So let me see if I've got this straight: the government stepped in and said you can't reveal the name of an MI5 agent who tried to murder his partner with a machete, and has also posted photos online of them posing with the machete, as it is a threat to national security? I give it a week before Dorries tries to censor James Bond's name and face from all Bond films...
I think that the word agent is misleading in this context, indicating a James Bond figure as you've suggested. This lunatic wasn't an employee, but more of an intelligence asset. He's an informant. Who informs on whacko criminals? Other whacko criminals. The intelligence community appear to have gone off the reservation recently, though. Largely absent while our political system has been under attack and questionable on Russia. The Tories probably privatised it and hushed it up.
I was going to reply to Hannon but forgot he had blocked me when I pointed out on a previous occasion in 2016 that he had been economical with the truth. Well I actually called him a 'lying fascist ****, intent on destroying the UK in the pursuit of Brexit', so perhaps not surprising!
I hate the Tories generally, as their entire philosophy disgusts me. This lot make previous generations of Conservatives look like geniuses, though. Is it just a change in reporting culture or are they a completely unprecedented shambles of morons?
Tuesday 17th May 2022 News brakes that a Tory MP has been questioned by police about rape allegations and will not be going to parliament until the the investigation was over. These are some the following days front pages: All Tory papers that argue against "censorship" and "cancel culture"...only one gives the story prominence, one gives it a column, one gives is 2 sq inches and two don't even mention it... Great to have a free, unbiased press
As with so many things, it all goes back to Thatcher She was the one who normalised stating that some of the animals are more equal than others instead of believing and/or saying it privately, and it's no surprise that people who were teens during this period like De Pfeffel, Rees Mogg et al are taking that to its logical extreme, just as it's unsurprising that people who weren't even born when she was in power such as crafty ****er Grimes or Tom Hardofthinking wistfully think back to the halcyon days where they weren't even a twinkle in their father's ballsack
please log in to view this image Tory, Labour, SNP (in Liverpool), Tory, Tory and the presenter (Tory). Carver writes for ConservativeHome and Mo Hussein was a spad for Amber Rudd. Tories ruin everything.
Tories....their string-puller media owners and a compliant BBC. (Oh...throw in at least one Police Force)
Need to fill up the car in the next day or two. Noticed that I'll be paying at least 11p a litre more than when I filled up a couple of weeks ago. This is madness. I cannot accept that removing Russian oil from the market must lead to this directly. There are so many factors here. The argument is often presented as something like 'there's this amount of oil on the market and now there's no Russian oil so prices are bound to go up'. Are they? This is implying that the amount of oil around is static, when in fact OPEC (largely) can pump more oil if they want. So why don't they want to, and why are they not being put under more pressure to do so? I believe (please advise if wrong) they could make up the Russian shortfall. But why are they normally not mentioned as a contributor to this crisis? Do we really have zero influence over OPEC? What happened to the 5p discount to the fuel levy? Did the operators simply not pass it on? Why are the oil firms making massive profits? Clearly they do not pass on cuts in the wholesale price as quickly as they pass on increases. What happened to competition? This after all is supposed to be the magic that keeps the capitalist economy going. Yet the variation of pump prices is really not that great. Why doesn't one firm undercut the competition, surely they would get significant more business? Isn't that how it is supposed to work? Instead there seems to be some kind of anti-competitive cabal going on. And even though the companies appear to have gobbled up the 5p levy discount, the government still has not introduced a windfall tax, and more and more are going into fuel poverty. I should be relatively comfortable as a single guy without a mortgage, but I drive to work and this is really hurting me. And if I'm worried then there are a lot of people far worse off than me who are worrying more. Yet what I see is not a "free market" but profiteering and lack of action in tackling the world supply of oil.
Of course... Audi and Volkswagen's electric cars with the same specs as a Tesla but at half the cost and significantly less likely to spontaneously combust can't come soon enough...
Long(ish) ... In summary, all a govt has to do to any market sector is to say : show your workings. If the petrol businesses have a baseline profit margin they wish to maintain over their tax year, while their CAPEX/OPEX costs are rising, then if their tax burden is temporarily dropped then they can balance their books by not passing it on. You would only see this the year after, so any financial punishment enacted by a govt would be long after the event. A smart/transparent govt should have its own general basic balance sheet for a petrol business, based on the most recent accounts filed for all the players in the market. It can then proclaim in public like this : At the moment we believe your rough CAPEX/OPEX costs are this, and your baseline target profit margins are this. Therefore given that we have dropped your tax by X, we contend that you should be able to immediately drop your prices by at least Y (Y < X) . The "burden of proof" then falls on the businesses to "show their workings" as to why the govt is incorrect. If they cannot, then the public makes it known they will go to the vendor who is dropping by Y (someone will "blink first" - lest they want to explicitly show they have cartel behaviour - and the consequences therein) . If the govt is incorrect, then the flaws are corrected in the basic model for the next iteration (a "virtuous circle" of modelling) .
The whole basis of capitalism is that prices are set at the level where the market clears. Businesses set their prices at the highest level the market will bear. Cuts in duty will be passed in full to the customer only if supply and demand drives that.
How is it visibly shown that the market customers cannot bear the prices currently set by the petrol businesses ??
And now, some context for the billionaire manchild's version of events And a few examples that underline that, no, Elon Musk is not as intelligent as his acolytes scream that he is
