Essay by Eric Worrall
In the wake of the shock Uxbridge by-election result, mainstream British political parties are questioning whether an unequivocal commitment to green policies is a guaranteed vote winner.
Great Reset U-Turn: Labour Party to Ditch National Car Emissions Tax Zones Scheme
KURT ZINDULKA 13 Aug 2023
…
Following steep public backlash and a disastrous by-election result attributed to anger over leftist London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s widely despised plan to expand the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) car tax scheme to all of London, the Labour Party has reportedly scrapped plans to campaign on bringing the Great Reset-style scheme to the rest of the country.
…
“That result in Uxbridge demonstrates there is never any reason to be complacent and never a reason to rest on our laurels. It is reminder that in an election, policy matters… We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet,” he said.
…
However, others are less convinced that the left-wing party will maintain such a position if they are given power by the people, with Conservative London Assembly Member Susan Hall, who will challenge Sadiq Khan in next year’s London mayoral election, saying: “Everyone knows Labour won’t stop with Sadiq Khan’s Ulez expansion, no matter what they say.”
Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/08/13/great-reset-u-turn-labour-party-to-ditch-national-car-emissions-tax-zones-scheme/
The rapid policy pivots of politicians in the face of the Uxbridge by-election upset demonstrates the shallowness of the British political commitment to the green agenda. The moment green zealotry stops winning elections, they’ll drop it like a hot potato.
Of course, road user charges like ULEZ are only a small part of the total package of green pain the British are enduring. But the cause of most of this pain is not as obvious as being charged to drive your vehicle.
British friends I’ve talked to mostly don’t believe green policies are driving up their energy bills, they have accepted relentless BBC attempts to blame energy company greed for high prices.
This BBC propaganda has succeeded because it is partly true. Energy companies are greedy, on behalf of their shareholders – they are taking advantage of the enormous barriers to entry imposed by excessive British green tape. But energy company greed is not the root cause of Britain’s problems. The root cause is the green tape which has created a near market monopoly for existing players, by preventing effective development of new British energy resources, and is blocking entry by new competitors like fracking company Cuadrilla. This is the root cause of the British cost of living crisis.
There will be an awakening. The Uxbridge anti-ULEZ victory shows there is a limit to British patience. Sooner or later that patience will snap, people will take the trouble to see through the fog of misleading claims and work out what is really happening, and the politicians responsible for inflicting this distress on the British people will face a tsunami of voter dissatisfaction.
What I do know about British politics was that Boris Johnson proved to be an utter disappointment, allegedly going hard green because of his new wife.
Both major parties seem irredeemably committed to green policies, and there is no one obvious to lead a coup.
I wish my British friends would take Nigel Farage more seriously. He lost his marriage, twice, and almost died twice trying to make things right in Britain – one time a suspicious automobile accident, another time survived an aircraft accident. But despite all this he’s still trying to help Britain.
Politicians who oppose Europe sometimes seem to have car accidents, like Austria’s Jörg Haider, though it could all be a coincidence.
Most of all, Farage is one of the few senior politicians I’ve met who pass the pub test – what you see is what you get. I was once lucky enough to spend 20 minutes one on one discussing politics with Farage.
Farage is a staunch climate skeptic, he once appointed Lord Monckton as UKIP’s climate spokesman.
Seriously, if you are looking for someone who has the national recognition and integrity, giving Farage a go would at least be a chance for a better future.
Surely better than voting for the usual scoundrels. What have you got to lose?
Climatology has replaced Catholicism across Europe. Maybe UK needs a new form of the church more open to reality than zealotry.
Any church open to reality would logically close up shop and send all personal home.
Farage blew his chances by running away and hiding after the referendum. Having lost his sinecure as an MEP he disappeared.
Now seven years and 5 PMs on it’s too late.
Personally I hope, with no optimism, that we don’t spend another forty years arguing about rejoining or how to make the most of being outside the EU. We wasted 40 years of membership by arguing amongst ourselves rather than looking for opportunities to exploit.
The EU became a get out of jail free card for incompetent politicians and bureaucrats now replaced by Climate Armageddon.
Rubbish, you’re another bitter UKIP supporter who fails to understand that Nigel recognised his Reform party was not capable of doing anything but diluting a stonking Conservative majority in the HoC, which they got because he did a deal not to contest certain seats.
