I’m With Stupid

Our leaders are not idiots. So why do they insist on taking us for fools?

I expect the leaders of Rainbow Nation Qatar are currently too busy celebrating the start of Pride Month to read the papers. But I have got some great news for them. And the American shale gas industry too.

Because thanks to UK Prime Minister apparent, Keir Starmer, the British taxpayer is about to make you both even richer. With the announcement, that as soon as he tips Rishi Sunak out of Downing St next year, he will halt all forward investment in what we used to call, the UK oil and gas industry.

You see sir Keir is a true believer.  He’s super worried about the impending Climate Apocalypse, and so in an attempt to reduce Britains carbon emissions,  he plans to increase Britain’s carbon emissions. 

And while he’s at it, he’ll also ensure that everybody’s energy bills remain needlessly, and eye wateringly, high.

Because it turns out that transporting big boat fulls of LNG from American and the Middle East which *checks Google maps* are miles away, is a much more energy intensive, carbon spewing, and expensive process, than simply pumping it out of the North Sea. Which is you know, right there.

And we need all that LNG because we aren’t generating enough of our energy needs from renewables like wind and solar.

I’ve seen claims that it is as low as 4% and as high as 40%, but it seems fair to say that at the moment renewables (wind and solar) provide about 25% of Britain’s energy needs. Which is actually pretty good.

But would you be happy to have the amount of energy available to you, everyday, for the things you want to do, like washing your pants and playing Playstation, reduced by 75% ?

Of course not.

So that energy has to come from somewhere.

We have plenty oil and gas right here. At least for our medium term needs. But our bosses are too sanctimonious, too virtuous, and too cowed by environmental protesters to fully exploit it. So instead we are the ones getting exploited. By foreign energy suppliers and home grown environmental grifters.

Weirdly Labour’s promise to destroy the British gas and oil industry is exactly what gravel arsed ambulance blockers Just Stop Oil have been demanding all along.

It’s no surprise the modern Labour Party are on the side of Just Stop Oil. They even have the same paymasters.

People like Dale Vince, the eco millionaire founder of Ecotricity, a company which made an absolute fortune from the ‘green levies’ you pay on your energy bills.

He’s like a Pound Shop Elon Musk, turning government eco subsidies into mega profits.

At least Elon is spending his cash on an exciting rocket ship to Mars. It looks to me like Dale would be happy with a wigwam and a lama farm.

It turns out Dale has been bank rolling both Just Stop Oil, and the Labour Party

Imagine if the boss of McVities started funding a direct action group which lies down in traffic demanding that the government spends more of the nation’s GDP on Hob Nobs, whist simultaneously bunging a million quid to the politicians about to be put in charge of National Biscuit Allocation. It’s that.

But that’s just politics. People should be able to spend their money promoting any political causes they like. Even rubbish ones. So I am in no way suggesting that either Dale Vince or Sir Keir has done anything remotely wrong.

At least they haven’t, for instance, conspired to ask a civil servant who nominally works for them, about the possibility of re arranging a speed awareness course. Nothing as corrupt as that.

But maybe we shouldn’t worry. Sir Keir assures us that he’s only talking about banning future investment in domestic oil and gas. He’s not going to close down the fields currently in production. That’s OK then.

I’m sure all those nasty oil companies will happily keep pumping out the good stuff, paying massive windfall taxes, and being portrayed as Hitler with an oil can. Even when the Labour Party has just told them there will be no prospect of making profits from new North Sea fields in the future. Yup. They definitely won’t pick up their ball and go home with it.

Maybe I’m being a bit unfair. Starmer only has our best interests at heart. That’s if you think our best interests involve putting even more Scottish people out of work, and increasing cash strapped Briton’s energy bills.

I think this is what the progressives call ‘equity’.

Of course next year’s election is still to be fought (yup. We’ve got that to look forward to. Woo! Woo!) and Starmer may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of electoral victory.

Increasingly desperate Tory pundits keep telling us that maybe, perhaps, possibly, next year’s election is not a forgone conclusion. And that there is a ‘narrow path’ to a Conservative victory.

But let’s be frank, that ‘narrow path’ probably involves Jacob Rees Mogg rushing round Britain with a big stick, and giving everyone over eighteen a bump on the head with it, in the hope we’ll all be concussed enough to forget the last 13 years of catastrophically incompetent Tory rule. So good luck with that. It’s not a great plan. But it’s pretty much the only plan they’ve got.

