Jan 29, 2022
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Admission was no doubt inadvertent but no less damning for that Slip: Chris Whitty In an attempt to justify its coronavirus policies during
And an archive of the link...
http://archive.is/X2qkx
The Prime Minister wants to lower the fuel duty
Apparently whilst he is off talking about the environment, our Lord and Master said he wants to lower the fuel duty.
And another Tory MP said that he is “passionate about the environment” but that “you cannot save the environment on the backs of the poor” and that lowering fuel duty “will make a real different to the standard of living for millions of poor families” across the country.
After TEN YEARS of austerity, where benefits have been cut, public services have been cut, public sector wages have been frozen or cut, the Universal Credit system has lead directly to an exponential rise in foodbank use across the country and the poor have been screwed over time and time and time again, now The Tories care about the poor enough so much so they are willing to sacrifice the environment over them?
BULLSHIT.
Tory policy has been directed by three things ever since the party was taken over by Thatcher in the 80s.
1 - making rich people richer.
2 - winning votes.
3 - that’s it.
If there has been any other principle guiding the Tory party, I have yet to see it in action.
Sometimes - very occasionally - 1 and 2 come together, so they can win votes and make rich people richer at the same time, but for the most part, it is all about making the rich richer, and trying to stay in power while they do it.
So they aren’t cutting fuel duty because they want to help the poor. They are cutting fuel duty because they know that the moment Parliament is in session again, there will be a vote of no confidence, and they will have to fight an election. And nothing helps win an election like giving people free money.
If they can say “LOOK - PETROL IS CHEAPER!” then people will go “Huh - maybe the Tories are not the soulless bunch of cunts we thought they were” and might actually vote for them.
Never mind that they screwed you over for 10 years, causing crime to rise, causing racism, bigotry and intolerance to shoot through the roof, causing white nationalism to emerge as an actual force in politics again. Never mind that foodbanks and charity shops now dominate most village and town high streets (along with shuttered shops).
Never mind that since 2010 the gap between rich and poor is wider than it has been since 1997 (the last time the Tories were in power, by the way).
Never mind that they don’t give a fuck about you, or your friends, and just want to use you to get back into power so they can continue not giving a fuck about you.
If they actually wanted to help, they could do far more about the standard of living than just giving you cheaper petrol.
Every year the railway costs increase by far more than the cost of inflation. That hurts far more people than the cost of fuel duty. Do they do anything about that? No. And why? Because it’s private enterprise that most of them make money out of, so why would they?
They forced the BBC into paying for licenses for the over 75s, and now are beating them with a stick when the BBC can’t afford it. Why? Because they want to shut the BBC down - they always have. If they’d just kept the licenses as part of the welfare budget, none of this would have happened, but that wouldn’t have suited their long term goals, so they didn’t.
The entire aim of the Tory party is to sell of Britain to the highest bidder - The BBC, the public services, the NHS - everything. They just want to make money for their friends and will do anything in their power to ensure that happens.
And if it looks like anything will get in the way - losing an election, The EU, the law - they will rig the game to make sure it doesn’t.
Brexit - a way to avoid taxes. The license fee debacle - a way to shut down the BBC by making it unpopular. Fuel duty - a way to win an election even if it means burning the planet.
I would like to say I am shocked and appalled, but - like President CFW with his nuclear hurricanse - I am barely even surprised.
Conservative leader says it is ‘absurd’ to shift away from fossil fuels and leave ‘vital resources untapped’
The Conservative party will aim to “maximise extraction” of oil and gas in the North Sea if it wins power, Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce. Badenoch will use a speech in Aberdeen in the coming days to set out her plans to extract as much oil and gas as possible instead of shifting away from fossil fuels, the Sunday Telegraph reported. She will announce the Tories plan to overhaul the North Sea Transition Authority, which oversees the issuing of licences, dropping the word transition and replacing its 12-page mandate with a simple order to extract the maximum possible amount of fossil fuel. Badenoch said Britain “cannot afford not to be doing everything to get hydrocarbons out the ground” to boost growth. She said: “We are in the absurd situation where our country is leaving vital resources untapped while neighbours such as Norway extract them from the same seabed. “Britain has already decarbonised more than every other major economy since 1990, yet we face some of the highest energy prices in the developed world.
