“sorry, but Tim Worstall is basically right.”

Hurrah! Hurrah!

All this is thoroughly seconded – although with a proviso that we do need to make transfer payments to vulnerable, low-income people who’re not in a position to cut their energy consumption in the short term.

“People in the rich world are simply going to have to start consuming less oil and gas and that is the signal that the market is currently sending them.”

But surely the social democratic response to this is to help the people likely to be hardest hit by this in the short term, and to increase investment to make it easier to reduce demand in the longer term? This is what Compass are suggesting should happen – through direct payments in the short term to people in low incomes to help them through this winter, and through increasing public investment in energy conservation and alternatives to oil and gas.

A windfall tax is not a panacea, but it seems like a better alternative than ‘leave it to the market’.

Got to disgree there. Tim is wrong in at least two ways: it’s not a free market (on the contrary, a cartel enforces quotas) and the product is an essential. That provides an incentive (some would say a moral incentive) not to let the access to that product fail on this scale.

I agree with one of the commenters on there – it’s a profiteering tax. Ofgen didn’t do its job and lower prices, so the government should.

On the other hand, a windfall tax only benefits freezing pensioners if they receive the money, or their bills go down. Since the government could quite easily spend it on wars instead, I don’t see how it solves the problem.

“Profits up six-fold in three years, while prices rise by as much as 35%” in an essential resource that hits the poorest hardest IS something to be regulated.

Don,

“A windfall tax is not a panacea, but it seems like a better alternative than ‘leave it to the market’.”

You’ve missed the bit about the windfall tax entirely screwing the market response.

I agree that those in need should be subsidised out of general revenues (yes, even the ASI believes in the safety net) and I also agree that we need more investment in both conservation and alternatives….something which high energy prices encourage all on their very own of course.

But a windfall tax is an appalling method of going about doing these things: precisely because it screws the market’s own response to those high prices, profits and the competition for them.

“sorry, but Tim Worstall is basically right.”

Pah!

I am less of a fan of the invisible hand than Tim, obviously, but the economic arguments for this do not make sense.

There is no serious evidence that this price rise has been caused by oil firms “profiteering” (ie hoarding the oil to drive the price up and then harvesting exorbitant profits). Prices have been going up because of rising demand and falling supply.

Now this is obviously hurting poor people and so the social democratic response would be to target relief at them through the welfare system, but what Compass seem to want to do is base a political strategy on demonising the oil companies. Read Zoe Gannon’s latest piece at Comment is Free.

She makes one valid economic point about the way in which Norway built up a long-term fund from its north sea oil reserves, which cannot be used for current expenditure, and then advocates that Britain (which hardly has any reserves left) does the exact opposite. All the rest of her article is about how the funds could be used to revive Labour’s political fortunes.

“invisible hand”

Ritual pedantry alert.

The phrase “invisible hand” is used three times only in the million words of Adam Smith’s writing that we have. And I think I’m right in saying that one use was in his paper on astronomy.

/pedantry.

Uhh… why not just cut the various fuel taxes altogether and increase taxes on high incomes instead. Apart from the fact it runs against the green agenda and, probably, EU law. But that would be sensible: make fuel cheaper in the short term while not punishing energy companies for providing energy in the longterm.

After all, we have never really tried “leave it to the market” before!

All the UK electricity and gas suppliers have seen profits *fall* this year, because they’re buying gas at wholesale prices that have risen by more than 100%, and then either making it into electricity, or directly selling it to the consumer for prices that have risen by less than 50%.

The wider point is that electricity and gas *don’t* cost too much, they cost the right amount given the current input costs. Companies aren’t making huge margins or returns on capital – they’re making lower margins than they were when energy was cheap. And (we/society/utilities) can only vary input costs significantly on a 15-year-plus timeframe – by increased investment in major renewable and nuclear projects.

Given the current state of housing stock, we need to raise transfer payments to stop the poor from freezing. But if you’re not poor, you need to accept that electricity and gas cost what they cost to make, and then stop being so fucking whiny about BUT IT’S NOT FAIR! IT USED TO BE CHEAP!, etc – instead, get used to the peak oil world, where the real cost of energy-intensive activities is higher.

(also, what the hell is the “cartel enforces quotas” point? If I want to buy electricity, there are at least eight companies I can think of who’ll sell me some – no cartel/quota required…)

No the real cause of higher oil prices is a cartel by the producers saudi arabia dnt eh bushs oil connections have led to a deliberate increase in oil to raise money for bush oil buddies.
Why did the price go up $140 then down to $110

We need a windfall tax how can these companies make massive profts and then claim the next minute that they are not making profits, when we can see clearly they are.

