That’s a funny-looking bus, it’s Boris’s lying anti-EU bus promoting money for the NHS when all the anti-EU shites are anti-NHS Neo-Liberal shites.
Sunak’s pledge to bring down the NHS waiting lists wasn’t an off-hand pledge, an off-the-cuff remark, or a long-term policy proposal
Dr Julia Patterson is Chief Executive of EveryDoctor, a doctor-led campaign organisation fighting to save the NHS
We’ve been hearing Rishi Sunak blaming the length of the NHS waiting lists on striking NHS staff for many months now. Despite recent analysis from The Health Foundation which showed that industrial action from consultants and junior doctors had only contributed to 3% of the overall size of the waiting list, he has repeated his rhetoric again and again.
Several days ago, Sunak admitted for the first time (to Piers Morgan during an interview) that he had failed his pledge to bring down the NHS waiting lists. This received a huge amount of attention in the national media, and for good reason. Sunak’s pledge to bring down the NHS waiting lists wasn’t an off-hand pledge, an off-the-cuff remark, or a long-term policy proposal. It was one of the 5 key pledges he made as Prime Minister in January 2023, and it was made in the midst of the worst NHS winter crisis that we have ever experienced.
Several days before Sunak’s pledge was made, Dr Adrian Boyle (president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine) had publicly stated that up to 500 people could be dying each week because of their inability to access urgent care within the NHS. The situation was incredibly stark. I run the organisation EveryDoctor (www.everydoctor.org.uk) and we were hearing from both NHS staff and patients who were experiencing terrifying situations. Patients were calling for ambulances which simply never arrived. GPs were driving emergency patients to hospital in their own cars, because they had no other option. When patients arrived at A and E departments, they were met often with chaos. Beds had been removed from A and E cubicles to make way for 6 patients to sit on chairs. Patients were receiving life-saving treatment in non-clinical areas, in corridors, even on the floor, as staff held up sheets to try to preserve their dignity.
Rishi Sunak offers huge fossil fuel subsidies to develop fossil fuel extraction in UK.
Concerns over corruption in government have been rising over recent years.
In yet another damning poll for Rishi Sunak’s government, almost half of voters believe that the current Tory government is more corrupt than previous UK governments.
The poll, carried out by Savanta, found that 47% of voters think the current government is more corrupt than previous governments. Only 7% of voters thought it was less corrupt.
57% of 25-34 year olds say that they think the current government is more corrupt than previous governments, while the figure drops to 41% for those aged 65 and over.
When it comes to party affiliation, while only 27% of Tory voters think that the current government is more corrupt, that figure jumps to 67% among Labour Party voters and 57% of Lib Dem voters.
Concerns over corruption in government have been rising after it was found that 1 in 5 government Covid contracts awarded between February and November 2020 contained one or more red flags for possible corruption and require urgent further investigation, according to Transparency International.
LFF’s poll shows the sheer scale of dissatisfaction with the Tory government in a general election year.
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Exclusive polling carried out for Left Foot Forward by Savanta, of 2260 voters, found that 66% of voters believe that Britain is now in a worse state than in 2010, compared to just 14% who say things have got better.
While half of 18-24 year olds say that Britain has got worse since 2010, the figure rises to 72% among those aged 65 and over. 71% of those aged 55-64 say they also think things have got worse, as do 66% of those aged between 35-44.
When it comes to party affiliation, even a majority of Tory party voters, 61%, say that Britain is now worse than in 2010, along with 68% of Labour Party voters, 67% of Lib Dem voters and 70% of Green Party voters.
Rishi Sunak offers huge fossil fuel subsidies to develop fossil fuel extraction in UK.
Rishi Sunak awards a huge tax break to further destroy the climate.
It’s called a windfall tax – it’s a further windfall for fossil fuel companies on top of their windfall of higher prices following the invasion of Ukraine.
Back in May 2022, the UK government announced the energy profits levy, as a response to the growing pressure for a ‘windfall tax’ on the massive profits being generated by companies pumping oil and gas in the North Sea. These profits were fuelled by skyrocketing fossil fuel prices in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The levy raised the effective rate of corporation tax paid on oil and gas profits from 40% to 65%, and again to 75% in November 2022.
But, it came with a caveat. Despite the UK’s urgent need to kick its addiction to expensive fossil fuels, this government didn’t want to discourage investment in more oil and gas extraction. So they included a tax loophole to ensure that companies investing in new projects to pump fossil fuels out from under the North Sea would see their tax relief (already generous by most standards) rise to 91%. In other words, fossil fuel companies could deduct 91% of their capital investment costs from their corporation tax bill. The ‘windfall tax’ may have, on the surface, attempted to tackle the grotesque profits being raked in by massive companies in the midst of the cost of living crisis – but it also made it cheaper for these companies to extract the fossil fuels contributing to the sky-high cost of living in the first place.
At NEF, we analysed last week’s new OBR data, and found that the loophole included in the energy profits levy has massively increased the amount of tax relief which fossil fuel companies will potentially receive. We estimate that oil and gas extractors could receive up to £18.1bn in tax relief between 2023 and 2026. That’s a massive increase of £10.5bn, or 136%, from the £7.6bn they were expected to receive before the energy crisis. This is an enormous amount of lost revenue that could go to the government to be spent on lowering our energy bills or improving our public services. The OBR expects the UK oil and gas industry to pay £24.3bn in tax between 2024 and 2027, meaning that closing the tax loophole in the energy profits levy could almost double the amount of tax revenue our government could receive – and the businesses in question would still walk away with billions.
