francovendee wrote: ↑5 Sep 2022, 8:58am
Whilst I'm pleased to see the back of Boris what he leaves behind will endure for much longer.
The genie is out of the bottle and others like him will have seen how far the rules can be bent/broken without any damage to their support from the Tory party. I see more corruption dressed up as being for the benefit of the country.
Let's see who benefits most from rumoured help with energy bills, customers or the energy companies.
What seems to be being proposed for energy bills is a government guarantee for bank loans to companies, to be paid back in future bills. The loans to be used to cap the cost per unit of energy.
Whilst this is much better than previous policy of allowing the poor to die from cold (Truss's "no handouts" pitch to the membership), it has some significant problems:
(1) It's an energy poll tax. The poorest, who pay a much larger proportion of their income on energy, will have an additional tax imposed on them for decades to come. The richest, with the largest bills, get the most short term help; we're subsidising Zahawi's heating bill for his stables.
(2) The banks who administer the scheme will get a cut. So it's more expensive than just giving the money from the govt.
(3) The energy companies, who are insolvent without this (as their customers cannot pay their bills), pay nothing for it. When we bailed out the banks, we took partial or complete ownership as recompense. Here, we're baling out the energy companies and their shareholders without any payback.
So (1) unfair, (2) expensive and (2), (3) crony capitalism.
But at least better than the poor freezing to death.