Essay by Eric Worrall
I set forth my position that the ONLY reason Jeremy Hunt is raising taxes on working and middle class voters is to preserve the Government Net Zero agenda.
The following is from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s British Government Autumn Budget statement, delivered yesterday.
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Although my decisions today do lead to a substantial tax increase, we have not raised headline rates of taxation, and tax as a percentage of GDP will increase by just 1% over the next five years.
I start with personal taxes.
Asking more from those who have more means that the first difficult decision I take on tax is to reduce the threshold at which the 45p rate becomes payable from £150,000 to £125,140.
Those earning £150,000 or more will pay just over £1200 more in tax every year.
We are also taking difficult decisions on tax-free allowances.
I am maintaining at current levels the income tax personal allowance, higher rate threshold, main national insurance thresholds and the inheritance tax thresholds for a further two years taking us to April 2028.
Even after that, we will still have the most generous set of tax-free allowances of any G7 country.
I am also reforming allowances on unearned income.
The dividend allowance will be cut from £2,000 to £1,000 next year and then to £500 from April 2024.
The Annual Exempt Amount for capital gains tax will be cut from £12,300 to £6,000 next year and then to £3,000 from April 2024.
These changes still leave us with more generous allowances overall than countries like Germany, Ireland, France, and Canada.
And, because the OBR forecasts half of all new vehicles will be electric by 2025…
…to make our motoring tax system fairer I have decided that from April 2025 electric vehicles will no longer be exempt from Vehicle Excise Duty. …
…
Read more: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-autumn-statement-2022-speech
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt intends to increase taxes by 1% of GDP.
How much of that money is the government spending on Net Zero? Here it gets a little murkier.
The Grantham Institute estimates the Net Zero push will cost 2% of GDP, but the government maintains most of that investment comes from private business.
I would argue that 2% of forced expenditure, coerced by Net Zero policies, is effectively a disguised tax, equivalent to the government taking 2% extra tax, and spending it on Net Zero policies directly.
Grantham also expects a net benefit of 4% of GDP, but even if you believe the alarmism, this alleged benefit is not immediate, and will only accrue if everyone else makes similar CO2 emissions cuts.
Headline findings
Read more: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/what-will-climate-change-cost-the-uk/
- Under current policies, the total cost of climate change damages to the UK are projected to increase from 1.1% of GDP at present to 3.3% by 2050 and 7.4% by 2100.
- Strong global mitigation action could reduce the impacts of climate change damages to the UK from 7.4% to 2.4% of GDP by 2100.
- The greatest single risk of climate change damages to the UK economy is from catastrophic disruption to the global economic system (worth 4.1% of GDP).
- Foreign trade will, under current policies, cause a 1.1% fall in UK GDP as other countries experience losses from climate change.
- Agriculture is one of the UK sectors expected to be most impacted by climate change. The reduction of arable land as regions become drier is projected to halve its total contribution to UK GDP by 2100.
- There are strong economic reasons for the drive to net-zero: the benefits from mitigation exceed the costs in the second half of the century
- Co-benefits include significant health improvements, due largely to cleaner air, and stimulation of the economy through investment.
- Combined, the net-zero transition (estimated to cost a maximum of 2% of UK GDP) is expected to have a net benefit of around 4% of GDP.
- In the future, natural disasters, tourism, forestry, transport, conflict and displacement are likely to emerge as significant channels of climate risk.
- Proactive investment in adaptation measures such as coastal protection can greatly reduce the risk of climate-related damages.
It gets worse. Last month, the Government accepted a high court judgement that their Net Zero policies are inadequate. This judgement will force the government to either increase coercion, increase direct expenditure, or both.
UK GOVERNMENT TO DROP NET ZERO STRATEGY APPEAL
October 2022
Michael Salau, Priya Thakrar and Rhia Gould
In July 2022, the High Court ruled that the UK government’s Net Zero Strategy (“NZS”) breached its obligations under the Climate Change Act 2008 (“CCA”).