Boris got his majority but stabbed Brexit voters in the back and went bright green, something no one expected.
The Reform party was never going to achieve anything significant. It would have been lucky to be a distant third in the election, more likely fourth behind the Lib Dems. There was then a possibility of a Labour/Lib Dem coalition to beat the Conservatives.
Nigel Farage has spent the best part of his life as a minority politician. For that he has been verbally abused, physically assaulted and lied about by Chris Bryant, a snivelling Labour politician using Parliamentary privilege to accuse him of accepting £500,000 from Russia. Bryant has yet to apologise and Parliament has not lifted a finger to admonish him. Getting thrown out of politics for good would be too good for the scumbag.
Nigel Farage has done more for the country than any living politician. From his position of a minority politician he forced the Conservative party to call a referendum on the EU, and he won.
We are now watching the EU disintegrating before our eyes, and were it not for Nigel Farage we would be going down with it.
He is the single most principled, articulate, charismatic and determined politician we have seen since Margaret Thatcher and the establishment is terrified of him.
Hear, Hear!
And in the recent NatWest/Coutts debanking debacle note how many MP’s now come out and say “they were aware of problems and had concerns”.
But they did nothing.
Farage shines a bright light and is fearless. He opened the entire immigration debate up again – because Labour and the Left shut it down with instant cries of “racism” and spineless Conservatives were too scared to put their head above the parapet.
Farage has done more for freedom, free speech and democracy in the UK than any other politician in the last 30+ years.
And don’t forget he also survived testicular cancer.
One of the great political put downs.
You’re not laughing at me now.
HotScot…….100% agree on that analysis as well as your comments on Nigel as the most articulate, principled and charismatic politician in decades. I have nothing but admiration for his tireless efforts to outwit the EU technocrats and protect the UK from a parliament full of people with no clue about anything important. I really wish Nigel would come back and save us at the next election 🤞
I’m a little more ambivalent about Farage – I never really warmed to him, personally and I think he’s still unsure of the Climate Change issue – he sees through much of the alarmist BS but still not convinced it’s a complete fraud. I agree that we’re seeing the EU in real trouble but unless our useless politicians wake up and really take control of Brexit we’re likely to be going with them – we’re still too closely tied to the EU and I’m in agreement with Nigel on that point, we need a bit more divergence and a lot more control.
I agree with you, notwithstanding my comment earlier; he is working with his hands tied to some degree.
His treatment by Natwest is, imho, allowing him to take on the Blob in a way they could never have dreamed possible. Woke Bankers ( always had a Monty Python issue with B and W ) is the very tip of the Woke/ESG dreamland that has been operating for years and is now in plain sight – “people” have had way more than enough and I, as the angriest person you will never meet, am not taking this any longer. If he handles this correctly – a very big if and even bigger deal – it will be Brexit #2 – I offer the evidence that Alison Rose admitted she had broken several key FCA regulations ( aka primary legislation in origin ) in speaking to a third party about NF’s accounts – she should never have been able to do so because she is not FCA authorised to do so, is subject to FCA SMR; that is as big a breach as you can get without stealing money from customers. NF and GBN should be hammering this daily, fingering Howard Davies – ex CEO of the pre FCA regulator FFHS – and his crap Board – a complete own goal. Take it from me, there are even bigger fish to fry than Ms Ros and Mr Davies – “go get em Nigel”
He doesn’t seem to be taking any active part in the next election. The only party which is somewhat skeptical is Reform, but even they are not explicit about what they would do on energy. There is no UK party which advocates repeal of the Climate Change Act, and dismantling of all the subsidies to wind and solar.
Subsidies from a variety of sources which, when you add them up, amount to 400+ pounds a year per household, according to Paul Homewood.
Nigel would be an excellent choice at the next election, but recently the blob have again tried to cancel him in a big way. Reform have a manifesto which is excellent, basically proper Conservative etc. viewable online now. The BBC and others are campaigning against him already, but GB News is the place to watch, and the Sunday Sermon on TalkTV from Richard Tice, leader of Reform.They are offering proper solutions to real problems, unlike the LabLibCon party (uni-party) which are virtually identical in their lack of ideas and policies. However he is very wary, probably because of his personal safety, he has loads of threats to life, of course the Police don’t care! He is playing a long game, which is quite reasonable given the political environment in the UK at present.