Yes, the cartel being OPEC and (refinery issues aside) the price being kept artificially high to line the pockets of oil-producing countries.

Which isn’t the same as OUR energy companies making profits (a completely different question), it’s just that I would hesitate to apply Adam Smith, or use the free market to justify anything.

But then, as someone said on Tim’s thread, Smith would have been against “minimum wage laws, trades unions, environmental laws, mandatory health Insurance and worker-safety rules, govt funded pensions, free universal education…” most of which I’m quite a fan of.

Erm Steve, you do know that Smith devoted several pages to arguing *for* free universal education, don’t you?

5 – are there past examples of one-off windfall taxes having the effects that you predict this one will have?

7 – “what Compass seem to want to do is base a political strategy on demonising the oil companies”

That seems politically quite sensible, in a context where oil companies are making profits, most people are feeling the pinch financially, and a majority of people think that both main parties are too heavily influenced by ‘big business’.

The basic policy here is to raise taxes to pay for infrastructure spending and extra welfare payments. Any time a leftie pressure group suggests doing that, the first response of the government is that however laudable it might be, it is politically impossible. There are any number of detailed leftie pamphlets, including several by Compass, which explain in great detail how a policy might work, without ever addressing political reality.

In this case, Compass are quite rightly focusing their arguments not on points of economic detail, but on presenting a populist case and providing clear evidence that doing this would be popular. They seem to have won this part of the argument, as opponents are now doing the ‘it may be popular, but is it the right thing to do’ response. This will annoy a few people, but is simply competent pressure group activity.

*Blinks and checks his post* Damn, that one snuck in. Actually, I had read that, just blind to it in that copy+paste.

It seems odd that Compass picked that name when they can’t see further than the end of their own noses.

Of course a windfall tax is a short-term measure, just like the last windfall tax was and the next one will be. Of course the winter fuel payments scheme is a short-term measure, which is why it is repeated annually.

Of course a windfall tax screws with the unpinning reality the market operates in, but the market is screwy in the first place.

What Compass fail to point out is how this government has destroyed pension planning and pension value by failing to reform the stock and commodity markets adequately if at all – because if shareholding reflected stakeholding then we’d all be participating in our shared successes.

Unnatural price fluctuations can be eliminated and spikes can be modulated by removing the need for the additional burdens of redistribution which increase disincentives to be successful, but it can’t be done whilst the economy and the government are set against each other.

I think the main point of contention is over the confusion about who is making all the additional money from the price rises.

The simple answer is everybody except you and me. The price rises have been caused partly by supply and demand issues, but they have been largely multiplied by increased risk levels. The more complex answer is that if you’ve got to spend X billion on security forces and an aggressive war to ensure resouce procurement then you have added that much top your base cost. There are many groups who have an investment in perpetuating instability.

Why does any of this shock us? It shocks us because we are middle-class bystanders isolated from the real conflicts over access and control of resources and beacuse the shock of our reactions fuel their actions by providing a prize fund to fight over.

“OPEC is a cartel”. True, but this is not the reason for the big price rise. In 1973 a number of Arab oil producing countries jacked up the price for political reasons, but there is no evidence that this is happening at the moment.

There are lots of reasons for the current price volatility: the dollar was falling for several years and has just started to rise again in the last few weeks, there have been worries about war with Iran, but now more oil is coming out of Iraq, the rich world is slipping into recesssion which will cut back their economic activity and so their use of oil, speculators like to speculate, etc. but the under reason for the price rise is related to rising consumption in some parts of the world and it is becoming more difficult and expensive to get it out of the ground in others.

Oil consumption has actually been falling in rich countries for the last two years, but that has been more than offest by rising consumption in China where demand is still growing. The economic rise of China (and Brazil and India to a lesser extent) is what is pushing up the price of commodities – and that is part of what has pushed up inflation in the rich world.

Alongside that, Britain and the US have been on spending and borrowing binges and that is what led to the credit crunch and the current economic downturn. But they are two different things.

What is worrying about what Compass are doing is that they are trying to build a political campaign by scapegoating a particular group of people (oil industry executives) who are not actually responsible for any of these problems.

This happens during periods of economic recession. Trade barriers go up, hostility to immigrants and ethnic minorities increases. Populist political parties run populist campaigns by exploiting popular prejudices.