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Whilst the government had applied for permission to appeal the High Court ruling, on 13 October 2022, it confirmed in a letter to the High Court that it would not be pursuing its appeal. The government will have until March 2023 to update its NZS and provide more information on how its policies will achieve the targets set out in the CCA.
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Read more: https://beale-law.com/article/uk-government-to-drop-net-zero-strategy-appeal/
Jeremy Hunt is under a legal obligation to explain to the court how he intends to bring Britain back to compliance with the 2008 Climate Change Act. Hunt has until March 2023 to provide that explanation. He has not yet done so.
Jeremy Hunt’s tax rises in his own words amount to 1% of GDP – half the estimated economic cost of Net Zero.
How much of that 1% tax rise will end up being spent on the Net Zero push? I would argue all of it. Under the terms of the 2008 Climate Change Act, the British Government is legally obligated to meet intermediate targets in its progress towards Net Zero 2050. The High Court ruling is that the government is in breach of its obligations. So the choices are, repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act, or for the British Government to make up the shortfall in private investment – raise taxes and spend whatever it takes to repair the breach of the government’s obligations to meet the Net Zero target, including intermediate targets, no matter what the cost.
So the hidden 2% tax becomes a 1% real tax and a 1% hidden tax.
Doesn’t this leave voters in the same position as before, effectively still paying a 2% Net Zero tax? Probably not. Much of the heavy lifting for the hidden 2% would have been paid by corporations. In my opinion, what Jeremy Hunt has done has quietly transferred more of the burden of funding Net Zero directly onto the middle and working class – a silent tax cut for rich people, many of whom are likely already net beneficiaries of Net Zero policies, through their investments in wind farms and solar panels.
In a way this transfer makes the burden of funding Net Zero more obvious. But regardless of whether corporations or working and middle class pay the direct bills, that 2% is an ongoing burden on the British economy. All costs paid by corporations are passed on to consumers.
The only real solution I see is to abandon coercive Net Zero, and allow British energy companies like Caudrilla to restore affordable gas prices, by permitting them to frack. And of course, if claims that renewables are cheaper are true, allow the green revolution to proceed at its own pace, without unbearably expensive government coercion.
Over to you British voters.
Who can we vote for, Labour have similar policies but intend to get to NZ quicker.
Isn’t little Jazzy Ardern Prime Minister of Net Zero?
Reform UK. They don’t have to win, just be a disrupter. UKIP and the Brexit Party didn’t win elections (except in European elections), they forced the Tories to change policies by appealing to many voters that would normally vote Conservative. I used to be a Tory Party member, but quit and joined Reform.
I’d argue it wasn’t Johnson that won the last general election, Corbyn lost it and Brexit Party withdrew they candidates from marginal seats to allow the Tories a free run.
I think Tory’s policies, are appalling to many voters.
Reform UK is the only choice.
I had a one on one sit down for 20 minutes once with Nigel Farage, he and Australia’s Malcolm Roberts are the only senior politicians I’ve met who pass the pub test.
I had similar with other UKIP MEPs e.g. Roger Helmer. They were real quality. None are left in UKIP. They followed Nigel out altogether, although some joined reform or other smaller parties
Eric, you have to put Matt Canavan on that short list.
There is a much cheaper way to net-zero. Just offset your carbon emissions, like Mr DiCaprio does. Amazingly that will only cost 23 Euro/t CO2 (see below). The average 5.22t UK citizens emit would cost only 120 Euros per year, or roughly a 100 Pounds, if that makes it more British. And the whole British economcy would get away with roughly 6.5 billion Pounds, which is an absolute bargain as compared to what they are spending already.
https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/fix/
It just makes me wonder, why net-zero is so cheap for the rich and activists, while it is totally unaffordable to the ordinaries. LOL
The average Brit pays many times more than that in fuel duty on their petrol cars.
The flat rate VED (Vehicle Excise Duty) for a petrol car is £165 per year
Such actions have given birth to new nations.
Hunt admitted that energy is costing £150bn extra. That’s a lot more than 2% of GDP. In inflated pounds GDP is around £2,500bn, so that’s 6%. Then add in the consequent damage to industry and the cost of extra imports of things we no longer make. The knock on effects of less money to spend on other things… the damage is much more severe.