The blob are a malevolent, mendacious bunch of anti democratic globalists
I hope to see them fail spectacularly during my lifetime
Agree Eric,
Farage would have been an epic UK leader, on par with Churchill
Farage has a patchy record but does get more right than wrong. Sadly in the past he didn’t do detail which when dealing with the EU is highly important. That the one party dedicated to getting the UK out of the EU failed to have an exit plan is a major failing of Farage and something that will blight the UK for years. Farage was also against a referendum, insisting that UKIP would take the UK out once it became the government and so wasted money gained from the EU via MEPs on UK elections where precisely zero seats were won. The money would have been better spent setting up UKIP as to main resource for information on the EU and how its membership affected the UK. To this day many people, especially politicians, fail to understand the difference between tariffs and border controls, and don’t know that membership of the EU Customs Union is for EU members only.
Norway is not an EU member and neither is Switzerland. Both effectively inside the customs union.
Some leader with a clear plan needs to step up.
A clear plan forward will not include crippling the economy to reduce CO2 output.
A clear plan would be “all of the above” as far as energy generation is concerned, and “let the free market decide” as a guiding principle.
Damn the CO2 scaremongering! Full Steam Ahead!
EW, I wish I could agree 100% – but I cannot which I concede may be 100% due to the overarching evil of OFCOM. He has to strike an OFCOM compliant balance with guests across the spectrum, but he fails again and again to skewer the EcoloonOughtists ( and again I accept he might not be totally in charge of that interview process…..however, if NO can deliver what I consider to be quintessentially small “c”, freedom loving monologues even though I do not agree with all of what he says…..a <1% amount).
IMHO, he should ask a number of very key questions of all these soi-disant green apparatchik revolutionaries – starting with “Exactly why do you consider CO2 to be a pollutant/inimicable to the planet/harmful to all life on earth” and “Precisely what level of CO2 do you wish to see in the atmosphere of this planet”…more informed folks here could make more cogent suggestions I am sure.
FFHS NF and his ilk have to attack these loonies in such a way to allow them to spout their mantras so that people can understand unequivocally what floats their boats – so everyone else makes an “informed” judgement rather than the guesswork that is sometimes the case now…….?
Boris Johnson was the best leader the Labour party ever had. But his new wife has nothing to do with it. He was a puppet from the start but very good in trowing sand in the eyes of the public. He is controlled and only follows orders from his masters the same masters who control most Western ‘leaders’.
Just look how they punished the public for voting Brexit.
Nigel Farage is the only option for Britain the rest is all the same lie.
“Nigel Farage is the only option for Britain the rest is all the same lie.”
That’s what it looks like to me, too.
Correct – Boris was driven by his wife’s green conology – one of her closest friends, Lord Goldsmith, was green conology on steroids
Boris, the man who wasted an 80 seat majority and achieved very little for the British masses, an historical malfunction of the highest order
The only people who were disappointed by the performance of the lying oaf Johnson were those who were blinded by his clown act and bonhommie. There was copious evidence that he was an incompetent ignorant idiot unsuited for any public office.
While I was inclined to discount any criticism by the left, and presume anyone they hate must be basically in the right.
As hinted, very very strongly, by Charles Moore, several times – and he knows!!!!
“A vote winner” says it all.
The minority woke is one thing. The majority awakening is quite another.
Yet I wouldn’t suggest a victory parade until the tide has fully turned.
Too many corporations and NGO’s profiting from too much government munificence as taxpayer dollar handouts.
The real failure is not so much the generosity, rather the lacking of product in return, commiserate with the largess. We’re many billions in with nothing of equal value to show for it but biased modelling, biased interpretations of the models, and an agenda purposed to resemble the labyrinth, hidden beneath a game of three card monte. Daedalus would be both amazed and jealous.
“Three card monte” or the Elmsley count 🙂
Poland is poised to have a higher GDP than Britain within 7 years:
https://news.sky.com/story/britains-economic-trajectory-will-soon-see-it-overtaken-by-poland-labour-to-warn-12821152
I’d say the time to wake up is long past, but the examples of leaders like Thatcher and Reagan show it’s still not too late if net-zero insanity and related policies are abandoned.