The oil companies are making massive profits.
We have high oil prcies.
Therefore oil compabnies are making massive profits from high oil prices and people are feeling terrible poverty as a result.

No cartels should be stopped do not let big business get away with exploiting the poor.

Can someone please stop the baby crying, please? It’s giving me a headache and I need to go to sleep.

I’m glad this has got an airing on here, I’ve written about this twice and have been constantly asking for answers on the “support” group on Facebook…blanket of silence unfortunately, it seems Compass is not answerable to it’s critics.

Don:
“A windfall tax is not a panacea, but it seems like a better alternative than ‘leave it to the market’.”

There are other solutions to help poor people with their energy bills. Spending more money on them…as the energy companies are now doing. How about not over-charging them on their rent and then creaming the profits off to pay for everyone else’s services nationally? It’s all well and good to look at the market as being evil, but this government has done bugger all (literally, now that the winter fuel payments are so inconsequential that a pensioner is no better off now than they were ten years ago) on fuel poverty and the disproportionate charging on the poor. If we want to start pointing fingers and forcing moves then it’s our own government and how we spend our public money we should be focusing on first. Oh, and I will constantly mention that forcing the market to change to a different model of charging is the best way to go.

But anyway, I am mostly amazed at how Compass has had the gall to con people out of their money to make a poll that essentially asks people “hey, those people have more money than you, wouldn’t you prefer…fairly of course…that you had some of that money?”

Thomas how is that our fault? Put some ear plugs in and let the baby do what it wants.

“But a windfall tax is an appalling method of going about doing these things: precisely because it screws the market’s own response to those high prices, profits and the competition for them.”

I’d be in agreement with this completely, if it wasn’t for Compass falling about over themselves to be everything to everyone and promising the world for nothing. They want to use the majority of the money on renewable energy, but also want to use some to make everyone feel fluffy inside. They ignore the practical barriers in the way of “insulating every home” without a rather widescale renovation project going alongside it, and when it comes to the renewable energy, it seems ridiculous that

a) they wish to pump money in to something that will help only 400,000 homes if they had exclusive use of that energy, assuming again that the energy from wind power would be significantly cheaper than gas based energy (I am under the belief it is not)…whereas in reality it will go in to the big pot and the poor are unlikely to actually feel any benefits from it,

b) will be ultimately run by one of the companies, as well as potentially a firm from outside the UK, that is taxed…meaning that it would be a forced redistribution of funds from a set of competitors to the one that can promise to run a windfarm for the cheapest money.

and c) that all of Compass’s claims about the energy companies (lack of) commitment to renewable energy, to my knowledge, is utter bullshit and they are sorting this sort of thing out on their own with the pushing of the EU.

Conor – the article doesn’t stack up. First you’re saying that energy consumption has gone up and needs to be reduced since prices are unlikely to fall. I agree with that, although I doubt Tim Worstall does.

From that perfectly sensible argument you somehow come to the conclusion that Tim Worstall’s apologia for market economics, which I showed last time is based on silly assumptions, is right. One doesn’t necessarily lead on to the other.

Your argument can be right, but the case for a windfall tax can also be right – simply because the latter measure is a short term redistribution, which exists independently of broader long term trends.

I’ll come back to Tim Worstall’s economics in a bit. Just need to grab some food.

But what benefit, Sunny, does short term redistribution do other than to political capital? It doesn’t help anyone out of their problems, it doesn’t solve “unfair practices” which is what Compass seem to be harking on about as justification for taking these profits away from the companies that have worked for them…and it doesn’t answer the questions I and others have put about what level of windfall tax is being aimed for and just where that money is ultimately going to find a home.

Why is it that those supporting a case for a windfall tax find it so hard to go that bit further and actually put some justification behind it other than “well it’s not fair is it!”

Might I add, the reason I keep asking about figures is because it would seem somewhat hypocritical depending on what those figures are for us to be asking for companies to be digging people out of fuel poverty when our government is part of the problem.

29 – “But what benefit, Sunny, does short term redistribution do other than to political capital?”

It means that people can heat their homes this winter when otherwise they would not be able to?

As I clarified in the second comment, why is it the energy companies that need to foot this bill?

And to further clarify, the energy companies ARE putting more of their profits than ever in to helping the poor heat their homes, it’s not like they’re sitting about being absolutely unethical here.

And to further clarify, the energy companies ARE putting more of their profits than ever in to helping the poor heat their homes, it’s not like they’re sitting about being absolutely unethical here.