The Grantham Institute are a bunch of green climate alarmists, so don’t expect a rational proper accounting from them, they have to make a living out of scaring people. Net Zero will cost many trillions of pounds, and achieve nothing for climate, it’s time to wake up from this nightmare.
At some point people will realize that increasing taxes are not increasing their standard of living. That is a dangerous place for office holders to be in, because they set the tax. Remember, those who want to lower your standard of living are not your friends.
The great unwashed populace standing on their local MP’s lawn waving pitchforks and torches is the scenario that will persuade them to change their minds…
“as regions become drier”
Is the UK really getting drier?
the pubs are still open
A lot of pubs are closing because of the hike in overheads; many will never re-open !
Wasn’t yesterday.
By negative 6%, apparently.
I must be reading this wrongly.1%? …2%? Have they been spending less than this up to now? And Germany, too? Even if such modest amounts are somehow true, you haven’t mentioned that the economy isn’t ‘steady as she goes’ going forward. Aren’t industries closing their doors, with attendant unemployment rising and a serious inflation, on everything we eat where and use also emptying people’s pockets? My city doubled my taxes on our house, gasoline, heating, lighting cooking. Insurance, fares, rising rapidly… don’t they have to lay out 20,000 for heat pumps, runaway electrical Bill’s.
Where will the goverment scoop up these taxes by 2024, 2025, 2028 2050. Won’t 1% of GDP actually be shrinking in real £s? Oh yeah, everybody is going get those real good paying green jobs, or become programmers, I forgot.
Just going by their numbers. I suspect the actual spend + economic damage is far greater.
An oldie, but so true.
“ In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address (20 January 1981).
Anyway, this is all moot. I noted over a year ago that peak renewables was reached in 2017 and that it’s all over except for the racking up of 20th century scale casualties globally from baked in “Policy-Caused Economic Disaster” over the coming years while we try to turn this beast around with institutions totally unfit for the purpose. People uneducated for anything to do with what is needed …
“the ONLY reason Jeremy Hunt is raising taxes on working and middle class voters is to preserve the Government Net Zero agenda.”
Abandoning the Net Zero goals will never happen, unless there’s a major revolution or a meteor crosses our path.
Focusing specifically on Britain’s Net Zero policy is missing a crucial point, as most other Western economies aspire to similar public policy goals. All of them are following the goals of the World Economic Forum, which is maximizing the threat of climate mayhem as a Trojan horse to justify extreme measures, deliberately intended to impoverish both individuals and nation states – in order to facilitate the introduction of their Great Reset. This is all about taking illegitimate political control and it seems there’s little or no opposition to stop them.
As Klaus Schwab himself has boasted, he has cleverly managed to place “his people” at every level of government, including many nations’ leaders, not to mention the largest investment companies, banks, major businesses, all the international bodies, UN, WHO, World Bank etc.
The next step is the imposition of CBDCs/abolition of cash. Various internet sources have long speculated that to facilitate this will require mandated vaccine passports – and lo and behold at today’s G20 in Bali, that’s exactly what the members have agreed, claiming it will “facilitate” seamless international travel – despite the failure of the vaccines to prevent transmission or contagion. The lack of logic is apparently considered unnecessary.
https://www.westernstandard.news/news/g20-leaders-sign-declaration-to-create-global-vaccine-passport-system/article_26d55dec-668c-11ed-a850-cb28a0316827.html
Nope. NZ is toast. Ruinables peaked in 2017. With the intractable economic and every other kind of Policy-Caused disaster upon us, and the scramble for Gas and Coal (which is soaring in price also because of idiot green policy) to meet energy needs not fillable with fairy dust power, the whole sorry meme is history.
Oh yeah, there is a crescendo of sparks and fire and doubling down coming out of the glassy–eyed totalitarian set, but this is simply the chicken-with-head-chopped-off gymnastics. They will be ducking for cover before long.
Here’s a thought experiment to convince you:
Imagine yourself a European head of state and you’ve managed to secure enough oil, gas and coal at any price to keep your country’s coming cold and hunger casualties down to mere 100s of thousands. Would you hesitate to go into the treasury and replace used up wind and solar and also vastly expand this failed network? I rest my case.