I’ve worked with Poles, very tough people. Even the Soviets had to compromise with them on allowing military access to pastoral care, and Poles led the uprising which led to the collapse of Soviet control of Eastern Europe. The EU doesn’t scare them, they take what they want and ignore the rules they don’t like.
As Britain should have
I hope Poland, Hungary and Italy leave the far left EU institution within the next decade, they will prosper outside it
True. such a shame that the UK politicians made such a mess of Brexit that it hasn’t encouraged others to follow us out.
More a case of the establishment/civil servants making a knowing mess of Leaving the EU. The politicians were and are mere bystanders. It is a classic case of the public voting to Leave and the establishment working to remain. Labour and the LibDems have made it clear they will work hard to re-join the EU if they gain a majority at the next election.
“The EU doesn’t scare them, they take what they want and ignore the rules they don’t like.”
Just like the French then….
A Keir Starmer claim, reported by Sky News.
Very credible – not.
The prediction will come to pass if Starmer wins at the next election.
True.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/07/poland-europe-superpower-communism-putin-military/
I understand your skepticism concerning the sources! But in this case it simply is a matter of numbers. Of course, that supposes that current trends continue, and things can and will change – especially if Britain drops its nonsensical energy policies.
“it’s still not too late if net-zero insanity and related policies are abandoned.”
I think so, too.
If these policies are not abandoned, things will only get worse for everyone.
Hanging on to the Net Zero narrative will destroy the UK, and others who do the same.
There doesn’t appear to be any evidence to support this claim. Certainly there are a lot of different views about why Labor lost. Have a look at
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/03/uxbridge-brexit-tories-anti-green-labour-local
for example. The author claims that it was due to local factors, mainly that the Tories got to choose their own candidate while the Labor party forced a candidate on the local party members.
Now was this a disasterous result for Labor. If they got the same swing towards them nationally as they did in Uxbridge they would still win the next election. Not winning a safe Tory seat (it was held by the former prime minster afterall) should not come as surprise to
anyone. And as for why Labour lost nobody really knows since no publich polling has been done to find out why. And given that the Green party got 850 votes compared to the winning margin of 500 you could just as easily claim that if the Labor party had more green policies it would have gotten those votes and would have won the seat.
Reading Guardian nonsense is harmful to human health. As is Green nonsense which you think would win seats. We shall see, but the high bills show the future of Green!
Continue squirming, it’s fun to watch the left tie themselves in knots.
You are largely right. The numbers don’t lie.
Would take issue with the idea that Green policies attract Green voters, though. That’s
not true. Green voters vote Green to be smug. The want to be pure of heart and
holier-than-thou. This bye-election proved it.
This was a fight between Labour, who supported ULEZ, and The Tories who were arguing against extending ULEZ. If Green policies mattered to Green voters, they would
have turned out in good numbers to get Labour the victory. They had the numbers
to do so.
But as Green voters do not care about the environment, they happily let ULEZ be challenged.
Fortunately, the polls and this vote show that Labour can win a General Election, despite the Green distractions.
Unfortunately, the Tories know this and are running scared of ever letting Sunak face an electorate.
That Labour can win a General Election is fortunate for nobody. They are complete dross – as is Sunak.
I pray Liebour never get into a majority, or minority Govt – the UK cannot take anymore far left dystopian madness
True but without a defeat will the Conservatives ever ditch the lefty wets and the green insanity to return to the kind of policies that would do the UK some good?
To my mind, “the Labour Party has reportedly scrapped plans to campaign on bringing the Great Reset-style scheme to the rest of the country” is a long way short of the headline “road testing anti-green policies”.
Labour never gives up trying to increase their reach, power and authority. If that means hiding unpopular policies until they have enough power to implement them anyway, then that’s what they’ll do.
Other than illegally bombing Iraq in what way exactly did Labor try to increase their power and reach under the last Labor government? Was it by giving independence to the Bank of England, bringing peace to Northern Ireland, giving Scotland and Wales their own parliaments? Labor help create the assembly in Northern Ireland and established the directly elector Mayor of London. All clear examples of power being devolved away under the last Labor government.