Well that’s mighty nice of them to put aside a few million to help people out (how do they plan to do that, and why do you support that over a windfall tax which is basically the same?), but out of the billions of profits they’ve just made – its a bit rubbish isn’t it?

But its nice to hear that someone has the interests of the poor, trodden energy companies at heart

it’s not like they’re sitting about being absolutely unethical here.

It really depends on what your definition of ethical isn’t it? Do you know how many people suffer or die every year through fuel poverty? What were profits of energy companies this year?

and it doesn’t answer the questions I and others have put about what level of windfall tax is being aimed for and just where that money is ultimately going to find a home.

That is for the govt to announce, if it follows this through. There would be several ways to do this.

Anyway Lee, your argument, like last time, seems to be that because a windfall tax doesn’t address broader concerns about energy pricing – its futile. I’m afraid that’s not an argument because you with or without a windfall tax, energy pricing could end up remaining the same. Besides, I don’t see the likes of Tim Worstall arguing to reform the energy pricing much either in that article.

His simple supply and demand argument assumes the market is functioning fine, which would automatically negate the existence of any “booming profits” (I note he carefully avoids using “excessive” the second time round). So to that extent it isn’t because there isn’t enough competition or there is some level of market failure.

“It really depends on what your definition of ethical isn’t it? Do you know how many people suffer or die every year through fuel poverty?”

No I don’t know. But if there were no energy companies supplying energy then that number would be rather higher, wouldn’t it? Like, perhaps, all of us?

Now you can indeed then go on to complain that said energy companies don’t have to be run for profit. That they should be nationalised perhaps. But that’s a very different argument from the ground which Compass have based their argument, which is I think the one we’re supposed to be addressing?

Further, when said companies were in fact nationalised I seem to remember that they did in fact make good profits. Even further, such things as the price of oil and gas (and if you want to talk about renewables, the price of windmills or solar cells) are not determined in the UK market but in the global one. Good luck nationalising the global supply and thus prices and profits there.

“First you’re saying that energy consumption has gone up and needs to be reduced since prices are unlikely to fall. I agree with that, although I doubt Tim Worstall does.”

Try reading what I actually wrote. I point out that in order to reduce prices we need to reduce demand and/or increase supply.

I’ve no objection at all to greater insulation, heat pumps for all, more use of economically viable renewables (I insist on that economically viable bit of course because if we start installing such which are more expensive than current methods then we’ll push prices even higher, putting even more people into fuel poverty.), none at all. How to fund that is of course a different matter.

I’ve been addressing the one very basic point about the desirability or not of a windfall tax.

The windfall tax idea is the result of a shocking misunderstanding of the basics.

In 1997, the energy companies had only recently been privatised and were almost all UK-based whereas now they are largely owned by foreign companies who earn huge amount of revenue abroad, not in the UK. How can anyone justify taxing a foreign company on money it earns elsewhere? Furthemore, if the companies are taxed on the earnings as a UK-based corporation, they will simply sod off out of this country and take their tax revenues with them – leaving the UK in an even greater mess.

Compass have got it all wrong. Conor has seen the light – well done.

http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com

I thought they were? Not massive, but enough in conjunction with the price increases to make regulation justified?

Incidentally, do people on here agree with what David Cox said today?

To clarify, instead of a loss aren’t they just making less profits than usual? And when those profits are due to price raises at their end which were more than necessary, and the consequences of customers being unable to pay are so severe, isn’t there a case to intervene?

I agree that a windfall tax isn’t the answer, but I’m not sure the companies are as blameless as you’d make out by declaring they’d made a loss.

Maybe I am missing out on the subtlety of the arguments going on in Britain.

I live in a country where the main energy company, Petrobras, is nationalised. It is making massive profits at the moment and the argument is what to do with them. A couple of years ago our neighbour, Bolivia, “nationalised” its oil reserves, which basically means that it seized the Brazilian-owned companies that had been extracting them. Brazil responded by saying that since it had made the investment it needed to be compensated for this.

But Brazil and Bolivia are both net energy exporters. Britain is a net energy importer. You already tax north sea oil revenue at 50%. There is not much left of this oil, but you want to levy a one-off levy tax on this and you are going to give away the proceeds of this to help people pay for their fuel bills. That just strikes me as being daft.

Have we forgotten about the middle-men who’ve been speculating on risk evaluations?

Which is why the price suddenly started to ease when Brown declared a renewed effort to resolve political and security issues in the Niger delta (though whether he’ll do anything to back up his policy announcement is another matter).