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Even if you accept the government’s warped logic, which seeks to encourage greater North Sea extraction, the policy appears to be failing. While total potential for tax relief has risen by £10.5bn, total forecast investment has risen by just £3.4bn. This would represent an abysmal return on a government tax measure. Relief has largely been extended to investments which were expected to occur anyway, suggesting the policy is (intentionally or not) little more than a vehicle for oil and gas companies to keep most of their explosive profit growth, while the windfall tax sustains an illusion of fairness.
The energy profits levy helped pay for the government’s emergency cost of living support measures – in theory. But our energy bills remain extortionate, costing 50% more than they did in early 2022, prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With the poorest households over £200 a week short of the amount they need for an acceptable standard of living, this government has still not provided enough support. Looking forward, removing the perverse tax reliefs extended to the oil and gas industry could free up almost £13bn of tax revenue between 2024 and 2026: enough to give every household in the country three £150 annual payments to help cover their energy costs.
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It’s reasonable to compare the so-called windfall tax to Norway’s windfall tax since they are both taxing fossil fuel activities in the North Sea. The Uk’s Labour party has repeatedly said that it intends to impose a “proper windfall tax”. There was further brief mentions of this during the Labour Party’s reformulation and massive restriction of it’s green policies yesterday 8th February 2024 but it remains unclear what is intended.
What’s obviously clear is that Norway’s windfall tax has made and continues to raise huge sums for Norway. There is still a disguised fossil fuel subsidy for exploration and extraction – from what I can see it appears to be 78%. That’s a long way from Sunak’s 91% and since we’re dealing with vast sums of money, 91 – 78 = 13% of vast sums of money is still vast sums of money (as any Chancellor should realise).
Investment in an offshore operating asset in Year 1 is 100.
In the ordinary tax base (22%), 100 must be capitalized and depreciated linearly over 6 years. The depreciation in Year 1 is 100 / 6 = 16.7, i.e., a deduction of 16.7. This results in a tax amount in Year 1 of -16.7 * 22% = -3.7.
In the special tax base (56%), the entire amount of 100 can be deducted directly. The special tax base will therefore initially be -100. However, we must deduct the tax amount from the ordinary tax base of -3.7 from the -100. The special tax base will thus be -100 – (-3.7) = -96.3. To calculate the special tax amount, we must use the technical special tax rate of 71.8%. The special tax will thus be -96.3 * 71.8% = -69.3.
Hence, total tax on the investment of 100 in the offshore operating asset in Year 1 is
-3.7 + (-69.3) = -73, i.e., a tax deduction of 73.
In Years 2 – 6, the linear depreciation continues in the ordinary tax base. For each of these years, the tax on the investment of 100 in Year 1 is thus -3.7 in the ordinary tax base. At the same time, this tax is treated as “income” in the calculation of special tax, as the amount must be deducted in the special tax base. The special tax will thus be 3.7 * 71.8 = 2.7 in each of the years. Total tax per year will therefore be -3.7 + 2.7 = -1.
Looking at the entire period Year 1 – Year 6 as a whole, the total nominal tax for the investment of 100 in Year 1 is the sum of -73 in Year 1 and -1 for each of Years 2 – 6 (5 years), i.e., -73 + (-5) = -78, resulting in a total deduction of 78 over the period.
Despite windfall tax and record profits, Shell paid just £15 million to UK, 22p per Brit last year
By comparison Norway received £6.3 billion from Shell, over a grand per Norwegian
28th March 2023, London – Energy giant Shell paid just £15 million in taxes and fees to the UK last year on their drilling, compared to over £6.3 billion to the Norwegian government over the same period, according to Global Witness analysis of Shell’s latest tax reporting, released today.
This means Shell paid around just 22p per UK citizen, compared to the £1,171 it paid for every citizen of Norway. This £15 million is much closer to the £9.7 million it awarded its CEO in 2022, than the considerably more it paid to most other countries in which it drills.
The UK ranks 19th out of 25 countries for taxes received by Shell last year, with the likes of the USA, Germany, Qatar and Italy all receiving far more from Shell than the UK. It comes despite the introduction of a UK windfall tax that Rishi Sunak, as Chancellor, described as a “significant set of interventions”.
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Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank. [3rd version of image has same text].
[T]he top team at Philps showed off the moment as soon as they were cleared by the super-tight security regime to do so. They posted on Facebook about hosting the diminutive Conservative leader of the UK, as would anyone.
It didn’t go down as well as they had hoped. The backlash was instant and harsh as the angry and derisory comments poured in. It became so overbearing that the company pulled the post down and even issued an apology.
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However many obvious Tory-haters were swearing off buying Philps’ products or spending money there ever again, which clearly the bright business saw as not a good look. As the pile-on mounted, it first turned off commenting. Then killed off the whole post.
Afterwards, it explained its actions – and denied any political party “affiliation” in a new post. It said: “We have decided to remove our post regarding the surprise visit from the Prime Minister today.
“It was with no intent to cause offence and was merely recognition of the Prime Minister popping by for a pasty. We apologise to anyone who feels disappointed or offended, certainly no political affiliations were intended.
“Let’s just say, pasties and politics clearly don’t mix!”