And just in case you had forgotten the Labor party has been out of power for well over a decade and thus have not been able to do anything about increasing their power.
There was nothing illegal about the resumption of the Gulf War.
Saddam signed a cease fire. Saddam violated the cease fire. The cease fire ended.
Perfectly legal, except to those who are paid to believe the US is always wrong.
On which particular server do you reside?
Ah yes, Tony Blair. When I said “Labour”, maybe I should have said “Labour people” or something like that. Everything Tony Blair did was for Tony Blair. eg.
“reforms followed, always presented as streamlining and modernisation, but in practice curtailing democracy and weakening the trade union link [[ policy debate would be confined to a behind closed doors framework, where decision-making was opaque, votes were infrequent and maximum pressure was mounted against those who disagreed with the leadership. Annual conference would now be an empty affair, tasked with projecting the Party’s image to the wider public. By the end of the New Labour years around a third of local parties had stopped bothering to send delegates to this toothless body.” – from How Blair pulverised the Labour Party https://labourhub.org.uk/2020/12/03/how-blair-pulverised-the-labour-party/
Many of the UK’s current problems can be directly linked to Labour policies implemented in the Blair/Brown years:
Immigration policy
Climate Change Act
F*cking up of pensions (G Brown taxing dividends in pension schemes)
Too many useless university places/students & corresponding student debt
Fake WMD dossier and lying to parliament; Death of David Kelly
I could go on.
Weaponising PPI….
Brown selling shiploads of gold to buy foreign exchange instead…..nothing too smelly there…..other than the price he sold out at and the wonderful Euros, among others, bought instead..
Did you say peace in NI? 35,000, people now on the hit list from SF? Not a lot of peace there is there? The Mayor of London is a leftie puppet, to be played with. You seem very very uninformed to put it mildly.
Sure. Let’s just ignore that major war crime in order to justify Labour’s continued existence.
Rare to see such a convincing argument. Evidence matters, well done.
These are all clear examples of Labour devolving power away from the Government. Independence of the BOE was the single biggest loss of power ever accepted by a Chancellor.
However, reality does not matter to political zealots. You won’t persuade those who are incapable of challenging their own beliefs.
Oh, look, Walton’s got a second, supportive account!
Perhaps you should try looking in a mirror.
“No. You Are!” is not as persuasive an argument as actual examples.
But it will satisfy those who cannot be dissuaded.
The NI peace settlement process was well advanced before Labour took over. As for devolution, remember what Blair said about the proposed devolved body for Scotland – that it would have no more powers than a county council. The Scottish devolution referendum was more to do with seeing off the SNP than anything else – remember George Robertson’s gloating after the result came in; at the time Labour expected to be in control of whatever governing body arose (the referendum did not specify what the devolution settlement would be) but for good measure they delayed any reduction in the number of Scottish MPs returned to Westminster to give themselves the best of both worlds. The Scots then turned on Labour (so much for Robertson’s glee) and threw in their lot with the SNP – that went well, didn’t it, it’s resulted in the centralisation of things that were once done at regional council level (so much for devolving decision making, eh?). And as we’ve seen with the on-going implosion of the SNP, the structuring of the Scottish Parliament as designed by Blair’s government has meant too little scrutiny of the governing party/parties (perhaps not surprising if it was designed to exercise appreciably fewer powers than have been devolved to it).
The interest in devolution in Wales was reflected in a referendum turn-out of about 20%, it was clearly not as big an issue as in Scotland. The Labour Party has done a fine job running Wales (/sarc/), but sometimes you can’t stop turkeys voting for Christmas.
Bliar degraded the UK so badly, it may never recover to be the world leader it once was
Tell me again how well the NI assembly is doing, please? All matters are having to be sorted out by the ministers of state because the elected assembly members, once again, are drawing their pay and sitting at home, refusing to participate with each other. And this is the great improvement is it, Isaak?
“And just in case you had forgotten the Labor party has been out of power for well over a decade and thus have not been able to do anything about increasing their power.”
No connection between the massive wave of strikes across key sectors, with full support of their various union leaders, the introduction of Woke ideologies – pick any from a vast number – and the century + long affiliation that Labour still retains as wells as a huge amount of members’ fees as political tithes? I think that the pursuit of political power is not restrained by being in Number 10..
