DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Labour’s energy plan will prolong the pain
Like most Socialist plans to spend other people’s money, Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal to tackle the energy bills crisis sounds good at first blush.
At a time of extreme financial stress – soaring inflation, rising housing costs – many families will cling to his solution of freezing gas and electricity prices like stricken sailors to a life raft.
But beware such gaudy baubles! In reality, Labour’s leader would be storing up a world of pain.
Leading economists warn the wheeze could cost at least £90billion if continued for 18 months – more than the Government spent on the entire furlough scheme.
Labour is trying to draw battle lines before the next election
Who would pay for such an eye-watering splurge? Sir Keir says it would largely be met by extending the controversial windfall tax on oil giants – who are the bogeymen to the hard-Left.
But a retrospective levy risks deterring investment – which could prevent new power sources from being developed – and leaving Britain more exposed to expensive imports at a time when we are trying to beef up energy security.
Equally, such a move would threaten jobs, clobber pensions and, ultimately, reduce tax receipts to the Treasury.
Moreover, the price freeze would benefit the wealthy, rather than simply targeting the poorest.
It would not incentivise households to reduce energy consumption.
Experts claim it would prolong rampant inflation. And it would invariably increase the nation’s debt mountain – saddling future generations with the bill.
Of course, no one doubts that struggling families need shielding from the blow of spiralling heating and lighting costs.
And Labour is trying to draw battle lines before the next election. But its big idea to revert to failed 1970s-style price controls and spend money the country simply doesn’t have would not just be a sticking plaster solution – it would deepen an already painful wound.
Degrees of cynicism
Britain’s universities have always been beacons for foreign students eager to burnish their intellectual credentials.
Over the years, however, the attraction of accepting such pupils seems to have significantly changed.
For there are mounting concerns that the award of prized academic places is increasingly about cold, hard cash.
Vice-chancellors deny reserving more and more slots for international applicants, who pay more than double the fees of UK-based students.
However, did Clare Marchant, the head of university admissions body Ucas, let the cat out of the bag yesterday by urging institutions to recruit even more lucrative students from overseas, including from Nigeria, Ghana and Vietnam?
It would be truly scandalous if talented, aspirational and determined British students were deprived places on courses by top universities thinking only of their bottom line.
Wrong rain is a joke
Despite thunderstorms (finally!) breaking the scorching weather that has left Britain bone-dry, the hosepipe bans affecting millions drag on.
Deploying the lamest excuse since leaves on the line were blamed for halting trains, experts claim that it is the ‘wrong kind’ of rain to end the drought.
The downpours will simply run off baked ground, they say, rather than soak into it.
Still, if greedy water firms had invested in mending leaky pipes and building new reservoirs instead of filling their pockets, perhaps we wouldn’t be in the preposterous predicament of being both threatened by flash floods and short of water.
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