Thursday, 10 January 2008

Darling wanted to be seen as tough on something - but he mistakenly picked tax fuelled energy price rises

I feel a case of déjà vu coming on…


It seems Gordon Brown’s Darling glove puppet Chancellor desperately wanted to engineer some ‘tough’ sound bite publicity, presumably to counter his less than 'tough, decisive, or even competent' image built up by his failures and ill fortune in the real world.


After Rises in Wholesale gas prices prompted the energy company Npower to announce price increases last week in the order of 17.2% for gas and 12.7% for electricity, increasing typical bills by £95 for gas and £64 for electricity, he seized on it.

The Chancellor, in an effort to glean some much needed positive publicity and portray himself as the citizen’s champion summoned Alistair Buchenan, of the energy watchdog (OFFGEM) for a meeting of Alistairs about soaring power bills.

A bit short in the joined up thinking department he unfortunately appeared to fail to take into account the treasury contribution to these headline increases.

Half of them, all told, allowing for three main green taxes - including a ‘green levy’ imposed under the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) emissions trading scheme. Oh - and not forgetting VAT.

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