Very true, but this applies to the whole liblabcon.
The Liebour champagne socialism Marxists have already infiltrated and commenced dismantling British history, culture and society – the socialist conservatives are helping them
Britain needs new, truly democratic, right wing leadership to restore hope in a far better future than the present
There are some voices of unease. It seems to be confined to the Conservative Party MPs, not more than 30-40 of them, and a much smaller number of Labour voices. Blair has expressed some unease.
The UK consensus of the political class however looks like staying the same. Its completely irrational. It is that it is possible to move the country to EVs and heat pumps, while at the same time moving electricity generation to wind and solar.
Labour, for instance, wants totally to decarbonize electricity generation by 2030. Idiotically, they seem to think this can be done by quadrupling the current amount of wind installed. This would be 100GW, maybe 120GW. Hopeless. There will be periods of a week or two when this will deliver 20GW, and quite a few days when it will deliver 5GW..
Even if you could build a further 100GW of wind by 2030. Can’t be done, and can’t be financed. As the Vattenfall case shows. As for overbuilding, it would not work, it will not cope with the calms, and its impossible to get 100GW wind in, let alone the huge amount you’d need for overbuilding to make any impact on the calms.
Then, the Conservative government, who will probably be kicked out in a year or so from now, propose to ban all new or replacement installations of oil boilers after 2025, forcing the installation of heat pumps. Also, from 2026, to limit the percentage of ICE cars that manufacturers can sell on a rising curve to elimination in 2030. From 2030 to ban ICE cars but allow hybrids. From 2035 to ban hybrids and only allow EVs. From 2025 to ban gas boilers in new buildings. From 2035 to ban them everywhere (including replacements).
Suppose all this happened. Its beginning to dawn on a few of the brighter members of the political class that the present grid cannot support the increased demand that EVs and heat pumps would lead to. Its not just generation, its also local transmission capacity. But even in terms of generation, there is no way that a grid which has been ‘decarbonized’ on the timescale Labour has talked about could possibly support it.
Imagine, demand has risen to peak 75GW. Right now its a bit north of 45GW. They have 120GW of wind installed. Its winter, there is no production from solar. There’s a calm. For 10 days they get under 20GW from the wind. But in that 10 days there are also several days when they get 5GW or less. What does everyone do? Wrap in fleeces and stay home and light candles?
And then there are no plans for the additional infrastructure. No plans to have enough heat pump installers. No plans to have enough charging points for EVs.
This is all pretty obvious, and its been said in public in a few places by a few people. But there is no sign of the senior levels of any of the political parties waking up and considering changing policy. SNP. Plaid, Labour, Conservative, Liberals and Greens are all unanimous in pressing ahead with this lunacy in defiance of common sense and basic engineering facts.
The key indicator will be when either Labour or the Conservatives propose repealing or heavily amending the Climate Change Act. Don’t hold your breath for that. It shows no sign of happening. No-one in any of the parties is even raising it as a possibility. They are too busy saving the planet.
You are of course correct, but such is fairly useless against these morons. I will add the cost. There is not enough money in the UK to do a fraction of this, taxes are already at breaking point for many, inflation is more like 20% for many and wages are low. Fixing electricity distribution £3 Trillion, digging up every road to do it, impossible, 14 years to approve a new pylon like, stupid. Then there is the battery; oh yes they need this to make it work at all. Potential cost £10 Trillion, using the entire world supply of Lithium for 10 years, and so dangerous that a fault would flatten the country, because Lithium batteries are inherently unstable and a fault causes meltdown in small ones and a vast explosion in large ones with the power of all the worlds nukes added together. The fools in charge don’t understand the basics of energy at all, or electricity, or chemistry, or weather(!), or in fact anything useful. The politics of idiots is all that can be said, and no one actually wanted or needed this anyway!
Re the Conservatives :-
‘The net zero 2035 target for electricity is not credible’ Prof Dieter Helm, Oxford University
“Despite another 1000 pages explaining Net Zero Strategy there is no credible plan to get from here to there”
https://dieterhelm.co.uk/publications/the-net-zero-2035-target-for-electricity-is-not-credible/
As for Labour :-
‘Labour’s £28 billion’
“Supply chains do not exist yet to do all this fast track investment……there is virtually no chance they will gear up quickly enough to meet Labour’s 2030 target.
