Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer calls for extra windfall tax to freeze energy bills
General / Mon 15th Aug 2022 at 09:18am
SIR Keir Starmer has said families would “not pay a penny more” on their energy bills this winter under Labour’s plans to tackle rising living costs reports the BBC.
The Labour leader claimed his proposals would save the average household £1,000 a year.
The package would be paid for, in part, by a big increase in tax on oil and gas company profits.
But critics said the plan would cost as much as the Covid furlough scheme and was not a long-term solution.
The government has already announced £37bn of support for hard-pressed families, but it is under pressure to do more, with bills set to rocket over the winter.
For the full story, click below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62542541
Theman
2022-08-15 11:39:02
The only people profiting from this are the foreign gas and oil producers. The UK produces very little. So please explain how you are going to get taxes from foreign owned companies. Should they find a way of collecting these taxes I am sure the companies would just put the prices up more to maintain their profit margins. The cold reality here is we are seeing global levelling up of the global economy, and as we are the 6th richest country we will all be getting poorer and sadly this will effect the poorest in this country the most.
David Forman
2022-08-15 14:09:25
This is the result of the Eco warriors stopping investment in nuclear power and a failure to build tidal generators. Those advocating wind power may have deliberately failed to notice falling wind speeds. UK Energy Research Centre co-director Keith Bell said the key point from Met Office data was the heavy fluctuation seen over time and by geographical location, meaning neither wind nor solar power could be relied on to consistently generate the electricity needed by the country.' https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/what-falling-wind-speeds-mean-for-uk-energy-supplies-01-08-2022/
David Forman
2022-08-15 14:31:55
Extract from State of the UK Climate 2021 report: The UK annual mean wind speed for 2021 was second lowest in a series from 1969. The UK annual mean wind speed from 1969 to 2021 shows a downward trend, consistent with that observed globally. See page 4 of https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/JOC.7787
Theman
2022-08-15 15:47:07
At least more modern thinking eco warriors are seeing the problems with wind/solar/wave/tidal energy ( can’t recycle the equipment and huge environmental damage)and pushing more for nuclear.Of course they could have talked to an engineer years ago and saved a lot of time and effort. The only real problem with modern nuclear energy is what happens if you go to war. You only need one bomb on one plant and most of the country would become uninhabitable….. still it seems our only option at the moment if they do not want to burn fossil fuels.
gary roberts
2022-08-15 16:55:27
Keir Starmer had better start listening to its members' and his leadership commitments. In short his 2017 manifesto commitments and using it as a template for his government. That 2017 manifesto is clear, radical and progressive and is attached: https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/labour-manifesto-2017.pdf In addition an article today in the Guardian he should read: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/15/left-age-right-labour-youthful-idealism If Starmer doesn't take note, then he may win an election but on a policy of not being the Tories. In short a pious and vacuous win with no radical socialist policies to change current direction. A disgrace with the 1945 government turning in their graves in anger!
adam
2022-08-15 17:54:16
Just cut the green taxes and levies (30%) of the bill and get fracking and aim for energy independence no matter what the source. The climate models are as good as the covid models and the vested interests also just as lucrative. Politicians will not do this as they always need an emergency to which we always just give up a few additional rights and pay more taxes to solve.
JD
2022-08-15 19:06:03
"green taxes and levies (30%)" - this nonsense again. Last time it was 20% or 25%. 30% of what? Show where you are getting this nonsense from. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/green-gas-levy-ggl-rates-and-exemptions/green-gas-levy-ggl-rates-underlying-variables-mutualisation-threshold The Green Gas Levy is a fixed price per meter per day, and is either 59p or £2.10 per meter depending on the scheme for the period. And there are exemptions. And is not applied to consumers, but to gas producers. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/default-tariff-cap Check the pretty graphs. "Green taxes and levies" are "policy costs" in red. This has only been raised a small amount since 2018 and represents far, far less than any of the made up numbers that some are reporting. Cutting the green taxes and levies will give very little help to consumers, encourage more use of fossil fuel, which is exactly the cause of the current problem - wholesale fuel prices. "At least more modern thinking eco warriors are seeing the problems with wind/solar/wave/tidal energy ( can’t recycle the equipment and huge environmental damage)" Can you easily recycle a coal/oil/gas fired power station? Is the "huge environmental damage" worse than the acid rain caused by burning fossil fuel? Exactly how much acid rain is produced by solar panels and wind turbines? Also from State of the UK Climate 2021 report: "The UK's climate is changing, with recent decades warmer, wetter and sunnier than the 20th century." "The 21st century so far has been warmer than any period of equivalent length from the last three centuries, as shown by the Central England temperature series." And yet some seem to want to make things worse by scrapping renewable energy projects?
Theman
2022-08-15 19:54:08
We don’t have acid rain any more, it went away as we moved away from coal. The moss on your roof is the proof that we no longer have acid rain. If you harvest the wind to create energy you are effecting the weather at source and thus accelerating climate change. You cannot recycle wind turbine blades as they are made from carbon fibre and nobody has worked out how to recycle solar panels yet. Also you need to kill everything when creating wind and solar frames. In the USA alone wind farms kill 5 million birds a year and the birds they kill tend to be the more endangered variety. The obsession with fossil fuels is a bit of a folly as it is only a small factor in a much bigger problem of too many people on the planet and the activities of those people and the over consumption of resources. It is extremely odd that all actions to supposedly reduce the problem result in even more consumption. For example electric cars, an electric vehicle weighs twice the weight of a fossil fuel vehicle, therefore it requires twice the energy to move it, problem is only 30% of energy produced comes from renewables on a good day, the rest comes from burning fossil fuel, which means you are burning more fossil fuel to operate an electric vehicle compared to the equivalent fossil fuel vehicle.Eventually engineers and scientists will come up with a way of reducing the weight, but at the moment we are nowhere near. But as I said climate change is just part of a bigger problem when you look at how many people on this planet don’t have access to clean water(1.5billion last time I checked) or live in food poverty(3 billion last time I checked) and these numbers will get worse as time passes. Having said that I still tip my hat to the person who worked out they could monetise the weather.
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