As retail prices increase so does VAT. Extra bonus for the government to spend on ruinables.
Yes, you are right. Its a sort of insanity that has taken over the entire political class in the UK. Labour and the Liberals and SNP are even more extreme than the Conservatives. There is no-one to vote for who is not in the grip of this mania.
The most insane thing about it is that reaching Net Zero, even assuming they can, will have no effect whatever on the global climate. The UK emits under 500 million tons of CO2 a year, out of a global total of about 37 billion.
It seems unlikely they even can. Starmer had proposed moving entirely to wind and solar for power generation by 2030. If you just add up all the offshore turbines it would take to come close to that, and also include the amount of storage or backup, its obviously not going to happen. And even could you convert power generation like that, you’d still have to deal with industry and home heating and transport. The idea that you can convert all this to electricity while at the same time converting generation to wind? Its completely mad.
Even if you believe in the supposed climate crisis, this is not a rational reaction to it. Its impossible to do as planned, and even if done it would have no effect on it.
What is amazing is there is just about no political opposition to Net Zero in the UK. They all seem to tiptoeing around, one suspects that in private they mostly admit that its nuts, but they seem terrified to state the obvious in public.
Meanwhile the offshoots of Extinction Rebellion are engaging in acts like vanalizing art works or monuments or buildings, as if this, or blocking highways, or letting the air out of car tyres, is in some way contributing to saving the planet from something.
The country seems to have lost any ability to connect ends and means. People seem to embark on any sort of irrelevant course of action, and then if challenged explain they are doing it because of something it has no bearing on.
Why not all stand on our heads for a half hour every morning? Because climate!
The age of emotion. Logic and facts do not matter, it is what you feel that is important. Your truth is better than the truth. The best example if this illogic is that men can change sex to become women, irrespective of genetics.
“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do.
“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first…Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes.
“Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper… Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.“
Charles Mackay, L.L.D.
These days you probably have to swap out the word “men” for some gender neutral woke nonsense, but otherwise the observation is as sound now as when it was published in 1841. Its an eerily apposite description of the climate madness we are witnessing today.
Sadly Eric it matters little who we vote for these days.
Labour introduced the 2008 Climate Change Act, one of Ed Milibands more obvious acts of national self harm. That act was championed by the Lib Dems and promoted by them during their coalition with the Tories from 2010 to 2015. The Tories, once elected in their own right retained the Act of destruction from 2008 despite Cameron the PM declaring “no more Green crap”.
2015 UK election result changed nothing, despite Cameron’s statement. It is possible his acceptance of ‘Green crap’ energy policies, owed more than a minor amount of personal interest. His father in law was being gifted huge state inducements and ongoing, to install wind turbines on his large landed estate. Samantha Cameron’s dad is Sir Reginald Sheffield 8th Baronet.
The Tories have failed the electorate at every turn. Their only saving grace is Labour would be worse. That is the state of politics here in the UK. There is no one we can vote for that will stop this madness of Green energy suicide.
At one point during the Chancellor’s speech to the House, Hunt reminded Labour, “you can not borrow your way out of debt”. Someone should have quickly reminded him you can not tax your way out of debt either. The only route out of debt is wealth creation. Sadly the constant closing down of wealth creation activities, due to high energy costs here in the UK, suggests even the Tories have forgotten that basic rule.
Best start learning mandarin
Might be a good idea for some. A young relative of mine studied it in college, in the Boston area- then got a job in a bank owned by a Chinese American who can’t speak a word of mandarin. But one day some businessmen from China showed up- walked in, looking for the Chinese American boss and started talking to him in mandarin- but the boss said, “oh, so sorry, can’t speak mandarin, I’ll introduce you to my employee, Sean *****”, a freckle faced Irish American who looks like a high school kid, who is fluent in mandarin. I think that kid has a fine future ahead of him.
At this point I urge people to give Mr. Farage a go. What have you got to lose? As you point out, all the mainstream parties are useless on key issues, so there is no such thing as worrying about whether your vote will be wasted anymore.