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It really doesn't matter how much oil and gas is extracted because it is sold on the international market and the UK has no say in setting the prices.
Leader says move is is necessary ‘to protect our borders, our veterans and our citizens’
Kemi Badenoch has announced that a Conservative government under her leadership would pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights. The move marks a lurch to the right for the Tories, who are attempting to stem a loss of support to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Farage has long been a critic of the ECHR and has pledged to leave it if he becomes prime minister. Badenoch said on Friday night that she had “not come to this decision lightly, but it is clear that it is necessary to protect our borders, our veterans and our citizens”. Critics of the ECHR claim it frustrates the government’s efforts to deal with illegal migration and deport foreign criminals. Others argue that pulling out of the treaty would damage the UK’s international reputation and breach the Good Friday agreement, which brought an end to decades of conflict in Northern Ireland. Russia and Belarus are the only two European countries that are not signatories.
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The Tories are adopting Reform's policies so fast they might as well be Reform.
Should the UK abandon the ECHR, whatever replaces it will have fewer rights, even for Brits.
I have spent the majority of my working life working with people who have struggled with mental and physical health problems, who have had t
The following comments were sent to the WSWS by a benefits advice worker. The speech made by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the Centre for Social Justice is a warning to all those working with benefit claimants that the welfare benefits system and even the semblance of a “safety net” to protect the most vulnerable is at risk of being completely removed. I have spent the majority of my working life working with people who have struggled with mental and physical health problems, who have had to depend on the benefits system to be able to live day to day. Many of those I have assisted to claim benefits and appeal poor decisions made by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have found the benefits system not only difficult to navigate, but also downright punitive in its approach to the difficulties claimants face, as they try to comply with conditionality and what they have been asked to do by the DWP. This has led to claimants having their benefits substantially reduced, leading to insurmountable financial hardship, left struggling to make ends meet, having to turn to food banks, or at times go without the basics to be able to live. The proposals laid out in Sunak’s speech will make this situation a lot worse. They have nothing to do with fairness or accountability to the taxpayer but are an attack on the sick and disabled. Sunak’s speech covers areas including both sets of claimants to Universal Credit (UC), job seekers and those claiming with a health condition within UC, and claimants to Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
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Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government plans to introduce legislation called the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill.
The UK government will allow fossil fuel companies to bid for new drilling licences on a yearly basis, to the chagrin of climate change experts who say that oil and gas extraction must be reduced, not increased, to save the planet. The UK’s King Charles has delivered his first ‘King’s Speech’ to the parliament today. The speech is written by the government for the monarch to deliver and sets out the legislative agenda for the coming months. Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunaks’ government intends to introduce legislation called the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill to mandate annual oil and gas licensing in the North Sea. The speech claimed the new fossil fuel sites would support the UK’s transition to net zero by 2050 “without adding undue burdens on households”.
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A shameless ploy to win, or rather keep, voters, and a lie. This will do nothing to help households' financial burdens. Most if not all the oil and gas will be sold on the international market because the UK doesn't have the refinery capacity. The fuel is essentially re-imported but has been refined.
While it won't help households, it should help with the huge deficit blamed on the Ukraine war and the pandemic but not brexit. The government will benefit twice; once from the sale of the crude oil then again when the imported refined product is sold to final UK consumer through the fuel duty and VAT paid, currently around £0.9/litre.
Of course, as the rest of the world moves away from fossil fuels they will bring less money into government coffers and the new fossil fuel infrastructure risks becoming stranded assets. And the UK will be far behind everybody else having done little to reach net zero in the meantime.
One thing is clear though; the king, known for his environmental activism when a prince, and being made to read out that shit, now hates the Tories, which is rather amusing.