Brexit mega thread : part 9 : Winter is Coming

[Chevyimpala67]

Part 10 of our long running thread.

Not sure what to say, really, other than it is worse than I feared.

Strap in, folks. It's gonna be a rough ride...

Few SME's have the reserves or assets to plan for 400% energy price rises.

Luckily few in Govt are proposing what your suggesting, would destroy large sections of the economy.

@Alexandra2001 just what I was going to say. In what world is it reasonable to expect SMEs to be able to handle these kinds of global shock events? Even if they could just raise their prices, their customers who are also affected by rising energy costs will no longer be able to afford to buy their products. And this is why economic libertarianism needs to die.

Yes i do wonder what planet some on the far right are on.

When this Ukraine war is over, i want to still go to a cafe.. a pub.. pop down to my local bike shop.. leaving them to their own devices would mean 99% would fold.. never to return.

Then there would be the unemployment...

400% of what? +400% of not very much is still not very much. I've worked out what my energy bill is without the government energy price support. I'm glad of it, for sure, but if it weren't there there's absoutely no possibility of my not being able to pay my bill, and I am very far from being wealthy.

Again, if you are using an enormous amount of energy and in a critical industry, running blast furnaces for example, it seems reasonable that Govt help should be provided to a private business in a similar way to ordinary citizens.

These are private businesses though, if the people who own them are happy to take profit out when times are good, they should be able to identify and manage risks to their business when things are tougher. If they can't do that, why should taxpayers be on the hook for their failure?

Keeping people employed during a once in 100 year pandemic by shelling out vast sums of our money was absolutely the right call. No business can be expected to plan for that coz its so unusual. "Energy costs" or some similar item I'd have thought would feature in the accounts of every business, in every accounting period, so that can be planned for.

Being "far right" is a new charge levelled at me 😁. I'm enjoying that one a lot, so thank you 😉

Agree people wouldn't be able to afford things. People need to buy less, a hell of a lot less.

Dismissing a 400% rise in any critical overhead for any business as trivial indicates a profound lack of understanding of how businesses and the economy in general work. This is typical of many advocates of Brexit though, so no surprise.

Exactly what I was going to say.

It's hard not to avoid the image of the whole country being subjected to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peine_forte_et_dure (strong stomach needed). Looks like it will take that to prise a recognition of truth from Brexiteers. Well the few that are left.

Latest Chris Grey blog

chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/12/theres-better-brexit-strategy-available.html

400% rises in energy costs are not something that any business would have planned for.

And just a little note; EU energy prices have risen by considerably less, due to some sort of "common market" of energy which sounds like a very good idea to me - perhaps we should join it...

Being "far right" is a new charge levelled at me 😁. I'm enjoying that one a lot, so thank you 😉

If the caps fits....? no one in the tax payers alliance is advocating what you are... not even Truss or Kwarteng..

Plus you are not being consistent.. you want furlough & business support loans (£330bn).. only to see the very same businesses and employees go to the wall due to Putin shutting off gas to Europe.. which no business could ever have planned for.

Might as well have saved the money.

This is one squirrel 🐿 I’m not feeding…

We can only hope someone senior reads his blogs.

@Alexandra2001 Starmer seems an intelligent and genuinely well meaning man with not very good political instincts. Literally no one currently cares about the HoLs at this juncture in time. Labour may not want their policies nicked, but they could focus more on criticising Tory policy. Its what the Tories did in opposition.

Its no point looking at my political instincts, i was on here cheering for Corbyn!!! & called Brexit wrong too.. didn't even think DC would be thick enough to call a vote!

& i agree Starmer is a decnt hard working and genuine man.. i like him.. but i think he is also far too timid...he isn't lighting my fire at all.. however, people like Mandelson say KS is doing exactly whats required atm.... and tbf he knows a shed load more than me.

😊

I'm not advocating for anything. What I suggested is a compromise, the difference between the COVID furlough and the energy situation is that during COVID most businesses faces severe restrictions on their ability to trade, during this energy crisis no such restrictions have been imposed.

The compromise from my POV is if your business is critical to our industrial future I agree its reasonable that the taxpayer meets more of that businesses energy costs directly via a subsidy. If they aren't, the taxpyer can bear more of the resulting cost indirectly through the business raising its prices. A restaurtant putting up the prices of meals for example.

If I can plan to absorb a 400% rise an a cost, other people can plan for it, including business owners. Put the contrary argument, why should taxpayers be supporting businesses through direct subsidy when there are no restrictions at all on their ability to trade?

This midset of saying that as soon as anything starts to go wrong (for a private business I might add) the taxpayer is expected to pick up the tab, I'm sorry but I just don't get that. People on here seem to want the taxpayer to pay for everything. That's just privatising the profit and holding the risk publicly and it's wrong IMO.

@LouiseCollins28 most of us haven't had to plan for a 400% rise. We're getting support and the rise has been capped. Even so there will be people who won't be able to take the rises because hey, we actually have poverty here in the UK.

Sure, but I still know what the cost would be if I weren't getting the support. Its pretty easy to add 3x £67 per quarter onto whatever you were charged to work it out. Of course there will be people who can't take the rises, that's what the government support £ to households is for.

@LouiseCollins28 if you're a SME already on the brink because of additional post Brexit red tape and staff shortages, with a considerable loss of exports because exporting to the EU is so difficult now, that rise could push you over the edge. I know you're a radical libertarian and you're all about capitalism red in tooth and claw, but some of us here don't agree with that sort of 'thinking'.

how on earth is being confortable with to quote myself "taxpayers directly meets more of a business's energy costs via a subsidy" capitalism red in tooth and claw, its about as far from it as I could be.

People should prepare for the unexepcted. Expecting people to have done that (if they can) is not unreasonable.

I'm absolutely not "red in tooth and claw" capitalist I'm in favour of quite a lot of things being nationalised FFS.

If an SMEs position is so precarious that they are going under for the want of £67 per month then they are surely dangerously close to trading while they are insolvent, which is against the law?

🐿🐿🐿🐿🐿🐿

Always on the nose...

A good debunking of the governments "misleading" claim of £800 billion in new global post-Brexit trade.

You may be surprised to hear that it's a bare faced lie...

Greg Hands on that £800bn lie

twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1603384286895382535?t=yVp8NXtPBmQ-rnPDCMnJCA&s=19
Here is @RhonddaBryant asking trade minister Greg Hands to apologise for gov't misleading the public by claiming its post-Brexit deals are worth £800bn.

He doesn't apologise, but watch carefully: right at the end, he corrects the record, from £800bn to - WAIT FOR IT - £80bn. ~AA

Is it just me, or has national reporting of the two recent by-elections been ... well it hasn't ?

suspect this will vanish below the fold before midday

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-63971038

Definitely not just you.And a poor result for the Tories. Imagine if it was a Labour Government which performed so dismally in a by -election. The right wing press and a few apologists for the Tories on MN would be crowing.