But having said that. Maybe we shouldn’t count out Rishi Sunak’s merry band of idiots just yet.

The Tories have tried everything. Lockdown. Furlough. Energy price caps. Environmental subsidies. Record breaking tax rises. Retaining all those EU laws and regulations…. And yet, so far nothing has worked.

But now Rishi has a new wizard wheeze to destroy the last vestiges of the UK’s market economy: Price caps on essential foods.

Come on guys!! This time you can do it!

The announcement that the Conservative government is about to make supermarkets introduce ‘voluntary’ price caps has prompted many questions. Chief amongst them, Haven’t these people ever read a book?

I’m not even talking a history book. Any book would do. Harry Potter, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, anything.

Because it’s not like this hasn’t been tried before. It has, and always with the same results.

Perhaps memories of Soviet bread queues have faded. Nevertheless. You don’t need to be Friedrich Hayek to realise that price caps will do nothing but create shortages. And actually put prices up.

It is obvious. If supermarkets are forced to sell bread, eggs and milk at a loss, or at least less than they think is viable, they will either reduce the supply, causing queues, shortages and rationing. Or cut corners, in order to provide these products in the cheapest way possible. Meaning lower quality products, and fewer of them.

And who will suffer the most? Well clearly the poorest. The very people these policies are supposed to help.

I can only assume that Sunak wants to give a boost to Britains ever growing food bank industry.

OK. Maybe supermarkets have a role to play in bringing down inflation. And there have been credible claims that they have been ‘profiteering’ But that’s an easy charge to make against any business whose sole reason to exist, is to, er, create profits.

There’s  a pattern here. We’re definitely being encouraged to think

Profits= bad. State intervention =good.

Maybe we could go the whole hog, and nationalise the supermarkets. Because that’s definitely worked for our amazing health system.

‘You are currently 7 millionth in the queue. Thank you for waiting. Your illness is important to us.’

Price controls are like trying to fix a flat tyre by driving your car off a cliff. Sure it will work. But only because by the time your Mazda hits the bottom, no one is going to bothered by a little flattie.

Sunak claims we have to do something because of inflation. But supermarkets didn’t cause inflation. His government did.

Obviously a huge part of the problem is the spike in energy prices caused by the Ukraine war.  But our government left us wide open to that by our aforementioned energy, (and I use the term loosely here), strategy.

The British government first turned on the printing presses after the financial crash. And poured money into the financial markets and inflated asset prices. Most of that money side stepped the real economy and so headline inflation remained low. Unless you were buying assets of course. But that’s fine because most of us don’t want to buy assets.

Except we do. It’s just we don’t call them assets. We call them houses.

It’s one of the big reasons that no one can afford a house these days. As is the fact that the UK population has grown by 8 million since 2000, but we haven’t built 8 million new homes.

Shhh. You mustn’t talk about that. For fear that you are immediately denounced as a racist. But in my defence I’m not criticising the governments immigration policy. I’m criticising their inability to do basic maths. So hopefully that will put me in the clear.

Covid came next. And the government magicked up £400 bn to ‘protect’ us from a virus that though deadly to some (including my own Dad-so I’m not claiming it was ‘nothing’) posed very little threat to most.

We spent most of that money keeping people pointlessly at home. Doing Zoom calls in their pants, and sitting around dreaming up increasingly ingenious fantasy methods to despatch Joe Wicks.

All that money printing caused inflation. But we were reassured this inflation was ‘transitory’. Yes. Well the last ice age was transitory. If you look at it the right way.

No one wins from inflation. Except of course, and they really don’t like to admit it,  the government.

Because just as inflation shrinks the value of your savings. It shrinks the real value of your debts too. And who has the biggest debts of all? Exactly.

And the daft ideas just keep coming.

Like Michael Gove’s brilliant plan to help people who can’t afford a house, by putting their rents up. That’s not what he claims to be doing, but it will be the inevitable consequence of his latest attack on private landlords.

No one likes greedy landlords, so they’re an easy target. Supposedly a Conservative on the side of small business, he’s simply passing the baton to Labour, who will no doubt double down on the lunacy and impose rent caps. We know how well they (don’t) work. Just take a look at Ireland.

