“Nothing is certain except death and taxes”
There’s now a crisis according to our dear MSM which tell us in their print editions today that the ‘cost-of-living’ has risen to 9%, or perhaps 10% or even 11% (link). The DT blames Putin, while the Express and Mirror have suddenly discovered their hearts for poor pensioners – these are baby boomers, but it’s expedient for now not to mention this. We also learn that ‘the No 10 Team’ is blocking that windfall tax on energy suppliers. It’s all terribly gloomy, and somehow so very unexpected, even for the highly-paid ‘experts’ writing in the MSM. Well, they had other things to bloviate about, since the 24th of February.
Let’s take a closer look. There’s the Mirror summarising a report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the culprit is Sunak:
“Soaring inflation is causing untold misery for Britain’s poorest families as they struggle to survive. The 3.1 million worst-off households are being battered by cost of living prices going up faster than anyone else’s. It means that while inflation has hit a 40-year high of 9% overall, for the poorest it has actually gone up by 10.9%. But for the richest 10% of households it is 7.9%, according to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Rishi Sunak is still refusing to help ease the cost of living crisis by resisting demands for a windfall tax on energy giants.” (link)
It is not earth-shattering news that those on lower incomes spend more of their money on food. That’s well known and documented. It’s also not earth-shattering that the Mirror, the Labour Red Top, moans that ‘the rich’, who were able to buy more expensive food items, can level down and buy the cheaper stuff whereas the poor can now only go to food banks.
It is however indicative of the economic illiteracy of the Mirror writers to insinuate that this windfall tax ‘will ease the cost of living’, without saying how that might work. It is a lovely cudgel to bash the Tories with, and The Times has jumped on the bandwagon because it’s just such a juicy item, helping to undermine Johnson while whitewashing Sunak. They don’t seem to notice that they are being utilised by Treasury mandarins who would of course love to collect even more taxes:
“No 10 is resisting pressure for a windfall tax on energy companies on the grounds that it would be “ideologically unconservative”. Treasury officials believe that the levy is “politically unavoidable” but are being blocked by the prime minister’s advisers. […] In conversations with No 10, Treasury officials have argued that while a windfall tax would not raise a significant amount it would send a powerful message to the public that the government was “on their side”.” (link, paywalled)
Strewth! So raising a tax which in the end we, the consumers, would have to pay through ever higher prices is ok because ‘it sends a powerful message’ and never mind rising inflation? Is this what plain economics has come down to: political messaging for the plebs? There’s more:
“Boris Johnson’s advisers are said to be resisting the move because it would be viewed as an attack on business. One of them said it would be an “ideologically unconservative thing to do”, The Times has been told. Sunak is increasingly in favour of a windfall tax because of the failure of energy companies to commit themselves to investing to shore up supplies.” (link, paywalled)
Oh, bad Tories, innit, with their conservative ideology of not attacking business …! Sunak’s reasoning looks amazingly amateur, insinuating that this tax is punitive because the bad energy companies haven’t done enough to ‘shore up supplies’. Please let’s keep world markets out of this, don’t mention ‘sanctions’, and don’t point a finger at Net Zero policies which aim to wean us off gas and coal.
Above all, let’s not ask why No 10 and the Treasury haven’t ‘nudged’ those energy companies into ‘shoring up supplies’ a year ago when this crisis started to develop. There was also that negligible little thing called ‘covid’ with money being printed as if there was no tomorrow, to alleviate the economic pain of lockdowns.
It doesn’t need to be mentioned that the Treasury loves taxing anything that moves. The next tax is already being ‘consulted’ about. It’s an ‘online sales tax’. The BBC has a report this morning where we read that the government has been ‘in consultations’ on this issue:
“The Treasury has been sounding out the retail industry on an online sales tax since February saying it is keen to hear the arguments for and against, as well as how it could work. It said no decision has been made.” (link)
I cannot recall having seen articles in the MSM about that consultation. So I checked out the government site and lookit here what I found: that announcement was made on Friday the 25th February 2022 (link). What an excellent example of hiding ‘news’! We do remember, do we not, what happened on the 24th of February. Clearly, the reason we plebs have been left in the dark is Putin’s fault.
A brief check using the browser of your choice shows that trade groups and grocery supermarket chains were well aware of this consultation. The consensus seems to be that such a tax would be useful if business rates on shops were reduced – as if any proper Treasury mandarin would ever support lowering a tax, any tax.
I expect the rift between us peasants and the Westminster swamp dwellers to widen increasingly as the weeks roll by towards the Autumn budget. Inflation, more taxes, even higher energy costs: no matter because our ‘government economists’ and the MSM editors are as economically illiterate as they’re scientifically illiterate. There’s a great comment article by Allister Heath in the DT today which deserves our ‘FROM BEHIND THE PAYWALL’ treatment – here is the link.
