is where the battle can be won – the principle, not the money. It’s an election loser, quite frankly. And it’s immoral. Do people have to freeze – and be reported in papers – before this guy gets it?