Gotcha, Tommy Sheridan pics from now on it is 

Mark Francois. I'm astonished you've missed out on him, I'm 3000 miles away and couldn't escape the vile little ****. 

Shell have just announced a QUARTERLY profit of 7.2 billion - yes - BILLION - yet the Tories continue to refuse to impose a windfall tax.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England has increased the interest rate 4 times since December, which will push millions of families into further financial dire straits.

ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING! 😤

The oil co's profits, like the reasons not to apply a windfall tax on them, don't make sense to me, unless I'm missing something - which is always likely. In the energy price shenanigans if the oil co's costs were going up at the same rate as what they're charging for their products then surely they'd be making the same profit as they did before eg last year. But they're not, they're making much more, so are charging more than is necessary if we use past costing levels (mark up) as a base.  So...nowt more than rampant profiteering? And the rationale for not going for a windfall tax is because the WM govt wants them to invest in renewables....but they're going to have to do that anyway. Else their existence as an energy supplier is less than rosy. So windfall tax or not they'll still be doing the same thing. So in my simplistic world they could charge less and make less profit - 'only' the same profit that was good enough in the v recent past - and energy users rather than their shareholders could benefit from both that and from a windfall tax to relieve the burden their hugely increased income stream is placing on society in general.

PS interesting tweets from George Monbiot today that an influential climate change advisory body is being funded by....you're probably ahead of me here....the fossil fuel industry.
 

Last edited by anders (5/05/2022 12:46 pm)

Money paid out to shareholders....
I still live in 2 places. In England where the water Co's have shareholders I have to pay massively more than I'm charged in Scotland.  Just saying. The switch there hasn't resulted in better or cheaper services. 🤷🏽‍♂️

I don't think shareholder dividends is wrong per se, but when the amounts paid out are in excess of what the company can afford while still being fair to its customers and to the needs of the society that they operate within, then to me its into 'pigs-at-trough and everyone else can get lost' territory.

Last edited by anders (5/06/2022 11:43 am)