I think that Reform will soak up a huge number of conservative, as opposed to Tory, voters. In my case I have never voted Labour or Tory, ever. Any other party apart from Greens or Liberals would be preferable as far as I am concerned.
Even if a third party emerged with a minority of seaas, if it held the balance of power it could exact some sanity from a coalition partner – an opposition in government.
Indeed! A vote for anything other that UKIP or Reform (forgive me if I don’t have the parties right, I’m not on that side of “The Pond”) would seem to BE the way to waste your votes at this point, unless there are openly skeptical members of the other parties to vote for…
The irony is that these tax increases are supposed to prevent the burden being passed to future generations. However, as a result of government’s NZ2050 obsession, future generations will be more impoverished financially and socially.
As many young people seem to want to go down the route of socialism, authoritarianism and climate alarmism, they only have themselves to blame.
Right, but then they’ll blame others when they can’t find jobs, can’t afford a home, can’t afford to travel, can’t afford to buy good food.
To a socialist, the answer to these problems is as obvious as it is wrong.
Can’t afford housing, demand government provide you a house.
Can’t afford heat, demand government subsidize heat.
Can’t afford food, demand government provide food.
Can’t find a job, demand government provide you with a paycheck.
If these don’t solve your problems, demand that government arrest anyone who opposes more free stuff so that government can finally get around to solving all your problems.
My take on this is that the Remain/Rejoin wing of the party and the civil service and city are in the driving seat, and the hidden agenda is to rejoin the EU. A happy successful UK wouldn’t do that, so we are to be destroyed economically, and subjected to incessant propaganda to make us perform worse than the EU, and then rejoin on terrible terms as a vassal state as an example to other EU nations.
Climate change is simply a convenient way to do this. More windmills, no fracking, delay nuclear…
We’re truly stuck between Scylla and Charybdis The two parties likely to form the next government are both fully committed, as are any third parties likely to form a coalition.
Basically we’re stuffed (there’s a better word) unless there are protests along the lines of the Poll Tax Riots about the cost of energy hitting the poorest hardest. I can’t see that happening any time soon as the population of Britain are cowed like cttle into doing anything the politicians want including freezing to death. Those politicians who think this is a fools errand seem terrified of the repurcusions of saying so.
We could still exploit the Fossil Fuels available to us and solve a lot of problems relatively quickly if we had the strength of will to join China and India and say up yours to the UN and green lobbies
From the article: “Under current policies, the total cost of climate change damages to the UK are projected to increase from 1.1% of GDP at present to 3.3% by 2050 and 7.4% by 2100.
Strong global mitigation action could reduce the impacts of climate change damages to the UK from 7.4% to 2.4% of GDP by 2100.”
Such delusional thinking! There is no evidence that CO2/climate change will cause any damage to the UK or to anyone else. This is a figment of CO2-phobes imagination.
This is called “being divorced from reality”. It’s very bad when national leaders are divorced from reality. But that’s the situation we are living in now.
Wasting Trillions of dollars and hurting millions of people based on a CO2 delusion. That’s what Western “leadership” is focused on.
Future generations will be amazed at how the whole Western world went off the rails based on a delusion about CO2. They will have a great example of mass delusion to study.
Future generations will have their own fanaticism, all generations do. The “naked apes” are inheritantly irrational.
Remember, remember the 5th of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
The people who wrote “V for Vendetta” imagined a right wing fascists frightening people with a deadly disease, and using that fear to subvert democracy. But these days green communists look far more plausible as the totalitarian villains of the story.
UK GDP in 2021 was $3.2 Trillion US.
1 percent of GDP is $32 BILLION dollars.
What hat did they pull the “current climate change cost” out of?
Has anyone asked the UK government to show their work on this astounding level of climate change “damage”?
This is total BS.
Can I point out that the British people do not often pay their taxes in US$100 bills. Was it too difficult to find a picture of £50 notes?
“to make our motoring tax system fairer I have decided that from April 2025 electric vehicles will no longer be exempt from Vehicle Excise Duty”
OMG blasphemy . …