“Even £28bn is nowhere near enough to get to the desired endpoint”
https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/labours-28-billion/
I do wish people would stop using the word ‘greed’ every time a company makes a profit. This is, fundamentally why companies exist – and, if they didn’t make a profit, companies would not exist and our lives would be even more miserable than politicians have currently managed.
The problem, Ian, is when corporations become so influential that they start fomenting laws to support their wet dreams of world domination, and corrupting the few laws we have left that proves them to be CRIMINALLY greedy.
I assume you are a businessman? If you can honestly say you are happy with profits not pumped up by subsidies or tax breaks, and no special exclusions from the civic duty you refuse to admit to with your claim of corporate personhood, well, I wish you the best, and thank you for keeping society alive.
But most corporations (not family businesses, mega corps) wouldn’t last past one tax cycle if they were held to the standards everyone else has to submit to. The one strong agreement I have with you, is that people use the term “corporate greed” (when they actually mean “Bolshevik collection of all property under one account”).
Exactly – try telling German Mittelstand businesses that profit is greed – I think you will get an extremely appropriate and very coarse German phrase by way of reply which may translate as f*** **f.
Energy companies are NOT greedy. If you say that then every business is greedy. Prices have gone up but most of it is because our fiat money is losing purchasing power thanks to the central banks printing presses. Maybe they earn more in pounds or dollars or euros, but they also need more of it because of higher costs. A company must make a profit to survive. Only the government can go bankrupt and survive. In a free market world, all products would be cheaper and better than they are today. Unfortunately, we live in a centrally controlled economic system and ultimately they can only survive by devaluing their currency. That’s why prices go up.
Those who really are in power want us to give away our ‘freedom’ voluntarily.
That’s why they control politics, the education system and the press . You have to start when they are still young to brainwash the population into Green Shirts and Climate Jugend.
Which is why the political left is so keen to reduce the voting age to 16. It might make more sense to raise the voting age to 50 – by then you’ve likely experienced enough of life to figure out when a politician after your vote is spouting BS.
Likely but not definitely- some people will go to their graves as ignorant and naive as they were as a teen. Jeremy Corbyn being a prime example.
I have no problem with lowering the voting age to 16 as long as it is accompanied by an overriding and “bottom line” rule that a minimum amount of income tax per annum over a minimum number of years must be paid, before the vote counts, with the amount linked to the rise in wages annually…….hope that sits well with putative teenaged junior doctors and others ( ex Uni career types > immediate posting as SPADs ) ….
The amount of income tax to be set initially by those paying the majority of income tax….perchance to dream.
The people are fed up with the relentless march to cultural destruction the Bolsheviks are forcing us on. With the next election cycle, I am sure they will take revenge, and vote in people who “speak our language”.
Which is why I must once again remind everyone of the official new Bolshevik electoral strategy:
They will field candidates who can speak on the issues from a “conservative view point”. Also, I seem to need to remind some that, no matter what the policies, promises or character of your favourite candidate; once the thing is in office, it is legally bound to execute Party policy.
And the Party hates you.
Reform UK are offering voters a nut zero free future and will max out the UKs indigenous oil & gas reserves, as a matter of national and energy security
Reforms popularity is increasing significantly – they may not become the ruling majority party, but it is critical for democracy, that they get some MPs into Westminster to help stop the LibLabCon rot
All 3 main parties are signed up to the great nut zero con – they may throw out smoke screens to get votes, but be in no doubt, they will forge ahead with full throttle nut zero once back in power
I hope the British people deny the globalist elites another 5 years of woke infested, climate alarmist, regressive living standards misery
“… Energy companies are greedy, on behalf of their shareholders..:
I worked for the power company in Nevada. Our rates were set by the regulators. How are rates set in the UK?
At the moment, by the regulator (the OFGEM cap). That may change, as there is a realisation it doesn’t work too well.
Road test this one.
story tip
‘Elon Musk of Essex’ moves Royal Mail electric lorry maker to US (yahoo.com)