Where production is nationalised this will obviously be less relevant, but Venezuela and Saudi Arabia etc will hardly be complaining.

The price rises were a result of the classic double-whammy – increased demand and greater threat to supply – when there wasn’t one happening then the other gave the price another push.

Now, who finances the commodity traders and is currently escaping all blame?

Oh, that would be the hedge funds and city brokerages. Off the top of my head, isn’t that Ashcroft, Duncan and Redwood?

Centrica is an exception, because it’s really two companies – a retail utility; and the owner of a bloody great gas field in the North Sea.

The retail utility bit saw its profits fall by three quarters because, like the other utilities, its costs in buying energy have risen a lot, and its prices have only risen a bit.

The bloody great gas field bit saw its profits rise a lot – but these are already taxed at 75%.

I don’t know why I’m bothering, but…

Centrica’s extraction arm sells the gas that it extracts from the North Sea at market prices. Some of it is sold to its own retail arm; some is sold to other energy suppliers. If it charged its retail arm less than the market price for this gas, it would get into trouble for dodgy accounting and tax evasion (as it would be transferring profit from the part of the business that’s taxed at 75% to the part of the business that’s taxed at 28%).

Centrica’s retail arm buys gas from Centrica’s extraction arm and from other gas extractors. It pays market prices for this. It then sells the gas to consumers. At the moment, it isn’t making very much money out of doing this, because the price it pays the gas extractors has risen much more than the price it charges consumers.

Yes, we could raise taxation on North Sea oil and gas extraction to more than 75%. However, this is where Tim Worstall’s original point comes in: the higher the tax we impose on this kind of project, the less willing companies will be to spend the large capital requirements needed to actually get the oil and gas out of the ground. It’s better for the taxpayer to get 75% of ten billion quid in oil sales than 90% of five billion quid…

Remember Centrica-the-extraction-company has its profits taxed at nearly three times the rate of Centrica-the-retail-company. That’s a pretty powerful incentive not to set an artificially high transfer price, wouldn’t you say?

@Tim: Yoko Oyes is Dirty European Socialist (see also here and here).

Sorry, I’m trying to clean up this thread since we seem to be invaded recently by loons who can’t read the comments policy.

Tim Worstall:
No I don’t know. But if there were no energy companies supplying energy then that number would be rather higher, wouldn’t it? Like, perhaps, all of us?

Um, way to go. And if water companies didn’t supply water we’d all be dead. Is that some excuse for them to charge sky-high prices? Not sure what point you are making, if any.

I’ve been addressing the one very basic point about the desirability or not of a windfall tax.

The desirability is there – its just your assumptions are misleading. A windfall tax isn’t about reducing prices for the long term, its about short term redistribution. No one has denied that. Over the long term, I agree we need better insulation, that energy pricing needs to be reformed etc.

John:
It’s better for the taxpayer to get 75% of ten billion quid in oil sales than 90% of five billion quid…

But no one said it should be permanently taxed at that higher rate. That jump in profits will not all go back into re-investment anyway.

Conor –
I live in a country where the main energy company, Petrobras, is nationalised. It is making massive profits at the moment and the argument is what to do with them.

And I agree we should have the same discussions here.

Here’s what a windfall tax does for the public

1. In effect, reduces the amount you pay the energy companies for fuel.

2. However, you are still charged the samse, as the government gets even more tax from you than it is already doing, by grabbing what they said you overpaid the energy companies for themselves. To waste.

And if anyone expects fair and rational redistribution, just hark back to the recent 10p tax fiasco. Don’t expect anything sane, or even vaguely “fair” from them.

Yeah but Sunny, the difference is that Brazil hasjust found the biggest oil field in the world just off its coast while Britain is about to run out of north sea oil.

I can’t remember when Petrobras was nationalised, but I would not be surprised if it was not under the dictatorship. There is nothing necessarily left or right wing about taking private companies into State ownership (Chile has a far larger private sector than Brazil, but it is also a far more equal society). There are also good and bad reasons for raising taxes. I am just not particularly convinced that this type of tax on this type of asset for this type of purpose is a good one.

“Anyway Lee, your argument, like last time, seems to be that because a windfall tax doesn’t address broader concerns about energy pricing – its futile.”