It’s like stupidity poker. And both Labour and Tories are playing with winning hands.

The Tories are holding a Full House. Because no one can afford to move out of their parent’s house, so they’re still living with their mum and dad.

And Labour are looking at a Straight Flush. With their plans to flush any wealth you’ve managed to accumulate, straight down the toilet. For your own good of course.

Next Starmer and Sunak will announce a cross party committee to look into  the feasibility of buying some magic beans.

But who cares? Rishi Sunak gets to claim the Tories are ‘clamping down’ on the greedy supermarkets and ‘rogue’ landlords. Meanwhile Keir Starmer can assure us that his policies will help deal with the ‘Climate Emergency’. (They won’t, partly because there isn’t one. At least not one that British government policy can possibly alleviate.)

Like so many of the measures taken to ‘help’ people. They do the opposite.

In the end you are left wondering why these clever men are proposing such plainly idiotic policies. And trust me. Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are very clever men indeed. You don’t become a top hedge fund manager or the Director of Public Prosecutions, by being a thicko.

They are not stupid. They just think you are.

They think when there’s no bread you’ll blame greedy supermarkets. Or Brexit. Or COVID. Anything but their guaranteed failure of an economic policy.

And when the lights go out they think you will blame the Climate Emergency, rapacious oil companies, or more likely just ‘Putin’. (Who I put in inverted commas because he’s no longer presented by our media an actual man. Just the literal personification of the word ‘baddie’.)

Because though our leaders, Tory, Labour, whatever, pretend to be on our side. They actually hold us voters in contempt.

They disdain anyone who just wants to get to work, in favour of upper class twits who lie down in traffic to somehow (and I genuinely don’t understand the supposed mechanism here) ‘save the planet.’

They seem to have contempt for anyone who would like to earn, keep, and spend their own money as they choose.

They seem to think there is something morally suspect in anyone who wants to work hard, grow a business and  reap the benefits of their labours.

And most of all, they have contempt for the electorate. For voting for the wrong things, and wanting the wrong kind of Britain.

In fact they hold the electorate in such low regard that Keir Starmer, Labour leader and voice of the Guardian reading minority, is making the bold play, and plans to abolish it altogether. Or at least what we’ve considered the electorate since universal suffrage was introduced in 1928.

The Labour Party haven’t done particularly well since Tony Blair. They’ve certainly had their moments but generally speaking their policies, or maybe their leaders (shout out to Gordon, Ed and Jezza), have not exactly resonated with the majority of the British public. Even in the face of a pretty inept Tory Party.

Usually this might lead a clever politician like Starmer to consider changing his party’s policies. To come up with some fresh, voter friendly ideas. But not Starmer. He’s too smart for that.

Not a British citizen? Who cares? You can vote in our elections anyway. Come on in. The more the merrier. It doesn’t matter where you are from, our research shows your likely to be a Labour voter. So you’re in.

Still a child? Who cares? Children are our future, and if you have the mental capacity to hate old people, Tories and Brexit, you clearly have the brain power to decide your government. Have a little pencil.

Even for our modern crop of politicians it’s breathtakingly cynical.

Britain is beset by problems, if not wholly caused by, then at least exacerbated and amplified, by the failings of our useless ruling class.

But rather than actually address these problems, and do something that might alleviate them, like removing food tariffs in the case of escalating food prices, or exploiting our own abundant energy resources during an actual energy crisis. They pursue policies and strategies which negatively impact regular people’s lives.

And then when those people get upset about them. The politicians and elites panic and point the finger at someone else.

Like foreign bogeymen, sometimes Putin, sometimes the EU, sometimes the ECHR, anyone will do as long as they provide a distraction.

Or they simply cut out the middle man, and just blame their own shortcomings on the voters themselves.

In reality our issues are generally the result of choices made right here in Britain, by politicians and elites whose short term interests involve causing long term pain for the very people they are supposed to be serving.

Why do these super clever people keep proposing such stupid policies?

At the end of the day, in an era of non stop news and social media, I think they simply want to portray themselves as men and women of action. To be able to claim they are ‘doing something’.  Even if ultimately that something makes life worse for everybody.

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What do you think? Am I being unfair on our leaders? I give them a hard time but running a country is of course incredibly difficult. Maybe they really are trying to do the best they can.

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