I leave you with the earth-shattering news that a female (what else!) DT ‘war correspondent’, reporting from the Ukraine, fell in love with a little dog and brought her home (paywalled link) – aahhh! See – we don’t need to worry about taxes and inflation and war when the DT has space for such a heart-warming story!
Mentioning Banks! Two things puzzle me, the
BofE do so little they only go to work one day a week. Food banks! If we are going to be struggling to feed the family, where will they get food from to stock the bank for the layabouts?
The civil service, which briefs incoming ministers on their new departments, is as complicit in the climate cult as much as polticians along with the MSM. Even without the pandemic, energy costs were going to increase (remember Hammond protesting at May’s trillion pound departing gift which MPs rubber stamped?). Apart from us few climate emergency sceptics, everyone was indeed in it together.
The response to the pandemic was initially necessary if only because of the years of NHS mismanagement, but the subsequent addiction to a series of lockdowns and tiers, indifferent to the collateral damage to the young denied socialisation and education, was yet further public sector self-interest to the exclusion of the interests of the governed. But, it also aligned nicely with, accelerated actually, the move to a green world in which we all cycle, so far as allowed to move about at all.
China’s fanatical zero covid policy was not anticipated to endure this long and so prolonged supply chain disruption has caught them unawares.
The US policy of extending and weakening Russia failed to see the implications of shutting down Ukraine’s production of wheat and fertiliser (and certain important minerals). Nor did they see it would accelerate a multipolar world.
The state is now so bloated, and its running dogs so habituated to the idea that they should control everthing, that even while it dawns on them, subliminally perhaps for now, that they do not not know enough to foresee the consequnes of what they do, they can only double down on their failed policies and hope that somehow things will eventually come right. Meanwhile, the government’s Public Order bill permits ankle tagging people to stop them attending protests. So far as they foresee protests increasing that may be the one thing they get right.
The extent to which this country and other so called liberal democracies have been mismanged is simply breath taking. Biden, Johnson, Trudeau, Macron, Scholtz ….all governing by reference to each other rather than to us. In some ways that is inevitable as each society becomes multicutural. There is no longer any volksgeist to guide goverments, no single peoples from whom social cohesion and solidarity can emerge. They look to each other because it is too scary, too unsettling to look anywhere else.
Interesting summary of the state of play.
Just as in the Covid pandemonium, the’ little people’ will pay the bill for the ‘teflon classes’ now spending money as if it’s going out of fashion, the pubic sector is creating more management non jobs as is the NHS. Small business owners say they can’t get staff, applicants don’t turn up for interviews and when employed to many want to arrive late, play with their phones every five minutes and stay away from work for flimsy reasons. Diesel hit £1.84 a litre here yesterday but the roads and carparks are full , many cars 4×4’s and EV’s sporting the latest registration so it seems Audi Avenue residents have yet to notice what’s going on maybe all that WFH dulled their senses.
Due to the impending green energy change, fossil fuel companies are unwilling to invest money in exploration (becoming increasingly difficult/expensive as fossil fuel reserves become depleted.
I suggest the starving poor get rid of their luxury products such as iphones, give up the booze, junk food, expensive clothing, cars and gambling.
Oh and make sure the man in their life is going to help support their children.
Just to underline what Viv is saying about the economy; Neil McCoy-Ward talks about the trouble the UK economy is in and it’s very interesting that he also uses a historical perspective. This is good information and the bottom line is this: we must stop expecting politicians and bankers to work in our interests, we are worthless to them and we’ve been yet again royally stitched up.
“The UK Is In DEEP Trouble!”
You are most likely correct. The problem started back in the days of Bliar and Brown.
No, the problem started after the WW2 when the Labour party consumed with victory over the Nazis considered that if big goverment could achieve such a victory in wartime then just think what it could achieve in peace time. The British people were taken in and thus they overturned the sound economic principles of the last 100 years that brought unimaginable wealth and power to this country by nationalising industry, creating a welfare system and creating the millstone that is around our neck now – the NHS. And all the while they built they all whistled to the tune of ‘The man from Whitehall knows best’ . The Tories in their desperation to get back into power swallowed the lot whilst also plotting to undermine democracy by bouncing Britain into the Common Market. We had in effect economic illiterates to the Left of us and traitors to the Right of us. The British political establishment had lost their marbles. What folly, no wonder America refused to send Marshall Aid. They did perfectly right. Britain had gone cuckoo.
NEW ZEALAND – Jacinda Ardern outlines her ‘Build back better’ plan, and speaks of the WEF Agenda 2030 Vision of Society.
The Vision of a new society, you haven’t been given a chance to vote for.
But then this is all a conspiracy right?
https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1526585562823634945
There’s no reason for anyone to be poor in the UK. It arises through stupidity and idleness.
The idleness starts at school with not doing homework and bunking off.
With women, it’s the expectation that the taxpayer should support any odd children they have. The nuclear family is always the best option. (If, it seems, unfashionable)