It’s the crux of the issue. Why levy a windfall tax if it’s a one off thing, that doesn’t go any way to helping people in the long term? Oh…the point is that in the year leading up to a general election Labour would be taking from the rich and giving to the “poor”, which as Jeremy points out is more likely to be the middle classes than those that actually need it. And I’m not advocating continuous windfall taxes (the payouts given at the minute to social tariffs are formed through discussion rather than legislation to my mind), because similarly I see it as a slippery slope to simply telling all kinds of business that they’re not allowed to have an arbitrarily defined level of profit without having it taken away from them…a wholly counter-productive idea.

As others have said, you don’t need to tax energy companies to give poor people a short term break, you could simply lower taxes for a year while raising them at higher bands, stop creaming money off of social housing rent, stop introducing more legislation that disproportionately taxes the poor and generally do whatever tomfoolery it is that allows you to discuss reducing/removing stamp duty to just give poor people a bloody break for once. Why, I ask again, is it that we’re so keen to go after companies rather than sorting out our own stable first?

As for desirability, don’t make me laugh. The desirability is there for everyone to be given a million pounds…perhaps compass should waste people’s money and time by lobbying for that next?

Oh, and can we also clear this up…Compass are not lobbying for money to actually be given to the poor in reality, they are lobbying to have multiple companies money redistributed to a singular company or partnership to run a windfarm primarily, and then maybe to ease the impoverished plight.

Windfarm, 10% of all british companies profits or there abouts…to get 1% energy security that will not be directly distributed, if there are savings, to the poor.

There’s no way that what Compass are asking for…which is why I keep pressing about figures…is at all realistic in actually helping anyone.

“Why, I ask again, is it that we’re so keen to go after companies rather than sorting out our own stable first?”

I second the asking of this question (where “we” is Compass and their supporters, anyway).

And thus it all goes quiet again, it seems no-one is able to answer this simple question.

Still no answer, hilarious!

>>“Why, I ask again, is it that we’re so keen to go after companies rather than sorting out our own stable first?”
>Still no answer, hilarious!

Not that hilarious. I think we’re all agreed that the current enormous profits/soaring fuel poverty situation involves the regulator failing to do its job at some point, and that needs changing, but the question of whether to “go after the companies” in order to redistribute wealth in the short term so people don’t freeze is another matter. A windfall tax is almost certainly not the way to do it, but waiting to ’sort out our own stable first’ ignores the members of the public who need help now.

“I think we’re all agreed that the current enormous profits/soaring fuel poverty situation involves the regulator failing to do its job at some point”

*raises hand to differ*. Fuel poverty bad; but profits not soaring.

You don’t think there’s been an unexpected windfall on top of the expected profits, as said by Compass in today’s Indy?

John Band – “but profits not soaring”

so, for those who haven’t quite got there yet, please explain where the price rises have gone.

Have production and supply costs risen? Are middle-men speculating? Has profitability increased? How have finance and trade costs been impacted by currency markets? Is it a more mixed picture across the sector and globe than anyone here is arguing?

FWIW I think the prospect of a windfall tax is like taking a cricket bat out to play table tennis.

SB: not that’s borne out by the financial results. Companies that own oil/gas fields are profiting (but already pay 75% corporation tax equivalent, so their profits automatically windfall-tax themselves); while utilities’ profits are down.

thomas: utilities costs have risen by far more than the rises in your electricity & gas bills. The governments of countries with large stocks of oil and gas have been the main beneficiaries. Self-windfall-taxing oil companies have been secondary beneficiaries; everyone else has lost out.

John, so what Compass really want is to place a windfall tax on those energy companies which are beyond the jurisdiction of this government and are succeeding because they are so.

In other words Compass want to redistribute the wealth which is being redistributed to the rich in poor countries to the poor in rich countries.

That’s not a choice I agree with.

“but the question of whether to “go after the companies” in order to redistribute wealth in the short term so people don’t freeze is another matter.”

I have to differ, it is exactly the matter. In fact I asked why it is we are going after the companies when we can sort the problem out with public money, can we stop acting like the only money available is that in the profit margins of companies operating in the UK?

“’sort out our own stable first’ ignores the members of the public who need help now.”

Sorting out our own stable doesn’t mean sorting out regulation, it means stopping the dithering being made over whether to give middle classes yet more tax relief (like, say, in stamp duty) and to actually give it to the poor that need it. Compass doesn’t seem to care about the underlying issues that have caused the poor to drop further in to fuel poverty, only that it is seemingly “unfair” that companies have managed to gain profits.

“You don’t think there’s been an unexpected windfall on top of the expected profits, as said by Compass in today’s Indy? ”

Compass say a lot of things