The Labour Government

Not if you limit the price a litre of fuel can be sold for above the cost of a barrel.

which is the kind of thing I was alluding to - its not as sumple as just tax them there needs to be more to what you do. Afterall the last Govt knocked 5p per litre tax off but with no conditions so the petrol companies simply paid 5% less but didn't reduce the cost to the motorist.
 
Some people on benefits are ne’er do goods who will happily doss through life. There are also a number of people who game the system working minimum hours for maximum take home pay. Are they in the majority? I wouldn’t think so.

On the plus side increased wages increases tax revenues and greats consumer led growth. Those who game the system will no longer be able to do so (of course some don’t work full hours for childcare etc and we need to cater for those). It will also reduce the burden on the benefits system for those remaining in work.

On the down side increases in pay could [potentially] create inflation to some extent. Inflation isn’t bad, inflation that outstrips pay is and businesses would have to decide if they want to pass costs on or not. They is a strong possibility it will lead to redundancies but that is the nature of the beast - what is the point in the tax payer paying for someone to just be in work? The job either exists or it doesn’t - it can’t exist because somebody else is paying for it. Of course businesses will complain and say how they can’t afford it - not dissimilar to the minimum wage and how that was going to result in huge numbers losing their jobs.

What isn’t right is firms like Tescos earning billions in profits whilst the tax payer props up the salaries of their shop workers.
Tesco saw overall group pre-tax profits climbing from £0.88bn to £2.29bn with profit margins recovering to 3.4%, having slid to 1.4% in the more challenging FY2022. They are not really a good example.
 
Your comment was as follows; “There's £7.6bn found today”.

As @metalblue has already highlighted, it wasn’t “found today” as the overspend on asylum has already been incorporated into the Treasury’s spurious analysis behind the fabled £22bn black hole. You’ve also quoted the cumulative figure over the period in question rather than the annual rate, which is of course the relevant measure for the current debate.

In fact the IFS suggest that an additional £4bn of expenditure would be required for asylum this year, whereas the Treasury have assumed £6.4bn. So if you’re so confident in the IFS analysis, it must surely disappoint you a touch that it only accounts for £4bn of the Treasury’s £22bn figure.

The £18bn gap of course relates in very large part to government’s own decision on public sector pay, and the difference in cost between what the previous government had assumed on this matter, and what Labour intended to spend, which would have been known to Reeves before the election.

So in your mind, willfully doing what the public do not want is OK for any government? Let's leave it there, I am sure we are not going to agree on this.

Regards your 2nd paragraph, the impact of Brexit being greater than the loss to the economy from e.g. COVID, I would say is very debatable. The 2nd part about Truss is just complete nonsense, pure and simple. It's not even certain that the bond market crash was actually her fault, but even if it was, the impact in the scheme of things is trivial at most. Inflation rates were high and rising anway. World-wide inflation rates were shooting up, and yes if we accept that Truss messed up then she made it marginally worse. But to say that her actions had a bigger impact on the economy than COVID is just incorrect. All too easy for critics to blame her when in fact there were far bigger forces at play.


tell us youre in a cult without actually admitting that you're in a cult.
 
No, it can only limit profiteering through taxation. They can’t control the gate price of refined fuel. OPEC (well Saudi) can control (sort of) the feedstock price through limiting or increasing production.
I'm talking about the price at the pump anyhow whichever way its done or through taxation if the political will is there it can be done.
 
I'm talking about the price at the pump anyhow whichever way its done or through taxation if the political will is there it can be done.

As you’ll know the government tax an amount per litre and they can control that or they could pass legislation to control thr margins the retailer makes (which is a fraction of what the government “earns”). What they cannot control is how much the retailer has to pay for the fuel (which will be feedstock + refining + delivery), they could potentially control the delivery costs for the domestic part.

So they can’t control the price at the pump.
 

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