Cost of Living Crisis

Isn't 170bn the global profit?

Are we going to tax and nationalise Aramco and Chinese natural petroleum?

 

The implication of the tax cut is surely a secondary issue to the £2.5tn in debt though?

Growth won't cut it, but when you're talking about £250tn why would it?

And £2bn on tracing or £2bn cutting the top rate of tax is tinkering around the edges. The big issues are the covid support and the fuel price support, nothing else really matters.

 

Its our oil and gas we shouldnt be paying these prices. Any decent govt would own their resources, sell them at global prices, reinvest and save the profits for a rainy day like now. Its hardly communism or even socialism its just common sense.

 

Maybe so. But you can't own the resources of the Chinese and the Saudis surely which is where the 170bn comes from.

So I'll ask you again to show your workings.

But in general there is nothing wrong with companies making profit, especially when they are just relatively low percentages or absolutely astronomical turnovers.

 

Truss has borrowed 100bn or whatever the number is and the prices are still going up for us. So when you factor bills will still be high compared to last year and the fact that they are paying 100bn to fund a cap then id say the 170bn is primarily uk based.

Channel 4 say:

The government is freezing the energy cap at its current level, rather than allowing it to rise in October as planned. Your total bill depends on your energy use, but the typical home can now expect to pay £2,500 a year from next month – around £1,000 less than previously expected.

We don’t yet know how much it will cost the public purse, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the bill could “easily” reach £100bn this year alone, “with more to come” in the second year of the policy

 

You're mistaking 2 different things as usual. The 170bn you quoted is profit, the 100bn you quoted is the subsidy which is funded through debt. Its not the same thing.

Why do you keep misunderstanding things? It makes it quite difficult to debate.

Show your workings on the 170 bn in profit the government could collect or just forget about it.

 

Youre arrogance knows no bounds.

I know the difference between expected profits of 170bn and the subsidy of 100bn.

Maybe look in the mirror. You consistently spin and twist things and then talk on about the nonsense aspect of an argument and ignore the hard facts that prove you sound once again dim.

If the energy companies make 170bn in profits it needs taxing. Why you are asking me to show workings is bizarre.

 

Haven't a scooby other than we have spunked/wasted so much more money domestically than others maybe ..

 

What arrogance? There's no twisting.

If GLOBAL energy companies make £170bn what right do you think we have to tax them? How can we tax Saudi based companies who are making money in Africa for example? Its nothing to do with us.

So show your workings. Its relatively simple.

 

Agree. What have I said? Even though I love the tax cuts I hate the borrowing.

But the big reason for the borrowing are what I stated. Its not like we'd be okay without cutting 1p off basic tax and removing the top rate. We'd still be screwed.

 

You actually probably deserved a proper response to this rather than me focusing on the flawed maths that UK Energy producers could have funded the price increase.

I don't view that my taxes go to wealthy individuals in general. Don't the top 1% of income tax payers contribute something like 30% of all the income tax collected? I want the nation to be bettered and infrastructure to be built but that doesn't mean that the taxpayer becomes an unlimited fund. The government take in £900+ billion in tax per year - spend it better rather than constantly wanting more.

But the last paragraph is a key point - sometimes there isn't a good solution - but we seem to have got ourselves into a society where we expect governments who are mainly made up of pretty averagely intelligent people to come up with solutions to impossible scenarios. We also seem to have got ourselves into an ideal where the idea of free money and just everything being solvable has become what we judge them against with absolutely no thought of the repercussions.

If my energy went to £6k a year then I would have had to pay it, I would have expected any UK companies who made an exceptional profit to be heavily taxed on with that money being used to reduce future bills but I also recognise that if the profit was being made in Saudi or wherever then accessing that is not possible. When I got my mortgage I paid 6% interest on it, if the rate goes up to 6% again then I will pay it again.

I won't be happy about either of those things but NOW is too late to complain about them. We all knew that massive borrowing through Covid would cause problems for all Western countries, we all knew that Europe relying on Russia for oil and gas was a dodgy strategy, we all knew that not having home grown energy supplies could bite us in the backside, we all know that having the government borrowing to fund the nations energy bill was going to be problematic, we all knew that 1% interest rates wouldn't last forever. These were all generally popular ideas up until about 6 months ago though. There's no point complaining about what you reap when you're cheered on the sowing process.

 

The simplest solution would have been to keep our noses out of Russian business.

Weird how we're capable of keeping out of Azerbaijani business, when a similar situation is unfolding, in a similar geographical area.

 

This

 

Russia invading another European sovereign country isn't just 'Russian business'. If Putin had been allowed to just walk all over Ukraine it would have been Moldova next, then the Baltic States and then on to Poland. Putin wants to reclaim as much of the old USSR as he can. Showing weakness to him would just have encouraged his megalomania even further.
Not sure why you don't seem to get this.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/29/truss-allies-excuses-financial-meltdown-economy-pound?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

These excuses are hilarious. I suppose the last twelve years' gross mismanagement of the economy are all someone else's fault too?

 

Even the Mail sticking the boot in:

 

Some of the posts on this thread would have you believing the Tories are actually doing a good job of running the country in testing circumstances.
Time for change.

 

Unfortunatly that won't happen for another 3 years.